Oath breakers, p.1
Oath Breakers, page 1
Oath Breakers
Grace Leeds
Copyright © 2024 Grace Leeds
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 9798326427359
Imprint: Independently published
Cover design by: Charles Utting
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to my grandmother, who I will always wish could have read it.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part Two
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Acknowledgement
Preface
When they first appeared, they were just shadows in the dark, scampering over the thirty-foot wall with barely a pause and leaving behind broken fences, trampled grass, shattered windows. They left trails of green slime smeared along the walls, down the streets, along people’s furniture, but they hadn’t hurt anyone, and they’d been gone by morning. Every watchman had disagreed about what they looked like. Some said they had four legs, others said they had eight. One man swore they had pinchers the size of his head, while one woman insisted she’d seen a pair of wings. Everyone assumed they would be gone for good. Everyone went to pick up the mess they’d left, swearing under their breath at the inconvenience.
It wasn’t until they began to touch the green slime that they realized the danger. It burned clean through a woman’s couch. A man trying to mop up the mess had been left with only the handle of his mop, the rest burned away before he’d had a chance to drop it. A mother had gotten third-degree burns on her hands. A little boy had lost his foot when he’d jumped into a puddle thinking to play. They didn’t seem so harmless anymore.
They returned a week later, crawling through the shadows and climbing over the wall that was supposed to keep them out. This time the watchmen were ready for them. When the creatures stepped on top of the Wall, their grey bodies were outlined by the moon, four legs holding them too close to the ground for the low light of the new moon to reveal anything else. It was enough for a watchman to shoot his bow. The thing cried out, a high screech that was immediately answered by three others below.
The people only found blood and green slime smeared along the Wall in the morning. The attacks started the next day. They always came at night, and they always killed, and what they didn’t kill, they left covered in their green slime, corroding, corrupting. The more they attacked, the further into the city they ventured. The further they ventured, the more destruction they caused. The more destruction they caused, the less hope the people had.
Part One
Chapter One
When Ayden was little, she used to love mornings like this. The sunrise shone bright orange, fracturing in a million different directions as it pierced through the trees. The air was crisp and cool, a gentle breeze stinging against her cheeks. If she’d been lucky enough to wake up before the sun, she wouldn’t have hesitated to drag her father out of bed after her, ignoring his grumbled protests and just knowing the sight would be worth being tired later. She used to love the sunrise. Now, she couldn’t bring herself to do anything but wish it was three hours later and that this stupid ceremony was over already.
“Ready?” Doyle asked. He was dressed in the official off-duty uniform of the watchmen. His green shirt tucked into black pants over combat boots with a sword sheathed at his waist.
When Ayden and the other four had first arrived, there had been a weeklong debate on whether they’d have to wear the same uniform before it had finally been decided that since they weren’t technically watchmen, they wouldn’t.
Ayden still remembered catching sight of the flier asking for volunteers in this experimental program to fight the new monsters who’d started sneaking over the walls. The people had taken to calling the monsters Nightmares for the way they snuck around in the dark, and after the first hundred people died, people were panicking. It was hardly a surprise the watchmen were trying to figure out a way to combat them.
“Ready,” the Witch said. She rose from where she’d been kneeling and drawing symbols into the dirt of the training grounds. There was a hexagram with a circle drawn around it, just small enough that the points of the hexagon stuck out. Ayden had seen her draw the symbols before, but the one time she’d asked what they meant, the Witch had just stared at her for so long Ayden had wanted to kick her and run.
“Each of you stand on a point of the Hexagram,” she said, moving to stand on a point herself.
Off to the side, Shane Byrne watched with his arms crossed and his eyebrows furrowed, and Ayden couldn’t help wondering how long he’d be able to keep from interfering. Shane Byrne was a short, handsome man, with hair turning grey around his scalp and temples. He made a point to wear finer clothes than most people in the city could afford to spend on food. Most people only referred to him as the Mayor. A title he seemed to like if the way he ruled over the city was anything to go by.
Ayden stepped forward. Her stomach felt heavy, her legs unsteady. She’d been preparing for this moment for the past six months and still somehow didn’t feel ready. Beside her, the other four idiots who’d volunteered stepped forward.
Neave Moore rang her hands in front of her as she stepped onto the point beside Ayden, her smile nervous and reassuring. Ayden turned away from her quickly. Ethan Kavanagh was on her other side, his eyes uncharacteristically focused. Rory Doherty was across from her, the scowl that always seemed to be present plastered across his face, and Oliver Connolly stood beside him, his dark skin unnaturally shallow with nerves.
“Repeat after me,” the Witch said, lifting her hands up. Her palms faced toward the ground, the muscles in her arms rigid.
Neave shifted, her feet kicking dirt up into the air.
“I swear to protect Atanacio, the people residing within Atanacio, and the Wall surrounding Atanacio.”
“I swear to protect Atanacio,” they spoke in tandem, their voices echoing around in the still air of the morning, and as they spoke, the lines that the Witch had drawn into the dirt began to glow.
Ayden tried to step back, her voice faltering when she found she couldn’t move her feet.
“Finish,” the Witch said. “You will not be able to leave until the ceremony is complete.”
Ethan grumbled, his words lost behind the buzzing in her ears. Rory’s lips were moving. Oliver swallowed thickly enough that she could see it from across the hexagram. Ayden forced her lips to move, panic rising up in her throat.
“I swear to protect the people residing within Atanacio,” she said, and the buzzing in her ears intensified. Her hands and feet began to tingle. “And the Wall surrounding Atanacio.”
The tingling in her hands and feet spread up her arms and legs. Her head throbbed. Her heart jack-rabbited in her chest. The Witch raised her hands high, and the lines glowed brighter. Ayden tried to raise her hands to block out the glow but found she still couldn’t move. Her heart beat was so fast it was beginning to be painful. The Witch’s lips moved. Someone screamed. The light brightened until all Ayden saw was white.
◆◆◆
Ayden woke to her entire body hurting, a sharp wracking pain as if someone were shoving needles into her bones. It was a physical effort to sit up and press her back against the wall. Every line of her ass that pressed into the thin mattress throbbed. Her head pulsed painfully with every beat of her heart. Before waking up twenty minutes ago, she would have said it was impossible for each individual digit of her toes to ache.
“Ayden?” Doyle Sweeney said. He had already been in the room when she woke up, talking before she was even fully conscious.
Ayden gritted her teeth against the pain that shot through her skull. Why was he shouting? He really didn’t have to shout. She was right here.
“Ayden,” he said, still so loud. “I know you’re in pain, but the Mayor will be here any minute, and he has questions.”
“Fine,” she answered. Her vocal cords gritted together down her throat, vibrating uncomfortably. It made her mouth pulse, her tongue tremble. Her teeth tasted like mint toothpaste and that cinnamon bread she’d had for breakfast the day of the ceremony. None of it felt right.
Footsteps sounded outside her door, a heavy stride, favoring his right leg. The odd, offbeat sound of metal rubbing and grinding together. It was only when the door started opening that she realized she must have been hearing the doorknob turn. She forced herself to sit up, forced herself not to cover her ears, nausea sitting heavy in her stomach.
The door closing behind Byrne was a loud click that vibrated through Ayden’s skull. His eyes swept over her, assessing and cold, and it didn’t take that much energy to glare back at him. After her first day training on the Wall, she’d learned to hate the man.
“Report, Quinn,” he said, and his voice wa s even louder than Doyle’s had been. His tongue made a wet smack inside his mouth as he spoke. His teeth ground together, and the dry flecks of skin from his lips peeled off and floated to the ground.
Ayden dug her fingernails into her palms because she never wanted to know what went on inside Byrne’s mouth.
“Sir,” Doyle answered, the shuffle of his feet against the floor almost musical against Byrne’s speech. “She’s barely been conscious. Perhaps—”
“I want to know what happened,” Byrne interrupted, eyes never leaving Ayden’s face.
“I don’t remember anything,” she answered.
Byrne’s eyes narrowed. Doyle shifted again, wiping his palms against his pants with a low scrape.
“Nothing?” Byrne asked, low and suspicious.
“A flash of light,” she said. “And then I woke up here.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“I can’t do—”
“After the Witch cast her spell, she died,” he interrupted. His voice was so loud, splitting her head open with every word.
She bit her tongue, the metallic taste of blood almost sweet against the pain.
“The five of you were unconscious. It’s been four days, and you’re the first to wake up. We need answers!”
“I don’t have any!” she answered, so quiet compared to him.
His words swirled around in her head. Died, unconscious, four days, first to wake up. It couldn’t be possible. The Witch had seemed so…untouchable. Months of training with her, preparing, learning, and never had the vaguest possibility that she could die entered Ayden’s mind. She was supposed to be around to help figure out the aftermath of her spell.
And what about Oliver? Rory? Ethan? Neave? Byrne had said she was the first to wake up. They’d been unconscious for four days. She’d been unconscious for four days. The others were still unconscious. The Witch was dead. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
“Ayden,” Doyle said, his voice soft and sympathetic.
She wanted to punch him.
“Shut up,” someone else said. A voice she didn’t recognize, a whisper of a breath against her ear, too gentle to be the Mayor. Doyle’s lips hadn’t moved. No one else was in the room.
Her eyes stung.
“…this is hard,” Doyle was saying. His eyes flicked to Byrne, who stood with his arms crossed, a scowl plastered across his face, but didn’t interrupt. “But anything you can tell us would be helpful.”
“I don’t know anything,” she answered.
A fresh wave of pain washed through her, and suddenly she was lying on her side, a tattered blanket she’d never seen before pulled up to her chin. Her feet were tucked under her butt, the blue blanket too small to reach her toes. The room she was looking at was almost exactly like hers—except, the desk was facing the wrong way, turned away from the window when the desk in her own room looked out of the window. Instead of ancient relics, the bookshelf was lined with books on philosophy she’d never read, never seen, and as she turned her head into the pillow, her hair brushed along her cheek, shorter and softer and thinner than hers had ever been.
“Ayden?” Doyle’s voice echoed, sounding far away, and someone’s hand pressed against her shoulder, creating a weird dual sensation of both the bed and the hand on her.
She jerked away from the touch, her shoulders pressing into the wall behind her while also feeling the bed under them. Doyle and Byrne stood before her while the room also stood empty. She swallowed against the queasiness building in her stomach, blinked, and was somehow back in her own room. The Mayor and Doyle both stared at her, their eyes narrowed.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” someone chanted, their voice clear and strong. Neither Byrne’s nor Doyle’s lips moved.
She closed her eyes, clenching her fists in the sheets of her bed. Flashes of that other room flickered against her eyelids. It was so distinct. Like it had been painted on her eyelids. She didn’t know anything, except that apparently the Witch’s spell had made her go insane.
“It hurts,” the voice answered.
Well, too bad, she told it, and it almost felt like the voice hesitated in her mind. Which was entirely too good to be true.
“Quinn,” Byrne said, his voice harsh and grating. “You need to—”
A loud knocking interrupted him. Ayden sighed, her fingernails digging into her palms even through the sheets. Why couldn’t people just be quiet? Byrne sighed and cast Doyle a pointed look. Doyle straightened his back and went to open the door. The watchman who stood on the other side looked frazzled, his uniform shirt inside out and his hair standing up like he’d just rolled out of bed and hadn’t had time to brush it.
“James?” Doyle asked.
“Uh, sir…” James answered. He flicked his eyes over to Ayden, then the Mayor before focusing back on Doyle. “It’s Ethan Kavanagh, sir. He’s awake.”
◆◆◆
The truth was, Ayden didn’t care about Atanacio, about defending the Wall or people or any of it. It was just…it was just that she hadn’t known what else—where else to go. She could still remember exactly what the mortician had said after she’d identified her mother’s body.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Her mother’s eyes were still open, pale blue like Ayden’s. Her hair was tangled with blood from the cut along her throat, her face barely paler than it was in life.
“I’m sure you’ll find this a difficult time, so I’ve provided a list of therapists for your use.” His breath smelled like smoke and tobacco, his eyes focused on the difficult task of placing the sheet back over her mother’s corpse. “Since you’re twenty-two and of age, your care is now in your own hands; however, you’ll be given a voucher for a week’s worth of rations to help you assimilate.”
Ayden had wondered if he’d practiced the lines. If any of that was actually supposed to make her feel better. He’d handed her the vouchers and the key to her house, telling her that now that the investigation into her mother’s death was over, she could enter again, but she just hadn’t been able to go home to the blood staining the floor, the knife still resting by her mother’s rocking chair where it had fallen from her hands.
She’d ended up by a house in the West slums, one of the many that were past the point of repair, the roof caved in and two of the walls halfway to crumbling, too tired to do anything but watch the people walk by her without a word.
So, the truth was, she didn’t care about Atanacio, about defending the Wall or people or any of it. It was just when a flier had flown by asking for volunteers in an experimental program to protect the Wall from the Nightmares, she hadn’t known what else she was supposed to do.
When she’d appeared at the training grounds in Central Atanacio, inquiring about the new project, the clean-shaven guy with bright eyes and freshly washed clothes had taken one look at her and turned her away. It had been Doyle, sweat clinging to his cheeks and his sword still in his hands, who'd seen the swords across her back and ushered her inside.
Byrne hadn’t wanted anything to do with her. He’d believed she was too rebellious, too self-reliant, that she would never be able to bend her pride enough to follow orders. She hated him, had always hated what he stood for, and as much as she wanted to spit in his face, to walk out, it had been a challenge she couldn’t refuse. She hadn’t been able to let some high-born boy who’d never had to get his hands dirty just to put food on his table judge her. In the end, she’d promised she would follow orders, that she would give her life to protect the people of Atanacio.
And now, after a week of being locked in her room as the others woke up, of being brought food because the Mayor, ‘didn’t know what the spell had done and didn’t want to risk anything until he could be sure’, she had never felt like breaking her promise more.
“Just tell me the truth,” Byrne said, sharp and annoyed. He visited her every day, demanding to know whether she felt any different, whether she remembered anything. As if asking the same questions would get her to answer differently.
You know that’s the definition of insanity, right? the voice asked, a low baritone that tripped through her mind. It held a steel confidence born of too many starving nights, of learning to rely on himself. She pressed the back of her head into the wall, digging her nails into her palms, and willed it to go away.
