When I woke again, the light in the woods had changed. Must be near dusk, I thought. Fell asleep again. Brassard’s going to give me a lecture.

As the fog in my skull cleared, I realized in a flash where I was. The following realization — that the old ranger was long dead — was like physical pain.

I lay in damp undergrowth in the sickly woods of Caelfall, not on the borderlands of Harodell. I was in my middle years, world-worn and tired, and not an eager young man set to challenge all the tyrants and monsters of Urn with nothing but a sword in hand.

Everything ached. I guessed I had whatever the doctor had injected me with to thank for that. Bastard old man, I thought. Not that I could blame him much — he had every reason to believe I was one of Orson Falconer’s agents. Still, if he’d only let me explain…

But I hadn’t really tried to explain, had I? I’d tried intimidating them instead, and the old physik’s clever apprentice had shut me down hard. I’d underestimated them both. Even still, they’d get themselves killed if I didn’t get back to the village and stop them from trying the castle’s defenses. If I wasn’t too late already.

I started to get up, but some subtle noise in the surrounding forest stopped me. I went still. Instinctively, the fingers of my right hand searched for my axe. Cold logic told me the doctor had probably taken my weapons, so I was surprised when I found it lying at my side.

Must not have wanted to leave me defenseless, I thought. Soft heartedness seemed a foolish trait for a pair of fiend hunters. They should have killed me.

Carefully, without a sound, I shifted my muscles to readiness and tightened my grip on the axe. There was another rustle. I felt a subtle coldness, an itch along my skin. Small voices whispered through my blood.

Something of the Dark was approaching. Some beast of the woods, perhaps, or one of the Baron’s creatures sent to deal with a loose end.

It wouldn’t find an easy meal. I waited, and when my instincts told me it was near I twisted, spinning into a low and savage kick. My boot connected with something. It fell with a yelp. I was on my feet and had my axe up in a flash.

For the second time that day I froze before delivering the killing blow. Instead I lowered the axe and stepped clear, biting off a curse. “Vampire.”

“It’s Catrin, you arse. Have trouble keeping names in that hard skull of yours? All the knocks you’ve taken to it, maybe?”

The young woman stood, wincing and lifting one foot clear of her skirts to rub at the ankle I’d bruised. She’d returned to her commoner’s garb, opting for a dark green dress that better blended with the shadowed woods and a pale gray bodice. Though, if she wanted to move unseen, the white frills along the various lines of the garment somewhat ruined the effect. “Bleeding Gates, you’re a jumpy one. Is every conversation with you going to involve violence?”

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“I turned into a varbat and flew around until I saw you lying in the mud.”

I glowered, unamused.

Catrin sighed and held up her hands in surrender. “I heard you got sent out on some errand for the baron and didn’t return with the Mistwalker who rode out with you. I put the screws to Quinn and he admitted you’d gone into an Irkwood. Alone. Whole castle suspects you’re dead.”

“So you came all the way out here?” I asked. We were several miles from the lake.

“I can move around quicklike if I want,” Catrin said with an evil little smile. “Maybe I can’t grow wings like some of my kind, but I’ve got my ways.”

I remembered how she’d moved through shadows during our conversation in the castle the previous night and didn’t comment. I turned and started walking, guessing at the direction of the road.

“Hey!” Catrin scurried to catch up, her skirts rustling through the brush. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the village,” I said. Before that old fool gets himself and his apprentice killed.

“Alright, fine enough, but could you at least tell me what happened out here? Why I found you lying on your face in the bloody wilderness?” She sniffed, then scrunched up her face in disgust. “Did you shit yourself?”

I paused, then sighed. I had. “I was drugged,” I told her.

Maybe I’d just let Olliard die.

“Drugged?” Catrin asked, confused. Her eyes fell like well trained arrows on the puncture wound in my neck.

I didn’t miss where her eyes lingered and turned, half raising the axe. She stepped back out of my reach, both of us going on guard at once.

“Not here to fight,” Catrin said slowly, watching me with wary eyes that shone just a touch too bright in the deepening forest gloom. “Came to make sure you were alive, not finish the job. You have my word, big man.”

I considered her a long while, torn by distrust, doubt, and need. I had no allies in this, and the situation kept getting more complicated. Perhaps I couldn’t trust her. Shattered Hells, maybe she’d been about to drain me in my sleep.

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But she hadn’t told the Baron about my duplicity, and she’d tried to find me after I’d gone missing. She’d stuck her neck out for me with the ghouls and even offered to help me escape the province, knowing nothing about me at the time.

She’d taken risks on my account. Whoever she was, whatever she was, everything she’d done told me she wasn’t an enemy.

Yet my instincts, and the sacred magic in my blood, screamed at me not to trust her.

Well, my instincts tended to compel me to swing steel first and ask questions never, and I had reason to suspect the golden magic sewn into my aura was a touch biased in this regard.

“What do you know of a man named Olliard of Kell?” I asked.

Catrin frowned, recognition passing across her features. “Sounds familiar, but I can’t… Why? He the one who made you shit yourself?”

I scowled. “Matter of fact, he is. He’s also a vampire hunter packing alchemical weapons from the Continent. He’s planning to raid the castle and kill all the heretics and monsters inside with a fancy crossbow. Him and his nun apprentice, anyway.”

Catrin’s eyes widened. “Oh.” Her frown turned thoughtful as she propped a fist on one hip. “Seems like he might be an ally, if he’s also after the baron’s head. Not that I’m eager to work alongside a man who’s made it a profession to hunt down my like, but you know what they say about beggars and choosers.”

“He has no clue what’s in that castle.” I rested my axe on a shoulder and started walking again. “Some moonsilver and a few prayers aren’t going to make a difference against that ogre. I need to get back there and warn him.”

“What makes you think he won’t just drug you again?” Catrin asked, keeping pace with me. Despite the dying light, she glided easily over the tripping roots and tangled vines. The way she moved reminded me of the elves.

“He’ll listen to me after I’ve knocked his skull a couple times,” I growled. I wasn’t in the mood to be patient or gentle with either of the hunters — they’d get out of my way and let me do my work. Orson Falconer and his coterie of darkness were a problem for the Headsman to deal with, not some vigilante.

“Well, it’s a damn shame you and he ended up having this misunderstanding,” Catrin stated cheerfully as she danced along at my side, “and I’m sure it’s awful embarrassing he made you go and soil your trousers, but you should really see this as a good thing, big man.”

I lifted an eyebrow as I walked. “That so?”

“Aye,” Catrin said brightly. “This time yesterday, you were one man against a small army of frightful things. Now you’ve got a pair of professional cutters roaming about on the same job, and a cute dhampir to—”

She never got to finish that sentence. Something small and quick as lightning flashed from the shadowed woods. It punched into her left shoulder. She stumbled back.

An arrow.

I moved without thought, on pure impulse. All my suspicion, uncertainty, and revulsion toward the changeling forgotten, at least in the moment. I caught her in one arm and lifted my axe with the other, snarling with rage at the woods as amber flame burst to life across my weapon.

And they were there, all around us. I knew it before I truly saw them. The sun had finished its descent, and my aura-imbued eyes saw through the darkness — but not so far as they should have. Another power was there, working against mine. An older magic.

Fey lights blinked to life through the trees. Bobbing blue Wil-O’ Wisps. They giggled like ghostly children, flitting in and out of sight.

One light passed in front of a tall shape, wild haired and clutching a warbow near tall as they.

Elves.

The denizens of the old woods had come.

“I don’t want trouble,” I said, calming my rage. More of the ghost-lights appeared in the corner of my vision. I tracked them, but saw no more of our ambushers. They lurked in the darkness. How many?

Too many, I thought. Even one would be dangerous enough.

“Es tiirien valre, es’curunai.” The serpent voice coiled through the darkness, spoken in nearly a murmur yet filling every gnarled edge of the wood. “Yet you bring trouble with you, mortal. That thing in your arm is an abomination.”

I thought at first the elf meant my axe. The elves had made it, long ago, but they did not love it. Then I realized he probably meant Catrin.

“We are no threat to you,” I said. “If you seek revenge for the Sentinel, neither I nor this changeling were responsible.”

“We know this,” the hidden elf said. The slithering words were punctuated by more fey laughter from the wisps. “But there are grievances besides those held against Falconer to be answered. You have much to answer for, Alder Knight.”

A cold shiver ran through my blood. They knew what I was.

“Are you alright?” I muttered to Catrin.

The dhampir was shivering in my arm, pressed against my side. She was very cold, though I wasn’t sure if that was her injury or her natural state. The arrow in her shoulder was black and fletched with pale green feathers. A subtle silver-hued light radiated from the wound, as though the dart had been a burning comet fallen from the stars.

“I feel sick,” she said. She looked very pale, almost so much as when she’d briefly taken her true form in my room the night before.

I clenched my jaw. The elves had hit her with azsilver. Banemetal, as humans called it. An alloy that harmed the soul along with the flesh, and was especially effective against the undead. Had Catrin been a true vampire, it would have scorched her spirit from her body and sent it hurtling into the Wend to burn for an age.

“Hold on,” I told her. “I’ll get us out of this.” I wanted to rip the arrow out, but didn’t dare take my other hand off my weapon. Had she been human, I’d have left it in to avoid blood loss, but the magic dart was doing harm for every second it was embedded in her.

“Knew you were some kind o’ lord,” Catrin said with a weak smile. There was blood on her teeth, and the whites of her eyes had darkened to red. She shivered violently, as though from deadly fever. Her accent had thickened — definitely a Marchlander. “Just my luck.”

I tore my attention from the dhampir and fixed it on the darkening woods. “I was sent by the Lady Eanor of the Choir Concilium to execute Orson Falconer. We are on the same side, my word of honor on it.”

“…Honor?”

The wisps ceased their laughter. The forest went deadly silent. The chill in my blood became a winter wind, ice crackling through my veins.

The immortal voice in the darkness spoke, and each word was a brand, each sentence a pronouncement of doom.

“You think to claim honor now? You, who wields the Faen Orgis?”

“You, who let the greatest of our havens burn?”

“You, whose order betrayed our archon?”

“You, who allowed the Enemy into the very heart of our most sacred places?”

“Even now you bear its mark upon your flesh.”

The scars on my face burned. I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t muster a word. What could I say?

It was all true.

“I was deceived,” I croaked. “I didn’t know—”

“You should not have come here,” the elf said. “You will not leave alive.”

Movement in the surrounding trees. More Wil-O’ Wisps, and only then did the true Sidhe make their appearance.

They were all tall as lords, all graceful, and an unearthly light clung to them. They were so beautiful it hurt the eyes, their weapons and armor shining with witchlight. Their faces were stern, wolfish, and utterly without mercy. They had the strength of ages, and a hatred born of the death of their civilization.

A death I’d helped bring about.

They gathered close, aiming shining spears at my neck.

“We will bring you to our lord for judgment.”