Chapter 1 

Katerina Forde, daughter of the late and beloved King Magnus and future holder of the co-regency of the Kingdom of the Frontiers, thought of another vicious thing to say when she was ungagged. 

If you don’t let me go, I will have my wife kill you, my servants cook you, and my handmaid serve your fingers as a light repast!

The threat went up to the top of the pile, and she went back to drooling into the already soaked cloth binding her mouth open. At the very least, the people guarding her were people. The shades that had attacked her and Lenna in the night were constructs: puppets of magic given form and purpose by their master. The two men posted to either side of her were human, though of course, that only made their betrayal worse.

They were Kralgrav guards, clad in her family’s own colours. She hadn’t met any of them before, but the idea that men loyal to her family, and thus naturally her, would be willing to aid in this treasonous act was unthinkable. Impossible! The vilest of treacheries! What else would these creatures stoop to?

She paused. Clouded by rage, she had ignored the obvious conclusion. 

They’d given their word that they wouldn’t kill Lenna, yes, but what did that matter? They were kidnappers. Traitors. Usurpers! Why am I surprised that they might have lied?  

Lenna.

Dear, sweet, stupid Lenna.

A serpent of ice slithered in her digestive tract. It took her a while to recognise it, as she’d felt it so rarely. Fear. What if they had lied? What if they had killed Lenna when they had the chance? Her hands bound, assailed by violent spectres and traitors with swords, without a tool or alembic, she was powerless. What hope did she have? What hope did any of them have? What—

No. She could not spiral. Her mind was a finely tuned instrument but in the grasp of emotion it was a paper weight. Deep breaths. The answers would come soon. And she had a feeling on whose lips they’d be tumbling.

Emerging from the Greathall’s only entrance strode the presumed ringleader for this entire circus. Clad in a dress that drank the light from the overhead fixture and leaving her body cloaked in wriggling shadows, the Magister stood at the head of a train of subordinates. Some in the colours of the Forde family, others in Thrast’s own garb. All besides her were carrying something in their hands or on their back. As they entered, they piled handfuls of equipment, bags, even large jars full of…something. All at the direction of—

“Savin,” Katerina said, though with the gag around her mouth, the name was difficult to understand. Nevertheless, that she was speaking at all seemed to get the attention of the powerful caster. The owner of the name she’d garbled glided over, her dress roiling around her feet like its hem was made of ships lost amidst a wrathful sea. 

“My word. How have you found yourself in such a predicament, Katerina dearest? Where is your wrothful beau?” 

Several protracted, discrete images of tearing her ex’s throat out with her teeth formed. But for the sake of decorum, and for gathering information, she did not attempt to act on them. Instead, she looked down at the gag currently making her drool like a rabid animal, and waited for Savin to take a hint.

“I don’t suppose you’ve been practising offensive casts with merely a verbal component,” she asked, then sucked her teeth with condescending disapproval. “No, of course not. My spies would have told me if you had. Here, let me help you with that.” She bent down and pulled the gag ever so slightly down to Kat’s chin, allowing her to speak but not with an abundance of dignity.

“Savin, you intolerable slime, have you completely lost your wits? Using sorceries in an attack on a sovereign nation’s rightful leadership? When word gets out, Thrast’ll be at war with all of its neighbours, starting with my Kingdom.”

But Savin was untouched by the barbs, ignoring the salient points to focus on the mention of her craft. “So you’ve seen my constructs up close! They’ve come a long way, I have to say. Their haunting visages, their gaunt figures, the black trails of sinister smoke that follow them…it’s all to look like someone has raised the spirits of the dead to attack the living.” Savin leaned closer to the two of them, whispering her next words like a tawdry accusation. “As if whoever is behind this has committed a most despicable act. Bonedancing. Necromancy. Still punishable by immediate death in most lands I believe. Even Thrast.”

Katerina couldn’t keep the irritation from her voice even if she wanted to. “I don’t have time for games, Savin. What are you doing here?”

“You should be thanking me for your life! It is only through my efforts that you remain among the living and not tossed into the catacombs with all your ancestors in this, your most sacred of holdfasts. Indeed, I even agreed to spare your precious wife! Though in retrospect I have no idea why. I’m sure she’d love to be a ghost here, hobbing and nobbing with the ‘honourable dead.’”

A moment’s relief. Lenna was alive. If she wasn’t, Savin would gloat about killing her, rather than insult her in absentia. Her own predictable distastefulness offered its own form of verification. 

“And the others? Riven? Crys?” Katerina asked. 

“Riven?” the Magister asked, making a show of confusion before continuing. “Oh! You mean my former hunting hound. Don’t fret, I haven’t killed him either. I have a perfect use for an unaffiliated assassin and magic user. Especially one armed with a Thornblade. He...oh, my apologies, ‘she’, is perfectly suited for the role of an assassin, don’t you think?”

The Princess scoffed. “I can’t believe you expect me, after all this time, to be impressed by your pennytheatre machinations.”

Savin clapped her hands together. “An appropriate allusion! Think of it like a play. You have been cast in the role of a lifetime, and the rest of your assorted band will be the day-players filling out the call sheet. This performance’s name? Regicide!”

The feeling of a slithering frost returned, chilling Katerina to her core. “If you’ve hurt my brothers—” she began, only to be cut off by a peel of derisive laughter.

“Oh, you innocent little Princess, you have no idea what’s going on, do you? Of all your pretensions at wanting power, all the times you told me in our bedchambers that you wanted control in your life, you’re just the same helpless fawn as the day we met. And I can’t wait to see your face when you figure out what’s going on. But! To business. We have a tight schedule to keep.” 

“Then you should probably just kill me now. I’ll not be tortured into a false confession. I’d rather die than be a party to your pathetic farce.” In truth, Katerina knew she’d break pretty fast under the slightest concentrated discomfort if delivered without consent by a stranger. But in her heart of hearts, she believed in her own ability to channel all the stubborn, pigheaded defiance of any Princess worth her salt to deny Savin anything.

Rather than prod her fears, her former lover shook her head. “Dear, as much as I loved to hear you beg, I don’t want you tortured. Physically, at least. And I don’t need you to admit your role in my little play. But I do need to make sure that you don’t interfere in my plans.”

As they spoke, the servants began setting up the equipment they had brought in. An assortment of alchemical instruments. Pipettes, vials, distillation coils, alembics, and half a dozen more esoteric items that Katerina had only ever heard of, along with tables enough to set them upon. She plumbed the depths of her studies to analyze each item’s purpose to piece together what she was facing. Predominantly rising to her mind, either out of statistical likelihood given the data or just plain fear, was the production of high potency acids and poisons. So it was with a flicker of relief when she saw who was carrying the last of the provisions. Then deepest, darkest despair when the ‘why’ of his appearance revealed themselves.

Carrying more two men put together was Paris, and behind him, slinking into sight like the mere mention of his name might make him vanish from existence, was her baby brother. The one person she thought above politics. The person she’d agonized the most about bringing into this world of back-stabbing and betrayal.

“Oh no…oh…no…” Katerina couldn’t keep up the pretense of unflappability. Magnus avoided eye contact, setting down a box full of various ingredients upon one of the tables before proceeding to assist in setting up a workspace. Katerina just stared, watching the one man she’d always trusted work in tandem with the people who had tied her up and were about to seize the kingdom. Savin saw the wound forming in Katerina’s chest and went to rip it wide open.

“Oh yes. Your little brother came to us with such a spellbinding story. You were all going to vote together and rule the kingdom with hands held like at the end of a child’s fable. Did you think that would work? Did you honestly believe that your land’s bannermen would follow YOU?”

Katerina didn’t respond. This time she had no arrows to find in her verbal quiver. No cutting remark to snap back with. She just shook her head and wondered where the Blackest Pit had she gone wrong to have almost everyone in her life turn against her like this. Was she truly that unlikable? That naive? That blind? Was she really just some dilettante playing politics?

Savin wasn’t through with her. She leaned into Katerina’s ear, as if to whisper a secret. But when she spoke, her voice was the gloating bray of a sore winner.

“No dear. I won’t kill you. And I won’t torture you either. Because Young Magnus offered to do the one thing I want most in the world, and something that’ll make this whole endeavour worth my time. I’m taking your magic, dear. I’m taking it away…forever.

*** 

“When you slouch back to Savin,” Riven snarled, her hand buried in the heart of a creature of living shadow, “tell her that this the last time she fucks with my life.”

The shade howled like a whistling kettle and died on her knife, the Thornblade launching a spatter trail of the creature’s tenebrous ichor as she withdrew it with a single, twisting motion. Now without form, the hungry nothing sloughed to the ground to join an equal amount from the first of its kind she’d slain. Two shadowmen sent to kill or capture them both. Riven watched the puddle of night crawl out the door in defeat, waiting for more. But there was nothing but the flickering light of the room’s lamp and the muffled din outside her door.

“Gods above, I swear I’ll kill that woman if it’s the last thing I do.”

Riven turned to see Crys standing at the side of the bed, nearly naked and holding her sword in the white-knuckled clutch of a woman clinging to the very edge of a raft to keep from drowning. Her eyes were locked open, frozen in the place where the creatures had finally vanished.

“What…what…” she repeated.

“It’s Savin,” Riven explained, gathering up enough clothes from Crys belongings to dress her for quick movement. “I sprang awake the moment the sigils triggered, but I had barely enough time to get my weapon before they were on us. She’s making her play, but I’ve no idea if it’s with the consent of the other Magisters. I’m guessing with King Magnus dead, she’s trying to disrupt the Mounting so she and hers can seize parts of the Frontier in the chaos. We need to get to Katerina, quickly!”

Riven Wove for herself a bodyglove of nightcloth. The light of her magic rippled down her body before clinging tight to her curves as she spun around to catch it all with her magical needle. The garment left little to the imagination, but modesty mattered little in a fight. And although she had just clad herself in clothing that rendered her difficult to see, Riven had little to hide anymore. Once she was sufficiently attired, she used the needle of her casting talent to twirl her hair into a bun, keeping it out of her eyes. Then she unspooled it, turning the thin magical focus into a spool of ribbon with which to further constrain her hair. In a moment’s notice, it would return to its shape and serve as a magical weapon of last resort. Plus: she thought ribbons were cute.

“There! Ready?” The whole transformation took less than a minute, but in that time Crys had yet to move. Riven opened her mouth to ask what was the matter, but her jaw closed when she noticed that Crys, the strongest woman she knew, was trembling. Shaking. Like a leaf in the breeze.

Shit, shit. Wasn’t thinking. Wasn’t thinking.

“My sword just…passed through them. I believed you when you said there would be magic but. But they could touch me. Grab at me. I…I...” Her voice was brittle, like iron pushed too close to the edge of its endurance. He eyes broke free of where it had been transfixed, pinprick pupils meeting Riven’s worried expression. “What was I supposed to do against that?”

Without a second thought, Riven pulled her into a hug, sword hilt and all. Crys momentarily started at being touched, but eventually relaxed a little into the embrace. When she was sure her partner wouldn’t fall apart in her arms, Riven pulled back enough to face her again.

“You are not helpless. Crys, look at me. Remember when we first met? Sparring in the courtyard? You absolutely had me beat. And when I was on the brink of doing something very stupid, you talked me down. You taught me how to be myself, step-by-step, inch by embarrassing inch. Remember how useless I was when I first tried out women’s shoes?”

A flicker of a smile played across Crys’ face. “Should…should have sold tickets.” Relief spilled into Riven at hearing her joke again, even if the memory was a little embarrassing.

“Point is, for most of our relationship, you were the one at the helm. I could rely on you to keep me afloat. But magical assassins are MY sea. I can’t ever repay you back in full, but please, for once, let me be the one to keep you safe.”

Crys swallowed hard, then nodded. “Okay. But let’s not make this a regular occasion. I’m an awful damsel in distress.”

***

Leaving their room and dressed to take lives, Riven didn’t hide the sigh of relief when there wasn’t a cadre of shadowmen waiting for them outside. When she’d known Savin as the Huntress, she’d never given a clue as to the extent of her power over the darkness. Only the writhing of those strange tattoos on her arms gave a clue as to her school of study. At the moment, Riven could only guess as to the number of shadows that the Magister could control. Two less now, she supposed.

“Katerina is this way,” Riven said, gripping Crys’ hand and pulling her to the left. She felt a little silly at first, leading a grown woman like that. But the reassuring grip she received told her it was the right call. At least for now. Crys just needed a few moments to get her bearings.

The corridor was no longer the quiet home of hushed voices and steady footsteps they’d entered two days before. Now it rang with muffled, echoing sounds from both directions. Shouts. Metal clashing, banging, falling to the stone floor. Booted feet in stoic march or hasty pursuit. Cries for aid. The noises built and broke each other like waves in a cove, leaving some places an agony to linger in but others eerily silent. Evidence of conflict appeared sporatically, scattered debris telling a story after the participants had vanished.

A tray of mostly empty dinner plates spilled over in a pile.

A dropped sword from the capital’s own smiths.

A smashed lantern and the smell of a fire that had only recently burned out.

Blood.

It had been spilled near the entrance to a four-way crossroad in the tunnel network, with two pairs of passages heading in opposite directions meeting in a small circular space that looked like it served as a guard post. An upturned table, chairs, and a full deck of playing cards covered the floor from when a game had been rudely interrupted. The furniture had been nicked in places where something sharp had rudely chopped or marred its rich wooden surfaces. A pair of lanterns, one broken open, another merely extinguished, lay on the floor next to the table.

Neither woman shirked away from the sight of spilled blood, but there was something more to this scene than just the evidence there’d been violence. She knelt down to inspect a large, darkening pool that was very likely where someone had bled out entirely. A long trail leading down one of the corridors implied the victim had been dragged to another location. As a wounded ally in need of help? Or, more likely…

“Riven?” Crys asked, instinctively checking down each corridor with a hand on her sword. “We probably shouldn’t linger here.”

“Something’s wrong,” Riven said absently, feeling the drying liquid beneath her fingers. Not long. Twenty minutes at the most.

“What? That someone got cut?” Crys asked.

“Yes. I don’t know how the magic works exactly, but did you notice any bladed weapons in the hands of the shadows that attacked us? Any claws? They grabbed me. They threw me around. But they didn’t try to slash me open.”

“But if the…shadow things didn’t do this—” she began before the two corridors in the direction they’d been heading filled with the sound of metal boots. Around curves in the wall emerged the resolute steel wall of the Knights Resplendent. The corridor was just wide enough for two to stand shoulder to shoulder, but they marched in single columns, each warrior wearing the colourful tabard of the banner he represented on the field of battle.

“I didn’t think I’d be glad to see those pompous fucks,” Crys said, waving at them. “That bitch Savin didn’t count on a whole legion of Witch Hunters at our beck and call, did she?”

Riven had lived well in the Winter Court. She’d trained with Katerina to become a better mage, learned how to walk and talk like a woman from Vikka, learned to fight like a hero from Crys, and learned to stand when it mattered from Lenna. But even now, as much as she hated to admit it, her greatest teacher had been Savin. From her, she’d learned all the devious machinations of espionage. Of politics. Of the kind word and the cruellest blade. These lessons Riven would never forget, no matter how much she wished to.

And so, when she saw the army of armed men approaching her, she realized what was happening. The wallpaper was torn down and she could see the clockwork within…and just how little time they’d both have to save themselves from getting crushed in it.

She pulled Crys into a new embrace, immediately followed by the hardest kiss they’d ever shared. Like Riven was trying to press whatever lifetime they had left into that single moment. When their lips parted, she spoke quickly and as quietly as possible.

“I don’t have time to explain, but I think those Knights work for Savin. They might not know it, but they do. Take this,” Riven pressed the Thornblade into Crys’ chest, “it’s as good for flesh as it is for magic. Take the corridor behind us and run. Do not look back, do not trust any man at arms, even if they’re from House Forde. Try to double-back and get to Katerina that way. I’ll lure these tin bastards the way we came.”

“I’m not taking your only weapon! I thought you were past this suicidal shit,” Crys replied, shoving the long dagger back into Riven’s hands. The look of fear had returned to Crys’ eyes. But it was different this time. This was a deeper terror. The kind you felt when you thought you’d never see your loved one again. Riven knew she was, because she felt the same iron vise close around her heart.

“Witch Riven!” one of the Knights declared, his baritone voice in the echoing corridors reminding Riven of a funeral bell. “Bondswoman and spymaster to the traitorous Princess Katerina. You are hereby ordered to surrender yourself for trial for the crime of attempted regicide, sedition, and the use of forbidden necromancies. The use of any sorcery after this order has been given will result in your immediate and summary execution!”

But Riven ignored them; she had eyes only for Crys. “I’ve no intention of dying tonight, or any time in the near future. I’m going to be annoying you with my bullshit until we’re old crones and good for nothing but yelling at the gulls. This Is How I Keep You Safe, Crys.” The words of the last sentence were each said with the surety of divine commandments. Riven pushed the Thornblade back into Crys’ hand. When it was clear she would not budge, the other woman’s fingers closed around it gentle. Like it was a part of Riven’s own body.

“Okay. But I’m just holding it for you. You’ll come back to me.”

“Always,” Riven smirked, then turned to run. She put her weight on one foot and her focus into ignoring the screaming voice in her head that told her to not let Crys go. But she had to. One of them had to make sure Katerina was safe. They had to split up. It was sensible. It was strategic. It was—

“I love you.”

The world stopped. The air left Riven’s lungs. She turned back to Crys. In the Light’s holy shine, the tough as brass guardswoman had the glint of actual tears at the corners of her eyes. This sure was a day of firsts.

“I love you,” Crys told her again, then scowled as she fought back her own emotions from overwhelming her. Finally, they burst forth, words spilling out of her mouth in a breathless torrent. “This is the worst possible moment for this, but I can’t have it be unsaid. Crys: I love you to pieces. Whatever life we have after this, wherever you go, I don’t care. So long as I spend it with you.”

“I love you too,” Riven said, half to feel how the words felt in her mouth now that she knew the feeling was shared. Yeah. She could get used to that.

“Last chance!” the deep voiced knight declared. Their radiant blades unsheathed. Torches flared to life. An army marching upon them, and still Riven was reluctant to leave this moment. Even if it meant her death.

Riven turned to coax Crys into motion one last time, but she was already running.

Good, she thought, Katerina is the only one strong enough to counter Savin’s magic. And clearly, this whole plan was designed to frame the Princess as some kind of necromancer. But to what end? Bah, that can wait for later. The pressing question of the moment: how to ensure these cretins followed me and not Crys?

“Hey!” Riven shouted in the direction of the mob. “Don’t suppose you’d listen to an explanation of what is actually happening?”

“We want nothing from you, witch!” one of the Knights bellowed.

“Guard your ears, men!” another entreated, his voice creaking with well-worn wisdom. “A witch has power over words as well as the wills of the weak and corrupt of spirit!”

“Fair enough. I have a second question then: are you interested in seeing a magic trick?”

Riven grabbed the oil lamp that had fallen on the floor, pulled the ribbon of fabric from her hair, then crammed one end of it down the lamp’s open fuel fount. There were plenty of ways a modern lamp could be built to be safe in the event it was tossed to the ground or cracked open by an impact. But this piece of shit must have been stolen from a cheap inn somewhere because it was practically an arson investigation waiting to happen. Pulling the soaked end of the fabric back out before stuffing the dry end in, she brought the Weaver’s needle back to her fingers. Riven poured her power into it, feeling the burning energy of her magic sting her fingers until the ribbon lit like a fuse. Then, with all the strength in her arm, she hurled the lamp at the closest of the soldiers.

“I cast flame!” she howled, laughing like a madwoman as the lamp-turned-bomb exploded into a shower of oil onto the nearest of the armoured men. He brought up a shield just it time, causing the lantern to explode outward and coat the entire corridor in flammable oil. A chorus of screams let out as stray splashes caught onto their richly decorated tabards or cloaks. The affected beat at themselves and their fellows to put out the flames, while others who had been spared the attack launched themselves towards Riven. With a devilish smile, she tore back down the passage, pursued by the sound of stomping boots.

Chapter 2 

The void that swallowed Lenna eventually spat her back out, though by the ache in her head, it had been a reluctant transaction. She sat on a stone floor so cold it sought to drain the life from her flesh. The air had a reek of dank, forgotten things about it, mingling with the smell of old parchment. The only light source was a single oil lantern turned as low as possible while still being lit. Despite it barely yielding a candle’s breath to the mostly pitch-dark room, staring at it for too long made Lenna’s eyes ache. She had to fight against the urge to shut them again and return to the blissful ignorance of a dreamless sleep.

No.

Katerina!

She shook off the daze and tried to stand, only to be tugged back down. Her hands had been bound and tied to something heavy, keeping her flat on her ass. Feeling for the fetter, her heart sank when she realized it was thick hempen rope. The kind they used on pulleys and cranes to haul heavy stones; not something she’d have a hope of breaking with strength alone. Temporarily stymied, she turned her attention to searching for some hint of her location.

She’s counting on me.

Katerina’s counting on me.

And, Lenna mentally added, I have to beat the piss out of the fucker who did this.

The room she was in was square, with the cord currently binding her hands wrapped around an enormous weathered stone in the centre. Its surface had been etched with characters from a dead language an eternity and a half ago, but erosion melted the characters until they were barely visible. How did it get in here? How long had it been there? It didn’t matter.

Menhirs, some part of her mind that sounded like Katerina told her, big rocks like that used to be called menhirs. Ritual stones carved with runes. Old magic to keep the dead from rising.

Around the big rock, the walls had been lined in horizontal slabs roughly five times as long as they were wide. Words in another language, this time clearly legible, marked them as the graves of someone important, probably. Another script she couldn’t read. Here and there the slabs had been shattered open or fallen out of their own accord, revealing the withered form of what could only be a human body.

Suppose I’m in the catacomb of burial sites that fill the mountain the Kralgrav is built in. Who in the Pit knows how far I am into it. That means...

She forced herself to think. Losing consciousness twice by force in a day was never a good thing for mental acuity, and the haze was hard to cleave through. She scrunched her eyes closed, blocking out distractions, she spoke her thoughts aloud.

“...that means whoever did this wants me out of sight, but doesn’t want me dead. Or at the very least finds me more useful alive. But why? Why not kill me?”

“Be grateful I’m not asking that question myself,” a familiar voice said from the darkness. A man held another lantern aloft, revealing her was clad in the armour of a Knight Resplendent. A sword at his hip, silver hair combed and styled to be something for the bard’s songs. But by how he’d lifted the lantern, most of his face had been claimed by shadow. Only by his voice did Lenna recognise him.

“You,” she said, charging him with a hundred sins at once.

“Me,” Adam Forde agreed.

With the pieces in front of her, it wasn’t hard to put the rest together. Still, it didn’t hurt to make sure. “So…who approached who first? Did you reach out to the Magisters for help betraying your country? Or did they offer you enough to sell your soul to Thrast?”

“Does it really matter?” he asked, his tone making sure she knew the question was rhetorical. “It’s over. I won. But rest assured, I’m not here to gloat. I came to make sure you were still alive, and to bring you a roommate.” He had the gall to sound magnanimous, which made Lenna want to strangle him with the rope around her wrists all the more.

The scrap of stone and creak of old metal forestalled the conversation. Adam moved out of the way to let another man carry the unconscious body of a woman. Claws seized Lenna’s chest. No. She was too tall to be Kat. Too thin. They’d put a loose fitting bag over her head to hide her face, the rest of her stuffed into a too large servant’s dress. Then, with a disquieting roughness, she was dropped onto the ground next to Lenna.

The man who’d just dropped her then knelt to tie the woman’s wrists together with a length of rope he’d brought, then tied that to a second knot around that which kept Lenna bound to the menhir. While he did so, he got close enough to the light of the lantern to identify. Somehow, this last betrayal was the bleakest.

“Don’t bother screaming for help,” Marten, Vladimir’s own Houseguard Knight, told them both. “I never even send the guards down this far. Nothing to find but ghosts.”

Lenna launched herself upward like a viper, only to get yanked back down by her bonds. “You fucking snake! Did Vladimir send you because he wasn’t man enough to betray me in person?”

Marten paused what he was doing, looked Lenna straight in the eyes, and laughed. Actual, genuine, sidesplitting laughter. The kind you lend to a surprisingly witty joke from a man you thought incapable of humour.

“Very close to the truth, Knight Lenna,” he told her, wagging his finger. “But no, I’m not Vladimir’s lapdog. As a matter of fact, nobody by that name ever really existed.”

He yanked off the hood, revealing a shower of the characteristic silver hair of the Forde family. But this woman was too tall to be Katerina. Her face too narrow. But when her eyes fluttered open, Lenna caught that same startling colour she’d seen before. A brilliant jade green. The same colour as—

“Vladimir?” Lenna asked, “is that you?”

“Incorrect. She,” Adam spoke the pronoun like it was a damning accusation, “is our long lost sister: Miria. From what I hear, you have much in common.”

The nature of the violation was so profound she struggled to put it into words. “You turned your brother…into a woman? What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“You’re one to talk,” Marten spat, his true colours catching the wind. “She’s the same kind of deviant freak that you are. She’s just as pathetic—”

“Marten,“ Adam said in a warning tone. “She’s still my sister. Your Princess.” The Houseguard fell silent. Regardless of what oaths he’d taken, what duties he had sworn to, it was clear he had new masters now.

“Apologies, my lord. It’s just good to have loyalty to someone worthy of it.”

As he spoke, Miria roused from her slumber. Adam turned his focus back to her, his words dripping with that foul condescension Lenna had come to truly despise him for.

“Father, King Magnus, Light of the One lift his spirit, wanted a proper spare to his heir. It was just after the Oxton Plague tore through his household, you see, and both our mother and Pyotr had fallen deathly ill. At the time, all he had for a successor was a secondborn daughter. Too cloudminded to do as she was told, too plain to attract many suitors, and…” Adam struggled to find the words, and Miria found them for him.

“Crippled,” Miria finished, her voice a brittle croak. For a second, it looked like Adam might fight her on that assertion. Some flicker of his sibling affection. But it faded quickly, and he pressed onward as if she hadn’t spoken.

“It would take years for the Queen to recover from her illness to have children again. So the King asked the Magisters of Thrast for a solution. A way to turn a daughter into a son.”

“’Better a miserable, broken son,’” Miria added, “than a happy, broken daughter. And I agreed. I’d do it again if it meant I never had to be someone else’s pawn.”

“To the wider world,” Adam continued, “and even the younger members of our family, our mother simply had twins named Vladimir and Miria, and the latter hadn’t lived. Anyone with questions just assumed Vladimir was a legitimized bastard and looked the other way. Another thing the world is quite familiar with. I was a man before I learned the truth. And though I love my sister dearly, I will not let that flimsy charade keep me from what I am owed.”

Marten rolled his eyes, clearly tired of this dialogue once he was restrained from having fun at his former master’s expense. “I’d like to remind you, my rightful King, of the other pressing matters due your attention. There’s still fighting in the halls, and I’d like to return you safely so I may aid in securing the whole of the Kralgrav for your use.”

Adam turned to the Houseguard with a touch of annoyance on his face. Then, with a sigh, he nodded. “Of course. I’m sure my sister can explain the rest of her tragic past while I start building our glorious future.” They turned to leave, Marten picking up the lantern from the floor to leave Lenna and Miria in the pitch black of a tomb.

“One more question,” Lenna asked at Adam’s back. “What becomes of us after your coup? What happens to Katerina?”

“I would never harm my sisters. I am a man of ambition, but I am still her brother.” He returned to the centre of the room and bent down so that he was at eye level with Lenna. “What if I let you keep your little palace in the south? The Winter Court, was it? A monthly stipend, a few servants, and a demesne for Katerina and Miria to reign over in my name. I need someone I can trust to keep my sisters safe, Knight Lenna. Despite what you’ve done to your body, despite the rage in your heart at being bested, I believe you to be a Knight of real principle. You wouldn’t abandon your charge to keep Katerina safe for anything in the world, and I would never ask you to. Swear to me a new oath, binding and sacred, that you will follow my orders, and I’ll let you all go back home, safe and sound.”

The bile she wanted desperately to spit in his face caught in her throat. As much as she wanted to tear out of her fetters and beat him til his bones bit, he and his co-conspirators had all the power in the situation. If he was truly evil, if there was no spark of affection or nobility in his heart, he would have killed her already. Perhaps even Miria too. This might be the best deal that Lenna was ever going to get.

Her hesitation answered him for the moment, and he set his own lantern down like a gesture of good will. “Think about it. I’ll leave you ladies for now. Please don’t try to escape. This night has been reasonably bloodless so far, and I’d like to finish it that way.” This time when he stood, he left the room without a second glance back. His echoing footsteps were audible for a while, growing quieter with each stride. Lenna couldn’t help but feel like the future she wanted with Katerina was vanishing along with them.

***

Being hopeless is a freeing sensation, in a way. It means all the responsibility is off one’s shoulders. The burdens a soul like Lenna had to bear were doffed like a heavy overcoat, and she could stride into oblivion with a smile knowing there was nothing she could have done to change her fate.

For a time, there in that tomb, Lenna was without hope. Resigned to her fate. Wallowing in self-pitious despair.

Then, after the third or fourth second had passed, she got back to work.

Sitting as she was with her arms bound and tied behind her back, her legs were the only limbs that would be of any use in the immediate future. She tested the ropes binding her wrists and arms. Tight. Rough when rubbed. Sturdy. But, importantly, cuttable. She just needed a knife and a little time. But after they were free…

“So…” Lenna began, unsure where to start this conversation. “Are you…do you want to be called-“

“Miria. That’s…that’s who I am, I suppose. It doesn’t matter.” Her voice still had that brittle quality to it, like she hadn’t spoken in a lifetime. Nevertheless, the voice she spoke with was clearly that of a woman.

“Alright then, Miria. You wouldn’t happen to know where we are, would you?”

“Why?”

Lenna took a deep breath before responding. “Because we need to know where we are if we’re going to get back to the fortress proper and rescue my wife, your wife, and everybody else held at swordpoint. Not to mention the Kingdom itself.”

Miria’s tone betrayed the meaning of her words. “Oh, of course. How could I think we were doomed when we have a single unarmed woman tied up to a big stone to save us?”

“Menhir.”

“What?”

Lenna chewed her lip, worrying she’d said something foolish. “It’s a menhir…right? Big stone with writing on it? Supposed to keep the dead from rising?”

This time it was Miria’s turn to pause thoughtfully. “Correct. Only the mighty and the powerful got such elaborate protections against necromantic intervention. Most people had to settle for—”

“Education later, Your Highness. Can you use it to figure out where we are?”

Another pause, shorter this time. “Potentially. My mother took it upon herself to serve as our family’s historian, having done so for her family before marriage. She took me down these passages when I was a girl. Hmm…more than one meaning to that turn of phrase. But should I find our location, what would be the point?”

Lenna knew that yelling would only make the situation worse. Of course she knew their odds were long. But there was no fraction of Lenna’s mind that was capable of inaction. It was anathema to her very being. And deep down, she knew Miria wasn’t a coward. She just needed a gentle nudge.

“Alright, another question: why did you agree to become Vladimir?”

“Because this world tends to treat women, especially those of noble birth, like expendable resources. Trapping us in gilded cages for display and procreation and little else. Because I didn’t want a life assigned to me for the expediency of others. Because I wanted to grab destiny by the throat.”

“And has that changed? Do you now wish to be bound to the whims of fate and guided by some puppetmasters from Thrast? Or worse: your smug prick of a younger brother?”

This time the pause between question and answer was barely perceptible. “It is very likely that I can identify where we are based on the carving on the menhir’s surface. But I will need more light and, preferably, the ability to stand.”

Finally. 

“Can you stand unassisted?”

“For short periods of time, yes. Ironically, it’ll be easier now that I’m tied to this damn stone. Gives me something to lean against either way.”

A plan formed. The rope binding them around the menhir was tight, but there was enough deformation and worn crevasses in the stone to let Lenna inch herself up from a seated position to a squat. Miria did the same, though the cursing underneath her breath made it clear she wasn’t having an easy time of it. 

“Alright,” Miria said, breathing laboured, “I’m erect as I’m getting in the near future.”

Lenna knew there would be very few worlds where commenting on that choice of words would improve their chances of success, so she moved forward. “Anything carved into the stone?”

Silence followed. Lenna kept herself sane by refocusing her own efforts on looking for something to cut the ropes. A sword was too much to hope for, but a hunk of jagged metal would be nice.

“I can’t read all of it. I’m…it’s behind my back. I’m going to have to move to my left a bit. Perhaps we can both move at the same time?”

Each step she told Lenna mirrored, the rope grinding along the menhir. After several steps, she called for a halt.

“And now the light.”

Lenna huffed, stuck out her leg, and after a few false starts, hooked the lantern’s handle with her foot. She held it aloft to beat back the shadows obscuring the text, quietly thanking her foresight to never skip calisthenics from her exercise regimen.

“Just there! Give me a moment and I’ll…yes. This is Yaroslav the Lesser and his retainers. I know where we are.”

With some relief, Lenna lowered the lantern. “Perfect. Now we just need to cut these ropes.”

Reorienting themselves almost 90 degrees gave her more of the room to look at, including more debris on the dust-caked floor. One of the tomb’s open alcoves sat directly in front of her, and scattered debris lay in a fan pattern outward. Impressions in the dust left behind by objects that had subsequently been removed, either to replace them or to take them to places unseen.

“The magic stone might have kept the living safe from the dead,” Lenna commented absently, scanning for anything she might use, “but it looks like the dead weren’t safe from the living.”

“Many parts of the catacombs were plundered by my ancestors,” Miria said, answering a question Lenna hadn’t asked. “Burial treasures sold to pay off debts or finance an invasion. Among other things, fiscal responsibility is not a heritable trait.”

“And they were rather careless…” Lenna’s words fall away as she eyed a particular shadow cast by the lantern. An object the length of her hand worked by a careless kick into a crack in the smooth rock of the floor. Just in range to touch with the edge of her boot.

She threw her leg forward, the sudden tension against the ropes yanking Miria back. Lenna’s foot skimmed the top of the object, bringing it a fraction of an inch closer.

“Careful, Knight!” the Princess admonished. But there was no world where Lenna stopped, or even slowed down. Every moment spent away from Katerina’s side was an intolerable outrage. Every second that passed was one where she was failing her duties as a Houseguard Knight and a wife. Another pull against the ropes, another impact, another admonishment.

“Apologies, Highness,” she said without really meaning it, “but I think I’ve found something. It looks like an abandoned tool with a jagged edge. Something left over from the graverobbers, perhaps?”

On the fourth reach with her foot, she was able to kick it toward herself. That made the process easier, though getting it into her hand would be another matter. But she had to figure out what it was first. That, at the very least, did not take very long.

What she had thought was the blade of a tool was the jagged remains of a femur. Time or premortem injury had snapped the enormous bone in two, rendering the slender edge of one half shaped like a crude facsimile of a hacksaw’s toothed mouth.

“Yaroslav the Lesser,” Lenna began, unsure how to phrase the next set of questions, “was he…was he a worthy ruler? Did he deserve his rest?”

“That’s a surprisingly complicated question. But I’m guessing you didn’t ask for a dissertation.”

“Correct. I am thinking of using the piece of bone in his crypt as a crude cutting implement. Corpse desecration is one of those tenets of faith that I didn’t look too far into. It’d be helpful to know that he wasn’t a saint or some such.”

She kicked the bone until it was up against the menhir. Then, this time with explicit permission from the Princess, they slid down again. Lenna’s hands found the end of the bone, pressed the jagged end against her bindings, and began to saw.

“If it helps, Yaroslav was a warmongering oaf who lost his tribe’s coastal possessions in an unfavourable peace treaty. I doubt any of the Gods will mind.”

Silence dragged the seconds into minutes as she worked the rope, exulting in every severed fiber.

“While we wait, why don’t you go into more detail about your contingency?”

“What?”

“Well, you told me you had a plan if the Magisters interfered. Spill, if you’d be so kind.”

For a second, Lenna thought Katerina’s sister might deny her. Hide behind another diversion or layer of obfuscation, or wallow in their predicament. But she didn’t. In fact, she was refreshingly frank.

“I’ve been gathering artefacts; that much you know. The ones I’ve been studying closely, the ones most immediately advantageous, I’ve hidden in my study.”

“Weapons, then? Please say they’re weapons.”

“Among other things, yes. I had no illusions of being some grand hero myself, but I’d hoped to marshall my brothers to my banner. To defend the family together.” The despondency touched her voice again, and Lenna knew she had to steer her back on track. Hopefully, she’d had some good news to share—

The bone snapped. The stress of using it like a blade finished the job that time had begun, and the femur splintered into useless little fragments against Lenna’s fingers, cutting the meat of her palm on the way. Lenna cursed, feeling the knot moisten with her free flowing blood.

“What? What happened?” Miria asked.

Reluctant to admit defeat, and even less willing to admit she was wrong, Lenna tested the knot holding her wrists together. The rope was thick, and even sawed half-way through, Marten had done a serviceable job at restraining her. But Lenna Stone had spent her new life making sure that she lost nothing of her old self’s ability to protect her charge. And along with her agility and combat acumen, that meant a reserve of pure, brute strength.

So she twisted her wrists, gritted her teeth, and pulled her hands apart with all the pent-up frustration she had. Like the rope was the only thing keeping her from wringing Adam’s smug little neck.

The rope snapped.

“About fucking time,” Lenna said to herself as she shucked off the rest of the rope and sprung back to her feet. Then, to Miria: “Well, you may have lost two of your brothers. But you do have a sister-in-law on your side.”

Lenna lurked around for more dead relatives to use as a weapon. Incredibly, she found the rusted remains of a sword amidst the crumbling remains of one of the King’s men. Corroded and dull, a quick application of the ball of her foot snapped the atrophied blade in half, exposing a jagged metal edge. With it, she made quick work of the remaining rope holding the Princess.

They were free! But, as far as Lenna could see the grand scope of their task, they’d yet to clear the starting blocks.

“Our first stop should be your study. Along the way, we may encounter more of the constructs that attacked me, or men working for your brother. Apologies for the bluntness, but I may need to-”

Miria cut through the attempt to staunch her ego with a wave of her hand. “I can walk without my crutches, but not at speed. If we are to make it to my study with haste, you’ll have to carry me.”

Lenna nodded. She picked up Miria with as much dignity as possible, shifting her weight in her hands until settling for a bridal carry. Bringing her over to the lantern, Miria grabbed the handle to hold it out in front of them. It wouldn’t be much light, but it’d be the only thing between the pair and the pitch black of the Kralgrav’s catacombs.

“I may have to drop you in a hurry if we’re attacked,” Lenna said, trying not to let on how likely she thought that was, “so if that happens: apologies in advance, Your Highness.”

“I understand. Likewise, if you mention carrying me like a blushing maiden to anyone, in particular my sister, I will put the Kingdom’s treasury in the pocket of the man who brings me your skull so I can use your hollow braincase as a chamber pot.”

“Naturally. Shall we?”

With their new status quo established, Lenna and Miria ventured into the dark.

Chapter 3 

Crys stood in the doorway to Katerina’s empty bedroom and cursed up a maelstrom. Neither she nor Lenna were there. The room showed signs of a struggle. Bedding tossed, a broken chair, and what looked like a burn mark on the wall. No blood though. Small relief. Katerina could be kept as hostage somewhere, but she didn’t imagine they would have much cause to keep Lenna alive. They must have surprised the big woman in the night with the same shadow creatures…

She looked down at the Thornblade. She’d held it before, but it still felt unfamiliar in her hands. Alien. Like something plucked from a fever dream and ending up by accident in the real world. Perhaps it was; magic weapons were as far out of her purview as a guardswoman as latrine duty was Katerina’s. But given that it was the only thing that could keep her alive, it would have to become real familiar, real fast.

She tried tossing the Thornblade between her hands. The balance was a little off, and it felt lighter than a weapon ought to. But she had no doubt that its tip would bite.

Was confessing my feelings really the best idea? Wouldn’t that make losing me harder for Riven if I don’t make it?

She shut that line of thought down before it could fester.

I won’t find her standing here playing with my weapon. The column of soldiers came from the Hall of Headmen. If I was going to hold a hostage, it’d be beyond that, in the Greathall.

With half an idea where to go, she took off in that direction, striding as fast as she dared through the barely remembered corridors.

She didn’t have to wait long before she reached another barrier to her progress. Two guards in the livery of House Forde stood over the body of a third, his gorget coated in blood. All three, dead man included, had tied golden cloth to their arms. Signifier of their allegiance? Made sense; tell the loyalists from the traitors at a glance, while still able to disappear among an unfriendly crowd at a moment’s notice.

“Orders were to take prisoners!” one of the guards shouted in an admonishing tone.

“Fuck that!” the other spat. “That horsefucker killed Hugo! I’ll just say she tripped on her own blade.”

A laugh, followed by a richly-accented voice. “Come then! We’ll see who is the clumsy one.”

A guttural howl froze Crys in her tracks. This was followed almost immediately by the appearance of Princess Turai, future Queen of the Kingdom, as she leapt onto the guard who had spoken last like a lynx onto a rabbit. As they plummeted to the ground, she jammed a dagger with a gorgeous bone hilt into a place his armour didn’t cover sufficiently: his throat. His fellow swung, but Turai and her prey were already crashing toward the stone floor. The sword bit nothing but her long, flowing hair.

The sheer ferocity of the scream and the act of bravery was spellbinding for a moment, but Crys wasn’t about to be a helpless bystander twice in a single evening. She charged the unassailed guard right as he threatened to plunge his sword into Turai’s exposed back. Without art or attempt at a flourish, she thrust the Thornblade into his back between spine and shoulder blade. A thin blade will pierce mail if driven in with enough force, so she put her whole body into the attack. Riven’s weapon not only parted the metal ringlets as it passed through, but it slid through the flesh between spine and shoulder blade as if she’s just stabbed into water. The only thing that stopped her momentum from carrying the Thornblade through to the other side was the basket hilt of the weapon, which stopped its progress cold.

“Saints and the Sea,” she gasped, never experiencing anything quite like it. The man she’d likely just killed refused to acknowledge the fatal wound. Even as foamy blood sputtered up upon his lips, he refused to fall. Turning to face her, sword still buried in his back, he struck out for her head. His sword swung wide arcs, crashing and scraping the walls enough to throw up sparks. She didn’t want to risk anything more than she had to and simply kept her distance, dodging his increasingly frantic attempts to cut her in two. He was operating on instinct, the wet noise of his breathing telling far more than a doctor’s diagnosis. Finally, he came to a standing rest, shaking fingers touching the tip of the Thornblade where it had emerged from his body.

“How?” he asked her at last, giving up the pretense of trying to kill her

“No idea,” Crys admitted, “but that’s not your problem anymore.”

Then, in a moment of crystal clarity, she realized this man was wearing the same uniform she had worn for years. Same red cloak, same tabard of the Kingdom of the Frontiers. They could have served together, perhaps at a banquet or some other state function. Had the circumstances been different, they could have been standing side by side against the traitors who had taken Princess Katerina. All the thrill of a victory against an armed opponent, had there been any on offer, spilled out of her with the last of his blood draining onto the stone. She did not doubt her cause, but there’d be no fable written of this moment.

“Please,” he asked, dropping his sword and falling to his knees. Perhaps if Katerina or Riven were here, she would have pretended to fetch a doctor, or even press in a makeshift bandage to staunch his bleeding. But Crys was a soldier. She knew what he was asking for.

She knelt down in front of him, placing her left hand on the back of his neck.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Gareth. Gareth of the Thulewood. I have…I have a wife. A daughter,” he said, eyes pleading.

“I’ll tell them you died well,” she told him solemnly. Then, as gentle as a lover, she slid her blade into his heart. He shuddered, then sagged into her embrace. As the life left his body, she laid him down beside his fellows.

“Why lie for him?” Turai asked, retrieving a curiously bent bow and a nearly empty quiver from the floor. “He died in a careless moment while failing to kill his future Queen.”

Crys felt a flare of irritation at the woman she’d just saved. But she quenched it before it burned any hotter than an ember. Horselord or not, Turai was still highborn. The lives of the faceless men and women around them was cheap coin easily spent. Crys had never been to war, but she’d known friends who spent their lives wonder what had happened to their loved ones. Empty chairs. Cold beds. Wet eyes on sunny days. The heart-rending sorrow of hearing they were gone was preferable for waiting by the docks every day waiting for their ship to come in.

“Because I’d want the same, if I were him,” she said, then quickly changed the topic. “It’s good to see you, Princess Turai. Forgive the lack of formality, but what do you know?”

They exchanged the limited information each had, with the important detail of Turai having sent off her Blade-Sister (some kind of bodyguard, Crys surmised) Jenniq to get help from outside the Kralgrav. Apparently, there were passages that only Vladimir knew about, ones he told his wife to use in the most dire of emergencies.

“Why didn’t you flee with her to safety?” Crys asked.

Turai looked as if the question was just as preposterous as the one she’d asked. “My husband is in danger. What kind of wife would I be if I left him to die?”

Crys nodded, unable to argue with that answer. Then she remembered Riven, and how little fight Crys had put up about splitting up.

What if I died without seeing Riven again? What if Riven died calling out for help and I wasn’t there?

FUCK. Why did I have to fall in love? This makes everything so much more complicated.

“Do you know where the Prince is?” Crys asked, though suspecting she knew the answer.

“I do not. But those loyal to the rightful heir have gathered in the dining hall. I was attempting to rally more when I was ambushed. Perhaps we should return there and begin our plan to strike back at these traitorous filth?”

“Sounds like a plan to me. Lead on, Your Highness.”

“Turai,” she corrected with a raised finger. “Please. Southerner titles are all well and good for the Stallion Dance or the fancy parties with the little cakes. But if blood is being spilled, what is the word…brevity. Brevity is important.”

“Crys,” she replied, thumping her chest with her blade hand in a new style salute, “and I couldn’t agree more.”

******

Vikka knew that she lived a charmed life compared to most. She never starved, she never had to worry about the roof falling in. She lived in a castle, the personal attendant to a Princess. Her days concerned with what others would consider frivolities. Niceties. The frippery of polite company. 

So it truly a jest of divine proportions that she’d be trapped in a royal banquet hall as the world ended around her. The realm meant for her critical eye for the subtle details had become a battlefield. Walls meant to hear the gentle humour of polite company instead played host to the cacophony of conflict. Arrows plunging into wood, men and women screamed in pain and fury, and everywhere the sound of steel meeting steel. And just when Vikka thought she’d grown inured to the chaos, a new instrument joined into the unintelligible symphony. The clink of a hundred pieces of cutlery spilled onto the cold stone floor, the shattering of a jug as it was hurled or just tossed aside with a casual indifference. Whimpers. Cries for help. Prayers. 

Vikka huddled behind a long, upturned table that had likely feasted half a dozen generations of Kings and their guests, now little more than a barricade with which to shield her body from the threat of imminent death. A scant few shaking forms next to her representing all those in the hall who had not taken up arms in some futile last stand. Maids, stableboys, two of the cooks. The rest…

She dared not peer over the lip of the table to see who was left. In her mind the battle had been lost a dozen times, each scream of pain a signal that the forces loyal to Katerina were finally vanquished and that the brute strength of whatever treacherous schemer was behind this plot had won the day at last. But then the clash of metal on metal would return, and she’d receive a frustrating reprieve from her worst fate.

Vikka scrunched her eyes closed. She needed to get it together! Somewhere out there, Katerina was likely in danger. And though she was as frightened as she’d ever been, she needed to be stronger! Like Lady Lenna, and Lady Crys, and Lady Riven…

Slowly, with great deliberation and with glacial speed, she raised her head to peer over the edge of the table.

The Kralgrav’s Banquet Hall had truly been a sight to behold. Spanning a hundred and twenty feet long and maybe half that wide, the room had two more tables like the one she hid behind that could be put together to span the length of the room. One had been shoved up against the nearest entrance, kept in place by a collection of other furniture behind it and the earnest effort of a few stalwart men from among the staff. The third table had been hacked to pieces during the tumultuous first hour. Its pieces bordered the second entrance and serving as the funnel with which those with arms drew in their traitorous former comrades.

What had been eight had dropped to five. Whether these were merely only the ones who had made it here or if they were the only guards still loyal to Katerina, Vikka couldn’t say. All she could see was this handful of souls standing between her and an uncertain future.

“YOU!” 

Vikka started so bad she nearly leapt to attention out of reflex. But the voice had not been for her. It had come from one of the guards, his arm in a crude sling made out of torn hose. Murrow! He was from the Winter Court! A good man, loyal, but hurt! His partner, Verity, was nowhere in sight. What had happened to her?

Oh no…oh no…

Murrow’s good hand held out a bow and a quiver half full of arrows. His target was the two chefs, both seemingly able bodied males, who didn’t dare meet his eyes.

“You’re men, ain’t ya? Stand up and help us, damn you!”

“No…I can’t,” the younger of the cooks stammered, “I don’t…I can’t.”

The guard turned to the second man. Much older, with a weather worn face that implied he’d met some hard years head on.

“This isn’t the first time my life’s been threatened, boy. And I’m not one to get drawn into the affairs of kings to prove my virtue. Whoever wants the throne, let him fight for it.”

Murrow looked to the others, eyes gliding over Vikka before deciding there were no takers. He tossed the bow and quiver at the older man’s knees, arrows spilling out onto the ground.

“If you dream up a backbone, here. Just make sure we’re not in the way when you start shooting.”

Finally, he left them alone, ending the irrelevant shaming ritual and allowing Vikka to wither in peace. The violence continues, the noise ebbing and flowing as combatants break apart, exchange partners, or try something new. The cooks exchange a terse conversation about heroism and fear, and Vikka doesn’t bother to listen in. Fear is not what keeps her pinned, keeps her helpless. She simply withstands, holding her mind like a thrashing beast from leaping onto the sights and thoughts that make her sick to her stomach.

But the noise changes, and as much as she wants to shut it out, she lifts her hands from her ears.

“It’s her!” one of the loyalist soldiers says. “It’s Turai!”

“Light, it’s about time. But who’s with her? That’s not her sister.”

“I don’t recognise her. But she’s moving like a blade-dancer!”

“…blood-drenching aside, she’s quite the looker ain’t she?”

“Agreed.”

Vikka perked up.

Woman?

Moving like a dancer?

Attractive? 

“THAT MUST BE CRYS!” she said, this time unable to keep herself leaping to her feet.

The traitors seemingly in full retreat, Vikka’s little heart soared when she saw a familiar face. Crys kicked one of the traitors into the room with a boot, his stumbling form toppling over the broken table barricade until he was fully at the mercy of the armed men within. He had enough time to gather himself and see he was surrounded before letting his sword clatter to the ground. Behind her, the powerful Lady of the Kralgrav continued down the corridor, chasing fleeing forms with merciless arrows. Tears fell from Vikka’s eyes, but she barely noticed them. A moment’s respite from the crushing omnipresent anxiety. Maybe things would be alright now. Maybe she would be okay.

But there, from her end of the great hall, she saw her worst fear come true. A man who Crys had likely thought dispatched leaped from the corridor. His face contorted into a furious rictus, his gauntlet clenched around a heavy mace. A brutal weapon meant for concussing bodies and breaking bones beneath armour. Cruel, ever so cruel. Crys didn’t see him. Her attention was on the combat in front of her, not the blackguard behind her! She would die. Riven would be heartbroken. Lenna would blame herself. Katerina would be…

Vikka swallowed. Their little family—the closest she’d ever felt to belonging—would be broken.

No. Never. NEVER.

Vikka looked down at her feet at the bow and quiver that the contemptuous guard had tossed to the ground. There, just obscured by the shoulder strap, was an arrow with ink-black fletching and a needle-shaped metal head. 

A knightslayer.

*** 

One day, a long long time ago, there lived a daughter and a father.

Despite being related by blood, they couldn’t have been less alike. The daughter was weak where the father was strong. She was kind when he could often be so cold to her. She did her best to make him happy, but there were some things she still fled from. And with their mother gone, the cold had grown colder still.

The air had that same bitter tinge on that fateful day in the late autumn. Days were getting shorter now, and it took longer for the sun to rise and greet them. The daughter and the father had set out very early that morning in the dark, with only half a moon and his knowledge of the road guided them true. Dawn broke when they reached the treeline, just like he’d planned it. 

“You’ll know all these roads one day too,” he’d told her as they slid their way through the fallen leaves, taking turns to practice those careful footsteps that left no noise. “Just as you’ll know the trees, the creatures, even the mosses and stones. The crown always needs a Master of the Hunt. Suppose it could stand to have a Mistress for a change.” 

The jest was in his words, but his true feelings were clear. He’d never gotten a son, but he wanted to leave a legacy behind. Something he could understand. And while the daughter loved her father, she could never be a great hunter. The moment she realized what meat was, she’d thrown up what seemed like a lifetime of dinners. The sounds from that feastday hog’s slaughter haunted her dreams for years. Just the sight of blood…blood…it was enough to cause her gorge to rise. To make her want to curl up and weep and hide until the world was better. Kinder.

“We take lives to feed the ones we love,” he’d told her one night, trying to calm her down. “Life is that exchange. When we die, our bodies feed the grass that they eat in turn. The crops we eat only grow in the soil fertilized by, among other things, their composted kin. It’s a form of magic, I reckon.”

She’d nodded at the time, but the daughter hadn’t eaten another animal since. Even when it made her muscles waste away, made her feel like she was rotting alive, even when she couldn’t get out of bed, she wouldn’t touch a bite of it.

Luckily, the brilliant princess had been playmates with the daughter since they were very young, and they’d stayed close even as their stations in life pressed them apart. She found out that the daughter was sick, and she nursed her back to health with potions of her own design. Then she taught her what to eat to not get sick again. Showed her how to live without taking a life from something that could feel pain. That could bleed.

But the daughter still wanted to make her father happy. So she kept up her practice with her bow. She’d loose arrows til her arms burned, then kept going. She’d fire from the castle towers, from the murder slits, or hanging from her feet. She’d arc her missiles like a trained mathematician, trajectories perfectly calculated in her head and knowing by the sound the unseen straw target made whether she’d hit her mark. She’d do everything in the world you could with a bow except fire it at a living thing. Except the one thing a bow was meant to do.

But on that cold, cold autumn day, there was no hiding from her fate. There, in the sickly yellow hue of an unwanted dawn, the daughter did her best to stay calm. To push down her feelings. The last two times they’d gone out and seen nothing to shoot at. Two blessed reprieves from this disgusting ritual.

But then she saw it. Tawny fur, graceful limbs, its curious head lifted from gnawing at the undergrowth to show off a pair of bone white antlers. The same kind she’d seen adorn her family’s cabin walls for her entire life. If her family had rich enough blood, a buck’s antlers might as well have been their crest.

Gorgeous creature. So full of life. So full of blood.

The daughter’s head pounded. Warmth drained from her fingers. It was as if the flesh had retreated up her arm and she was left with nothing but rattling bone. The hands of death.

“There,” the father whispered, his hand as steady as the tree trunks around them as he pointing out the next ingredient for his pot. “This one’s all yours. You can do this, Vikka. I believe in you.”

*** 

When Vikka first picked up the bow, it was as if she was afraid it might bite her. But it was hard to forget what it felt like in your hands. Even after what felt like a lifetime of trying. She tested the draw weight. Impressive. Something that small shouldn’t be able to-

Daughter, a familiar voice said, you must never lose track of a target. The prey have eyes facing to the side to glance, to fret, to worry. The predator only has eyes for her target. Only ahead.

Vikka’s eyes snapped up. Her mind had pulled on the reins of time and rendered the scene in a slow, agonizing crawl. In the time since her reverie had begun, the traitor with the mace had closed the distance. The expression on the guards’ face must have provoked Crys to begin to turn around. 

Target?

“Man, fighting age, wearing mail beneath a tunic.” Her replies were quiet, crisp, and to the point. Just like he taught her. 

Distance?

“One hundred and ten feet.” Too far to see the details in his face. Good. 

Clear flight?

“No. People moving in and out of the way.” The loyalist guards were in motion, but they’d never intercept the blow in time.

Wind?

“None. We’re in a mountain.”

Aye, girl. Interesting little hunting ground. 

No time. No time. The target was preparing to swing. She pulled back the arrow. Her muscles strained against the draw, but she was no layabout. Vikka had made a home in the south fit for a Princess with the sweat of her brow and the strength in her back. It’d be enough.

For what it’s worth, her father continued, his voice fading to the whisper she remembered from his deathbed, I did forgive you. It’s just hard to watch a dream die.

“Easier to push your daughter away, I suppose,” Vikka mouthed, unwilling to upset her draw with expelled air at this crucial moment. The target’s hand pulled back, mace ready to bash Crys’ skull. It was a target. All it was was a target. Bodies moved in and out of her line of sight, but all her focus was on the thin passage of air between her and her prey. She waited for a handful of seconds to pass to let a man’s flailing hand drop out of range of affecting her shot. Then, without malice or pity, she loosed.

She didn’t see it wobble in flight, nor did she remark on how the fletching brushed the cheek of the man who’d questioned the chefs’ courage. Her eye was off the mark now, watching the progress of the heavy steel bludgeon.

Moving closer…

And closer…

And…

Vikka heard nothing. Not above the din of the fighting. But a bouquet of feathers now sprouted from the target’s neck. The hand holding the mace opened, its heavy head sending it careening off against a far wall. The target lost all interest in attacking, its hands reaching for something. The momentum translated into a weak bodycheck that nearly knocked Crys over. It folded up like fresh linen, limbs moving without coordination on the floor. 

Her eye flicked to where her arrow had impacted again, and her gorge rose. Just as it had all those years ago. Crimson poured through the mail like a sieve. It pulsed out in a way that could only be the carotid. He was dead. He’ll bleed out in minutes without healing. For a moment he was the deer. The beautiful creature she’d trailed to watch its last moments vent out into the leaves. An arrow from her hand in its chest, that crisp autumn air filling with the sound of a creature with punctured lungs. It looked up at her, knife in her hand, ready to finish the job…

She looked to Crys for solace. For reassurance that she’d done the right thing. Crys was safe. What’s more, the momentary spectacle of seeing a man catch an arrow in the throat in front of him made her opponent turn toward Vikka. He caught a fist to the face for his troubles, and an elbow to the back of the head on the way down. Vikka watched it all, stock still, bow in hand. She’d done it. After all these years, she’d saved one life by taking another.

Good shot, kid.

“I learned from the best,” she tried to say. Instead, in the span of five seconds, and in no particular order, she vomited all over herself, screamed, then passed out of consciousness.

***

Crys cleaned off her sword before sliding it back into its scabbard. She’d forgotten to do that at least once, and now the damn thing was gonna reek until she cleaned it out.

Another thing the damn singers never sing about, she griped. It was hard to consider this anything but a victory, but the air smelled like rot, and spoiled meat, and shit, and vomit, and, for some reason, bread. Oh, right…the kitchen! They must have been preparing for breakfast, the poor fuckers.

The ragged cheer as Turai greeted the assembled loyalists did sound like something out of a bard’s tale, Crys had to admit. She stood in the doorway and watched them clap hands and exchange embraces. She might not have been born in the Frontiers, but the men and women at arms looked practically smitten with their gorgeous, blood-stained Princess. Not afraid to get her hands dirty, fighting for them against the traitorous cads. A minor victory, but she’d take it.

Crys was about to join Turai inside when something strange caught her eye. An arrow lodged in the neck of one of the traitors. At the moment, nobody in the kitchen held a bow, or even wore a quiver. Where in the Starless Night did that come from?

As she examined it, she found something much more interesting. Strapped to the waist of one of the guards was a weapon far exceeding his station. In fact, it looked rather familiar! The pommel in particular was quite distinctive indeed. The dumb prick who’d stolen it likely didn’t know what he’d taken as a trophy. If he did, he might have put up a half-decent fight.

“Trust me friend,” she told the moaning man, undoing his belt to get at the scabbard. “It’s better for both of us if I take this off of you.”