Dawn brought him back to himself again with her head pillowed on his shoulder. Suddenly conscious that he wore nothing but a bandage beneath the fur, he eased her from his arm. Once free, he reached for the neat stack of his clothes and pulled his bloodstained tabard over his head.

Now the wound in his side felt like nothing more than a tightening scab. Nath looked again at the woman who had healed him. He drank in all the details he’d missed in the dark. Gold-blonde curls, sand-brown skin. A short nose with a rounded tip. He almost gave in to the urge to wake her, but made himself slip from the tent without disturbing her sleep.

The bite of cold air outside cleared his head. Nath tucked himself into the rest of his clothes quickly. Early snow clung to the ruined trees. None stuck to the ground around the forest pool. Nath went to its edge and dipped his hand into it, swiping a palmful of water across his face. Whatever spell that had been there the night before was long gone.

He stared at his reflection. Who he was and where he was spread itself across Nath’s thoughts like the sun rising up over the Witch’s Teeth.

The fourth-son king, caught out with no crown and no army. He had the thought in Emmond’s voice. Throneless though his brother had been, at least Emmond died surrounded by his army, coated in blood and valor. Nath hadn’t even made it to a proper battlefield.

The events of the ambush prickled in his mind. He remembered the tents in the woods, his banner quivering in the torchlight. The plan had been to creep up a Tooth and find a lost valley between two peaks wide enough to move a scant two hundred men under cover of darkness. Gruffydd’s men knew the land better than any; he’d broken off to scout ahead with secret instructions to send midnight riders back to Nath with changes to the route. He’d been waiting for the rider in the usual spot when the attack started.

Nath’s mind wandered down a dark path. Had someone intercepted Gruffydd’s rider? Had there been any rider intending to meet him that night at all? His hand went to his side before he remembered his sword was gone. Nath squeezed his long fingers into an empty fist and thought of the mage who swung for him.

Something wasn’t right. They weren’t formally at war, and no one from Nynomath should have known they were coming. Rumor had it that the Great Dome of their mages had cracked. Its once-great Seers could no longer predict the course of men overland, no more than it could trace stars in heaven. The mage who’d attacked him had his face painted for battle.

But mages never fight under a full moon, Nath thought. He touched the sore place on his ribs. Something dark and strange moved through the Witch’s Teeth. He would have to get off the mountain to get away from it.

He heard a stir behind him. The woman stood just outside her tent as if summoned by his thoughts.

Nath smiled at her in greeting. He thought again that she was beautiful, even though in the full light of day he could see the dirt on her clothes and scowling lines around her mouth. Her eyes were striking, the kind of brown artists compared to foods — chocolate, coffee, the dark soft bread peasants made with sugar.

“You’ll catch your death out here,” she said. She held up a gray wolf pelt in one hand.

Nath felt a stab of relief strike his worried mind. So she did speak Ammarish. It would make it easier to be near her.

He approached and accepted the wolf pelt from her. The top of her head didn’t even come to his chin when they stood face-to-face. He slung the fur over his shoulders, making each movement slow so as not to frighten her.

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“I want to thank you, but I do not know your name,” he said.

She answered. He caught the first part, and Mmm, and then the very end of it, two sweet sounds that filled his mouth: “Eva.”

“Ma-eva,” she corrected.

Nath tried again: “Mama Eva.”

“No.” One corner of her mouth quirked up, revealing a dimple. Her voice was a hoarse, quiet murmur. “No… I am no one’s mother.”

“Certainly not mine,” Nath said before he could stop himself. Best not to talk about his mother. Best not to tell her he was the son of a queen. He touched his side and nodded to her. “Thank you, Lady.”

“I’m not a lady, either.” A flicker of something moved within her dark brown eyes.

Nath felt a little thrill, as if he’d won a game. He pressed his invisible advantage, hoping to win more from her. “What are you doing out here?”

“Hunting,” she answered. He noticed now that she held the mage’s knife in her hands. The one she’d pulled from his wound. “Who slid this between your ribs?”

“Someone who doesn’t have very long to live,” Nath answered. His hand went to his hip again, where there was no sword, and he settled for resting it there. He wanted to appear confident to her. He was not quite sure how old she was, but he knew it was older than him.

“You’re left-handed.” Her eyes flicked to his hip and then up to his chest. A line formed between her brows and the dimple vanished from her cheek. “Whoever stabbed you must have known that. To find your traitor, look for someone who has seen you hold a sword.”

Traitor. A prickle went up Nath’s spine. This woman in the woods, Eva, was almost certainly a witch. How else would she have known his thoughts almost before he did? Nath resisted the urge to cross his fingers against enchantment. His mother’s lessons in chivalry won out over the priests’ lectures on damnation.

He wondered again what she was doing out here, what man might have wanted to hurt her. Perhaps she’d been a healer-slave to the mages. They took witch-children young and raised them like calves in the stall to sacrifice on their altars.

“There are mages in these woods,” he warned her. His eyes flicked to the crescent, which she held balanced on her palms. “One may come looking for that, if you keep it. You’ll be safer if you come with me, Lady Eva.”

“Ma-Eva,” she corrected again. She held the knife out to him. “Shouldn’t you keep it? It’s your reward for cheating death. And evidence against your traitor, besides, when you get back to where you’re from.”

“Come with me,” he pressed. He wanted to reach for her hand, but she still held the crescent in it.

Her dark eyes slid over him again, from head to foot. A sad look drifted across her face and she turned away from him, shrugging her way through the flap of her tent. He waited a moment, hopeful that she might come back out with a basket under her arm and a kerchief for her golden hair. But after a minute, she called out:

“Go away.”

The mage-speech sang in his ears. The words shaped a compulsion in him to turn on his heel. Like the crush of the death spell the night before, he felt a weight settle against his heart, urging him to do what the words in his mind instructed.

Nath fought against it, determined to stay near her. Powerful as she was, her spells hadn’t been enough to protect her. She needed him, he thought.

“I’ll go away,” he agreed to quiet the spell. Then he countered its effects, adding, “But I will see you again, Eva.”

Nath looked up at the sky, sighting the peak of the Witch’s Tooth that loomed over the pool. This time, he made sure it was on his left as he walked in the direction he believed was south. Even though every part of him twisted like a compass back around to point behind him. Back toward her.