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T he first clue that Emery wasn’t well: He didn’t emerge from his bedroom when the clock struck noon.

Ambrose had slept fitfully. He’d made himself toast and listened with one ear to the book about Henry and Simon while the other ear waited for sounds from Emery’s room. None came, not even the click of Katzica’s claws on the floor.

Silence preyed on Ambrose’s worst fears. Surely if anyone had broken the wards or hurt Emery, he would have heard? He wanted to check in but had never been given permission to enter Emery’s bed chamber.

Once the sun reached midday, he couldn’t staunch his worry any longer and knocked on the door.

A grunt of surprise followed, then a groan. “It’s open.”

Ambrose cracked the door. The curtains were drawn, but in a thin shaft of light, Katzica could be made out curled up on the end of the bed beside a lumpy shape in the blankets. Emery’s voice issued from within.

“You can come in.”

Ambrose stepped gingerly over the threshold.

If he’d thought the living room a mess, it didn’t compare to Emery’s bedroom.

Hardly a foot of floor space was not occupied by stacks of books, odd magical artifacts, trinkets, tithes, and potion bottles.

A footpath snaked between the chaos. Most strange were the wardrobes, one of which had the large doors common for clothing storage, another peppered with a grid of different-sized drawers, all with different knobs, the wood a mosaic of myriad colors in flaking paint.

Ambrose couldn’t see Emery’s face and followed one path toward the bed. His heart lurched a little seeing two empty potion bottles on the nightstand.

“Are you well?”

“Feel like I got hit by a bus.” Emery’s face emerged, cocooned in the blanket. “Must have caught something hanging out in graveyards an’ soggy bogs every night the past week.”

Ambrose’s heart picked up speed. “Have the potions helped?”

“One of ’em was to counter hexes. Not that they usually work. Morcant crafts his to be impervious.”

“And the other?”

“Painkillers. My head is caning, but I don’t think he hexed me. This isn’t his style. Probably just a cold.”

Just , Ambrose thought with mounting alarm. He’d suffered a cold and nearly perished. He leaned close to press his hand to Emery’s forehead and found it stifling and clammy.

“You’re feverish. Have you any spells to cure this?”

“There’s no cure for a cold, silly.” He sounded delirious.

Ambrose bit his tongue to keep the hysteria from tinging his voice.

He could protect Emery from violent spells and witches, but illness?

It was little wonder he’d come down with something, given the stress, sleepless nights, and lingering effects of Morcant’s various punishments.

The consequences if he succumbed to sickness now, though?

Together, they stood a chance against Morcant, but not with Emery one feverish step from the grave. Ambrose hadn’t damaged his standing with the witch king by refusing to kill Emery only to let him die of an ailment immediately after.

Colds had felled warriors and kings. He needed to find a way to bring Emery’s body back to healthy equilibrium, balance his humors, something.

Blearily, Emery looked at the clock on his nightstand, then bolted up. “Shit, I didn’t think it was that late.”

“You should rest.”

Emery swung his legs over the edge of the bed and started pulling on fluffy slippers. “I’ve got to go to the library. Find any books on immortality they might have.”

Ambrose grasped his shoulder. “You should sleep .”

“But—”

“You’re ill.” Ambrose pushed him back into bed insistently, bearing him back until he lay against the pillows. “Let me care for you.”

Never mind he hadn’t a clue how to do that. Emery had stopped fighting at least. Rather, he’d stopped moving altogether, staring at Ambrose wide-eyed, flushing to his neck and chest.

Abruptly, Ambrose realized his position—looming over Emery and pinning him to the mattress.

Afraid of intimidating him, Ambrose lurched back. “I’ll find something to help.” He retreated from the bedroom and went out into the hall. “Get some rest. I’ll be back.”

He shut the door, trying to think back to his own illness.

The physicians had used all manner of tincture and poultice to try and break his fevers, but the most effective means had been bloodletting with leeches, and he was quite conveniently located in a bog.

There were two issues. Leaving the sanctuary of the wards was one. The collar was the second. It would only let him go so far from Emery’s side.

He had to attempt it. Taking a mason jar from the kitchen and donning his cloak, he ventured out into the cold, damp air, closing the door silently behind him so he didn’t disturb Emery.

He didn’t get far before something caught his notice. Around the side wall, planks of wood and a gleam of dark iron peeked out from the moss and ivy. Upon closer inspection, it was a cellar door, smelling damp and rotted from disuse.

A bog seemed a poor place for a cellar, but then, it seemed a poor place for the chapel, so perhaps this spot hadn’t always been part of the wetlands. Either way, he’d seen no doors inside that could lead here.

It didn’t look as though Emery used it with any frequency, yet something about the door called to him.

Wonderingly, he knelt and reached for the iron padlock chaining the doors shut, startling at the unnatural heat of the metal. Magic laced its fingers with his. It had a familiar touch—like the peace of escaping a storm into a place of sanctuary.

Emery’s magic. His signature was unmistakable.

Ambrose flexed his hand. With his abilities, he could break the lock easily, but the presence of the spell bothered him. It begged the question: What had Emery hidden down there, and from whom?

It got under his skin. The new, delicate trust between them could fracture easily under the weight of one heavy secret.

This could be where he hid my remains , the witch king breathed.

Ambrose had the same thought, but now was not the time. He needed to do something about Emery’s fever.

You may not get another opportunity to search this place unobserved. Is my resurrection so much less important? He will not perish in the space of a few minutes.

Guilt gnawed at him. He’d refused his king’s orders twice already, and exploring the cellar shouldn’t take long.

Careful to be quiet, he gripped the padlock in his fist and let magic burn its way through the interior like lit oil. It snapped open. He wouldn’t be able to lock it again, so only a cursory inspection would make it appear untouched. But if Emery came down here …

He’d have to cross that bridge when he came to it.

The doors creaked open no matter how delicately he moved them.

The stairs descended into a hungry black mouth.

His arms broke out in gooseflesh as, with every step, the temperature dropped by a degree.

The cavernous echo of his footfall accompanied a constant percussion of water dripping, which he discovered the source of when he got to the bottom stair and a frigid flood soaked him to the ankles.

Without a torch, the only light provided came through the open cellar door. In its wan glow was a sodden pile of firewood and some ancient barrels, but mostly cracked stone and water. It looked empty and unused, except—

The air smelled of damp and algae, but some other fragrance accompanied it. An unplaceable wintery aura of snow and spruce.

They’re here. My bones are here.

Ambrose’s gaze snagged on a pile of moldering blankets in the corner.

He recalled that first night of his resurrection: Emery had bundled the witch king’s skeleton up like a load of laundry and cast a spell to transport it elsewhere.

He waded across to it. The closer he came, the more the chill aura of magic enveloped him. With reverent caution, he unfolded the soggy blanket, but no matter how delicately he moved, the bones within clacked together.

Careful!

Ambrose didn’t want to risk dropping any into the foul water, so he bundled the blankets up in his arms, climbed the steps out of the cellar, and laid them out on a bare patch of earth.

Most of the bones were all jumbled together, but the skull stood out with its golden circlet, divested of its rubies and sheen by grave robbers and long centuries.

Looking at its graying teeth and black sockets, he struggled to remember the sunlight of the witch king’s smile or the blue of his eyes.

“What do I do with them?” he whispered.

You must find one in particular. The seventh vertebrae of the neck.

“How will I be able to tell which one?”

He needn’t have asked. As he touched the bones to sort through them, his thumb brushed one so cold it felt as though it burned him.

Yes, that one! It bears a mark.

Ambrose had to use the corner of the blanket to hold it. Through the fabric, the cold seeped through, seeking to freeze his blood. On the backward protrusion was a mark—not like the engravings of the arcane tether. It glowed like frigid breath on the air.

Through intuition, he suspected only he could see it, or Emery might not have discarded it in the first place.

“What’s to be done with it now?” Ambrose asked.

As yet? Nothing. This spell requires a phrase to unlock it, a phrase only written in my grimoire.

“You don’t remember the phrase by rote?” That was not like the witch king.

Spirit memories are fallible, but I have one foot in the grave and one on the other side with you. It is not forgetfulness which keeps me from using the spell now, but a requirement in its creation. Do you remember how we gave up our names?