Pregnant For My Father-in-Law
It looked harmless now, nothing more than a delicate wedding band with a pale gold finish and tiny runes carved so finely into the inner curve that a human eye would never have noticed them, but I knew better.
The healers had already called it a Vow-Seal Ring, an old witch artifact used in black-market marriages to bind secrets, punish betrayal and silence whoever wore it if they tried to speak against the one who placed the vow.
It was illegal in every civilized territory because it did not simply burn skin. It tightened around bone, poisoned the blood, attacked the nerves and, if resisted too long, stopped the heart like a hand closing around it. The fact that Ciara had carried that thing