Dumped the Oathbreaker for His War God Uncle novel · Chapter 24 of 32

Chapter 24: Her Own Name

"The words," Phaedon said. "All of them. I know you."

I kept my hand up.

"On my own name," I said, "I will never speak of the Vault. Not at the Feast. Not ever."

My palm stayed clean.

It would stay clean as long as I kept my mouth shut.

Phaedon looked at it a long time.

"Midnight," he said. "Don't be late. I'd hate to start without you."

He took me down himself.

The guards let Eudora go at the tower door, and she went off into the dark at a run, toward the north road.

I knew where she was going.

So did Ismene, at the top window, watching her go.

At the last bell of the old day, Phaedon lifted the tapestry behind the throne and held the door for me.

I went down first.

Theron was where I'd left him.

His head was down on his chest.

He didn't lift it when the lamp came round the arch.

For one terrible breath I thought the cuffs had opened the other way.

Then he said my name.

It was barely a sound.

"She bought you, uncle," Phaedon said. "Be grateful."

He laid his palm on the lock at Theron's right wrist.

It flared white, and the cuff fell open, and Theron's arm dropped.

The left.

Then the ankles, one and two.

Theron didn't fall.

He stood there in the lamplight swaying, his wrists black with old blood, and looked at his nephew.

Phaedon stepped back fast.

"A deal's a deal," he said. "Ask her."

Theron didn't ask me anything.

He turned to the wall, took hold of the chain where it met the first ring, and pulled.

The ring came out of the fresh mortar on the first try.

Then the second.

Phaedon's guards at the arch looked at each other.

The third ring took him two pulls, and he had to lean on the wall after.

The fourth came out with a crack.

He gathered all four chains over his shoulder, cuffs and rings and all, and the iron hung down his back.

"Those are Sun House property," Phaedon said.

"Then come up and take them," Theron said.

Nobody did.

He walked up forty-one steps with the whole weight of it on him and never once put his hand on the wall.

I walked behind him and counted.

The housekeeper was waiting in the Iron House yard with a lamp and her one eye full of water.

The dogs got there before her.

They knocked him down in the mud, chains and all, and stood on him and washed his face.

He lay there under them and laughed until he coughed.

The legion stood along the walls in the dark with torches and didn't cheer.

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