After a harder winter than any the Kingdom of Night could remember, the first spring thaw swelled the rivers to flooding, tearing out bridges and washing away fords. Heavily traveled roads turned to bogs, weighing down horses and trapping wagons. Spring rains rolled across the landscape, misting when it wasn’t downpouring, and added a pervasive sodden dampness to the world.

  Progress northward was a slow crawl for the royal family and its contingent of Royal Thorns, especially after they met up with the baggage train at Siu Carinal. Under favorable conditions, the trek from Thornfield to their destination at Shamasa Redoubt on the northern border would have taken a month. As it was, in a fortnight of travel, they had barely made it onto the central grasslands of the kingdom.

  The baggage train brought along a small crew of necessaries only—drivers, a handful of cook staff, and a few of the king’s trusted officials[].Thus, tasks such as digging out the wagons or pulling foundered horses from the muck fell to the most elite and highly trained swordsmen in the realm.

  “Not especially glamorous work,” Izak observed wryly, putting his shoulder to the carriage with his fellow newly grafted Thorns. His boots filled with watery mud and slid in the bog.

  “I was told there would be more women,” Sketcher rumbled as they pushed.

  “They’re on the other side of this night-forsaken puddle,” Izak gritted out. “Put your back into it and get us over there, you great rustic beast.”

  Sketcher’s ever-chapped red face turned redder from the combination of effort and the reference to his hulking size, of which he was outlandishly ashamed. The rustic was so large that, on first sight, Izak had taken him for one of the oldest in their year. He’d learned later that Sketcher was in truth three years younger than himself, barely seventeen. There weren’t many commoners Izak could stare dead in the eyes with their bare feet flat on the ground, but Sketcher was a grain-fed ox of a man, big, broad, and strong. He had a grip that could crush a smith’s hammer or render in loving charcoal the finest lines the strong gods had ever graced a feminine body with. The latter occupation was the source of his chosen name and had been his claim to fame during the long, womanless stint at Thornfield.

  Womanless for everyone but Izak, that was.

  “Whip those blasted ponies bloody, Driver!” Rake, the wiry Thorn on Izak’s opposite side bellowed, slipping and straining in the muck. “Now! Before this bog swallows us whole!”

  The barber’s son was the image of hungry peasantry Izak was more used to—shorter and thin as a rapier, all angles and points, with mousy colorless hair to match the muddy splatter soaking his uniform.

  No less loud for his smaller stature, however. The carriage lurched as the horses slammed against their harness, tearing Rake’s prop out from behind his back. He went down with a wet splat, and came up cursing the night foul at the top of his lungs.

  The entire time they fought the sucking mud, the pull of the grafting nagged at the new Thorns. It started as a demand that Izak return to Etian, and quickly progressed to a shrieking terror that assailants were poised to leap onto his brother the very next second, all the while insisting that Izak would be too late to stop them. His heart rebounded off the inside of his chest, and beneath the muddy uniform, sour, anxious sweat soaked his skin.

  It was maddening. He could see that Etian was safe, could see Hare and Dolo standing guard over his brother, and still the grafting howled at him to wallow out of the muck as fast as he could and race to his brother’s side.

  He couldn’t obey, unfortunately. There was cold, gritty, stinking mud to push the king’s carriage out of.

  As Commander of the Crown Prince’s Thorns, Izak could have, by rights, stayed out of the mess and stood guard himself, but he kept having these foolishly noble ideas that he should be in the thick of it with his men. Show them that just because he was the brother of the future King of Night didn’t mean he would leave the commoners to do all the work.

  Sheer idiocy. And yet, in the thick of it he was.

  By the time they got the carriage moving again, Izak was muddy head to foot, and the muscles in his legs and back were twitching from exertion. His fellow Thorns didn’t look much better as they belted on their swords once more, wincing at every smear of mud they left on the gorgeous Thornfield-forged weapons.

  All except for Dolo and Hare, who had suffered nothing worse than damp air and boredom.

  “I should be apologizing to you,” Sketcher told his horse, taking the reins in his massive paw. “I wasn’t a light load before. With all this mud, I must weigh twice what I did.”

  “At least it’s still raining,” Izak said with acid cheer, slinging mud as he mounted up.

  He directed his men to positions around Etian, then adjusted his swordstaff, Loss, in the special saddle sheath he’d had fitted for her. Trying not to show disgust at the mud he left on her elegant ebony haft, he nudged his horse into motion.

  As usual, Etian chose to ride a distance from their father’s carriage, his dark eyes scanning the trees and forest from behind his glasses like the Josean-blessed warrior he was. Izak did the same, not out of any instinct of his own, but because the grafting was certain that attackers waited behind the thinnest of cover to leap out and murder Etian.

  Izak wished he were a big enough man to be proud that he was protecting his younger brother, but being soaked through, with mud in every inch of his clothing, while the grafting screamed inside his skull made that a near impossible task.

  If things had gone differently three years before, it would be Etian covered in mud and grafted to serve Crown Prince Izakiel until he died. He didn’t want to feel this resentment—especially considering that he knew the better man had been given the crown—but when he was this cold and dirty and wet, he couldn’t avoid it.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “Hazerial wants to speak with you when we stop for the day,” Etian said as Izak’s horse fell into step alongside his.

  Beneath the layer of mud, Izak smirked. “Excellent. If I’d known that earlier, I would have let his light-burned carriage sink.”

  ***

  The Skalia household arrived at The Overlook as the sun rose. Glittering spring flurries danced over the bluffs that gave the sprawling estate its name. Below, the Salt River rushed on in a muddy froth, roaring with spring melt. Their baggage train and staff followed the drive around to the servants’ entrance.

  The lord’s carriage drove up to the manse, its wheels coming within inches of the step, as close as the driver could manage to put them.

  Lord Zinote’s Thorns climbed down from their frozen perch, where they had been huddled on top with the coachman, and spent a moment working the stiffness out of backs and joints while looking over the immediate area for threats. One opened the carriage door, while the other jogged up the steps and inside.

  A moment later, the Thorn inside, Ranger, leaned out and shot his fellow swordsman a nod.

  “Your ladyship.” Hawk handed out Lady Zinote.

  “Oh, Hawk, it’s so beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Lord Zinote followed his wife. “For Eketra’s sake, dear, he’s just spent all night riding atop a frozen carriage. What he wants is a hot fire and a steaming drink, not to stand around while you gape at the weather. Get inside.”

  Her ladyship favored the black-eyed Thorn with an apologetic smile, both for her husband and the delay, then made her way up the stairs. At the entry, she stopped and turned back, waiting expectantly.

  Lord Zinote raised his hands to his daughter, who struggled in the carriage door with a protesting bundle of blankets.

  “Shall I hold him?”

  “No.”

  “Just while you step down. They’ve spread ashes, but the stair is still somewhat slippery.”

  Ignoring her father’s plea, Pasiona climbed awkwardly from the carriage. A gloved hand reached out, and she yanked her squirming infant son away from the encroaching grasp.

  “My apologies, Your Highness.” Hawk backed away and bowed his head. “You looked as if you were unsteady.”

  In her arms, Reuel finally managed to break free of the blanket covering his face. Tiny fists bumped against chubby cheeks red with the warmth. Ice blue eyes widened at the sudden temperature shift, and a sparkling flake came to rest on the feathered tips of his long black lashes.

  Quickly, Pasiona tucked in the corner the infant had knocked free, then fled up the steps and into the waiting safety of the manse.

  While the staff began unloading baggage, furniture, and provisions brought north, a pair of soldiers in rougher garb rode the outskirts of the estate. The pair of armed strangers gave one of the chambermaids a turn when she caught sight of them out the nursery window. She gasped and nearly raised the alarm.

  “His Highness the Crown Prince’s men,” Pasiona said, joining the girl at the window. “My husband sent them to ensure our safe travel.”

  The chambermaid frowned. “Doesn’t Prince Etianiel know about Hawk and Ranger?”

  Pasiona adjusted the bundle in her arms. “My husband is the future Chosen of the Strong Gods and your future king. If you ever question him in this house again, pack your things. Is that understood?”

  The maid dipped into a low curtsy. “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Prince Etianiel is merely concerned for our son. There are any number of foul villains who would harm the future Crown Prince of Night.”

  “Of course, Your Highness. I never stopped to consider the danger the heir to the throne faces.”

  For a moment, Pasiona considered claiming that this was why Etian had sent her and Reuel away. But if it came out that she was spreading such nonsense while her husband ploughed his father’s wife, Pasiona would look the fool. Better to retain her dignity and face the truth.

  Perhaps she had been a fool for believing that such a driven, Josean-blessed warrior could ever be faithful to anything but the battlefield.

  Their son loved her. That was enough. It would have to be.

  “When the soldiers have finished their sweep of the property, have the steward send them to me,” Pasiona told the girl. Hawk and Ranger wouldn’t like it—the aging Thorns hated having armed men within a mile of her father—but her husband’s soldiers were her concern, not theirs.

  The order was relayed, and when the soldiers’ mounts had been stabled, Pasiona received the men in the nursery, a dusting of snowflakes still melting on their clothes.

  Both men were younger than her father’s Thorns by nearly two decades, though they acted just as jaded and wary. Werin was a stout, broad-shouldered man, a head shorter than her husband, with blackheads scattered across his wide nose and a habit of letting his stubble grow wooly between shavings. He was in a wooly stage now, despite their party having laid up at an inn the day before. A wide battleaxe hung down his back, and stuck in his belt was an incongruently delicate green enameled longknife that Nock claimed Werin had taken from a Helat soldier.

  Nock was Werin’s opposite, narrow in the shoulder and hip, and almost as tall as Etian. His face was long and thin, and his eyes were obscured by a curtain of long, greasy hair. He was a longbowman—from the talkative soldier, Pasiona had learned that his given name was Norian, but neither the crown prince nor anyone from his unit ever called him by it. Besides his bow, he carried a battle-scarred falchion on his bony hip, “just in case the pointy-ears get too close for an arrow.”

  So far as Pasiona knew, no pointy-ears had ever made it as far south of the border as her father’s holding, but the falchion remained in evidence.

  She assessed the men with her icy, heavy-lidded stare for long enough that the taller started to fidget, pushing strands of greasy hair out of his face. Beside him, Werin waited patiently for her to speak.

  “What were your instructions once my son and I arrived at The Overlook?” she asked.

  “Stand guard, await news,” Werin replied.

  Pasiona caught the nervous flit of Nock’s gaze. “I take it there is more?”

  Nock shifted feet. “Werin’s not meaning it disrespectful, Your Highness. Only that we’re not allowed to say what Eti—ah, His Highness’s—plans are, in specific. There were a few, see. Different moves for different cases, depending on what we hear.”

  Pasion’s glare turned cold. “Whatever Prince Etianiel ordered you to call him to his face, you will afford him the respect due the crown in front of me and in front of our son.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” Nock bobbed his head, greasy hair swinging. “Glad to.”

  On her lap, Reuel grunted crossly and began searching for his next meal. She adjusted the babe in her arms and opened her bodice.

  Fire blazed in the hearth, but the nursery air was cool on Pasiona’s bare skin. She pulled Reuel’s blanket over his upper body, hanging it from her shoulder, to protect him from catching a chill.

  With her son seen to, Pasiona returned her attention to the men.

  The hardened soldiers were looking anywhere but at their crown prince’s wife while she nursed his son.

  “Have you never seen a woman feed her child?”

  Werin shrugged.

  “I’ve got a babe,” Nock said. “Haven’t seen him yet, though. My wife’s back in Breaktree Ford. Must be a year old now. When I left two summers ago, Malli thought he’d come around Winterlight.”

  Less than two years in her husband’s service for the one, no telling how long for the other. Doubtless they had fought well to gain Etian’s approval, but both lacked the discipline Pasiona had grown used to seeing in her father’s Thorns and their royal counterparts. She’d heard it said that it would take a dozen trained soldiers to kill a single Thorn.

  But these ungrafted men had an advantage that no Thorn did—the freedom to transfer their loyalty to whomever they wished.

  “What will it take for you to answer to me rather than my husband?” she asked them. “Name your price.”