Vows of Ashes のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 1 - チャプター 10

ELIAS The wrench slipped and I nearly lost two fingers to the engine block. I caught it, barely, and the same motion that saved my hand threw me backward off the gunwale, straight into a man who'd been standing behind me the whole time. Close enough to touch. I hadn't heard him come aboard. Nobody comes aboard my boat without me hearing it."Careful," he said, catching my shoulder. His grip was gentler than his voice. "Wouldn't want Ironmouth's most famous name to drown on my boat. People might ask questions."My stomach dropped before my brain caught up to why. I knew that voice before I turned around, everyone on the docks had been saying his name for three days like a warning. The Cassano heir's back. He's asking about you. Watch yourself. I'd heard it from Bricci, from Rosalind, from men I'd never spoken to in my life, all of them suddenly interested in whether I knew to be afraid.I turned, and there he was.I remembered him at nineteen years old, at a funeral, standing straight

ELIAS I didn't sleep. I sat up with my father through the worst of it, through the shaking and the muttering, through the moment near two in the morning when he gripped my hand hard enough to bruise and said, clear as anything, "I should have sent you both away when I had the chance," before slipping back into the fog he retreated to whenever the truth got too close to the surface.Both. Not you. Both.I turned that word over for the rest of the night like a stone in my pocket, worn smooth from handling, and by the time grey light came up over the water I had a list of questions long enough to fill a notebook and not one single answer.I went to the Cassano house anyway. Not because Kai had ordered it, though he had, in that voice that expected obedience the way other men expected air, but because for the first time in nineteen years someone with actual power in this city seemed to believe, even a little, that my father wasn't simply a murderer drowning in guilt. And God help me, aft

ELIAS My whole body had gone cold and very, very still. It was a stillness I'd learned as a child, the kind that comes from years of understanding that sudden movement draws violence the way blood draws sharks in open water. I kept my eyes on Marco Reyes, on the easy, unbothered way his hand hovered near the edge of his jacket, and felt, underneath the fear, something else rising to meet it. A cold, clear fury that had been building in me for nineteen years and had finally, finally found somewhere to point itself.This was who had wrecked my father's house. This was the man my father had spent nineteen years terrified of, drinking himself into silence to keep his son safe from. Not a story. Not a debt owed to a dead man's ghost. A man standing in a study, smiling, like violence was an inconvenience to schedule around rather than a decision he was seconds from making.The room felt smaller than it had a minute ago. I was aware of every exit, the way I'd trained myself to be aware of

ELAISI folded the letter against my chest before Teo could see what was written on it.I didn’t know why I did it. I just wasn’t ready for anyone else to read those words. Not even him.“Teo.”My voice sounded strange.“What do you know about my mother?”He didn’t answer.He walked slowly across the ruined study, stepping around broken glass and papers scattered across the floor. Then he stopped beside my father’s desk and lowered himself onto the edge of the chair.“Sit down, boy.”He wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were on the sea chest lying on its side. Photographs had spilled out across the floor. One of them was partly trapped beneath a broken drawer, but I could still see the corner of a woman’s face.My mother’s face.“I’ve been standing in this wreckage for two days,” I said. “I don’t think sitting is going to make much difference.”A small smile crossed his face, but it disappeared almost immediately.“Fair enough.”He rubbed his jaw.When he finally looked at me, his eyes w

KAII didn’t stay down.Nineteen years of training has taught me one thing: never stay still when danger is coming. A gunshot wasn’t going to erase that habit overnight.I was already pushing myself upright, biting back the pain in my shoulder, when the door opened.It wasn’t Marco.A young nurse stood there with a clipboard against her chest. She looked tired, probably used to walking into all kinds of strange situations, but even she froze when she saw me halfway out of bed and Renata sitting beside me with one hand buried inside her jacket.For a second, nobody moved.Then Renata pulled her hand out.Her expression changed instantly. Whatever I’d seen on her face moments ago was gone, replaced by the calm, controlled woman she’d been pretending to be for years.“I’m sorry,” she said smoothly. “My nephew was startled. It’s been a difficult night.”The nurse glanced at me, then at Renata.She recovered quickly and started talking about checking my vitals and giving me more pain medic