The Reformer's Vow
The Vows of Velmarra #2
4/30/2027
Fantasy
They call him the Reformer. She has no intention of being reformed.
They call Donavar Keach the Reformer, and he has never once liked it.
He lost an eye in the war and gained a raven, and he has spent the years since taking apart the kind of men the Courts prefer to call rumours. The one he’s hunting now works Hollow territory, takes children, and has never had his name written down by anybody with the authority to act on it.
Ness Tarn knows the name. She has known it for years. What she doesn’t have is a reason to hand it to a Verdant knight with an Order commission and a habit of deciding what’s best for people — and she says so, at length, before she agrees to anything.
What follows is a hunt through the back-rooms of the Hollow Marches, conducted by two people who each expect the other to break first. She was born to a Hollow house and buried the name it gave her. He is the only person in years to ask what it was.
They get their confession. Under contract-magic, in a room with no doors, the predator gives up more than his own crimes. He names someone above him.
Nobody in that room believes it. A rumour, an old story, a bogeyman that Hollow advocates frighten each other with.
The Veiled Hand.
