Ruthless Vows

In Ruthless Vows, memories and wounds are heavily intertwined, suggesting the life-altering and sometimes identity-forming stories that scars represent. When Iris wonders about Roman’s survival, Forest draws on his personal experience of Dacre to conclude that the god is likely “healing [Roman’s] wounds, stripping away all the connections he once had. Connections like Roman’s family, his life in Oath, the things he once dreamed of” (25). In other words, as Dacre heals Roman’s wounds, he steals his memories. This epitomizes the broader relationship between selfhood and remembered pain in Ruthless Vows: To erase one is to erase the other.

Moreover, the novel suggests that such erasure is not truly possible, as even after Roman is healed by Dacre, his scars remain. Upon waking in the under realm, Roman studies the scars on his right leg and traces them “as if they were routes on a map” (33). This metaphorical map in his scars ultimately provides the path back to Iris. This is evidenced in the article that Roman begins to write and scraps:

I don’t know what else fuels me to keep rising at dawn and continuing forward other than this: there is […] a story hiding in my scars. One that whispers to me, even though I have yet to fully capture the words.