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R esurrection hurt worse than dying.

Ambrose recalled the eerie peace of his soul rent from his body.

Pain followed by sweet sleep. Now, the marrow refilled his hollow bones until they were fit to splinter.

Tendons laced him back together like an ill-fitting corset.

The muscle and meat for which he’d been long feared hung heavy on his newly assembled skeleton.

When, finally, his skull’s sockets swelled with eyes and he blinked them open, he anticipated the face before him with a dread swoop in his half-knitted belly.

Better than the way he remembered dying, Ambrose remembered the witch king—his cherubic smile, the rich thunder of his voice, the soft caress of his magic.

These recollections were far gentler than the flood of guilt that followed.

Ambrose’s last act had been a failed attempt to protect the man he’d sworn himself to.

The man before him, though, was not the witch king.

He was a necromancer, dusted in grave dirt and the flickering green sparks of the resurrection spell.

His raven hair had gone prematurely silver.

He wore no armor, only alien clothes. Neither the rough-spun of peasantry nor the fine satin of nobility, but something in between.

His mouth held the vaguest memory of a smile.

At his feet lay the slain body of his familiar. A white hound, its chest ruptured to tithe the heart inside and power the spell putting Ambrose together piece by piece.

It painted a bloody picture. A witch who readily killed his familiar wasn’t likely to have benign intentions in bringing Ambrose back from the dead.

The spell finished. The green light abated. Ambrose scrambled to assemble the puzzle of his resurrection and came up with only two pieces.

The first was that an ancient magic, exquisitely hungry, still carved a hollow in his ribs. So the witch king’s spell—if not the man himself—still lived. That meant he could return.

The second, even more disconcerting thing was that the spell had put his body back together but hadn’t the decency to clothe him.

His nakedness struck a well-worn chord of fear in his heart.

A century he’d spent keeping the secret of his sex from the world at large.

Only one had ever known what he hid between his legs.

And now he knew. This stranger with the blood of his familiar dripping from his fingers.

Ambrose took a step away from him.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were y—”

Too late. A surge of agony stopped Ambrose. It was as if he’d stepped on hot coals, been struck by lightning. A glowing sigil of runes in the soil trapped him where he stood.

He staggered back into the circle but didn’t cover himself. He didn’t want to give the stranger any leverage, any sign of weakness. Instead, he recovered from the pain of the spell and defaulted to the oldest and most reliable means of disarming powerful, dangerous sorcerers.

He smiled. “You’ve caught me somewhat off guard. I appreciate the resurrection, though I don’t suppose you have a spell to spare for conjuring me some clothes?”

The witch didn’t return the smile. If anything, he looked more wary. Mercifully, he wasn’t looking at Ambrose’s nakedness, but the runes scarring an arcane collar around his throat.

“It worked,” said the stranger, as if to himself. “You’re the Grim Wolf of Bellgrave, back from the dead.”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” said Ambrose. “But I’d be most pleased to make the acquaintance of the one who resurrected me. To whom do I owe this honor?”

“Emery Vale. I’m the necromancer who tithed a small fortune to resurrect you.” He spoke in melody, but his body didn’t dance to it. He held himself in expressive repose, emotion buried in a grave deeper than the one from which Ambrose had risen. “You’re welcome, I suppose.”

A small fortune and his familiar , Ambrose thought.

He looked down on the poor, broken body of the hound.

Its tail made a spiral, the long proud snout tipped up toward its master in supplication.

The gaping wound in its chest had Ambrose absently touching his own where an enchanted axe had caved his ribs in.

A blaze of scar tissue met the calluses of his fingertips.

“A worthwhile sacrifice for your protection,” Emery said, following his gaze.

“Is that why you resurrected me? To protect you?”

“That is the idea. Or part of it.” He tilted his head.

His movements and the gleam of his dark eyes were graceful and opportunistic as a carrion bird, clever and cruel.

“I wouldn’t say no to a spot of revenge, either.

All this assuming you’ll comply. I have a pact ready to be signed, if you’re keen.

If not, I can let the sigil take you back to the grave, but when do the dead ever get a second chance? ”

The threat had to be a performance—Emery wouldn’t easily discard the thing he’d traded a sacred familiar for. He must be desperate for help and concealing it. That was leverage Ambrose might be able to exploit.

On the other hand, the familiar’s murder revealed Emery’s unconscionable ruthlessness. Ambrose would have to tread carefully and put on an amiable face indeed if he was to forge an escape.

Fortunately, sweetness came naturally to him.

Before he asked his questions, he scanned their surroundings.

A flickering witch light illuminated the scene.

No headstone, tomb, or great statue marked the spot.

He’d been laid to rest in an unmarked grave in the woods.

An entire skeleton had been assembled on the ground, its pearly bones labeled with bits of paper.

Ambrose’s heart tripped. Around the skull’s brow was a golden circlet with empty settings where rubies once glowed. It was fused with the bone. Still a king, even in death. In the grave, a single casket lay open, the runes that once sealed it all singed and cracked through.

Seeing their resting place desecrated disturbed him less than the lack of monument. Their enemies had cursed them with the worst fate for any man who sought to make himself immortal—that of being forgotten.

The magic in his breast slavered for their punishment.

The only thing that sated his ravenous heart was that he and his king had been buried together.

He wondered if, in separating their skeletons, the necromancer had mistaken one rib for another, one segment of spine.

It seemed to him that a life lived so enmeshed would make it impossible to tell whose bones belonged to whom.

As if in reward for the thought, the arcane collar squeezed gently, like a barely perceptible hand on the nape of his neck.

Affection, hope, and guilt burned in him. The three emotions together made a braid of his insides, tight and twisted.

He’s gone. I failed him. But if I’m alive, if his magic is, too, he could find his way back to me. We can be together again.

It was Ambrose’s duty to ensure it, and his last hope of redemption.

First, he needed answers.

“How did you find our grave?”

“By accident, many years ago. A dead cicada told me about something strange in the ground. I didn’t dig you up, of course. I did my research. But I had an inkling you were here.”

“What year is it?”

“2024.”

Ambrose reeled. Five centuries . That was how long he’d been feeding worms. Every enemy who’d put him there was gone.

Again, he looked to the dead hound. “If the tithe for resurrection is your familiar, you only get one opportunity to bring someone back from the dead. Why me and not someone more important to you?”

“You assume anyone is important to me. I told you. I need protection.”

“From?”

“Hellebore and Morcant Van Moor.” He spoke the names as if grinding them by mortar and pestle.

“Who are they?”

“Other necromancers. You could call Hellebore my rival and Morcant my nemesis, if you want to be dramatic. It hardly matters who they are, only whether you can deal with them. Can you?”

“Not at the moment.” Ambrose cast a pointed look toward the sigil at his feet.

“I won’t free you from it without assurance you won’t strangle me.”

“That would be a poor way to express my gratitude to the man who resurrected me,” Ambrose said. “I assure you—”

“I want it in writing,” Emery interrupted. He drew a scroll from his robes. A honeyed, evergreen smell of magic wafted off the paper.

A pact like that could bind Ambrose permanently to his service. That is, if there weren’t already another spell which superseded it …

He looked back at his old master’s skeleton, searching for the thing that could potentially free him without subjugating himself to Emery. He counted the matchstick bones of his master’s right hand, segments of phalange, shrapnel for the wrist, and—

His heart sank. The metacarpal bone of the right index finger was gone.

Emery wasn’t smiling when Ambrose’s gaze met his, but the light cast him like a grinning skull nonetheless. He drew the bone from his robes and held it up, runes shining on its surface. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

Ambrose smiled blithely, though the runes of the arcane collar felt too tight for words, and his mind reeled in search of a means to regain possession of the bone. “I see you’re already a step ahead of me. Do you know what it does?”

“It’s obvious from the runes on your skeleton and his that some magical pact binds you, but I didn’t know if magic so old could hold for several centuries.

It’s … unique.” He paused, and in the space of that silence, Ambrose tried to determine a means to avoid what he knew would come, but it was too late.

“But no, I don’t know what it does,” Emery said. “Tell me.”

The finger bone glowed a faint necrotic green. The runes on Ambrose’s neck burned. Prepared as he was, his heart still heaved with the desire to refuse. It didn’t matter. The arcane collar squeezed every word from him like pulp from a juiced peach.

“On a finger bone of the right hand of my master were carved the runes of an unbreakable pact. Whomsoever holds it holds me, as the corresponding runes were carved in my spine. It is my leash. My tether. I submit to the one who holds it, obey their every command, can never bring them to harm, and never leave their side.”

It had been an expression of his devotion to a man he adored, and now Emery had corrupted that loyalty by stealing it for himself.

This part remained unsaid.

Emery’s eyes narrowed. He looked between the glowing runes on the bone and the ones lit green on Ambrose’s neck, fading as the compulsion ended. “How does it work?”

Ambrose, scraping the recesses of his newly born mind for an escape plan, hadn’t expected such a question. “What do you mean?”

“Magic requires a tithe. This is powerful magic to have survived this long, but I can’t see what’s been sacrificed, so are you lying?”

“There isn’t a surviving soul that can vouch for my character, but it’s not in mine to lie,” Ambrose said, still affable in spite of his circumstances. It wouldn’t do to anger his captor.

It didn’t reassure Emery in the least. “One way to know for sure.” He pointed the bone at Ambrose. “Kneel.”

The arcane collar choked obedience from Ambrose. He stumbled to his knees, head bowed in shame rather than deference, the only small rebellion he was permitted.

Emery said, “If this is an act, it’s a good one. So if I release you from the sigil, you belong to me?” He didn’t appear smug, more vaguely nauseated, as if Ambrose were an inconvenient necessity.

It sickened Ambrose’s insatiable magic. He’d belonged in life and death to only one man.

Yet, in this perversion of his original pact, he saw an opportunity. Nothing about it prevented him from finding the means to return his master to his rightful spot at Ambrose’s side.

“Release me, and I am yours to command.” The words tasted rancid.

Emery still looked mistrustful. He appraised the rune bone. “It wouldn’t bode well for either of us if someone were to take this from me. I guess that’s why the old bastard had it engraved in his skeleton. I don’t suppose I could have it transferred to mine?”

“That’s beyond my knowledge,” Ambrose said, praying it was impossible. “I was the king’s guard. I know little of magic. I do know that the process hurts.”

“Mm. Don’t fancy that .” Emery tugged at a strand of his hair and tied it in a knot around the finger bone.

With a mutter of magic, he tithed the strand.

A magic ward or lock, Ambrose assumed. He was not a witch, but he’d been around one long enough to recognize the spell.

Emery pocketed Ambrose’s tether. “That ought to be enough.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “You could be feigning obedience so I free you, only to turn on me after.”

“I’ve no reason to do that. I’m grateful to have been resurrected in the first place.”

Emery didn’t respond. Hopefully he wasn’t contemplating something more painful or humiliating than kneeling to compel Ambrose into performing as further assurance of the pact’s veracity.

“Tell me your name.”

“Ambrose.”

“Ambrose.” He tasted the name, but whether he appreciated its flavor, Ambrose couldn’t tell.

There was a moment of hesitation. The pact was indelible. All that remained was to release Ambrose from the sigil.

He saw the play as if watching it on a stage. The necromancer had to bet that the arcane tether would hold once the sigil was gone. It would. That little fossil controlled Ambrose entirely, but it still required a leap of faith for Emery to spit on the sigil and dispel it.

With an expression of distaste, he did. It flared and died. The only illumination now came from the pale witch light. Ambrose took a step. Emery took one backward.

“ Stop ,” he commanded.

Ambrose grunted as the collar yanked him still, but in that brief second of freedom, he’d spotted something familiar in the unblooded steel of Emery’s scavenger eyes.

Fear.

Ambrose, in life, had been a gentle soul. But he had also been the king’s guard, with all the righteousness that defending a king entailed.

This man knew who Ambrose was. He’d read the history, knew the things Ambrose had done.

He had reason to be afraid.

What they had was so far from trust. It was hardly a transaction, the leash a fragile thread restraining Ambrose’s instincts.

When the witch king returned, he would snap that leash, and if Emery proved himself a villain, nothing would save him from royal justice.