An immortal knight. A fearless rebel. A love forged in the fires of war.

Chevalier Rollant de Montvieux was once a man of honor. Betrayed on the battlefield and bound by a sorceress’ curse, he has spent six centuries serving the French crown—immortal, untouchable, and doomed to lose anyone he dares to embrace in love. As revolution smolders in the streets of Paris, Rollant clings to duty as his only purpose in his wretched existence—until he meets her.

Élise has nothing left to lose. Defiant, outspoken, and determined to fight for a future free from tyranny, she has no patience for kings—or the loyal dogs who serve them. But when she crosses paths with Rollant in a spy’s disguise, she senses something different beneath his quiet strength—a man burdened by secrets, trapped in a fate not of his choosing.

Drawn together by forces neither can control, their connection deepens in the shadows of a crumbling world. But Rollant knows love is forbidden to him. To hold Élise is to curse her to certain death.

As France teeters on the edge of war, Rollant must make an impossible choice: honor his unbreakable oath and protect her from afar, or risk everything—including her life—for one fleeting chance at love. And Élise must decide where her true battle lies: in the streets, fighting for freedom, or in the arms of a man who may be her ruin—or her greatest salvation.

For readers who love slow-burn, fade-to-black forbidden romance and gothic historical fantasy, The Darkest Oath weaves echoes of Beauty of the Beast into a sweeping tale of sacrifice, love, and redemption set in the dark underbelly of the French Revolution, where love itself may be the deadliest betrayal.

BookCave Content Rating:

Moderate with Community Content Elements / Themes, including:

• closed-door romance
• violence - assault, abuse, executions

Author Rating:

The author rated this book for ages 14+ for violence, closed-door romance, and adult themes. 

Chapter 1: The Chains of Vengeance

Siege of Damascus, Levant 1148

“Do you wish to live, Rollant?” An ethereal whisper wove through the din of battle, cutting through the clash of steel and the cries of the dying.

The whisper tickled Rollant’s ears like a wisp of wind carrying words not meant for the living. Rollant moaned through strained breaths and shattered lungs. 

“Angel of death, take your enemy,” he rasped with unfocused eyes, searching the skies for God’s messenger. He assumed the origin of the whisper was divine—a sign from the heavens. But only fallen bodies strewn across the blood-soaked ground were in sight.

His gaze, blurred by the edge of death, drifted to the silhouette of Arnoul, his brother-in-arms looming over him. The cries of the Saracen enemies echoed in the distance but faded to the slowing heartbeat in his ears. Rollant grasped at the fragments of the past moments, trying to piece together the fatal betrayal and pleading with God on why He let him fall to Arnoul’s blade. Arnoul, the man who had shared his food, his cot, his horse—the long years spent training, fighting, and saving each other—he was the one who struck him down? 

Rollant’s mail-clad fingers, clumsy and weak, drifted toward the wound on his neck. Blood poured warm against his chainmail coif. Breath and blood warred within him—both desperate to escape his broken body.

“Forgive me, old friend,” Arnoul muttered softly, though too soft for the weight of his sin. He wiped his blade clean with Rollant’s surcoat, the sacred white stained red. “But your lands, your title—they were ever meant to be mine.”

Rollant wanted to scream, but his voice failed him. Life fled from him as the sun perched as a bloodied halo above the walls of Damascus. The ruddy sunlight cascaded onto the once-proud Crusader banners, now torn, ragged, and scorched by fire. The frayed threads fluttered in the smoky air as a last stand for God and the Holy Lands.

Memories of his beloved wife and precious daughter flashed before his eyes. Amée’s gentle touch warmed his cheek, and her laughter echoed in their home tucked away in the Chartreuse mountains outside of Lyon, France. Cateline’s tiny hand reached for his to walk by his side in their garden. Dread far deeper than the pain in his flesh pierced his heart at the thought of leaving them with traitors such as Arnoul.

“Do you wish to live?” The whisper came again, clearer this time—a woman’s voice, cold and thin. Not a messenger of God.

Rollant pushed through the blurry vision and focused on Arnoul’s voice that planted him in the brutal present.

“Do you wonder why I have cut you down?” Arnoul shook his head and gritted his teeth. 

Rollant gasped for air but narrowed his eyes in hatred.

Arnoul nodded. “A knight as brave as you deserves an answer.” He leaned upon his heavy engraved sword. “Our noble King Louis the Young sees you alone in all things. He has refused to favor the rest of us. Too much glory upon your head. Too much favor from the king.” Arnoul’s words wavered as though he struggled with what he’d done, but his eyes remained steady. He lifted his boot from Rollant’s crushed hand, the bones broken and useless from Rollant’s last desperate attempt to defend himself. “God have mercy on my soul; His will be done. But life shall be better without you to claim all the King’s favor. For now, I may have chance to cause the King’s eyes to shine. For now, the King may greet me with a smile and remember my name.”

Rollant stared in disgust at the man who had once been like a brother to him. 

Arnoul kneeled and placed a heavy hand alongside Rollant’s cheek—a cruel reminder of their false friendship and loyalty once shared on the battlefield. “Sorrow fills me, my friend. Be with our Lord, Rollant. I shall see that your wife and daughter be properly cared for, as is right.”

A spew of venom desired to leap from Rollant’s tongue into the cursed man’s face. His lips twitched with words unsaid. How dare Arnoul, a traitor, a betrayer, speak of honor and care? The twisted sense of righteousness showcased Arnoul’s greed and decay. How had Rollant not seen through to the envy beneath his mask? A choked, blood-filled gasp flew over Rollant’s lips.

Amée’s face, flawless in its memory, appeared before him. Pearl-white skin, her almond eyes gazing at him as they always had—full of love. He could almost hear her voice and feel the warmth of her hand in his. Cateline, too. She would grow into a woman without him. She would never again feel his arms around her in protection or love.

If a Saracen had struck him down, he would have surrendered his soul to the Lord, finding peace in the knowledge his death was in God’s honor.  But not like this—betrayed by a selfish, greedy act.  He was a righteous warrior for the crown of France, and he deserved an honorable death! Arnoul mocked him and stole it all.

Something feral surged in Rollant’s chest with a last, wretched pulse of life. With what strength remained, Rollant swung his fist upward, connecting with Arnoul’s throat. 

The betrayer slumped back, clutching his neck, and coughed with a violent rasp. He snarled as he regained his breath. He twisted his head to sort out the pain. 

“Still so much fight in you, even at the end,” Arnoul said through coughs and a broken voice. “Our battle shall be worse with your absence.” 

Darkness clawed at Rollant’s vision. His breath came in shallow gasps. His strength faded. No words could be spoken. He wished a weapon had been blessed to his hand, so to drive it through Arnoul’s chest. But both hands lay limp and powerless in the dirt—unable to move anymore. Yet he clung to life in actionless rage. It piled up in his heart and weighed heavy on his back teeth.

The world around him grew eerily silent, as if the dark tendrils of death reached for him. A cold stillness replaced the action of battle. Arnoul’s footsteps sounded distant and hollow as he moved away.

Amée’s face was the last vision he held but it warped into a bright light.

The whisper came a third time in an alluring croon. “Do you wish to live, Rollant?”

Rollant’s heart stilled. His mind, once consumed with thoughts of vengeance, filled with the faces of his wife and daughter. The thought of leaving them vulnerable made his soul cry out in despair. He would do anything—anything—to stay with them.

A dark figure loomed over him with celestial hair floating like sunrays behind her head.  Her eyes shimmered like distant stars. The coldness came with her presence and laid heavy on Rollant’s body. “A knight so brave and just should not endure such treachery. A blameless one the King needs. I am his sorceress, a guardian for his lineage, and I choose you.” 

She presented an offer of salvation laced with cruelty: “I shall give you eternal life if you give your years in service of the French crown.”

The weight of the offer pressed down on him. Eternal life was meant for the righteous with the Lord in Heaven, not in this world.

Her wintry fingers wrapped around his heart and squeezed, cutting his debate short. 

“Do you desire life?” she asked, softer but more insistent. It came from a place beyond death, beyond the light of God. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t right. Eternal life came from God, not by dark forces. Whether his acceptance of the sorceress’ offer would sever him from his creator forever stilled his soul. 

But knowing Arnoul would take his precious Amée and raise Cateline sat raw in his belly. If he accepted the offer, he would live and ensure Amée and Cateline were protected and loved, but after their passing, he would never see them again. But if Arnoul, who succumbed to Lucifer’s temptations, took care of them, their souls might be lost, having been led in Arnoul’s ill-fated guidance. 

Icy tendrils crept down his spine, and the light faded the more he thought. The enigma pressed against his chest, tightening it and taking away his breath. The sorceress would only present this offer once. He had one choice: natural or unnatural, right or wrong, survival or surrender. Questions plagued him: How long was eternity? How long until he went mad after Amée and Cateline were stolen by time? Would he age but never die? The consequences of eternity could not be weighed. If it could not be weighed, then his answer should be no. But yet, she dangled his family before him like a golden dream. Who would care for Amée and Cateline? Him or Arnoul?

“Make your choice or death it shall be, and with your wife, Arnoul shall replace thee,” she crooned in a sultry whisper. Her form held him, frozen, suspended between life and death.

There would be no peace, no reunion in Heaven, only endless years trapped in a body that refused to die. And yet, it was the sacrifice he was willing to make for his family.

“Yes,” he said with closed eyes without further thought of the consequences that would surely come. The moment the word slipped from his tongue, the release of death was snatched away. His chest seized, filling with a breath not his own. Its piercing freeze burned its way down his throat. 

The sorceress’ celestial hair faded and transformed as the world twisted and sharpened in focus. Her presence faded into the folds of darkness with a simple whisper, “It is done, Chevalier Rollant de Montvieux.”

Time had passed. Bright stars littered the night sky. God’s creations glared at him with cruel disgust. Blood cried up from the trembling ground. Agony seared his limbs as the bones in his hand snapped back together with a sickening crunch. His body contorted and spasmed as life sprang to his limbs. Blood reversed its flow and returned to his neck in an even stream, choking him, drowning him, until he breathed with clarity and ease. Every breath, though, was frigid and foreign. Heavy and oppressive, the night pressed in on him as though the stars and the earth had recoiled from his return.

Spent, his body collapsed atop the dirt. Tears filled his eyes. At least he could still serve God by protecting the crown. The thought was hollow and did nothing to soothe his fractured soul. He did not feel complete; he did not feel whole. He had fallen from God. Maybe he did not have a soul anymore, just the spirit given not by the creator but by a sorceress. Perhaps that was why each breath was foreign and bitter.

“What have I done?” he whispered, fearing a colder, darker, and far more painful life of no escape.  He had stood for honor, for loyalty to God and the king. Yet he lay there with the steel of his brother’s sword still warm with his blood. He had trusted Arnoul and believed in the righteousness of their cause. Every day, he had trained to be a warrior to protect holiness. Every night, he prayed for strength to remain blameless and to keep a repentant heart. Now, all he saw was the empty shell of that honor, that lifelong purpose, crumbling away under the weight of betrayal and immortality. Where was the justice? Arnoul walked away free to live, free to die, free to take his land and wife. Rage burned in his chest. Arnoul had forced his hand in accepting the sorceress’ deal. If that traitor had not cut him down, he would not have had to give up death to save his wife and daughter from that miserable knightly imposter. He was condemned to wretchedness because of Arnoul’s error, Arnoul’s wrong. It was Arnoul’s doing. Arnoul deserved punishment. Arnoul had stolen his honor, his peace, his hope of a life with God. Arnoul deserved pain. Arnoul deserved to die.

“I shall him slay.” The words escaped through clenched teeth, his voice hoarse.  His body trembled from the rising fury that spread through him like fire, hotter than the stars. The pain that had once gripped him was gone, replaced by a fierce clarity. The thought of God’s will lingered in the corners of his consciousness, but his mind was consumed by one thought—Arnoul.

Pushing himself up from the dirt, his limbs ached, but strength had not left them. The world around him seemed to narrow, the stars above shrinking into insignificance. His fingers curled into fists, the knuckles white against the night. 

Rollant would serve justice. He would make Arnoul live the same agony he felt when he was struck down by a man he had once called brother.

He crossed the bloodstained expanse of the Crusaders’ encampment with swift strides. His unwavering resolve propelled him forward and muted the laments of the injured and dying. He glided like a phantom as if enveloped in darkness by the sorceress herself, causing his surroundings to fade into a black blur.

The man who betrayed him lay asleep, exposed and unsuspecting, beneath the tattered remains of a Crusader banner. His sword was still close at hand, with Rollant’s ale and salted meat bag thrown by his side. The thief! 

Arnoul stirred gently, mumbling in his sleep, “Forgive me.” 

The moonlight illuminated his contorted lips and furrowed brow in nightmarish slumber, as Rollant drew Arnoul’s sword into his hand.

Slay him. Cut him down as he has done to me. The thought blazed in his mind, filling him with the cold burn of hate. Arnoul deserved to die. He had taken everything—honor, trust, and life itself. Rollant had followed the code of knights, fought for God and country and king, and now it all lay in ruins at Arnoul’s feet. He was cursed to life forever and never be one with God.

“End it,” he muttered as his knuckles grew white around the hilt of Arnoul’s sword. It would be a cowardly murder. An unarmed, sleeping man would be no threat. Yet the stale, foreign air passing over his lips, not full in life but neither in death, ground to silence every code and honorable virtue to which he had pledged his life. 

His hand wavered. The blade trembled. A strange chill crept into his chest and stayed. The sound of an indecipherable whisper echoed in his skull. Doubt gnawed him. He blinked. His vision blurred. He could feel her presence—the sorceress. If he was condemned to live forever, then Arnoul would be condemned to die for his betrayal. If the sorceress granted Arnoul immortality too, then Rollant would be a thorn in Arnoul’s side for all eternity. 

He raised the blade high. The steel glinted in the moonlight. His vision tunneled, focused on Arnoul, who was unaware that the Angel of Death waited for him. Oh, how it must have been when Arnoul took the blade to Rollant’s throat mere hours before. The treacherous thought sealed Arnoul’s fate. 

In a swift arc, Rollant wrenched the blade back and brought it down, cutting Arnoul deep in the throat, severing the voice before a single scream could escape and wake the soldiers who slept nearby. Arnoul’s gurgling filled the space between the dying and the immortal. Arnoul’s eyes beheld Rollant and grew wide beneath the moon. The color drained from his face as if he’d seen a ghost.

“This is no dream, old friend,” Rollant whispered. 

Arnoul’s hands scrabbled at his neck, and blood spurted from his lips. Rollant spat on Arnoul’s surcoat and watched as the light faded in Arnoul’s eyes.

Rollant’s heartbeat thundered in his ears, drowning out all other sounds. The rush of satisfaction he had expected, the moment of triumph—none of it came. He had expected to feel free—freed from the betrayal, from the pain, but there was no glory there, only emptiness. 

A hollow victory.

Arnoul, once his brother-in-arms, was now nothing more than a body like all the rest. “Reap what you sow,” he said to Arnoul’s spirit. “He deserved to die,” he whispered in an attempt to ease the vengeful monster back into the black pit of his belly. The urge to vomit remained in the monster’s descending path. His breaths were ragged—colder than the breaths before. 

His fingers still gripped the sword hilt, but its weight felt wrong, as though it no longer belonged in his grasp. He threw it down by the traitor’s feet. He shivered, now able to feel the icy winds of the night. His breath turned to fog before his face.

The whisper returned—so faint he almost missed it. But it wasn’t coming from the wind or the battlefield—it came from deep inside himself. The sorceress’ voice, thin and cold, curled the edges of his mind. His heart faltered as her power sent him to his knees. His hands caught his body from the drop. Arnoul’s dark blood coated his fingers. He had killed a man in a coward’s act of revenge. It was not justice. It was not honor. It was not pure. 

It was savage.

“What I have done?” He brought his fingers to his face and noticed their quiver. Arnoul’s blood ran down his finger like a tendril of darkness racing toward his heart and chasing away the rage that had consumed it.

The sorceress’s voice drifted through him, her tone no longer alluring but dripped with disappointment. “You have chosen a path darker than even death.” 

She appeared before him again, her form solidifying out of the shadows. Her celestial hair floated in the night, but her gaze did not evoke the warmth of starlight. Her lips curled into a smile, though it was far from kind. “You have taken more than his life, Chevalier. You have forsaken the honor that once defined you.” Her eyes glowed faintly in the dark. “And so, your punishment will be as eternal as your immortality.”

Rollant’s breath stilled. “Punishment?” He gasped. Fear wrapped his legs. “But you gave me life.”

She moved closer, her ethereal form swirling with a cold wind. “I gave you life, but your actions have bound you to something far worse than death. You were not just. You were not noble.” Her gaze flickered to Arnoul’s lifeless body. “And now, you are no different from the traitor who lies before you.”

Rollant’s heart sank as her words settled over him like a death shroud. “I have done right,” he tried to argue even against his own thoughts.

“You did what was easy. Gave way to fleshly vengeful desire.” Her voice was cold, cutting through him like the sword he had thrown at Arnoul’s feet. “You have not killed for justice,” she said. “You killed for vengeance. And now, you shall suffer for it.”

Rollant staggered back, crawling away from her. His eyes widened as her swirling form passed over Arnoul and came to him.

“What suffering shall I endure?” he asked, afraid of the answer. 

The sorceress’s expression grew more somber, her eyes narrowing as if she pitied him. “Your beloved wife and daughter, the two women you hold most dear.”

“Please,” he whispered and shook his head. His limbs went weak. His heart struck still at the mention of Amée and Cateline. His voice cracked, and tears welled in his eyes. “Anyone but them.”

The sorceress swayed her head against the breeze, telling him it was what he feared. “They shall be taken from you the moment you cross the threshold of your home. Their lives, like your own, shall be forfeit because of your actions. But because I see your love for them, I shall give you an option. Therefore, you may never return home, and they shall enjoy long lives,”—her finger rose—“or you cross the threshold to see them one last time.”

Rollant fell to his side. He had accepted the sorceress’s deal to see, love, and care for his wife and child. Now, she was taking them away just like Arnoul had done. He snarled at her cruelty, a knife in his belly. “You cannot do such a thing!” he cried. 

She stood as a silent sentinel; her gaze was past him as if it had already been decided.

His heart broke like his body and his mind. 

“Please,” he struggled to his knees and bowed his head before her. “Spare their lives. I will do anything. I beg you.” His voice crumpled with a sob. The strong, resolute knight was reduced to nothing. “Please, I shall—”

The sorceress silenced him through an icy tendril to the heart. “It is done,” she said, her words as dark as the blood staining Rollant’s fingers. “And more shall be taken from you for begging when I have already extended grace. Know this, Chevalier Rollant de Montvieux: should you ever embrace anyone in love, they too will breathe their last. Your heart will be forever empty, your touch forever cursed.”

“No . . .” The word tore from Rollant’s throat, hoarse and raw. He scrambled to his feet, the weight of her curse crashing over him like a tidal wave. But she vanished like smoke, and he was left gasping into the night amid the murmurs of the king’s camp. He turned toward the direction of his home, across the sea, as though somehow he could outrun her words. Amée. Cateline. Their faces flashed before him. Tears ran down his cheeks. What had he done?

But the curse had been sealed. Her words were absolute. He had abused her gift of life. Rollant would live, but he would never truly be alive again. For as long as his body endured, he would walk the earth with the knowledge that his love, his embrace, would forever bring death to those he cared for.

Paperback Size: 5" x 8"

490 pages

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ePub File Size: 1.2 MB

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Publisher: LLMBooks Publishing
Published: July 2025
ISBN-13: 978-1-961759-26-8
Genre: Gothic Paranormal Historical Romance