The Unexpected Bonding Vow - Michelle Howard Page 0,2

have her hands slip. She looked down. Red smeared across the white diamond patterned floor. More red trails ran from a jagged wound across her palm. Beside her trembling fingers was the knife she’d used to prepare her food. It must have sliced her hand when she tried to brace on the counter.

Laughter built around her. Bets rang out and jeering calls urging Maurin to punish her more. In a daze, Saedra pressed her face to the floor, her body one ball of hurt and vowed she’d escape this mad man one day. Just as her mother wanted her to.

“Get up!” Without giving her a chance to respond or comply, Maurin jerked her from the floor by her shoulders and shook her hard enough Saedra saw stars. Hard enough she feared he’d truly end her life as her head bobbled on her neck.

With a roar that singed her ears, he tossed her again. Saedra flew across the room and slammed into the wall. The back of her head cracked as it made contact and she vaguely felt the snap of the bone in her right leg as it crumpled beneath her weight. Maybe she was wrong and he did plan to kill her after all.

Pain exploded moments later. Then everything went dark and she didn’t hear any more.

***

Garik- age 18

“Do you take this oath to hold above all others, Garik Denikon?”

The Master of the Guild waited patiently for his response. The oath was a contract and vow one couldn’t give up on a whim. Three solid years of mental and physical training culminated to this moment he’d longed for. It was worth the pain and hurt he’d gone through to get to this point. Garik inhaled calmly and let the breath out on a balanced sigh as he agreed. “Yes.”

Jodhan didn’t quite smile but he clasped both of Garik’s arms below his shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “Then you are ready.”

Another squeeze before he released Garik to step back and wave his arm at the silver jewel-covered chalice. It rested on a pedestal beneath the gleaming overhead light of the vestibule where the ceremony was taking place. The holy area had been prepped specifically for this moment and the flickering flames from the candles surrounding the space added to the serious nature of the commitment he was about to take.

Garik reached for the chalice and stared into the gleaming contents. Bluish liquid swirled inside. One of the earlier lessons drilled into him was caution about accepting drinks. Poison was a simple but effective means of killing.

A week of being in screaming pain curled on the floor of his room and evacuating the contents of his stomach had cured him of accepting any food or drink he hadn’t prepared himself or watched being prepared.

This was different, though. He was finished his training protocol. Drinking from the chalice was a symbolic act of trust. Nothing more or less. He tossed back the contents and swallowed in one large gulp. Overly sweet, but the liquid went down without resistance and none of the familiar pangs that often accompanied consuming poison.

Garik set the chalice back in its prominent place and turned to face the audience of over a dozen dark-clad men standing around them in a circle. Assassins who had also completed training this cycle. Like him.

There was no applause, no warm cheers but there was pride and respect in the stoic gazes that had witnessed the proceedings. It soothed a place inside of Garik, which had ached long before he joined the Guild as a confused teen of fifteen. Orphaned by the death of his parents in a mining accident and abandoned by what remaining family he had left, Garik had hooked up with a band of miscreants thieving and looting.

It was an unreliable lifestyle and one that would have seen him dead sooner than later if not for the night he’d tried to fleece a man clad all in black as he’d left a drinking establishment.

As soon as Garik and the others had closed in on the stranger, their target had spun on his heels, kicked Phinneas hard in the chest and delivered two rapid-fire punches to Ward’s face. Garik hesitated, the long blade he held in his hand feeling inadequate in the face of the clear experience of their mark.

“Do you really want to do this?” the stranger asked, his face partially shielded by the hood of the shirt he wore beneath his ankle-length duster.

Garik’s two partners leaped to their