The Widow of the Bawn provided comfortable chambers to each member of Finn Nu’s coterie. The lord himself stood in his own room after the conclusion of the dinner, looking out the window over the rolling fields beyond Estival Bawn and contemplating the gray moon that rose over them.

  “It’s waxing full,” he said darkly. “The dead one.”

  His wife had little patience for his more brooding moods. “It is but a lifeless stone caught in this world’s motion, husband mine. What is here, on the surface of this sphere, is what matters.”

  She stood behind him. He turned and caught her silver fingers in his own, lifting them to his lips. “Is that not your own kingdom we speak of?”

  “There are forests upon the surface of the Living Moon,” she said seriously. “And it is those my kinsfolk hunt. The other is but ice and rock.”

  “Sad,” he said and kissed her hand.

  She touched the corner of his mouth, her solid black-and-brown eyes lingering on his chin. “Come away from the window, my love. There is death ahead, and I would have us indulge in life tonight.”

  She pulled him away from the window and the view of that dour gray sphere glaring down from where it nested amid the stars. He went two steps, only to pause.

  Erthri tugged, but Finn Nu did not budge. She frowned as she turned back to him. He stared back, his expression pensive.

  “We are meant to guard this keep tonight,” he said.

  “Penric is on the walls,” Erthri said in a soothing tone. “No Thing of Darkness will so much as creep upon those distant hills without tasting his arrows.”

  She was right. Finn Nu went another step, but it was slow and hesitant.

  That’s right. Penric used his own name, because he’s undead. The glamour is more dangerous for him, if he loses himself.

  And that thought made me blink out of Finn Nu. “Erthri” sighed heavily.

  “Can you not allow yourself to rest for one night?” Tzanith asked me.

  She was better at this than the rest of us, able to pass in and out of her masque without the confusion, the disorientation. It was second nature to her.

  "The kind of rest you're talking about might mean a lifetime of consequence," I told her bluntly.

  The elf studied me with those unsettling animal eyes. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that part of you does not want such a future?”

  I met her gaze for a brief moment before glancing away. She knew I couldn’t.

  “Many men would not consider it such a fetter,” Tzanith said. Did a hint of frustration creep into her soft voice, or did I imagine it?

  I felt a muscle at the corner of my lip twitch. A smirk, or a sneer, I couldn’t say. I felt certain there were plenty of men who wouldn’t mind a single night of pleasure, much less a lifetime of it, with one of the nobles of the Sidhe. There were countless changelings in the world to prove that fact.

  “It’s a dirty trick to use this spell to try and get a child off me,” I said in a low voice without looking at her. “Was this your queen’s motive the whole time? A replacement for Darsus?”

  This time, there was no ambiguity in Tzanith’s anger. I could still see her through the face of Lady Erthri. “If all we wanted from you was your seed, ser knight, then I promise you there are less elaborate ways to take it.”

  “But you know it would bind me to you,” I accused.

  Tzanith lifted her eyebrows. “Do I?”

  I flushed with anger and brushed her hand off, turning back to the window. The elf did not let me off with just that, though.

  “Even if but a single night between us might earn such a result,” she said, “you think quite highly of yourself to assume you might love them.”

  “Of course I would…” I growled in exasperation. “That’s not the point at all!”

  “You say so,” Tzanith said, “but I have seen it many, many times. The oaths of love and devotion sound so sweet, up until the moment when we offer the fruit of love and you mortals turn from it in horror.”

  I thought of the creatures in Garihelm’s drains. Of the many twisted, misbegotten beings who haunted the world’s wilds, the bestial irks who’d emerged from the shadows by the horde during the Fall. I thought of the Keeper’s inn, which was one of the few places where Urn’s half-breeds could find any comfort or warmth.

  Most of them ate people.

  I sighed and rubbed at the bridge of my nose. What were we even talking about? “Unless sleeping with you is necessary for this charade, Lady Erthri, then I’m not willing to go down that road.”

  “Because of her?” Tzanith asked.

  I went still and felt my heart skip a beat. “Her? You’ll have to be more specific.”

  The elf paced around to stand between me and the window, forcing me to look at her. She glowed very slightly, producing a dim blue light that made it hard to put my attention anywhere else. “Do not play the fool with me. That malcathe you were with at my father’s court. I know she became your lover.”

  I masked my relief. “She’s long gone now. What’s your point?”

  “Then who is it?!” Tzanith demanded. “Tell me who has bewitched you so, and I will purge them from your thoughts! Do you not think I see how you armor yourself in suffering? I saw it that first night at my father’s hall, and even then I longed to make you forget! Do you think it a small thing that my queen has offered me to you, or that I am willing?”

  She took a single step closer, her dress swishing around her ankles with the sudden motion. “I am of the most ancient blood, mortal, a child of the same hunters who scoured the Abgrüdai from the surface of this world long before the Onsolain lost their kingdom. I still remember the name of the God who was before Aureia! I am a Lady of the Sidhe, and I have offered you a lifetime of my warmth!”

  Another step, and this time I took a step back. Tzanith’s eyes were hard, the right one brightening to gold. “And that is no small thing, mortal. Tuvon’s gift is in you still, and you shall live for centuries should you not be slain. We offer you what your emperor and empress have failed to provide — a realm that will last, a monarch worth serving, and all my artifice in the mending of your broken heart!”

  She reached out and pressed the tips of her silver fingers to my chest as her voice softened. “You need not suffer so. Let me take your pain away, my lord.”

  My lord, ser knight, ser headsman. I was growing weary with all these titles. None of them really saw past those, did they?

  I looked at the elf, feeling a deep, abiding weariness. “Why do all of you obsess over my pain so much? Dei said almost the same damn thing.”

  Tzanith’s brow knit in confusion. “Dei?”

  Does she really not know, or is she just much better at this than I gave her credit for? “The one who gave me these,” I said and gestured to the scars on my face.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Tzanith’s white teeth flashed in a silent snarl. “The abgrüdai. So it’s true.”

  “That’s right!” I laughed. “I was seduced by one of the Adversary’s harlots. So tell me, lady elf, do you still want me? Even profaned as I am?”

  I spread my hands out, displaying myself, and let a bit of Finn Nu creep into the gesture. Perhaps it was him causing me to indulge in this melodrama. Maybe it was the corruption I’d taken into myself, for I felt it creep out then as my anger grew, making the shadows at the edges of the room deepen, making my voice colder and more hollow. Tzanith pulled back from me at the change, her face going pale.

  Or maybe I was just tired of dancing around this.

  “You want to know why I’m so resistant to your charms, Tzanith Balesdotter?” I spoke in almost a whisper as I leaned closer. “It’s because I can’t tell the difference between you and the demon.”

  She slapped me. The sound of it was like a small lightning bolt in the dark room. Then, her eyes welling with tears, Tzanith lunged past me and fled. I never heard the door open or close, didn’t see how she departed, just felt a rustle of disturbed air and knew she was gone.

  My cheek burned. She’d struck the opposite side of my face from where Shyora had scarred me, so for once I felt more pain on the right side than the left. I lifted a hand to feel at the spot. It tingled and felt uncomfortably warm, as though I’d just been lightly burned. I couldn’t quite tell, but there seemed to be a small light in the corner of my eye.

  She’d left a spot of her blue aura there, just like when she’d kissed Lady Amelia’s baby earlier. Irritated, I made an effort of will and burned off her magic before it could settle and make a permanent mark.

  A throaty chuckle came from a rack on the wall, where I’d hung my cloak and the fur pelt I wore over it. “You are beginning to learn.”

  I grunted and made a dismissive gesture. “I’m not in the mood, Vicar. And you shouldn’t be chatting right now. It’s already going to take me all night to repair the damage I did to the masque.”

  We’d decided that Vicar should remain free of the brunt of the glamour’s power, so he could act as an anchor that might pull me back from it if needed. That meant he needed to avoid drawing attention to himself, including offering advice or employing any of his powers.

  Vicar’s eyelights followed me as I moved to the window and leaned against it. “Why do you resist the elf’s charms? An alliance with her queen could be just the advantage you need, now that your relationship with the Choir is strained. Heavensreach would think twice about making a move against you with Tuvonsdotter at your back.”

  He was right. I considered the question a few minutes, all the while waiting for the usual rush of guilt and self hatred that would normally follow an encounter like the one I’d just had.

  Funny. I didn’t feel guilty about it this time. Damn them all.

  “I’m not going to let Maerlys turn me into her pet, even through proxy. A year with Tzanith, and I’d barely remember my own name unless she whispered it into my ear.”

  “You give yourself too little credit,” Vicar said. “Do you think your will is so weak?”

  I turned and folded my arms. “You tell me. It’s proven so before.”

  “You were much younger then. And I do not think that handmaiden is nearly so dangerous as Pernicious Shyora.”

  “I don’t know,” I said with a sigh. “I don’t like these manipulations. Bleeding Gates, she just tried to use this glamour to get me into bed with her!”

  “A commendable tactic,” the devil stated.

  “Right.” I snorted.

  “But it’s not just that, is it?”

  I glared at him from the corner of my eye. “Since when did you become the one I talk to about my love life, Sulfur Monk?”

  “Believe me,” Vicar said in a dry voice, “I have little interest in it. However, I think there is a deeper issue at hand. It is my role to advise you, Hewer, and I am advising you to let that nymph seduce you. It will save you much trouble in the future and better secure your power, which you have neglected severely.”

  He had a point. Besides my lance and a tenuous alliance with Rosanna, which I’d strained by challenging her in front of witnesses, I was more or less adrift as a political power. An easy way to get myself murdered.

  “I’m…” My jaw clenched. “Damn it, I don’t know!”

  “I do,” Vicar said flatly. “It’s because of the succubus.”

  My eyes narrowed. He had hit the nail on the head.

  “You can make these pretty excuses about protecting your potential partners from the demon’s wrath,” Vicar said, “but you cannot fool me. We are bonded, you and I, by the pact we made.”

  “Are you telling me you’ve been reading my thoughts?” I asked in a harsh voice.

  “Not precisely,” the devil said. “But I catch fragments of your feelings, and I have been guarding your dreams at your own request since that night at Maerlys’s court. It is easy enough to see. You will not give your heart to another until this matter with the demon is resolved.”

  “You mean, until I kill her?”

  “To merely banish it again would simply place you back where you were before Baille Os. I said resolved, Alken.”

  “I’m open to suggestions,” I said bitterly.

  “If I knew how to heal wounds left by the abgrüdai,” Vicar told me, “then I feel I might become a kind of god.”

  “So what, then?” I demanded.

  “I do not know. Tzanith offered you a solution, but it seems distasteful to you.”

  To tamper with my soul and memories, so I wouldn’t even care anymore.

  Never. My mind belonged to me. I’d not even allowed Rosanna to have that. I had shared some of it with Catrin, but if I’d ever become aware that she tampered with my thoughts, our relationship would not have ended with quiet regrets and a kiss.

  Vicar continued to watch me. “How did you break free of it?”

  I glanced at him and frowned in confusion. “Break free of what?”

  The pelt’s eyelights flashed. “Do not keep playing coy. The succubus’s control, of course. You managed to shirk her hold over your mind in order to slay her material body, obviously.”

  I just stared at him, not sure what he was talking about. “That’s not how it happened. She showed me what she was, told me the other paladins were planning to murder Tuvon, and tried to get me to fight them. I assumed she was trying to make me her tool at the time."

  Vicar made a noise of frustration. “Obviously she ensorcelled you, Hewer! Succubi use similar tactics to faeries in their manipulations, only it is far more damaging to the mortal psyche. I assume it has taken you many years to recover, given the recurring dreams and obsession. But what allowed you to free yourself in the first place?”

  “And I’m telling you,” I said with growing exasperation, “there was nothing like that. My mind was my own when we fought.”

  Vicar was quiet a moment. “Impossible. That creature would not have been so foolish as to leave you whole. All it would have taken was a single kiss to make you her slave, even with the Alder’s blessings.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  Before he could reply, a noise disturbed the night outside the room’s window. I looked through it and thought I could make out small, dark shapes passing over the distant hills.

  Wolves. They were howling at the moon.

  “Evangeline gains more power by the night,” Vicar said. “She could become a threat as great as the Gatebreaker, given time.”

  My job was to rescue Rysanthe, but I hadn’t forgotten Urawn Aarlu’s other directive — to punish the ones responsible.

  That task, I had no qualms with.

  The Lady Amelia departed Estival Bawn the next day in all style, riding in a coach pulled by a team of six chimera. She went with her handmaidens and knights, a large company sporting the colors of both her own clan and House Brightling, white and yellow banners flapping in the spring wind, sparrows marching alongside hares. They formed a column out of the castle, followed close by Finn Nu’s party.

  The group’s cleric slept in the coach, having been up all night performing cleansing rites on the possessed constable. Finn Nu’s squire rode with Amelia’s knights, leaving only his sister inside the carriage to hear the icy silence that lingered between him and his wife. She noticed it, but did not comment.

  “Brave of the Hare to go to Carreweir after all,” Maeve noted. “What do you think we’ll find waiting for us there, brother?”

  Finn Nu was distracted, his gaze fixed outside the window as their coach rolled along the trail. “Wolves, I imagine.”

  He tried to take Erthri’s hand, but she pulled it away from him. Finn Nu frowned in confusion, and wondered what they’d fought about the previous night. He’d had too much wine, he thought. His cheek had stung when he woke up.

  “Wolves and foxes,” he said with a dark chuckle. “And we the hunters, invited into their den. A shame I did not bring my spear.”

  Tall Carreweir was among the subcontinent’s oldest settlements, at least when only counting those of human origin. It sat at a bend in the River Fess, and the great keep at the crest of that bend — the High Herald’s Keep — soared over the city like a crown of white spires and flapping banners. It formed the centerpiece of a mighty dam, that ancient fortress, holding back the waters that drained out from the Fences of Urn and siphoning them into a great moat that encircled the central city.

  Few castles in all the realms rivaled it, save perhaps for the Fulgurkeep in Reynwell or Herot’s Pinnacle in Karles, a handful of others. Once, the King of the Banner had been chosen, or so it was said, by the God-Queen Herself to act as the grand marshal of Her armies. The position became ceremonial in later centuries, and after the Aureate Crusades, the first House Wars, and the sordid dramas of the early emperors, no single lord could claim dominance over the Bannerlands.

  The palace in Carreweir was maintained by stewards, some of whom had tried to stake their claim to power only to be deposed one after the other in a myriad of bloody conflicts. The Herald’s Throne remained empty for many generations, a veritable tomb for many destroyed noble clans even as it had once been a gallery to the glories of Urnic chivalry.

  Now, as the caravan approached the gates of a great bridge that crossed the moat into the city, they could see that the distant palace flew the banners of House Ark. The same ones rose over the bridge castle, displaying a black ship on an argent field, its sails struck through by sun rays.

  The first test. Somewhere within the Wyldedaler, I tensed and waited for everything to go wrong.

  But a shout went up, people moved about on atop the gate, and then the drawbridge was lowered and our column allowed into the city.

  So I retreated back into Finn Nu as the gates slammed closed at our backs and trapped us inside the jaws of our enemy.