The sun was an hour from the horizon, painting the snow in long, bruised shadows that felt like reaching fingers. To the rest of the Iron Guard, it was the Golden Hour—the time to scout for a soft bed of needles and start thinking about the evening’s rations.

  To me, it was the countdown to a massacre.

  “There she is!” Sir Joric called out, pointing his gloved hand toward the grey silhouette of the watchtower ruins on the ridge. “Just like I remembered. We’ll be in the lee of those walls before the first star shows. What do you say, Kaelen? Should we send Leo ahead to start the fire?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. I was staring at the base of Joric’s throat. In my mind’s eye, I could still see the obsidian talon bursting through his windpipe. I could still hear the wet, rhythmic tearing of his flesh.

  “Kaelen?” Joric’s smile wavered. “You’ve been staring at me for three miles. Is there a spider on my face?”

  “No,” I said, my voice sounding like it was being dragged over gravel. “We aren’t stopping there.”

  The column slowed. The rhythmic clop-clop of hooves faltered as the knights looked at each other in confusion.

  “Excuse me?” Sir Marcelle, the eldest of our group, rode up to the front. “Captain, the men are exhausted. The horses are starting to foam. The watchtower is the only defensible position for ten leagues.”

  “The watchtower is a death trap,” I barked. I pulled my horse around to face the entire line. “We push past the ridge. We camp in the middle of the Low Basin. In the open.”

  “In the open?” Joric laughed, though it sounded forced. “Kaelen, the wind in the Basin will cut us to the bone. We’ll have no cover, no high ground—”

  “And no canopy for things to drop from!” I roared.

  The silence that followed was heavy. The knights looked at me with a mix of concern and burgeoning resentment. To them, I was a leader who had suddenly lost his mind to the North-chill. I saw Leo, the young squire, shrink back slightly from the intensity in my eyes.

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  I ignored them and rode straight to the carriage. I didn’t knock. I pulled the curtain back.

  Lady Elara was waiting. She looked at my face and saw the change. The skepticism was gone; the soldier had taken its place.

  “Tell them,” I whispered. “Tell them it’s a command from the Duke’s blood. Give me the authority to move them, or we die in those ruins again.”

  The Young Lady stepped out of the carriage. She looked at the twenty knights—the men who had just been ‘erased’ and ‘brought back’ by her mysterious ability. She stood tall, her voice regaining a sliver of the steel that came with her lineage.

  “Captain Kaelen speaks with my voice,” she announced, her eyes sweeping over the Guard. “The watchtower is cursed. I have seen it in the omens of my house. We move to the Basin. Now.”

  No one argued with the Lady. But as we turned away from the ridge, the muttering started. “Madness,” Marcelle whispered. “He’s going to freeze us all because the girl had a bad dream.”

  The War Council of Two

  We reached the Basin as the light died. It was a flat, miserable expanse of frozen peat, but it had one advantage: you could see a rabbit moving from five hundred yards away.

  I sat with the young Duchess away from the main fire, ostensibly to discuss the “Omens,” but in reality, to plan our survival.

  “They move through the trees,” I said, sketching a rough map in the snow with a dagger. “They used the tower roof as a jumping point. By staying in the open, we force them to run across the snow. We’ll see them coming.”

  “It won’t be enough,” Lady Elara whispered, her hands huddled in her furs. I looked at the knights. They were huddled around the fire, casting suspicious glances my way . I stood up and walked toward the center of the camp. The knights went silent as I approached. Joric was sharpening his blade, his movements jerky and irritated.

  “Listen up!” I shouted. “Tonight, we don’t sleep in shifts. We sleep in pairs, back-to-back.”

  “Kaelen, this is insane,” Joric snapped, standing up. “We’re the Iron Guard! We don’t act like paranoid bandits!”

  “Joric,” I said, stepping into his space until our chest plates touched. “In ten minutes, the wind is going to shift to the North. When it does, I want you to look at the shadows at the edge of the light. If I’m wrong, you can have my rank in the morning. If I’m right… you do exactly what I say.”

  Joric stared at me, his jaw set. Then, he looked at the treeline.

  The wind shifted.

  The scent of wet copper hit my nose—the same smell from the kitchen, the same smell from the slaughter. I saw a flicker of movement on the white snow—a pale, liquid shadow moving far too fast for a man.

  “Archers!” I roared. “Ten o’clock! Fire into the dark! Now!”