The attack came just after midnight when the stars above the mountain shone brightest. A hiss of steel and rustle of silk announced the start of the frantic struggle that spread through the camp like wildfire. 

Anathas, king for just forty days, was on the eastern side of the sprawl of tents where he’d gone to await a secret messenger near the treeline. The cries to reach him came from men who died on the western side, closest to the road his army traveled to reach the mountain. At twenty-three, the Young King had spent more than half his life hidden away behind books and swords while his father and brothers fought at war. The teachings had never left the realm of possibility — until his mother put a crown on his head. 

Now Nath half-turned, only half-ready for the blade that whirled out of the dark to slash at him. He got his sword drawn just fast enough to stop the attack before it reached his neck. His ears rang with the sound of steel on steel. 

If you’re close enough to get stabbed, you don’t deserve to be king, King Aelius had often told his sons. Back when the kingdom had three living princes to pick from.

Nath swore. A quick twist of his arm got the blade low enough to disengage. In another moment, he felt the pull and tug of his sword sticking into flesh. He lost his grip when the dying man fell, taking Nath’s blade under him in a heap of limbs.

Screams surrounded them now. Orange flames bloomed among the red and green tents of Ammar’s knights spread across the hillside. Nath realized then just what had happened to his camp. An ambush — the worst possible start to a king’s military career. The worst nightmare of Queen Neith-Anne, who only had one son left alive.

Nath bolted for the trees. Ammar didn’t have any princes left to pick up after him if he died here. His mother had reminded him again and again while she arranged his coronation. Be a good son and a better king — find a bride, father heirs. Do not die. 

More shadows met him there under the cover of darkness. He made out the flash of white teeth and black-brown whorls across the face and eyes. Mages, the fiends of the next kingdom over, painted their faces with the blood of witches before battle. 

Nath cursed as one lunged for him with a hooked blade. With no sword, he counted on fists to save. He stepped in close with an arm up to block the hand that swung for him. It was enough to stop the arm, but not the knife. The sharp tip of the mage’s scythe slipped under his elbow to plant itself between two ribs. His embroidered tabard offered barely any greater resistance than his own skin. 

Nath swore and wrenched himself away, taking the mage’s knife with him. A blind left hook thrown to the snarling face rewarded him with a sickening crack. Then he was running through the dark, hardly aware of the screams behind him. He pressed a hand to his side to keep the blood in and the knife still while his long legs carried him further away from the battle. 

He could picture his mother, safe back in her fortress, her painted lips pursed in disappointment while tears dangled from her eyelashes. Queen Neith-Anne raised all her sons to be honorable, noble knights of the realm whose first duty was to their sacred bloodline. How could Nath avenge his brothers if he ran away from their killers and not toward? 

A dangerous ache spread from the knife in his side. Nath didn’t dare try to pry it loose. Instead, he pressed himself to the bole of a tree and took shallow breaths. The screams faded while the attack spread through the camp. Cut off from his weapons, his men, Nath tried to think what to do. King Alieus would have snarled at him to stay where he was. Emmond, his father’s favorite, would have shouted at him to go back and fight. Anryniel, Neith-Anne’s favorite, would have laughed and told him he might as well go hunting if he was stuck in the woods. Anryniel had even taken the trouble to show him how, not with hounds and horses like the lordlings, but on foot with only a knife and a bow. If this whole royalty thing isn’t for you, Nath, you could always go and live in the woods!  

Nath put the wind to his left and moved toward what he thought might be southeast. The ground hardened under foot, and the jagged peaks of the Witch’s Teeth appeared in the gaps between the trees. The snow capped mountains divided Ammar from Nynomath, with the slopes to both sides chewed to pieces rockslides, spells, and saints. Nath had led his small force dead center up the slope to try and find a narrow pass that would let him gain at least one peak. His mother approved the expedition as reprisal for Anryniel’s death. She longed build a shrine to him on the Witch’s Teeth so that the spirit of her favorite son could still guard Ammar from the mages. 

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No shrine this year, Mother, Nath thought. 

Pain beat in his chest, mingled with anger and guilt. What a sorry state that Queen Neith-Anne depended on her youngest child to restore the kingdom. Almyr, the baby, had died at birth. Emmond perished at the Battle of the Horn beside King Alieus. Now Anryniel joined them wherever the land beyond death lay, having died far from home at the Emperor's court. No one knew just how mages had got ahold of the body, but it was them who sent Anryniel’s heart home in a jar to bury alongside their defeated kings, and the dead baby. 

Queen Neith-Anne would’ve climbed into the sarcophagus with them if Nath hadn’t promised her he would avenge them. 

The sound of his breath changed. Nath became aware, dully, that the knife slid somewhere it shouldn’t have. The shouts were far away, now, muted by the thick cover of trees. Old redwoods, pines, and even a few scraggly whites crowded close to where he labored, one painful step after the other. He stepped past the gnarled roots, sure footed even in agony, and found his way to a place where the ground flattened. 

With any luck, some of his knights would have escaped. Nath stopped for a moment to think what to do. The last fort they’d passed ten days back at Thornhaven. Twenty men had left ahead of them to scout a hidden path past the mages’ watchtower on the southern Tooth. His childhood friend Gruffydd led them. 

Griffy will notice something’s wrong. Nath reassured himself that someone would notice the Fourth Son King was missing. Griffy might even come out himself, just so he could tease Nath about it later.  

He lifted his head to look for a Tooth again. The trees parted, rewarding him with the sight of a jagged peak. Somehow to his right instead of his left. He squinted at the half-dome shape of the mountain with its edge pointed south. 

“Fuck,” he snarled. He’d gone the wrong way. North, and still east. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” 

He didn’t want to die. Not alone, not in the woods. All the oaths he’d sword when Neith-Anne placed the crown on his head came back to him: Defend the borders. Retake the Teeth. Find a bride. And the last while the Queen Mother held out the jaw with his brother’s heart for him to swear upon: Never die by a mage’s hand. 

No, Mother. A deer is going to eat my heart. Then shit it out. Nath laughed, delirious. The last little chuckle shoved his lung right up onto the knife’s tip and he felt a heavy pressure as blood swept in. 

He dragged himself a few more steps. Dry, cracked bark crunched beneath his feet. Dazedly, he looked up and saw that all the trees around him were stripped bare. Torn down to the pulp in some places by the claws of a wild animal. 

An eerie stillness hugged the ruined trees. Beyond the dull pressure of blood filling his lung, Nath felt the crush of a spell press down on him from every direction. The most he knew of magic came from the flimsy stuff of Ammarish witches. Little miracles of ash and honey to bring rain or ease labor. The stuff he felt in the air around him now was older, darker. 

The magecraft of Nynomath, its purpose shrouded in blood and silence. 

“Come to me, Death.” 

The words spoke in his own voice. Nath supposed he might have said them. But how could he speak with a lung full of blood? His feet moved, carrying him deeper between the ruined trees. A glistening silver line appeared along the ground just ahead of him. As he approached, it widened into the still surface of a forest pool reflecting the pure white glow of moonlight. 

Enspelled, Nath stumbled to the edge of the water. He saw his reflection in the mirror stillness: a tangled mess of black braids hanging over a long face with deep lines around his eyes. Desperately in need of a shave. His eyes looked black in the reflection, but he knew that they were blue. Like his father’s, like his brothers’. 

Grief drove him to his knees. Dark spots danced at the edge of his vision and Nath felt that cold white water pulling him toward it. In another moment, he would have plunged in. 

Then the spell broke. The surface of the water shattered in a thousand ice-cold droplets, splashing him across the face.  Nath blinked the spell water away and saw a head emerge from the pool. His failing breath caught in his chest. 

A woman stood up from the pool, naked and wet — just as surprised to see him as he was her. 

For all the rest of their lives, he would always picture her that way. Pale hair down around her shoulders. Shadowed skin that held the gleam of moonlight in its curves. And two wide, dark eyes that watched him. 

Anathas stayed on his knees while she waded toward him. The darkness was back, but this time it was only blood loss. He let it take him, smiling at the one clear thought that shot across his mind like a falling star:

If I’m going to die, it’s going to be with her.