When his younger sister is propositioned by the Tyrant King, Aster steps in to take her place. Just when he fears he must face this fate alone, the King assigns Rowan the Black to protect him—an Enforcer Knight with a tortured past. Despite his cruel reputation, Aster can't shake the feeling that Rowan is familiar to him. Haunted by memories of his lost childhood sweetheart, Jace, Aster must now navigate a veritable political chess game he wasn't at all prepared for. 

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“Flowers like the rose are needed for so many reasons,” Aster said. “The ground needs their roots, bees need their pollen, and animals need their leaves. So they do what they can to survive, by any means necessary. Does that mean a rose is evil for growing thorns?” He looked up at Rowan.

Rowan kept his eyes on the rose. He didn’t seem convinced. “A single rose has never caused as much pain as I have, Aster.”

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Broken Vows is created by Alex Agar, an EGlobal Creative Publishing signed author. 

BRoken Vows

Being in this house again, Rowan had a harder time keeping up his stoic outer demeanor than he thought he would. He tried to keep as quiet as he could when Aster was showing him around, but he knew he wasn’t doing a good job of keeping everything under wraps. Aster saw how melancholy he was anyway.


And how could he not be? Being here after so long, after so much had happened over the years… he felt as if he could see his own ghost drifting through the halls, or maybe the ghost of the life he could have had. How would it have been, if he’d come home instead of fighting that day? If he’d come home at all? He could be living here, happily married to the love of his life, watching their children run around the grounds, playing without a care in the world. 


Yet here he was, standing in the very spot he first met Aster, pining for what could have been. 


Chapter 18: Oaths Sworn Over Stars