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“It was both of us. It was…” The blush suffused his cheeks, crept down his throat into the high collar of his tunic. “When I arrived home, Mother informed me she was hosting another of her dreadful matchmaking balls.”

“Ugh.”

“Yes. There have been plenty over the years – I believe I was five for the first one.”

“Gods.”

“But this time…I’d never stretched myself so thin. Never used up so much magic before.

“When I went down into the well this time, though, I didn’t go alone.”

“Mattias?”

Náli snorted. “No. Valgrind. The impertinent beast.”

Oliver felt his brows shoot up. “Valgrind?”

“Mmhm. Mother didn’t want him out chasing sheep and terrifying the crofters, apparently, so Mattias and the others smuggled him down into the catacombs. When I went into the well, he jumped in after me, and he managed to cross over…” He went on to tell Oliver a wild, impossible story of long-dead ancestors, and the birth of magic in the North.

By the end, Oliver realized he was faintly dizzy from holding his breath, and plopped down onto a cleared section of bench where the sun had melted the snow from its seat. “Gods,” he murmured.

Náli joined him. “Quite.

“As for Erik’s belief in it all – magic may be new to you, but it isn’t to me, nor to my bloodline. I believe what I saw and heard and felt beyond this plane. All of it’s true.” He turned to face Oliver, suddenly grave. “This isn’t a war that’s purely sword against sword. We’ll have to fight on two fronts: the mortal, and the immortal.”

Oliver attempted a laugh, a sad and choked thing. “Oh, is that all?” He didn’t enjoy the uncharacteristic trace of sympathy in Náli’s responding smile.

He turned away. “Well, then. War aside: at least you’ve solved your dilemma, yes? There’s no more need to produce an heir.”

“Hm,” Náli hummed, and then hesitated, expression squashing down in boyish fashion.

It was Mattias who answered. He stood a few feet away, arms folded, not unhappy, exactly, but serious. Like always. Oliver didn’t know the man well, granted, but he’d yet to see him truly smile.

“There’s no longer a rush to produce an heir. And his lordship may leave the Fault Lands at will. The fire mountain is properly settled. But though the other Guards and I possess magic, now…” He lifted a hand and stared at it, gaped at it, really, a reflexive moment of awe. “We weren’t born with it. There’s no way to know that a child fathered by Klemens, or any of us, would possess Náli’s inherited powers.”

“Fatherhood might still be in my future,” Náli said, wincing. “Joy.”

Oliver looked to Mattias…

Who scuffed his toe through the slushy snow on the path and cleared his throat, awkward, suddenly. “There is a young woman who is…willing. A friend of Náli’s, even.”

“She and Klemens,” Náli began, and Oliver stayed him with a raised hand.

“You know what? I don’t think I need all the dirty details.”

Náli snorted and waggled his brows.

Mattias’s cheeks went very pink.

Oliver said, “So how is Valgrind?”

8

If they were all being honest, it was a shock something like this hadn’t happened sooner. It had been too quiet for too long; even knowing this, they’d let their guard down, and so the crumpled bit of parchment, when it arrived in the fist of a pale, panting scout with a fist-shaped bruise on his face, still landed like a gut-punch.

It had been written in Continental, their language, though the grammar was a little off: that of a translator and not an Aquitainian citizen, the handwriting loopy and flourishing in a way that brough to mind the musical language of Seles.

Your men are clumsy, slow, and breathe too loud. You send children to do the job of a man. One we return to you as a show of goodwill, the rest we keep, until you surrender.