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T he revelation twisted Ambrose’s insides in knots, but it reaffirmed their desperate need to do what they’d come for and leave. Morcant didn’t settle for punishing those he loathed in life alone; he punished them after death, too.

Emery rubbed his hands together vigorously to warm them against the chill of the ghost. “Let’s get this over with.”

The corpse door was blackly unwelcoming as they passed through. Emery’s witch light offered five feet of visibility and no more, so they walked slowly.

All the while, the grimoire called to Ambrose, melodic and dangerous as siren song.

The first thing they came to was an open sarcophagus made of stone. It was empty.

“Just when I think things can’t get any more cursed,” Emery murmured. “This is the sarcophagus we all sat in during the second half of the initiation rite.”

Sure enough, the dried remains of black roses littered the bottom of the sarcophagus. Ambrose tried not to appear overly condescending, but that seemed the point at which anyone sensible might have politely withdrawn their candidacy from the guild.

Emery read his expression too well. “I know . Not my finest hour in decision-making, but I thought it was just edgy ambience, not human sacrifice magic.”

They inspected it for a false bottom, but aside from the dark, rusty spray of blood on one side, it hid nothing.

They investigated the room further, finding a second corpse door.

This one was the same size and shape as the one Morcant and his students entered through for the rite.

Emery opened it with a spell, and sure enough, the room where the rats were sacrificed was on the other side.

A torch of necrotic green fire burnt eternally in a sconce, carving through the darkness better than the witch light.

As they turned, its beam glinted off something on the opposite wall.

Emery gripped Ambrose’s arm. Squinting, he understood.

An array of weapons were mounted on display, with a line of identical daggers at the top—a banner of them like wallpaper, with one missing from the far left.

They were the daggers used to kill the rats.

Ambrose counted six, excluding the one still hidden in the chapel ruin after Hellebore’s attempt to murder Emery with it.

Each was affixed to the wall by hooks stinking of ward magic.

It would be no easy feat to simply remove them, even if you ventured in to find them.

“When you went looking for them, did you not search the mausoleum first?” Ambrose asked.

“I did, but I couldn’t open the corpse door, no matter what charms I used. Maybe it could only be unlocked from this side?”

Something else stole Ambrose’s attention.

Below the daggers were many other weapons: swords, maces, a halberd, and—

An axe.

It still glowed faintly with an enchantment, making the blaze of scar tissue along his sternum burn with memory.

Without realizing it, he’d taken several steps toward it.

“Those are all the daggers from the initiation rite,” Emery said. “All of them, except mine.”

Ambrose heard him distantly, his ears ringing the closer he got to the axe. As if entranced, he found himself a foot from it. The haft bore a chorus of carved runes, its killing edge still keen enough to separate a man’s head from his neck. Without knowing why, he reached up to touch it.

“What is it?”

Emery had appeared at his elbow, a crease of concern between his brows.

The weapon seemed to whisper as Ambrose ran a thumb along its edge. He wouldn’t have to apply much pressure to draw blood. He felt the cold wind of the spell’s signature lingering there. He’d always wondered which of the witch king’s enemies had cast it. Ilonara Thorn, maybe?

It had been effective. It had shattered his enchanted armor, sundered the spell which made him heal quickly, bursting apart every protection the witch king imbued him with like teeth scattering from a shattered skull. The only mercy lay in how efficiently it had ended him.

“This is the axe that killed me,” Ambrose said.

Emery looked stunned. After a second he said, “I forget sometimes you died at all. Feels like you’ve always been here.” He flushed as though he’d said something revealing. “It must have been awful.”

“Not really. It was over so quickly, I hardly remember.”

“Was there anything after that?”

“Hm?”

“An afterlife.”

Ambrose shook his head. “If there is a heaven, they’d never admit a soul as stained as mine.”

An ephemeral feeling flickered past Emery’s half-lidded eyes. After a beat, he touched Ambrose’s shoulder, one finger grazing the arcane collar. “Those weren’t your actions.”

“He did not always compel me.”

“What’s the difference, when you know disobedience means your death?”

Ambrose didn’t think he was clever enough to find his way to the bottom of that philosophy. All he knew was that he wanted to do better than that, now he had a second chance to.

“The grimoire is in here somewhere. Let’s keep searching.”

“We haven’t checked this side.”

“I think it’s this way.”

Emery’s silence held weight, but he followed.

Ambrose listened for the song, now louder and as physical as taste or touch. The witch light shone over more sarcophagi set into the wall, and Ambrose felt along the cold stone until he came to one that was warm. The tinny ringing in his ears hit a fever pitch.

“It’s in here.”

“How do you know?” Emery sounded cautious.

“His magic is in my blood. I think it calls to its own.”

Emery shivered, looking mistrustfully at the sarcophagus. “Can you open it?”

“I won’t have to.”

Using his powers for destruction was easy, but retrieving something this way took effort.

Nevertheless, the magic answered his call eagerly, flooding his fingertips.

He thrust his arm into the sarcophagus, stone melting around his arm like butter.

He grimaced as his hand first encountered the dusty bones inside.

He cast around until his knuckles brushed coarse leather and old paper.

That’s it, my sweet wolf. You’ve found it.

Magic and the witch king’s spirit both coursed through him. He felt like a fragile vase overstuffed with water and soil, packed too tightly for anything else to grow. Abruptly, his head felt as if it might split.

“I almost have it,” he said.

Take it!

Emery looked concerned. “Can you pull it out?”

“I think so.”

You must!

A bead of sweat trickled down Ambrose’s temple. The worry line between Emery’s brows deepened.

“Ambrose, I could craft a spell.”

Don’t listen to him!

“Ambrose!”

Emery reached a hand out to stop him, comfort him, perhaps both, just as Ambrose let out a pained snarl and wrenched the book free from the tomb.

It tumbled to the floor from his numb fingers as he let go of his control of the magic.

It flooded back into the reservoir of his heart and made every beat feel labored, made his blood feel thick as mud.

You’ve done it. Good! I can finally return. You can reunite us at last.

“Ambrose. Ambrose, are you all right?” Emery asked.

Ambrose held his aching head and shuddered as Emery tried to pull his hand back to see the harm.

He couldn’t take it—the sweetly gentle way Emery asked after his well-being while the witch king rejoiced in spite of his pain.

Reading his mind, the witch king’s voice turned bitter. You’ve suffered worse pains than these, and I can heal all the moment you return me to this world.

It was true, and perhaps Ambrose was being too sensitive, but he couldn’t help leaning into Emery’s cool palm against his forehead.

“You’re burning up. You didn’t have to do that.”

Ambrose didn’t know how to explain, but he did.

Retrieving the book was penance for the way his once-pure desire to resurrect the witch king had been polluted by a fresh and intoxicating longing to indulge in Emery’s attention.

He didn’t know if Emery felt this, too. The need to be near.

To touch. To kiss. And not like a friend kissing his friend’s cheek in farewell, but a kiss that said, “Hello,” and then made itself at home, but he couldn’t indulge any of it without suffering this harrowing guilt that he’d betrayed the one man who’d ever loved him.

He could not even hide these craven wants from the witch king.

He jerked away from Emery’s touch. “I’m fine. The book?”

Emery looked lost, uncertain, but his witch light flew to hover a foot above the grimoire. Its fall left a track in the dust. Ambrose stooped to pick it up. It was thicker than his forearm and had a supernatural weight to it, as if the magic of its pages had their own density.

Open it.

The spine made the sound of splintered bones as it fell open.

I remember. I remember now. Page three hundred and thirty-two.

Ambrose had only just learned his numbers, but he’d been getting better with them. He liked numbers. They were solid, immovable. He flipped to the correct page.

It was littered with scrawlings, forming a halo around a singular phrase. Ambrose squinted, but he couldn’t understand it. It didn’t seem like English.

Emery looked over his shoulder. “ Em ruoved regnuh tel. What does that mean?”

Say it. Wear my spine like a wedding ring and say the words and my true name. And yours.

Ambrose shuddered. He had all the pieces now. He could bring the witch king back from the dead but chafed at the idea he needed to invoke his old name in order to do it. That was his name no longer.

It was not the only thing contributing to his resistance. After all this time spent trying to resurrect his king, too many doubts clouded his judgment to go through with it immediately.

He wanted to tell Emery.

He wanted Emery to tell him not to.

Do not fail me when we’ve come this far!

Emery said, “Now we have it, maybe it can help with more than killing Morcant. There could be a way to break the hold of the witch king’s magic on you, too.”

“Or to bring him back.”