Reign Shadowfell turned twenty on the coldest morning of the year, and he spent it the way he spent most mornings — alone, walking the river that ran past the Nightshade gates. Sixteen years ago the caretakers had found him at those same gates, four years old, no name on him but the one stitched inside his coat. He had asked them a hundred times who left him there. They always looked at their hands and said nothing. He had grown up faster than the other children, stronger than boys twice his age. By twelve he could outrun the horses. By fifteen the other kids stopped inviting him to anything. He walked the river now because the river never flinched when he came near. A small imp stood in the path where the reeds thinned. It had blue hair, curled horns, and a tail that flicked behind it like a whip. It came up to Reign's knee and grinned like it had won something. "I've been watching you, Reign," it said. "Waiting for this day to finally come." Reign stopped. He had spent sixteen years asking questions that closed doors. This creature had opened with his name. "Who sent you?" he said. The imp tilted its head. "The ones who left you at that gate. They told me to find you the day you turned twenty. That's today." Reign looked back once at the roofs of Nightshade behind him, at the shuttered windows of the caretakers who had never answered him. Then he stepped off the path and followed the imp into the reeds.

The reeds gave way to trees, and Reign followed the imp deeper into the forest. He heard the patrol before he saw them — boots on wet leaves, two voices calling his name. The caretakers had sent men after him. If they dragged him back to Nightshade now, the imp would vanish and every answer with it. Reign dropped behind a trunk and reached for the knife at his belt. The imp only grinned. It raised one small hand and snapped its fingers. The air around Reign went cold and thin, as if a sheet had been pulled over him. Two guards pushed through the brush a stone's throw away. One looked straight at Reign and did not see him. The other turned in a slow circle, hand on his sword, and cursed. They shouted for each other, though they stood close enough to touch. Then they broke and ran the way they had come, back toward the gates. The imp doubled over laughing. "Their faces," it wheezed. "Every time." It straightened and wiped its eyes. "We move now. They'll come back, and they'll bring more than two." Reign sheathed the knife. His hands were shaking, and he did not know if it was fear or something else. "What do I call you," he said. The imp looked up at him. "Lux." They walked. The trees grew closer together and the light thinned to green. Lux kept a pace that made Reign work to follow. After what he judged to be two hours, the ground began to rise, and the trees pulled back from a wall of black stone. A cave mouth opened in the rock, low and wide, breathing cold air. Lux stopped at the edge and turned. "They're inside," he said. "The ones who sent me." Reign looked at the dark, then back the way they had come. The patrol was somewhere behind him with more men now, and the only door left was the one in front of him. He stepped past the imp and into the cave.

The cave swallowed the daylight in three steps. Lux took Reign's hand and pulled him deeper, small fingers cold and dry. Reign meant to yank free. He had spent the whole walk building a hard knot of anger in his chest — anger at the strangers ahead, at the years of silence, at himself for coming. The knot should have tightened here in the dark. Instead it loosened. Something in the air pressed the fear flat, like a hand on a dog's back. His breathing slowed without his say. He did not trust it. He kept walking anyway, because the imp kept pulling, and because turning back meant the guards. Lux stopped so hard that Reign almost stepped on him. The imp's ears went stiff. His head tilted toward a passage that branched off to the left, where the stone breathed a colder air than the rest. "The old one is here too," Lux whispered. He did not look up. "I don't know if she bad or good. But she is here." Reign felt the calm in his chest shift, as if it had a source and that source had turned to look at him. "Who," he said. Lux shook his head fast. "Not them. Older." He tugged Reign forward, quicker now, his bare feet slapping the wet floor. "We have to get to them first. If she reaches you before they do, they can't take you back." Reign did not ask what back meant. He ran. The passage forked and Lux chose without slowing. Behind them, somewhere in the left branch, a low sound moved through the rock — not a voice, not footsteps, but a pressure that made the calm in Reign's chest deepen against his will. He understood then that the quiet in him was not his. It was her reaching. Lux felt it too and cursed in a language Reign did not know. They rounded a bend and the tunnel opened into lantern light. Three figures stood waiting at the far end of a low chamber, hooded, still. Lux shoved Reign across the threshold and planted himself in the mouth of the tunnel, arms out, teeth bared at the dark behind them. "He's here," the imp said, without turning. "Talk fast. She's close."

Behind him, stone groaned. Reign turned in time to see the mouth of the tunnel narrow. The rock slid down like a slow jaw closing. Lux darted back from the threshold as the gap shrank to a hand's width, then to nothing. The pressure that had been reaching for Reign cut off mid-breath. The three hooded figures had not moved. "Wait," Reign said. He stepped toward the sealed wall and put his palm on it. It was warm. "Open it." No one answered. The imp came to stand at his heel, small and panting, horns tipped forward, tail lashing. Lux would not meet his eye. Reign understood then that he was locked in with strangers, and that the imp had known the door would close. Then his blood moved. It started low in his gut, a heat that climbed his spine and spread down his arms. His hands shook once and steadied. The lantern light in the chamber grew, though no one had touched a wick; his eyes were drinking more of it. The seams in the stone sharpened. He saw the weave of the hoods, the wet on the floor, the pulse in the throat of the smallest figure. His shirt pulled tight across his shoulders. Muscle filled in under the cloth like water filling a bag. A hunger opened in him that had nothing to do with food. He wanted to bite down on something living. He took a step back and hit the sealed wall. The smallest figure lifted her hands and pushed the hood off. She was young, close to his age, with a shaved scalp and a mark inked behind one ear. She watched him change and she smiled. Not cruel. Pleased. Like a woman who had bet on a horse and won. "There you are," she said. "We were starting to think they'd bled it out of you." Reign's throat worked. "What am I." "What your mother was," she said. "What your father agreed to hide. That's why they left you at those gates. The house you grew up in would have killed you the day it showed." She nodded at the sealed wall behind him. "We closed the door so you could open without running. You can hate us for it later." The other two figures pushed back their hoods. An older man. An older woman. Neither of them was his. He knew it the way he now knew the pulse in the girl's neck. The hunger in his gut settled into something he could carry. He was not safe. He was not among family. He was among people who had waited twenty years to see if he would survive his own blood, and he had. That was the deal he had walked into. He let his hand fall from the wall.

Reign kept his back to the sealed wall. The imp pressed against his boot, ears flat, watching the girl. The older man and the older woman had not spoken since dropping their hoods. Reign fixed on the girl because she had smiled at him while his bones changed shape. "Your name," he said. His voice came out lower than it had that morning. She tipped her head. "Vixen." "Are you here to hurt me?" "Quite the opposite." She stepped closer. The imp bared its teeth. She stopped and lifted her palms. "I'm here because I'm promised to you. You are the heir to Shadowfell. I'm the heir to Silvercoat. Your blood is the strongest vampire line in the realm. Mine is the strongest Lycan line. Our house was arranged before either of us could walk." She let that sit. "We marry. We breed. What comes out of us has never existed. Nothing standing will stand against it." Reign heard the pulse in her throat and made himself count it instead of hunger. He looked at the older pair. Neither denied her. The woman gave a small nod, as if confirming a ledger. He understood the shape of the room now. Not captors. Brokers. He had been raised in secret so this girl could be raised opposite him, and the door had sealed so he could meet her without bolting. He did not trust any of it. But he could stand in it without swinging. "I'm not agreeing to anything," Reign said. "Not to you. Not to a bed. Not to a war." "I didn't ask you to," Vixen said. "I asked you to know me. The rest waits." He looked down at the imp. It had stopped snarling. Its tail flicked once, alert, no longer defensive. Whatever had stalked him through the side passage, whatever older female had breathed against the stone at his back, was not in this chamber. He lifted his eyes to Vixen. "The woman in the tunnel. The one who followed us. Was that your mother." Vixen's smile thinned. "Yes." "Why did she hunt me instead of greet me." "Because she doesn't agree with the arrangement," Vixen said. "She wanted to see you dead before I saw you alive." Reign let his shoulders drop from the wall. The threat behind him had a name and a reason now. He could carry that. He held out his hand, palm up, not to take hers, only to show it empty. "Then tell me who my mother was. Start there." Vixen looked to the older woman. The older woman finally spoke. "Sit down, boy. It's a long telling, and we don't have the night." Reign sat.

Reign sat where the older woman pointed. The stone floor cooled him through his trousers. The imp climbed onto his knee and stayed there, tail curled, eyes on the brokers. Vixen took a place across from him. The older man stepped back into the dark, leaving the older woman to do the telling. She did not begin with words. She reached into her robe and drew out a red stone set in silver. A raven spread its wings across the face of it. A silver ring coiled above the bird, biting its own tail. She held it up so the chamber light caught the red, then the black. "Who wears this rules House Shadowfell," the older woman said. She placed the amulet in Reign's open palm. It was heavier than it looked. "It is your birthright. It is your seat. The vampires of this realm answer to the one who carries it, and that one is you." Reign closed his fingers around the stone. Beside him, the imp went still. Across from him, Vixen's eyes went wide. She dropped from her crouch to both knees. The imp slid off his leg and did the same, pressing its forehead to the floor. Reign looked down at two bowed heads and did not know what to do with his own. "Your father ruled this house before you," the older woman said. "Your mother was the daughter of Thanos. The demon king himself." Reign's hand tightened on the amulet. The silver bit into his palm. He had come here for a name, and he had been handed a throne and a grandfather in the same breath. He understood now why his adoptive family would have killed him. He understood why brokers had guarded this room. He also understood that the woman in the tunnel, Vixen's mother, had wanted him dead before he ever touched this stone. That fight was still waiting. He lifted the amulet over his head and let it settle against his chest. The imp raised its face. Vixen stood. "Tell me the rest," Reign said. The older woman shook her head. "Not tonight. You carry enough to leave this cave alive. The rest waits until you can hold it without breaking." The wall behind him gave a low sound. A seam of light opened where none had been. The tunnel was unsealing. Reign got to his feet with the stone warm against his sternum and the imp at his heel. He had a name for his blood now. He did not yet have the whole of it.

The seam of light widened into a doorway. Reign stepped through with the amulet warm against his chest. The imp scuttled at his ankle. Vixen followed, her two guardians a pace behind her, silent as the stone. The tunnel air was colder than the chamber. Somewhere in the dark ahead, Vixen's mother still waited with a knife she had brought for him. He could not walk out of this cave and go looking for anything about his blood while she hunted him through the roots. He stopped before the tunnel bent. He turned to Vixen. The imp planted itself between them and watched with bright, curious eyes. The guardians said nothing. "Your mother wants my head," Reign said. "If we are to make this work, I need to hear it from you. Will you stand with me? Or will you hate me if I have to fight her?" Vixen looked at him a long moment. She stepped closer. She laid her hand flat on his chest, over the red stone and the raven, over the silver ring that bit its own tail. He felt the heat of her palm through the metal. "I follow my king," she said. The imp bared its teeth in something like a grin. The guardians did not move. Reign closed his hand over hers and held it there against the amulet until he was sure she meant it. They found her at the fork where the tunnel split toward the reeds. She came out of the side passage with a curved blade low at her hip. She had her daughter's face, older and harder. She looked at Vixen's hand still near Reign's chest and her mouth twisted. She did not speak. She lunged. Reign moved before he decided to. The blood the chamber had woken in him answered first. He caught her wrist and turned it. The blade rang on stone. She drove her shoulder into him and they went down together. He was stronger now. He had not known how much until her ribs gave under his forearm. She tried to bite. He pinned her jaw with his other hand and looked at Vixen over the woman's shoulder. Vixen's face did not change. She gave him one short nod. He did not kill her. He held her there until the fight left her arms, then he pressed the amulet against her forehead. The raven on the stone caught the tunnel light. "House Shadowfell rules the vampires of this realm," he said. "Your daughter follows me. You will not touch me again, or I will end your line before it ever meets mine." He let her go. She stood slowly. She looked at Vixen once, then at the amulet, then she turned and walked back into the dark passage without her knife. The imp picked up the blade in both hands. Reign took Vixen's arm and led her toward the reeds. The hunt in the tunnels was over. He could begin looking now.

They walked out of the tunnel into a cold gray morning. The reeds bent under a wind that smelled of wet earth. The imp trotted ahead, then stopped and looked back at Reign with bright eyes. It said it knew the way to Shadowfell Manor. It said it could take him home. Reign put his hand on the amulet under his shirt and felt the stone warm against his skin. Home was a word he had never owned. He nodded once and told the imp to lead. Vixen caught his sleeve before he took a step. Her white hair had picked up dust from the tunnel. Her yellow eyes held his. She told him the amulet made him king on paper, but the vampires of the realm had never seen his face. She said some would kneel. Some would test him. Some would try to gut him in his sleep and take the stone off his body. She said the manor would be full of both. Reign started to answer. Then the wind shifted. The smell hit him like a hand at his throat. Warm, clean, alive. His fangs pushed through his gums before he thought to hide them. He turned his head. A young woman knelt in the reeds at the edge of a clearing, cutting green stems into a basket. No guards. No blade at her belt. She hummed to herself. Reign heard her pulse. He heard the wet slide of it under her jaw. Vixen said his name. He did not hear it the second time. He crossed the ground between them in three strides. The woman looked up. Her mouth opened. He caught her shoulder, bent her back over his arm, and sank his teeth into her neck. She made one small sound. The blood filled his mouth and it was better than anything the chamber had woken in him. He drank. He could not stop. He felt her go loose against him. Vixen's hand closed on his wrist. She pulled. He snarled at her without meaning to. She did not let go. She pressed her palm flat over the amulet at his chest and said his name once more, low and hard. The stone burned against his ribs. His teeth came free of the girl's skin. He looked down at what he had done. The woman's basket lay tipped in the reeds. Her breath came shallow but it came. The imp crouched at her side and pressed a small hand to the wound and watched Reign with no expression at all. Reign wiped his mouth. His hand shook. He had wanted the manor. He had wanted answers about his mother. He had not walked ten steps out of the cave before his blood chose for him. Vixen kept her hand on the amulet. She told him they could not go to the manor now. They had to hide the girl, and they had to hide him from himself, before either could be trusted through a gate.

Reign knelt beside the woman in the reeds. Her breath was thin. Her skin had gone the color of milk. Vixen still had her hand on the amulet at his chest, ready to pull him back if he lost himself again. The imp watched from the woman's shoulder. Reign did not have a plan. He had a body at his feet and a road he could not walk with it lying there. He leaned down before he could think it through and pressed his mouth to hers. He bit the inside of his own lip until he tasted iron, then let a few drops fall past her teeth. Her body jerked. Her back arched off the flattened reeds. A sound came out of her that was half cough, half cry. Vixen's hand tightened on the amulet. The imp scrambled clear. Reign held the woman's shoulders and waited. Her pupils blew wide, then shrank to pinpoints. The color came back into her face in a hard rush. She sat up on her own. She looked at Reign the way a dog looks at the person holding its leash. "What is your name," Reign said. "Lyla," she said. "Lyla Thorne." Her hand went to her neck. The wound was closing under her fingers. She did not seem surprised by it. She seemed to be waiting for the next word he would give her. Reign let go of her shoulders and stood. He told her his name. He pointed to Vixen and said her name, and then to the imp and said Lux. Lyla nodded at each one as if he were handing her tools. Vixen took her hand off the amulet at last. She looked at Lyla, then at Reign. She did not say what she was thinking. He could guess. He had made a witness into a thing that belonged to him, and that was a different problem than a body in the reeds, but it was a smaller one. No corpse to bury. No blood trail to hide. The hunger in him had gone quiet for the first time since he left the cave. Reign picked up the woman's basket and handed it to her. She took it without asking why. He turned to the imp and told it to lead. The imp bared its teeth in something like a grin and set off through the reeds. Vixen fell in at Reign's left. Lyla walked at his right, half a step behind, matching his pace without being told. Four sets of feet now, moving toward the manor his father had left him. Reign kept his hand on the amulet under his shirt. He did not know what waited at the gate. He knew he would not arrive alone.

Two days of walking put the manor in front of them at dusk. The road bent out of the trees and there it stood, black stone stacked into towers, purple spires cutting the sky. A raven was carved above the gate, an ouroboros in its beak. Reign stopped at the tree line without meaning to. Vixen stopped with him. Lyla halted a half step behind his shoulder. The imp crouched by his boot and watched the gate the way a dog watches a door it knows how to open. Two guards stood at the gate in dark mail. Reign felt them before they saw him. His senses had been sharpening for days, and now the two of them registered like heat against his skin, cold and thin and lesser. He put his hand on the amulet under his shirt. He did not draw it out. He wanted to know what would happen if he did not. He walked. Vixen at his left, Lyla at his right, the imp trotting ahead. When he was ten paces from the gate the taller guard's head snapped up. The shorter one made a small sound in his throat. Both went to one knee at the same moment, heads down, hands flat against the stone. Neither had seen the stone at his chest. They had felt what wore it. Reign kept walking. He did not look down at them as he passed. He heard Vixen let out a breath she had been holding since the reeds. The courtyard opened wide. Torches were already lit along the inner wall. A man waited at the foot of the steps with his hands folded in front of him. He was tall and thin, hair the color of iron, a long dark coat buttoned to the throat. He did not kneel. He watched Reign cross the stones toward him and his face did not change, but Reign saw the pupils widen, saw the small shift in the shoulders as the man's own senses answered the pressure coming off him. "My lord," the man said. His voice was even. "I am Jackson. I keep this house." He looked past Reign to Vixen, then to Lyla, then down at the imp. He did not ask about them. He looked back at Reign. "May I see it." Reign pulled the chain from under his shirt. The red stone caught the torchlight, the silver serpent and the raven bright against it. Jackson looked at the amulet for a long moment. Then he stepped aside and turned toward the open doors. "Your father's study is as he left it," he said. "There are papers you should read tonight. Some of them concern your mother. Some of them concern the ones still looking for you." He did not wait for an answer. He walked into the house, expecting Reign to follow.

Reign followed the steward through the tall doors, Vixen at his left, Lyla a step behind, the imp trotting at his heel. The foyer opened into a hall of black stone lit by iron sconces. He was already thinking of the study, of papers with his mother's name on them. He did not see the man standing in the center of the floor until the steward stopped short. The man was old in a way the guards outside were not. His skin was thin over the bones of his face. His hair was white and cut close. He wore a long grey coat and no weapon Reign could see. He did not move when they came in. He only watched, and the pressure Reign had learned to feel off other vampires came off him in a slow, cold weight that made the imp flatten its ears and step behind his boot. "My lord," the steward said carefully. "This is Johan. He served your father." Johan did not bow. He looked at Reign the way a man looks at a coin he suspects is false. "Three have come to this door since the house went dark," he said. His voice was quiet and even. "Each wore a face and a story. Each said the blood was his. I put two of them in the ground myself. I will not speak of your father, or your mother, to another liar. Show me why I should kneel." Vixen's hand moved toward the small of her back. Reign lifted one finger and she stopped. Lyla had gone very still at his shoulder. Reign held Johan's eyes and reached into his shirt. He drew the chain out slow. The red stone came free of the linen and caught the sconce light, the silver serpent and the black raven bright across its face. He did not lift it toward the old man. He let it hang at his chest where any vampire in the room could feel what it was. Johan's knees hit the stone. He went down the way an old soldier goes down, one knee then the other, head bent, one hand flat over his heart. For a long moment he did not speak. When he did his voice had cracked open along a seam Reign had not seen. "Forgive me. I knew your father from before he took this house. I knew your mother when no one else would stand near her. I have waited sixteen years to see that stone on a Shadowfell throat again." Reign let the amulet rest against his shirt. "Get up," he said. "You'll come with me to the study tonight. You'll tell me who she was, and you'll tell me who is still hunting for me." Johan rose. The steward turned toward the inner hall. Reign followed, and for the first time since the reeds the road ahead of him had a name in it he could ask questions of.

Johan led them down a corridor Reign had not yet walked. The old man moved without hurry, one hand trailing the wall as if counting doors he remembered. Vixen kept close on Reign's left. Lyla walked behind with her eyes on every shadow. The imp padded at the rear, ears flat. At the end of the hall Johan stopped and stepped aside. The door was taller than the others and cut from black wood banded in iron. In its center, worked into the metal, was the same raven and ouroboros that hung against Reign's chest. Johan spoke without looking at him. "Only the blood of the true heir opens this door. If you are not what you say, the door will kill you where you stand. It has been closed sixteen years. No one has tried it since your father shut it." He glanced at Vixen. "Only him. Not her, not the girl." Reign drew the small knife from his belt. Vixen's hand closed on his wrist for one breath, then let go. He cut across his palm. The blood welled fast. He set his hand flat on the iron handle. The metal drank the blood the way dry stone drinks water. The red went into the raven's eye and did not come back. Reign felt the pull travel up his arm and stop at the amulet against his chest. Inside the door something groaned. A weight shifted, deep, like a chain uncoiling in a well. A click sounded, then another, then a third. The door swung inward on its own hinges. Cold air came out that smelled of paper and old smoke. Johan let out a breath he had been holding a long time. He bowed his head once and did not follow. Reign took Vixen's hand and stepped through. The room was small and lined with shelves. A desk stood in the center under a shuttered window. Papers were stacked on it in neat piles, held down by a stone the color of dried blood. A ledger lay open where his father had left it. Reign could see writing in a hand he did not know. On the near shelf sat a portrait, half turned to the wall. A woman with dark hair. His hand tightened on Vixen's without meaning to. The amulet at his chest had gone warm. Behind him Johan spoke from the hallway, quiet. "He wrote until the night he died, my lord. Every name that mattered is in this room. Some of them are still breathing." Reign did not turn. He walked to the desk, set his bleeding hand on the ledger, and began to read.

Reign turned the portrait fully toward the light. The woman looked back at him with his own eyes and his own mouth. He knew her before he had words for it. His hand went slack on the ledger and the blood from his cut smeared the page. Vixen stepped closer and said nothing. She had already seen what he had seen. The imp came in from the hallway on quiet feet. He crossed the small room and stopped at the base of the shelf. His shoulders folded down. Two tears ran through the dust on his cheeks, then a third. Reign had never seen him cry. He had never seen him stand still for this long. Lyla stayed by the door with her hand over her mouth. "You knew her," Reign said. It was not a question. The imp wiped his face with the back of his wrist. "I was her familiar," he said. His voice was smaller than Reign had ever heard it. "From before you were born. She fed me from her own plate." He looked up at the portrait, not at Reign. "Her last order to me was to watch you. To wait until your twentieth birthday. To bring you to Vixen. I have done what she asked." He touched the hem of Reign's coat once, then let go. "I am sorry I could not tell you sooner. She made me swear." Reign knelt so their eyes were level. The amulet at his chest was warm against his shirt. "How did she die?" The imp's throat worked before any sound came. "The grand inquisitor of the Church of Light heard of your birth," he said. "A child one part vampire, one part demon, one part witch. He said such a thing could not be allowed to grow. He came for her himself. Your father was not in the house. She hid you at the gates before they reached her. She died in the front hall." He looked at the smear of blood Reign had left on the ledger. "She died buying you the road to this room." Reign stood. He did not speak for a long moment. Vixen put her hand on his back, low, where no one else could see. Lyla lowered her eyes. Reign lifted the portrait from the shelf and set it on the desk beside the ledger, facing out. He picked up his father's pen. Under the last name his father had written, in a hand that shook only once, he wrote: mother. Then, beneath it: grand inquisitor, Church of Light. He closed the ledger over the drying blood. "We know her name now," he said quietly. "And we know who to find next."

Reign kept his hand on the closed ledger. The portrait watched him from the desk. He needed more than a name written under his father's last line. He needed the shape of the woman behind it, and the blood she came from. He turned to the imp still standing by the shelf. "Lux," he said, "what is my mother's name?" The imp lifted his chin. His eyes were still wet, but his voice held. "Merida," he said. "It means prism in witch lore. Light broken into every color at once." He looked at the portrait, then at Reign. "She was named for what she was." Reign turned to the old retainer in the doorway. Johan had not stepped into the study. He stood at the threshold with his hands behind his back, the way a soldier waits for an order. "Johan," Reign said, "what is my father's name?" The old man met his eyes. "Count Inzti," he said. "Count Inzti Shadowfell. He signed every page in that book with his own hand." Reign sat back in the chair. He set the names against each other in his head. Merida. Inzti. A witch-born daughter of the demon king. A count who ruled every vampire in the realm. He touched the red stone at his chest through his shirt. The silver raven pressed into his palm. He had a house on one side and nothing on the other. His mother's line was still a closed door. Vixen watched him from the desk's edge and did not speak. Lyla stood by the wall with her hands folded low. The imp waited. "Lux," Reign said. "Does the demon king know I exist?" The imp's ears flattened. He did not answer at once. Reign leaned forward. "Answer me." The imp swallowed. "Thanos was told your mother was killed," he said. "He was not told about you. Your father made sure of it. He thought the inquisitor would find you faster if the demon court came looking. So the court was never told there was a child." He paused. "Sixteen years, my lord. Your grandfather does not know his daughter left a son." Reign was quiet for a long breath. Then he opened the ledger again. Under grand inquisitor, Church of Light, he wrote a third line in his father's pen: Thanos, demon king — send word. He closed the book. "Then he will know," he said. "Before the inquisitor does." He looked at Johan. "I need a rider who can carry a sealed letter into the demon lands and come back alive." Johan's jaw worked once. "There is one," he said. "He will not like the road." "Wake him," Reign said. Johan bowed and went. The portrait stayed on the desk, facing out, watching the room fill with what came next.

Johan had not been gone long when a second knock came at the study door. A guard stepped in, breath quick. He had come from the outer wall. A man in gray traveler's clothes had been seen crouched in the tree line, watching the manor gate. A silver sun hung at his throat. Reign closed the ledger and stood. The Church of Light had already found the house. Reign called Johan back and had him bring Jackson to the study. The two men came in together and stopped at the desk. Reign kept his voice low. "A Church of Light scout is on the perimeter," he said. "He has to be dealt with tonight. Take whoever you need. Circle him from the reeds so he cannot run for the road." Johan gave a short nod. Jackson waited for the rest. Reign set his hand flat on the ledger. "Bring him to me alive if you can. Please." Jackson's eyes moved to the red stone at Reign's chest. The silver raven and the ouroboros caught the lamplight. He did not ask what alive was for. He bowed once and said, "We'll take him from behind the well, my lord. He'll not see the second line." Johan drew a knife from his belt to check the edge, then sheathed it. They left together without another word. The imp slipped after them at Reign's nod, small feet quick on the stone. Reign turned to the two women in the room. Lyla stood by the wall, hands folded low, waiting for use. Vixen stayed at the desk's edge. Reign looked at her first. He held her gaze until she understood. A scout taken alive was not a prisoner. A scout taken alive, fed the right blood, bound the right way, became a mouth inside the enemy's house. Vixen's yellow eyes did not move from his. She had seen him revive Lyla in the reeds. She knew the shape of what he meant to do. She crossed to him and took his hand. She rested her head against his shoulder. Her white hair fell across the front of his coat. "And now it begins," she said. Lyla did not speak, but her chin lifted a small degree, as if she had been named without her name being said. Outside, the wind moved through the purple spires of the manor. Somewhere past the outer wall, boots were moving through wet grass. An hour later Johan returned. His sleeve was wet to the elbow and not with his own blood. Two guards dragged the scout between them, gagged, wrists bound behind, the silver sun torn from his throat and set on the desk in front of Reign. The man was breathing. His eyes were open. Reign looked down at him and rolled back one cuff. "Kneel him," he said.

The guards forced the scout to his knees on the study floor. Reign stepped around the desk and looked down at him. The gag had slipped, and the man was already talking through split lips. He begged. He named a wife. He named a child. He said he had only been told to count the guards at the gate. Reign let him speak until the words ran out. Then he crouched so their eyes were level. "Your life as a scout for the Church of Light is over," he said. "You will not go back to them as their man. You will go back to them as mine." Vixen stepped behind the scout and set her hands on either side of his head. Her fingers were small and very strong. She tilted his jaw back until his throat opened to the ceiling. Lyla knelt at his side and held his shoulders down against her knee. The scout tried to twist. He could not. The red stone at Reign's chest swung forward as he leaned in, the silver raven and ouroboros catching the lamp. The scout saw it and made a sound in his throat that was not a word. Reign drew a thin knife across the inside of his own wrist. Blood welled up in a dark line. He held the wrist over the scout's open mouth. Three drops fell, then two more. He watched them land on the tongue. Then he pulled his arm back and pressed his sleeve to the cut. The scout began to convulse. His heels drummed on the floor. His eyes rolled white. Vixen held his head still so he would not crack his skull on the stone. Lyla kept her weight on his shoulders and did not flinch. A thin foam ran from the corner of his mouth. The imp watched from the doorway, small hands on the frame, quiet for once. Reign counted the seconds under his breath. He had done this once before, in the reeds, with a girl who was almost dead. This man was not almost dead. The blood took him harder for it. After a few minutes the scout took a deep breath. His back settled. His eyes opened, and they found Reign at once and stayed there. The whites were clear. The begging was gone from his face. Vixen let go of his head and stepped back. Lyla eased her hands off his shoulders. Reign stood over him. "Tell me your chapter's name," he said. "Tell me who sends you. Tell me what they know of this house." The scout answered. He answered every question, and he did not stop until Reign told him to. Before dawn the scout walked back down the road toward the town with his silver sun rehung at his throat. He carried a false count of the guards in his head and a true count of everything he heard in his mouth. Reign watched him go from the high window. He had eyes inside the Church now. The inquisitor had a name by breakfast.

Three days after the scout walked back down the road, Reign sent for Johan. The old retainer came into the study with his boots still wet from the yard. Reign stood at the window with his hand curled around the red stone at his chest. He had slept in short pieces since the letter left. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the rider's back on the road and wondered if the demon king would send a blade instead of an answer. "The rider," Reign said. "Has he come back?" "He was seen on the ridge late last night," Johan said. "He rode slow. He'll be in the hall in a few minutes." Reign let out a breath he had not known he was holding. He turned from the window. "Thank you, Johan." Then he looked to Lyla, who stood by the door with her hands folded at her waist. "Coffee, please. And whatever the kitchen has for pastries. Bring enough for the rider too." Lyla dipped her head and went. Vixen sat curled in the leather chair by the cold hearth, one boot tucked under her. She watched him cross the room and smiled with the corner of her mouth. "How very human of you," she said. Reign laughed once, short and real. "Some habits just won't die." He sat on the edge of the desk. His hand would not leave the amulet. The silver raven pressed into his palm. The rider came in behind Lyla and the tray. He was thin from the road and there was dust in the creases of his coat. He knelt on one knee before Reign and drew a folded packet from inside his shirt. Black wax. A sigil pressed into it that Reign had never seen before, three points around a burning eye. "From the court of King Thanos," the rider said. "He read your letter in front of me. He asked me to tell you that he read it twice." Reign took the packet. The wax was still whole. He broke it with his thumb. The letter was short. He read it once standing, then sat down and read it again. His grandfather did not doubt him. The hand inside the letter named Merida, named the color of her eyes, named the song she had sung as a child. Then it named a price. Thanos would shield him from the Church of Light. Thanos would ride against the grand inquisitor himself. In return, Reign would come to the demon court within the month and stand before it as blood of the house. If he did not come, Thanos would come here, and he would not come alone. Reign set the letter flat on the desk. Vixen was already at his shoulder, reading. Lyla poured the coffee with steady hands. He had his shield. He had one month to walk into a court that had never known his name.

Reign folded his grandfather's letter and set it back on the desk. He looked at Vixen across the study. "I guess I get to meet my grandfather face to face." Lux, perched on the arm of the leather chair, trembled at the words. The little imp's ears flattened and his tail curled tight around his ankle. Reign crossed the room and touched the amulet at his chest. The red stone was warm against his palm. "Pack what you need," he told the room. "We leave in the morning." Lux found his voice in a small squeak. "The demon king eats messengers who bore him. I have seen it." Lyla stopped pouring coffee. Vixen laughed once, low. "Then be interesting," she said. Reign crouched to the imp's level. "You are coming because you knew my mother. You are the only one left who did. When I stand in that court, I need someone beside me who can tell me if the man on the throne is lying about her." Lux swallowed. He nodded once, quick. Johan brought a carriage from the coach house at dawn. Black lacquer, the raven and ouroboros stamped in silver on each door. Four horses. Reign helped Lyla up first, then Vixen. Lux climbed in last and burrowed under a blanket on the bench. Johan closed the door. "Three days to Portlandia, my lord," he said through the window. "After that, the border. Send word when you cross." Reign nodded. The carriage rolled forward. The road bent through wet fields and thin pine. On the first day Reign said little. On the second, he asked Lux for a story. The imp sat up in his blanket. He talked about a girl who sang to the kitchen cats at the demon court when she was small. He talked about the color of her eyes, which were the color of Reign's. He talked about the night she carried a baby out of a burning house with the inquisitor's men still in the yard. Reign listened without moving. Vixen watched his face. Lyla wrote nothing down; she only listened too. By the end of the day the portrait in his father's study was not a stranger anymore. It was a person who had run, and sung, and bled. On the third afternoon the road climbed a low ridge and Portlandia opened below them. Stone walls. Slate roofs. Smoke from a hundred chimneys. A line of wagons waited at a gate where clerks checked papers. Beyond the gate, the sign of the demon court hung over a customs house: three points around a burning eye. Lux pressed his face to the window and made a small, unhappy sound. "Inn first," Reign said. "Then the gate tomorrow." Vixen nodded. Reign put his hand on the amulet and did not take it off until the carriage stopped in the yard of the first tavern inside the walls.

Before the carriage door opened, Lux held up a small hand and made everyone wait. "Demon court is not like your halls," he said. "You do not bow to Thanos. You kneel on the left knee, right hand flat over the heart. You do not speak his name unless he gives it to you. You do not show teeth when you smile. Teeth mean challenge." He looked at Reign. "And you do not touch the throne. Not the arm. Not the step. Not the rail. A hand on the throne is a claim. A claim means blood." Reign nodded once. Vixen repeated the knee and the hand back to him. Lyla mouthed the words. Lux checked each of them and then, satisfied, opened the door. The inn was warm and low-ceilinged. Reign chose a table near the hearth. The fire threw orange over the boards. A barmaid came with a cloth over her shoulder and waited. "Four dinners," Reign said. "And an ale for me." Vixen ordered red wine for herself and Lyla. Lux tapped the table. "Demon hooch," he said. "The sweet kind." The barmaid wrote nothing down and left. Reign felt the room change before he heard it. Talk at the other tables thinned. A man by the window set his cup down and did not pick it up again. Two workers at the bar turned on their stools. An old woman by the door stared without pretending not to. Reign kept his hands flat on the wood. The amulet lay warm under his shirt. He did not touch it. Lux leaned close. His voice was almost nothing. "Your eyes," he said. "Purple eyes belong only to the king's blood. His children. His grandchildren. No one else in this city wears that color. They are counting the ones they knew of. You are not one of them." Vixen's hand moved to her belt under the table. Lyla went still. Reign looked once around the room, slow, meeting each pair of eyes and letting them see him look. He kept his mouth closed over his teeth. One by one the regulars turned back to their cups. The old woman at the door stood, pulled her shawl tight, and went out into the street. The barmaid came back with the drinks and set them down without meeting Reign's eye. Reign lifted his ale. "She's gone to tell someone," Vixen said quietly. Lux nodded. "The court will know a purple-eyed stranger sits at this inn before we finish our meal. We will not need to walk to the gate tomorrow. They will come here tonight." Reign drank. The audience he had traveled three days to request had just been granted, on terms he had not chosen. He set the cup down and began to eat.

Reign finished his ale and set the cup down. Lux drained the last of his sweet hooch and licked the rim. Lyla left half her wine. Vixen wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and stood. Lux slid off the bench, coins already in his fist, and marched to the bar to settle the tab. He counted out the payment with a grin, added an extra piece for the barmaid, and told her the food was good enough that he would lie about it later. Reign walked to the counter alone. The keeper was an older woman with flour on her sleeves and sharp eyes. She looked into his face and did not look away. "Usually royal blood sleeps at the castle," she said. Her voice was low. She did not say which castle. She did not need to. Reign kept his hands on the wood and his mouth closed over his teeth. "We'll be heading there tomorrow," he said. "Tonight I wanted quiet. Something normal." The keeper studied him a moment longer. Then she smirked and reached under the counter for a key. "Room 4B. Second floor. Biggest room I have. It should fit all of you." She set the iron key in his palm and closed his fingers over it. "Whatever comes through my door tonight, boy, comes for you, not for me. Keep it upstairs." Reign nodded once. Vixen stepped up beside him and thanked her. Lyla thanked her twice, quiet and careful. The keeper only nodded and turned to wipe a glass. They climbed the narrow stairs together. Lux went first, sniffing at each landing. Vixen came behind Reign with her hand near her belt. Lyla followed last with the bag. The hallway smelled of lamp oil and old wood. Room 4B was at the end. Reign turned the key and pushed the door open. Two beds. A long couch under the window. A washbasin. A single lamp already lit low on the table. He stepped in first and checked the window latch, the closet, the space under each bed. Then he waved the others through and shut the door behind them. Reign lifted the amulet from under his shirt and let it rest against the outside of the cloth. The red stone caught the lamplight. The silver serpent and the black raven showed plain on his chest. He would not meet his grandfather's people in worn road clothes and a hidden pledge. He would meet them as what he was. Vixen saw the change and gave a small nod. Lyla sat on the couch and folded her hands. Lux climbed onto the window sill and watched the street below. "They're already moving," he said. "Two on the corner. One on the roof across." Reign sat in the chair facing the door and waited for the knock.

The knock came sooner than Reign expected. Word moved fast in a demon city, and his purple eyes had done half the work already. He glanced at Lux on the sill. The imp gave a small nod. One at the door, no blade drawn. Reign kept his seat and set his hands flat on the arms of the chair. The amulet lay open on his chest, red stone catching the lamp. "Let her in," he said. Lux hopped down and pulled the door back. A small demon stepped through, no taller than the imp himself. Three short horns curved over a single eye set in the middle of her brow. The mark was plain. It was the same crest stamped on the letter Reign had received from his grandfather. She wore court black with a silver clasp at the throat and carried nothing in her hands. Lyla shifted against the far wall and folded her arms. Vixen crossed the room, sat sideways in Reign's lap, and rested a hand on his collarbone. The message was clear enough. Reign let it stand. The small demon looked at each of them in turn and did not blink. "The king sent me to see the face," she said. Her voice was dry and older than her size. "He wants proof before he opens his hall. Bring what your mother left you and lay it on the table. He will know her hand." She waited. Reign said nothing. The room had grown small around one problem. He had no ring of Merida's. No lock of hair. No letter in her writing. He had a portrait sealed behind a door three days away, and a story from an imp. Nothing his grandfather could hold. Reign lifted the chain over his head and set the Shadowfell stone on the table between them. The silver raven and the red stone caught the lamp. "This is my father's," he said. "My mother left me the imp. He served her before he served me. Ask him anything you would have asked her." Lux stepped up to the table and put one clawed hand on the wood. He named Merida's favorite song. He named the scar on her wrist. He named the last order she gave him and the year she gave it. The small demon listened without moving. When Lux was done, she picked up the amulet, turned it once, and set it back exactly where Reign had placed it. "It is enough for the gate," she said. "It is not enough for the hall. The king will hear the imp himself, and he will decide." She looked at Vixen in his lap, at Lyla against the wall, at the door behind her. "Come at first light. Bring only the imp. Your women wait outside the throne room, or they wait here." She bowed once, shallow, and left. Reign closed his hand around the stone. He had bought the gate. The hall was still shut.

The small demon's hand was already on the door when Reign spoke. "My women come with me," he said. He did not raise his voice. He set the chain back over his neck and let the red stone rest on his shirt. "Vixen Silvercoat is my match by blood contract. Lyla Thorne is bound to me by mine. They are my party. My grandfather will accept that, or he will not see me at all." The small demon turned. Her single eye moved from Reign to Vixen in his lap, to Lyla at the wall, to Lux on the sill. She did not answer at once. Reign kept his hand flat on the arm of the chair. He did not repeat himself. He had spent the last hour learning that repeating a thing in this city made it smaller. The imp on the sill stayed very still. Vixen's fingers rested on the silver raven at his throat, not gripping, only there. Lyla's arms stayed folded, but her chin came up. The small demon smiled. It was a thin smile, and it changed her face into something older. "You have just earned the hall," she said. "He would have turned you away if you had left them. He wanted to see if the boy came in as a son or as a suppliant. Bring them. Bring the imp. First light." She opened the door herself. On the threshold she stopped and looked back, not at Reign's amulet, but at his face. "You look just like her," she said. Then she was gone, and the corridor swallowed her steps. Lux let out a long breath and his shoulders dropped an inch. He climbed off the sill and sat on the table beside the lamp, small hands folded, tail slack. He did not speak. He had not breathed like that since the cave. Vixen turned in Reign's lap and kissed him. It was not the polite kiss she had given him at the manor gate. It was the kiss of a woman who had just heard her man name her in front of a king's runner. Reign felt her hand tighten on the stone at his chest and then let go. Against the far wall, Lyla's face went red. She looked at the floor, then at Reign, then at the floor again. She had heard her name in the same breath as Vixen's. She understood what that meant. Reign closed his hand around the amulet and held it a moment before letting it fall. The gate was open. The hall was open. His grandfather would see him at first light with the imp who knew his mother and the two women who had chosen him over their own blood. He had bought the audience without a hair of Merida's or a line in her hand. He had bought it with the people she had left him to find. What his grandfather would say when the doors closed behind them, he did not yet know.

The lamps had burned low. Lyla and Lux slept curled together in the far bed, her arm over the imp's small shoulder. Vixen sat by the window with a whetstone across her knees. Reign was cleaning his palm at the basin when the knock came. Three soft raps. Then a voice through the wood, low and easy. "Come outside so no blood gets spilled in the inn." Boots moved off down the hall, heavy and unhurried. Vixen was at the window before Reign finished drying his hands. She pulled the curtain a finger's width. "Three in the street," she said. "Plus the one walking down the hall." She looked back at him. Her yellow eyes caught the lamp. Reign smiled. He felt the hunger wake under his ribs, clean and quiet, like a dog lifting its head. "Good," he said. "I was getting hungry." He lifted the red stone from his shirt and tucked it back under the cloth so it would not catch light in the street. He woke Lyla with a hand on her shoulder. She sat up at once, red hair loose, eyes already sharp. He did not need to explain. She reached for the small knife under her pillow and slid off the bed without a sound. Lux stayed asleep. Vixen touched the imp's horn, murmured something, and he curled tighter and did not stir. "Let him sleep," she said. "He earned it." Reign nodded. He went to the door and drew the bolt back slow, one notch at a time, until it cleared the plate without a click. He stepped into the hall. The man in the corridor was broad, leather-clad, a short blade already in his hand. He had turned at the sound of the bolt and had not expected Reign to be that fast. Reign closed the gap in two strides. He caught the wrist, twisted the blade down into the floorboards, and put his other hand under the man's jaw. He did not bite. He held. "Who sent you," he said. The man's eyes rolled toward the stairs. That was answer enough. Reign broke his neck against the wall and lowered him quiet. Behind him, Lyla shut the door on Lux and followed. They went down the back stair. Vixen took the alley mouth. Lyla took the doorway. Reign walked into the street alone with the amulet warm against his skin. The three men saw his face and saw his eyes and one of them said a name under his breath that was not Reign's. It was hers. Merida's. Reign heard it and knew, before a single blade left its sheath, that these men had known his mother. He let the first one draw. Then he moved. When it was done, two lay in the gutter and the third knelt with Vixen's claws at his throat, alive, ready to talk. Reign wiped his mouth. First light was still hours away, and he had a prisoner who had spoken his mother's name.

The two dead men would not stay hidden long. Reign heard a shutter open two streets over. Somewhere a dog barked and stopped. He looked at Vixen with the prisoner still bent under her claws, and at Lyla in the doorway wiping her knife on her sleeve. First light was hours off. If the watch came before then, the audience with his grandfather ended before it began. He pointed down the street to the shape of an old mill against the sky. "Behind that. Now." Vixen moved first. She took a dead man by the collar and dragged him low through the gutter, quick and quiet on her heels. Lyla took the other by the boots. Reign kept his hand on the prisoner's shoulder and walked him ahead of them at a normal pace, like a drunk being led home. Behind the mill they found a dry water trough set against the wall, split at one end and full of leaves. Vixen tipped the first body in. Lyla rolled the second on top. They pulled the leaves back over and kicked dirt across the drag marks in the alley. It took less than a minute. Reign was already turning to the man on his knees. He crouched and took the prisoner's jaw in one hand. The man tried to look away. Reign turned the face back to his own and held the eyes. The amulet warmed under his shirt. He let the hunger rise into his voice, low and even. "You will walk with me," he said. "You will not shout. You will not run. When we reach my room you will sit where I tell you and answer what I ask." He watched the man's pupils widen and slack. The fight went out of the shoulders. When Reign stood, the prisoner stood with him and followed at his heel like a hound. They climbed the back stair the same way they had come down. Reign went first, the prisoner behind, Vixen and Lyla last. He turned the key soft and pushed the door open. Lux came off the bed in a blur of teeth and claws, a snarl already in his throat, small horns down. The imp lunged at the stranger's leg. Then he saw Reign step in behind, and stopped mid-air, and dropped to the floor with his tail curled tight. "You left," Lux said. His voice cracked. "You left me." "You earned the sleep," Reign said. He shut the door and drew the bolt. He pushed the prisoner into the chair by the window and stood over him. The man sat where he was put and folded his hands in his lap. Reign looked at the slack, waiting face and thought of the name the man had spoken in the street. Merida. "Now," he said. "Tell me how you knew my mother."

The room was too thin for what Reign needed to do. The walls were plank, the floor creaked, and the innkeeper slept one landing below. A scream would carry. A spilled cup of blood would soak through to the boards downstairs by morning. Reign looked at the prisoner in the chair and knew he could not cut him here. He crouched instead and put his face close to the slack one. The amulet warmed against his chest, red stone catching the candle. He let its weight press through his voice. "You want to tell me," he said. "You have wanted to tell me since I took your jaw in the street." The man's mouth opened before Reign finished the sentence. The words came out in a tumble, quiet and steady, as if someone had pulled a stopper. He said there were more than the four in the street. He said they were a group, twelve at the core, more at the edges. He said they meant to move against the demon king. They had watched Reign since Portlandia's gate. They knew what his eyes meant. They had thought if they took him alive they could trade him at the throne room door. Reign kept his hand on the man's knee and pressed harder. "Who leads you?" The prisoner's throat worked. He named a man Reign did not know, and then he named him again by a title Reign did know. A close aide to his mother. One who had stood at Merida's shoulder in the years before she died. The prisoner said the leader had loved her. The prisoner said the leader believed the king had failed her, and that Reign's existence proved it. Lyla moved by the door. Vixen did not move at all. Reign let go of the knee. He stood and walked to the window and sat down on the sill. Lux climbed onto the bed and watched him without speaking. Reign put his hands on his own knees and looked at the floor between his boots. His mother had a man who loved her. That man was raising a knife at the grandfather Reign was riding to meet at first light. In a few hours Reign would kneel before a king whose own house was rotted from inside by someone who had once brushed his mother's hair back from her face. He turned the amulet in his fingers and felt the raven's edges. "Bind him," Reign said. "Gag him. Under the bed. He lives until I decide." Vixen bent to the rope in her pack. Lyla drew a strip of cloth between her teeth and tore it. Reign did not watch them work. He watched the candle and counted the hours to first light and thought about which truth he would carry through the throne room door, and which he would keep behind his own.

Vixen finished the knots. Lyla knelt with the cloth strip stretched between her hands, ready to gag the prisoner. Reign stood from the sill. He was still turning the problem in his head. The conspiracy leader was a man close to his mother, and Reign did not know his face. In a few hours he would walk into a hall of the king's inner circle and smile at strangers. One of those smiles could be the one that killed him. He crossed to the chair. He crouched again and put his hand on the prisoner's jaw before Lyla could tie the cloth. "Wait." The candle sputtered. The amulet warmed against his shirt, red stone pulsing under the raven and the silver ring around it. Reign pushed the weight of the stone into his voice one last time. "Name him. Face, mark, anything." The prisoner's eyes rolled up. His tongue worked. He said he did not know the man's face. He had only ever met the go-between. Reign started to pull back. The prisoner spoke again, unbidden, still under the pull of the stone. He said the one who led them wore Merida's earrings. He said everyone in the circle knew it. He said the earrings were small, silver, shaped like a crescent, and that Merida had never taken them off in life. Then Lyla pushed the cloth between his teeth and knotted it behind his skull, and the room went quiet. Reign did not move for a long moment. He stayed crouched with his hand on the prisoner's knee and closed his eyes. Earrings. Not a ring, not a blade, not a seal. A woman's earrings, worn openly at court, worn like a trophy or a mourning. The leader of the twelve was a woman. She had been close enough to his mother to take her jewelry off her body, or to be given it. That meant a woman of the inner circle. That meant the daughter of one of his grandfather's keepers, or a keeper herself. The playing field shrank in his head from a hundred faces to a handful. He opened his eyes. Lux was watching him from the bed, tail curled around one small foot, head tilted. Reign smiled. He felt it happen slow, one corner first, then the other. Lux went still. The imp had known his mother. The imp had seen that smile before, maybe, on her. Reign stood and touched the amulet through his shirt. "Bind his feet too," he said to Vixen. "Under the bed. We leave at first light." Vixen nodded, watching his face. Lyla watched Lux watching Reign. Reign turned back to the window and the dark street below. In a few hours he would kneel to a king, and he would look for a woman wearing his mother's ears.

First light came gray through the shutters. Reign left the prisoner bound under the bed with the gag tight. He washed his face, straightened his collar, and touched the red stone under his shirt one last time. Vixen wore her black coat and her hair up. Lyla wore the dark dress with the small crosses stitched into the skirt, her red hair loose over one shoulder. Lux climbed onto the table and waited. The four of them went down the stairs together and out to the carriage. The woman who had come to the inn the night before stood at the castle gate in armor now. She opened the carriage door herself and did not smile. She told them her superior would meet them in the courtyard. Reign nodded once. The carriage rolled through the outer gate and past two rows of guards who did not look at him and did not look away. The horses stopped. A large demon with green-black skin opened the door and put out his hand. Vixen took it and stepped down. Lyla took it after her. Lux jumped from the seat to Reign's shoulder and gripped his collar. Reign stepped out last. A thin man in a gray coat crossed the stones toward them. He bowed at the waist, not deep. He said his name was Huntley and that he was the steward of the castle. He would take them to the hall. His eyes moved once over Reign's face, once over the shape of the amulet under his shirt, and once over Lux. He turned and began to walk. Reign followed with Vixen at his right and Lyla at his left. The courtyard was full of people who had come out to see him. Reign kept his pace even and his face still. He looked at ears. He looked at every woman they passed. A servant girl carrying linen, no. Two guards' wives by the well, plain hoops, no. A tall woman by the inner arch in green silk, pearl drops, no. Then, on the step above the arch, a woman in dark red stood with three other women of the inner circle. She was watching him come. Small silver crescents hung from her ears and caught the morning light. Reign's step did not change. He did not look at her a second time. He felt Lux's claws tighten on his collar and knew the imp had seen them too. Huntley opened the inner door and stood aside. Reign passed him and went in. He had walked into the king's house without drawing a blade, without a question asked, and he had found her. He knew her face now. She did not yet know that he knew. For the first time since the inn, the ground under him felt firm.

Reign took Vixen's hand and held it firm. Lyla stepped in a half pace behind her. Lux climbed to his shoulder and gripped his collar. Huntley pushed both doors of the throne room open and walked in ahead of them. His voice carried the length of the hall. "My king, Reign Shadowfell and his party have arrived." The four of them crossed the stone floor together. Reign kept his head up and his chin level. He did not look at the woman in dark red on the step of the inner circle. He did not look at the guards along the walls. He stopped where a brass marker was set into the floor. Vixen stopped with him. Lyla stopped a step behind. Thanos rose from the throne. He came down the three steps and walked toward Reign until only a few paces stood between them. A single tear cut a line down the old king's cheek. He did not wipe it away. "You have her mouth," Thanos said. His voice was low and rough. "And her eyes." He looked at Reign a long moment. Then he said, quiet enough that only the front of the hall could hear, "Walk with me. Alone. There is a room behind the throne." Reign glanced at Vixen. She gave the smallest nod. Lyla did not move. Lux stayed on his shoulder. Reign said, "The imp comes. He knew her." Thanos looked at Lux and his mouth tightened. He said, "Then the imp comes." The room behind the throne was small and plain. A table, two chairs, a jug of water. Thanos shut the door himself. He sat and put both hands flat on the wood. Reign stayed standing. He asked the question he had carried three days in the carriage. "How did my mother die." Thanos did not lift his eyes. "They told me a fever. I believed it for sixteen years. Your letter was the first I heard of a child, and the first I doubted the fever." Reign watched his hands, his mouth, the pulse at his throat. Lux watched too, and after a slow breath the imp pressed his small face against Reign's neck. It was the sign they had agreed on. Truth. Reign felt the red stone under his shirt go warm against his skin. He said, "The Church of Light killed her. Their grand inquisitor." Thanos's hands closed into fists on the table. He did not speak for a long moment. When he did, his voice shook. "Then I have been lied to by someone in my own house." Reign sat down across from him. He had his answer. His grandfather had not known. The enemy wearing his mother's earrings was not the king. She was the king's blind spot, and now Reign held the only lamp.

Reign stayed in the chair across from Thanos. The small room felt tighter now. Lux climbed down from his shoulder and sat on the table between them. Reign put both hands flat on the wood, the way the king had. He needed the old man to feel the weight of what came next before he heard it. "A group of men came to my inn last night," Reign said. "Four of them. They tried to take me to use as leverage against you." Thanos's jaw set. Reign did not stop. "Their leader wants your throne. Three are dead. We kept one alive. He talked." He watched the king's hands. The knuckles stayed white on the table. The pulse at his throat jumped once and held. "The leader wears my mother's earrings. Silver crescents. She stood in your inner circle this morning." Thanos did not move. For a long moment he did not even breathe. Then his eyes closed. When he opened them the tear was gone and something colder sat behind them. "Describe her," he said. Reign described the dark red dress, the pale throat, the earrings. He did not give a name because he had none. Thanos said one word under his breath. He did not repeat it. He looked at Lux. The imp pressed his face to Reign's wrist. The red stone under Reign's shirt went warm. Truth again. Thanos saw the small sign and understood it. His hand came off the table and closed around the edge until the wood creaked. "She sat by your mother's bed the winter Merida was small," Thanos said. "She was the one who brought me word of the fever. She has served me thirty years." He stood. He did not raise his voice. "You will stay in this room. You will not be seen in the hall. If she learns you named her before I have her, she runs, and the other eleven scatter into houses I cannot search without tearing my own court apart." Reign nodded once. Vixen and Lyla would keep the door. Lux would watch the corridor. Thanos took a key from inside his coat and set it on the table. "For the far door. It opens on the guard passage. If I do not come back by the second bell, you use it." The king went out. Reign heard the throne room fall quiet on the other side of the wall, then the sound of boots moving in formation. He pulled the amulet from under his shirt and set it on the table beside the key. He had spent the ride from the manor afraid the king was the liar. He had named the real one without saying her name at all, and his grandfather had believed him on the first telling. The trust had held. The trap was set. Somewhere past the wall, a woman in dark red still did not know her morning was over.