Ruthless Vows
by Rebecca Ross
Contents
Epilogue: Coda
Overview
In the epilogue, Enva spends Dacre’s Day in Oath before deciding to use Iris’s surrendered key to open the hidden passage to the under realm. She realizes that traveling below may let her escape the vow that has kept her confined to the city and resume her divine duty of guiding the dead across the wider realm. The chapter closes by shifting the story’s future toward Enva’s freedom, purpose, and the lingering spiritual aftermath of the war.
Summary
On Dacre’s Day, Enva returns to Gould’s café in Oath and repeats the ritual she keeps every year: ordering the same tea and cake, sitting alone on the patio, and watching the city. The waiter recognizes her order but not her face, underscoring how easily Enva passes unnoticed among mortals. As Enva lingers in the spring warmth, she reflects on the iron key around her neck, which Iris surrendered at Enva’s cathedral after Dacre’s death.
Enva considers what the key still represents. Because Dacre is gone, the under realm has fallen dormant again, but it still exists as long as a divine remains alive. Enva knows she could use the key to open thresholds and awaken it. She also remembers that she has effectively been trapped in Oath ever since making a bargain with Alzane, unable to break her vow and leave the city by ordinary means.
Instead of following her usual route to watch an opera rehearsal, Enva enters Gould’s and walks through the café’s interior. Passing the place where she once sat during the bombing, she remembers having watched Iris and Attie descend below without realizing who she was. She continues into the hallway and stops at the lavatory door, where the hidden entrance to the under realm waits.
At the door, Enva realizes the under realm may offer what her vow has denied her: a way to travel the wider world in body as well as in dream and illusion. She thinks of the lands beyond Oath and of the countless soldiers’ graves across the realm, where souls still wait for her song because the earth remains dry and unrested without her music. Driven by that purpose and by the possibility of freedom, Enva unlocks the door, descends the stairs, and draws out her harp.
As she moves deeper into the dust and darkness, the place feels familiar rather than threatening. Enva remembers that the last time she played, she used her music to call mortals toward war, but she refuses to let that be her final legacy. With her harp in hand and magic gathering at her fingertips, Enva vanishes into the under realm, setting out toward a new purpose beyond the limits that have bound her.
Who Appears
- Envaremaining divine who revisits Oath, reopens the under realm, and seeks freedom and renewed purpose.
- Blue-eyed waitercafé server who recognizes Enva’s usual order but barely notices her beyond that.
- Irishad surrendered the iron key to Enva; recalled from the bombing and as part of Enva’s decision.
- Alzanefigure from Enva’s past bargain whose vow has kept Enva bound within Oath.
- Attiementioned in Enva’s memory of the bombing, descending below with Iris.
- Dacredead god whose defeat left the under realm dormant and made Enva the only remaining divine.