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Ambrose ran his fingers through the rough-cut layers of white hair fringing his face.

It hadn’t returned to its original brown.

Necromantic magic had siphoned the color in his past life, and it had stayed that way in this one.

He used to have twine to bind some of it off his neck. Perhaps he could find some later.

He pulled out a strand and gave it to Emery, who pressed it against the door. In a shower of sparks, it burnt a waving line into the paint. Ambrose followed him inside, magic trailing its fingers through his hair in recognition as he passed.

Once, he’d viewed magic with childish wonder and reverence. Now, his feelings were complicated. It felt like the caress of a lover whose affections had soured. He shuddered.

Inside, he’d expected it to feel like a crypt, the lair of a man mad enough to raise a several-centuries-old corpse.

Instead, an enchanted ward kept the rain from drizzling through a hole in the ceiling, moonlight pouring through instead.

The sparks of a spell from Emery warmly lit the room with candles and a fireplace.

Untidily stacked bookshelves scaled the walls, and the books that wouldn’t fit formed stalagmites surrounding squashy chairs.

A lumpy tartan blanket pooled where Emery had once been cocooned.

It was more comfortable than expected, but certain things put Ambrose on edge, too.

Through a doorway, he spied a kitchen with steel machines the likes of which he’d never seen.

A bed just the right size and shape for a hound lay empty next to the crackling fire.

The fire in particular made him avert his eyes, neck sweating with memory.

No one came to greet them, and Emery wore no wedding band.

It shouldn’t have surprised Ambrose. A man who couldn’t love his familiar enough to spare her life wasn’t liable to give his heart to a wife, but he looked four and twenty years at least, well past marrying age.

Ambrose thought he might have partnered for the stability of heirs, if not for love.

He switched focus to his own purpose here. “I’ll search the perimeter for dangers. Do you have a sword to equip me?”

Emery’s hawkish stare flicked skeptically from Ambrose’s face to his hands, where a soot-stained spell of magic smeared him from fingertips to elbows.

“In the history books, you never needed a weapon.”

Ambrose stiffened. “I prefer a sword.”

“Sorry to burst that particular bubble, but swords aren’t really a thing anymore. It wouldn’t serve you well, anyway. Wait until you hear about firearms.”

The word turned Ambrose’s stomach. Surely the ritual that turned his hands into weapons wasn’t a commonplace weapon of this era?

“You don’t need to search the perimeter. My wards will inform me if anything crosses the boundary or tries to enter. For now, it’s late. We can dive into the details of this arrangement after some rest.”

From the charcoal smear of sleeplessness under Emery’s eyes, he didn’t rest often.

Ambrose wanted answers, but fear of repercussion tempered his tongue.

While his suspicions and apprehension rose, he disguised them with an amicable smile and a nod.

“Of course, though I’d appreciate knowing the details of what imperils you.

Information could spell the difference between victory or failure. ”

“Mm. The particulars are tricky. I’ve an idea. A loophole, maybe, but tomorrow. My enemies don’t know about this place, anyway. I’m safe here. Mostly.”

That wasn’t reassuring in the least.

Emery flicked his fingers toward the armchairs and blankets. “Help yourself.”

He disappeared into an adjoining chamber, the door closing with the distinct click of a lock and the sniff of magic.

So he didn’t trust Ambrose even while holding his tether. It was a mutual feeling.

Now that he was alone, the bone-deep weariness of his resurrection sapped his strength. He melted into the armchair, pulling blankets over himself, disconcerted by the way they smelled of Emery—like sweet Scotch and campfire smoke.

The thought drew his eyes to the fire. With a flare of remembered pain, he looked away. Best not to think about that. Instead, he ought to dissect his new reality and form a plan.

Of a few things he was certain. He needed to find a way to return the witch king to life, he could not trust Emery, and he was wildly out of his depth in an era so temporally far from his own.

He would need to learn as much as possible to survive, and that would mean ingratiating himself to his new master. At least temporarily.

Moreover, he would need to find a way to maintain his current form.

The witch king had committed to maintaining the illusion of Ambrose’s masculine body where most would have flung the word “abomination” at him.

Emery wouldn’t likely provide such potions for free, but if Ambrose could convince him, or better yet, if Ambrose could find a way to procure such potions for himself—

The books lining the shelves taunted him with all their hidden knowledge. Solutions to his problem could lie in their pages, if only he could read them.

The witch king could have, if he were here.

A pang of grief and longing went through Ambrose, keen as the axe that clove them apart all those years ago. If only Ambrose hadn’t been outnumbered, if only he’d fought harder, they’d still be side by side.

My sweet, loyal hound. Not even the vast distance of centuries could tear you from me.

The voice, intimately familiar, was a spectral caress in his mind, so faint he couldn’t know for certain if he’d truly heard it, or if it had been a trick of the wind in the eaves and the crackling fire.

The fire.

It drew his eye like the morbid curiosity to look directly at something he knew would haunt him later. It leapt and snapped, snaring him in memory.

A raging forge. The hollow husk that still vaguely resembled a man inside. A hot poker sifting the embers.

He’d hesitated. Of course he’d hesitated.

Then the witch king, who could so rarely risk touching him, not in view of courtiers and lords, laid his soft, un-calloused palm against Ambrose’s cheek and said, “I cannot ask this of you.”

But that soft touch only steeled Ambrose’s resolve. “To protect you, I would do anything.”

He jammed his hands deep into the ashes.

Hot charcoal crumbled and encased him to the elbows in an agony so intense, his mind went white.

He screamed. His flesh melted. Pain transcended reason.

One moment, he burned as if every mote of him were aflame.

The next, he shuddered in the gripping jaws of cold, his body failing to make sense of what it felt.

Does this pain sting, scald, freeze, bruise, lacerate, ache, infect?

His mind hadn’t known, so his body had felt it all.

The hungry fire flashed necrotic green as it fed, skin and sacrifice feeding the spell. His blood boiled with magic like hot oil, quickening into the bones of him, transmuting his pain into the kind he could inflict.

But Ambrose had always been loyal. No amount of pain could turn his heart. And the witch king’s gentle hand on his cheek, catching his scalding tears, had been its own twisted balm of relief.

Many centuries later, he lay in blankets next to a fire, looking at his permanently ash-stained skin. Hunger, that old dog, licked its lips and curled in his belly. A starving void he’d never quite sated since that day.

He wondered if the abilities that blighted ritual had imbued him with still worked. He feared finding out. For all that they were useful, they’d always left him feeling sick and hungrier than ever.

He’d never regretted it, though. Not when it had made him such an effective guard against all those who would do his king harm.

Not when, afterward, he’d spent a week in bed healing, tended to by his king, who applied cooling salves to Ambrose’s arms and palms and fingers, intimate as a honeymoon and sensual as a kiss.

The closest they could come to either.

He turned his face from the fire, focusing instead on the aperture in the ceiling through which a window of starry sky winked at him. In spite of the hunger, his leash held in the hand of a stranger, and the fact he was alone, his thoughts turned two words around like a spindling thread of hope.

I survived, I survived, I survived.