The Sheltering Vow

It protects a household. Not a child.

Mae Davaran has never broken a law in her life.

She’s twenty-eight, mageless, and a matron at a Karsthold children’s-house. Four weeks ago, her sister died on a staircase in her husband’s manor. The Iron Court magistrate ruled it a fall. The city patrol heard Mae out and wrote down hysteric.

So Mae does the only thing left to her. She takes her sister’s children and runs.

Calenna is seven. Anders is five and hasn’t spoken a word since the morning his mother died. Mae has two days of food, her father’s knife, and no magic to protect them. But anyone who wants those children will have to go through her first.

Darien Vossarin is a Verdant Recon-Knight. A forge-lord has paid the Order twice the going rate to bring his children home, and Darien has never failed an assignment.

It takes him three days to find them.

It takes considerably less than that to realize Mae isn’t the danger.

And he isn’t giving the children back.

But defying his orders won’t be enough to keep them safe. In all of Velmarra, only one instrument outranks a father’s blood claim: a Sheltering Vow, fae law older than the three Courts and beyond the reach of any of them.

It doesn’t protect children.

It protects a household.

A hearth. A family. Two adults standing over it.

For a year and a day, Darien and Mae would belong to that household together. After that, the vow becomes permanent, or it ends.

There’s only one problem.

He won’t offer it.