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T he words were a gentle squeeze around Ambrose’s throat. Magic rumbled within him like a hungry stomach.

Part of him was not surprised by Emery’s request, although it chafed at an age-old, unquenched desire of his.

He’d wanted to be a knight, a hero, and in so doing had become a weapon. One who fought righteously, yes, and he could not fault those who wielded him. They were only using him as he was designed. But he couldn’t deny how the bloodshed had tainted his self-image.

What did surprise him was Emery’s reasoning.

Morcant had punished him for his failures in keeping with teachers and their students. Humiliated him in front of his peers and prevented him from escape, yes, but Emery wanted to murder him.

It seemed a very dramatic, out-sized response. One Ambrose wanted no part in.

Emery was studying the fire, its glow outlining a striking profile. The proud arch of his nose and raven sweep of silver-streaked hair curling behind his ears made him distinct in silhouette. Light glimmered off the handsome sweep of a cheek, carved hollows in the masculine bump of his throat.

How treacherous of fate to gift such a cruel heart with a fair face.

Ambrose didn’t want to kill anymore.

Then he heard it. The witch king’s voice, like drops of rain soothing the flush of emotion.

We might not relish the thought, but the necromancer’s death could serve our ultimate purposes—if we play our cards correctly.

How?

Death has adverse effects on my memory. It is difficult to recall the specifics of the spell needed to restore my life, but the tithes will doubtless be costly. If I had my grimoire, I could piece together the rest. For now, sweet wolf, I ask for your patience and your faith.

If there was any chance it could bring them together again …

“How do you propose we kill him?”

The wine bottle slipped from Emery’s hand. He caught it—narrowly. “You agree to it just like that?”

It wasn’t that Ambrose wanted to kill. The magic in him did. He could feel it slavering at the mere notion. But if this could reunite him and the witch king, he’d do most anything.

“You hold the arcane leash,” Ambrose said. “And I owe you a debt for resurrecting me.”

“Right.” Emery reached into the pocket of his cloak and withdrew the pearly bone. “I didn’t realize the witch king enthralled you so thoroughly that you ceased to have any opinion of your own.”

Ambrose repeated his question before he said something regrettable. “How do you propose we kill him?”

“I want to make it look like an accident,” Emery said. “Or natural causes. Anything that won’t raise suspicion.”

Ambrose clenched his spell-stained hands in the upholstery of the sofa arm. He was grateful he wouldn’t have to use them, but the magic bared its teeth. It wanted to feed. “Do you have a plan?”

“I’m working on something, but I don’t have all the pieces yet. Something to sleep on.”

Ambrose looked up through the aperture in the ceiling at the lightening sky. “It’s daybreak.”

“Yes, well, that’s the guild for you. Calling on us at odd hours of the night. You learn to be opportunistic about naps. I will make up a proper bed for you at some point, but for now, I hope the sofa is comfortable. God knows I’ve crashed on it countless times myself.”

“It’s perfectly adequate.”

Emery didn’t lack for blankets or pillows. Given what he’d said about Morcant taking control of his finances, it was safe to assume everything was either spell-crafted or stolen.

But Ambrose had no intention of sleeping.

Emery disappeared with Katzica into his room.

Ambrose waited for the click of the lock, then started searching the chapel for an “e-reader” and “headphones.”

It didn’t take long. Though Emery seemed to prefer paper books, he had an e-reader stashed under a stack on the coffee table, earphones discarded in a drawer of miscellaneous cords, among other wires and machine bits Ambrose didn’t recognize.

He managed to follow the blind boy’s instructions through turning it on and navigating to the library.

It read out the titles to him in an inflection-less voice, each more ambiguous than the last. He hadn’t the faintest clue what a book called His Virtuous Vices or My Hex Husband were about, but he could safely assume they weren’t historic tomes detailing the witch king’s accomplishments.

These titles were interspersed with the instructional variety. A History of Taboo Witchcraft and A Study in Rare Spellcraft could potentially hold clues to the type of magic tethering his soul to the witch king’s, but he doubted they’d be so specific.

No, he needed something pertaining to the witch king himself. Perhaps something which could allude to the location of his grimoire.

He’d nearly flipped through the entire library when the monotonous voice read out a title that had him jerking upright.

Desmond Caepernicus: A History of Terror Under the Tyrant Witch King.

He froze, his finger hovering over the book he’d just selected.

He could not recall the last time he’d heard the witch king’s name uttered aloud.

He’d always been referred to by his titles.

Even in private moments of intimacy, Ambrose had never spoken aloud the name this machine had just read in the same toneless voice it used to enunciate titles like Sensuous Sundries .

The black cover showed an illuminated script with skulls and poisonous botanicals.

Hesitant, he tapped the cover and opened the book to its first page.

Apprehension rattled in his chest as the monotone voice read him the publishing details, a foreword from the author forewarning of the difficulty in analyzing the actions and details of a figure from so long ago, and then finally, the contents of the book itself.

He only managed a couple chapters, but the more he listened, the more his apprehension grew.

The title purported to attempt an unbiased portrayal of the witch king’s actions, free from judgment, yet it focused heavily on his most controversial and desperate actions.

It tiptoed around using modern language and definitions of his relationships, making mention of the undisputed loyalty of those within his inner circle while having no way of knowing for certain what the nature of those relationships were.

It mentioned Ambrose, not by name but reputation. The Grim Wolf of Bellgrave. The witch king’s “mad dog.”

The author demurred, It can never be known to what extent the Grim Wolf’s actions were his own.

Was his depravity an innate feature the witch king merely exploited, or was he a soldier following orders under threat of treason to his king if he disobeyed?

While occultists and conspirators theorize he might have been magically subjugated, no historical evidence substantiates the claim.

Most accounts describe the Grim Wolf as bloodthirsty, rabid, and all too eager to do his master’s bidding, such as this journal entry recorded by Reverand Lewis Tybalt, 1410.

“Forgive me, Father, for I’ve seen things from which no prayer or divine blessing could bring reprieve.

The witch king, in routing out a traitor seeking sanctuary in the abbey, did send his mad dog, who, being a godless heathen, did not respect the sanctity of our church and set upon the poor wretch to part him from his vitals with his bare hands.

Such screams I’ve never heard. Even at choir, I think I can hear their echo.

And once the vile act was done, how should the villain appear? Smiling and satisfied.

A devil desecrated our holy church. For keeping such corruption in his close company, may God have mercy on the witch king’s soul, and if it be treason for saying so, may God also have mercy on mine.”

Ambrose dropped the e-reader into the blankets, but the voice went on until he yanked the earphones out.

He wished to hear no more of that night.

He remembered it well enough, but hearing it described by an outsider stung.

Of course, the priest didn’t know magic sang through his veins and made his body rejoice in the carnage.

No one saw how his heart was sickened for it.

As a young boy, he’d attended a jousting competition in the hopes of laying eyes on the witch king’s first knight—Sir Aric, a man whose legendary stories had carried even to the ears of peasants and farmer’s boys like him.

He had watched Sir Aric unseat his every competitor at the joust, then Ambrose had sneaked into the stables to meet him. Yet, when he’d expressed dreams of becoming a hero just like him, the knight said, “Far nobler to be a farmer.”

It left Ambrose confused and disappointed.

On his way home, Ambrose and his family fell afoul of bandits.

Ambrose’s father, insisting they had nothing, was killed first. His mother begged they spare Ambrose.

They killed her, too. He would have died next, if Sir Aric hadn’t intervened.

He died valiantly with a dagger to the throat from the last bandit after felling all the rest.

That was how, baptized in the blood of his hero, Ambrose met the witch king. He’d cast a spell, stopping the bandit mid-thrust of his blade, taking the dagger from his frozen hands to give to Ambrose.

“He killed my knight, but he killed your parents. You deserve vengeance.”

The memory felt wet as running ink at the edges. He couldn’t recall if he’d hesitated, whether he’d been afraid, angry, grief-stricken. Time had worn the rough edges of that event smooth. He thought, perhaps, there had been someone else there with the witch king, watching, but he couldn’t be sure.

Oddly, the only detail Ambrose could recall with clarity was that it had required more force than expected to stab somebody.

Once the act was done, the witch king offered him training as a knight. A sweet gift made bitter by circumstance.

Between avenging his family and killing the traitor in sight of a church’s priests and saints, the book’s recollections of Ambrose’s life made him nauseous.

He’d pledged his devout service to the man who’d rescued him from certain death.

Somewhere between that moment and this one, he’d spilled so much blood in defense of his king that it dyed red the purity of those heroic dreams. Everyone he’d killed had been an enemy to the crown, yet … in his darkest hours, he’d wondered.

In his quest to be a hero, had he become a villain instead?

This book certainly thought so.

The man you hunted was a traitor. A dangerous apostate. Lives were saved with the sacrifice of his.

I know , thought Ambrose.

But as ever, his soul was the one to bear the bloodstains.

You were loyal and true. No king could have asked for better, but these books were written by the ones who killed me. It serves them to paint us both as villains.

Ambrose let the words soothe his fears, but it crossed his mind that, perhaps, the voice he heard was not the witch king’s at all. Perhaps it was only a figment of his deranged mind, pretty lies he told himself. Yet, he couldn’t help but hold on to the dying embers of hope.

Perhaps things could be different this time.