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M y vision narrowed as I drove my mount through the winter forest.

Michail . The name throbbed with each thundering hoofbeat, pulsed with every ragged breath torn from my lungs. My brother had landed on our shores. The knowledge writhed inside me like something rabid, turning my stomach to acid. Not just my brother, but a usurper king who wore a golden mask to hide what the Rot had done to him, to hide that it would eventually disfigure him and drive him mad, if it hadn’t already.

The brother who poisoned our father, who’d murdered our older brother Andrej. He’d collared me and sold me into slavery. Now he brought his forces to corrupt these lands just as he had corrupted Ostovan.

Branches struck my face. I welcomed each bright point of pain as needles and bark flayed skin. My fingers numbed on the reins, locked in a death grip after an hour of wild riding through the underbrush. The cold pierced me. The threat of a broken neck on these treacherous slopes should have made me pause. But caution drowned in the red haze consuming my thoughts.

The sound of pursuit grew closer. Only Ruith would dare follow when I was like this, coiled tight as a bowstring and twice as likely to snap. Only he possessed the arrogance to believe he could stop what had to happen next.

My mount's breath clouded in the frigid air as we wove between ancient pines. Snow sprayed from his hooves. The forest thickened, branches hanging low under their white burden. Perfect. I yanked the reins, plunging us into the densest part of the grove where deeper snow would slow my pursuer. My teeth ground together until my jaw ached.

"Elindir!" Ruith's voice cracked through the trees like a whip. "For love of the gods, stop this madness! You ride to your death!" The raw edge of fear made my chest constrict. He'd already died for me once. But this wasn't about him, or us. This was about Michail, about betrayal that ran deep as marrow. My brother's poison had to be purged from the world Ruith and I were working so hard to build.

A growl ripped from my throat. I answered by spurring my horse faster, ducking beneath a snow-laden branch. The impact sent white powder cascading down my back. My hands trembled with the effort of controlling the reins, rage making my movements jerky and wild. Let him follow. Let him try to command me as if I were still his slave. Those days were done.

The ground dropped ahead, plunging down into a frozen stream. Jagged ice coated the rocks like dragon's teeth. The sight barely penetrated the pounding in my head, the metallic taste on my tongue. I pulled up short, some last thread of self-preservation winning out over blind fury.

That heartbeat of hesitation was all Ruith needed. His larger mount crashed through the underbrush beside us, cutting off our path. My horse reared. I tried to keep my seat, but the motion combined with my own reckless anger sent me tumbling into the snow.

I rolled to my feet, white powder clinging to my clothes. Before I could regain balance, Ruith was on me. We went down hard, the impact driving the air from my lungs. Snow crushed beneath us as we grappled, my rage finding new focus in the physical struggle. I swung at him, connecting with his jaw. The pain in my knuckles felt good. Real .

He caught my next punch easily, using his greater strength to flip us over. My back slammed into the packed snow as he pinned my wrists above my head. The familiar position sent heat coursing through me even as I bucked against his hold.

"Get off me," I snarled.

We both knew it was an empty threat. My body was already betraying me, responding to his dominating grip even through my fury.

I twisted beneath him, testing his hold. The pressure on my wrists increased in warning, sending sparks of pleasure pain down my spine. My throat tightened, phantom pressure from a collar long removed.

"He murdered our father," I choked out. "Andrej. Everyone."

The memories rushed back, months of Modir's torments while Michail watched. The way my own screams had died in my throat when they collared me.

"He took everything. My voice. My freedom. And now he brings his corruption here." My voice cracked. "I won't let him destroy everything we've built."

His grip shifted. Ruith caught my jaw. Fingers dug into my skin, forcing me to meet his gaze.

"And throwing your life away solves this?" Fear blazed in his eyes. Not for himself. For me. "I've already watched you die once,” Ruith growled. “Never. Again."

The memory hit me hard. His face still as he lay in his bed. Features peaceful, almost as if sleeping. But his skin had been cold beneath my hands. His soul gone. He'd done that for me, to save me. If I died now, I'd be spitting on that sacrifice.

My struggles weakened. But rage still burned hot in my chest, a banked fire refusing to die.

"Then help me stop him," I whispered. "Before he does to your people what he did to mine."

His thumb traced the edge of my jaw. Gentle. At odds with the iron vise around my wrists.

"We will stop him. Together. But not like this."

His weight doubled, driving me deeper into the snow. My lungs fought for air beneath him.

"Not in blind revenge that leaves you dead in the end."

I arched my spine, muscles caught in the paradox of resistance and surrender. Heat bloomed where our bodies pressed together. Cold bit everywhere else. The familiar dance of power anchored me even as Michail's betrayal clawed at the edges of my mind, threatening to drag me back into that red fury.

"I can't just wait while he spreads his corruption. While he—"

Teeth against my throat. Sharp. Possessive. My words died as Ruith's mouth found the tender hollow where my pulse hammered. A visceral reminder of who held me now.

"You will wait." His lips vibrated against my skin, each word a command pressed directly into my flesh. "You will plan. You will trust that I understand exactly what's at stake."

His grip constricted. Black spots swam across my vision. The edges of the world darkened.

"And you will not throw away everything we've built on a suicide mission. I forbid it."

A shiver raced down my spine that had nothing to do with the snow seeping through my clothes. My body responded before my mind could resist, remembering chains and commands and submission. Muscle memory. Bone deep. Months of slavery had carved these responses into me.

"I am not your slave anymore." I spat the words through clenched teeth.

They rang hollow even to my own ears. We both knew the truth wasn't so simple. The collar was gone, but something else had replaced it. Something deeper. Something chosen rather than forced.

Something more.

His free hand slid from my jaw to my throat. His palm settled over my pulse. A pressure so light it barely existed. The ghost of what once was.

"No. You're not my slave."

Heat laced his voice. It made my pulse jump beneath his fingers. The rhythm of prey recognizing predator.

"You're something far more dangerous. My equal. My partner in this war."

His fingers tightened fractionally. A promise. A threat. Both at once.

"Which means I need you alive and thinking clearly."

The words sliced through my rage like a blade through flesh. Equal. Partner. The terms still felt foreign on my tongue, though we'd been building this new dynamic between us for months. Snow melted beneath me. Cold water soaked through my clothes. My struggles gradually stilled.

"The rider who brought news of Homeshore's fall still lives,” Ruith said. His weight shifted, but he didn't release me. "He still lives, barely. If we return now, we might question him further about Michail's forces, his plans. That's worth more than a suicidal charge into enemy territory."

My teeth clenched at the memory of the messenger's words. Homeshore taken. The port burning. The news had sent me riding blind with fury before hearing anything else.

"He was barely conscious when he delivered his message," I said. My voice scraped raw against my throat. "What makes you think he still lives?"

"If he doesn't, we have other ways of getting answers. Daraith awaits our return. Dead or alive, that messenger will tell us what we need to know."

The necromancer's name sent a shiver through me different from the cold seeping into my clothes. I'd experienced his powers firsthand when he helped raise me from death. I remembered nothing of death, or my immediate return, but the thought of him questioning a corpse made my skin crawl. Still, necessity overruled revulsion.

Ruith finally released me. He rose to his feet and offered his hand. I took it, pride warring with practicality as he pulled me up. He didn't release my hand. Instead, he pulled me closer, his other hand tangling in my snow-dampened hair.

The kiss was claim and comfort both. Fierce enough to steal my breath. A reminder of everything we'd built, everything I'd risked with my blind charge toward vengeance. I leaned into him despite myself. His warmth chased away the lingering chill of rage.

When he finally drew back, his eyes held equal measures of love and warning. I found myself doing what no other would dare. What even now felt like a privilege that stole my breath. My fingers slid into his dark hair, brushing one of his braids.

The touch transcended physical intimacy. More intimate than any kiss. Any coupling. The fact that he allowed it—that he leaned into my touch rather than pulling away—said more than any political title of consort ever could. A reminder that we were bound by more than just the remnants of old power dynamics now.

His sharp intake of breath matched my own. His hand caught my wrist. Not to pull away, but to press my palm more firmly against his hair.

"Still trying to tame me?" he murmured. His voice had gone rough.

"No more than you've tried to tame me," I whispered back.

My fingers wound deeper into his braid. The admission cost nothing now, not when we both knew the truth of us.

"We're beyond that, aren't we? Wild things choosing to stay."

His answering smile held an edge of the vicious prince I'd once despised. He turned his head. Pressed his lips to my palm. I marveled at how such a gentle gesture could come from the same elf who'd had me tied to a post and flogged mere months ago.

The path from collar to consort still felt unreal at times. From hating this elf to fighting beside him to sharing his bed. Each step was impossible until it wasn't. Even now, part of me marveled at how completely my world had shifted.

Our horses found their way back to us through curtains of falling snow. In my blind rage earlier, I hadn't truly seen the transformation of the Twilight lands around me. Now, as we mounted and began our return to Calibarra, the strange beauty of it stole my breath.

Snow fell in absolute silence. Not the wet, heavy flakes I knew from Ostovan winters, but crystalline fragments that caught light and shattered it into rainbow shards. The ancient pines towered above us, their branches laden with white that sparkled with an almost blue tinge. Even the air felt different here. Sharp and clean. It scraped my lungs with each breath.

Ruith rode slightly ahead. My gaze fixed on the way snow settled in his dark hair, refusing to melt. As if the land itself had claimed him. The same snow that soaked into my clothes and bit at my exposed skin seemed to embrace him. Made him more ethereal. More Other. A reminder that for all we'd become to each other, he wasn't human.

"How many winters have you seen?" The question slipped out before I could stop it.

We'd never discussed it, though the thought had haunted me since he'd made his bargain with death. One day each year spent cold and still. Trading precious years of his life to keep my heart beating. If I was lucky, I had maybe thirty more winters ahead of me. Thirty days of death for him, scattered across whatever span of life elves were granted.

He glanced back. Snowflakes caught in his lashes. "Does it matter?"

"Answer the question."

A pause. Only the soft crunch of snow beneath hooves filled the silence.

"Thirty-two." His voice was carefully neutral. "Young enough that my enemies still whisper I'm unfit to lead, old enough to prove them wrong."

"And how many do your people usually see?"

I found myself holding my breath. Unsure why this answer suddenly seemed so important.

The shadow of a smile crossed his face. "The oldest I've known reached one hundred and seventy winters. Though few of us die of age alone in these times." His expression darkened. "My father is nearing one hundred and twenty. Still strong enough to make both our lives difficult for quite some time."

The knowledge settled heavily in my chest. Not immortal then, as humans whispered, but still... I might live another thirty years, if lucky. He could have over a century more. And he'd pledged to spend one day of every one of those years in death, all to keep me at his side.

"Don't," he said softly. "Every winter was the same before you. Let me have these that will be different."

The words caught in my chest like a blade. Such a simple way to dismiss the weight of his sacrifice. As if trading days of his life for mine was nothing more than a pleasant change of seasons.

"You could have a century of unbroken winters ahead of you."

"A century of winters alone." He turned in his saddle to face me fully. Snow clung to his dark hair like a crown of stars. "I made my choice, Elindir. Let me have the peace of it."

I looked away first, unable to hold his gaze. The snow continued to fall in that unnatural silence. Each flake was perfect and sharp as diamond dust. Like everything in the Twilight lands, even the weather carried an edge of dangerous beauty.

We rode deeper into the ancient forest. Trees wider than village houses rose into the white sky. Their branches wove together so tightly that the snow fell in strange patterns, creating paths and circles in the air that seemed almost deliberate. The elves had names for these trees. Names so old they weren't even words anymore, just sounds shaped by centuries of reverence.

A wolf's howl shattered the silence. My horse's ears pricked forward but showed no fear. More howls answered. The sound rolled through the forest. They were speaking to each other, I realized, in a language as old as these woods.

The sound triggered fragments of memory I'd been trying to piece together for weeks. The ritual hunt that had made Ruith king. I remembered the blizzard. Howling in the snow. Chasing after what I thought was a lone wolf and then...

And then everything was strange for a time. It felt like a fever dream. Ruith battling a great white wolf who became a man. Ruith cutting out its heart. Coming down the mountain somehow unscathed with the heart of a dead god in a pouch… It seemed impossible, but in this wild and ancient land, perhaps not.

The snow deepened as we rode. The forest transformed into something from a dream. Everything sparkled with an almost blue tinge in the strange, diffused light. Shadows took on colors I'd never seen in normal winters. Purples and greens that shifted when I looked directly at them. Had I really ridden through all this beauty blind with rage earlier? My fury at Michail felt distant now, though I knew it would return soon enough.

Then we cleared the tree line, and all thoughts of beauty vanished.

The pristine white carpet ahead was broken by dark patches where snow refused to settle. Blood stains. They were weeks old, but still seeping into the frozen ground. My horse picked his way carefully around a discarded shield. Just weeks ago, this field had been a sea of bodies. The place where I had died.

I touched my chest. Phantom pain flared where Senna's blade had pierced my heart. The snow wasn't thick enough yet to hide all the signs of what had happened here. Scorched earth from battle magic made black scars in the white expanse. Broken weapons caught the weak sunlight. Places where the grass would never grow again. Where too much power had been unleashed at once.

There were other marks, too. Ones only I would recognize. The exact spot where I'd killed my former overseer. Someone had since moved the rocks that had been slick with both our blood. The place I'd come to rest when I was too weak to keep crawling toward Ruith...

My mount snorted and tossed his head. Perhaps he remembered that day. The chaos of battle. The screams of dying men and horses alike. The sound of steel on steel and magic blasting. None of the accounts sung in the great hall mentioned those details. None spoke of how, even dying, I'd made sure Senna would never use that damned rod to hurt anyone ever again.

Ruith's horse drew alongside mine so close our legs nearly touched. He said nothing, but reached across the space between us to grip my arm. His touch anchored me to the present, to the quiet fall of snow rather than the memories of blood and fire. He'd held me here, though I was already gone and had no memory of it. Somehow, I knew that. And then he'd given up his own life to bring me back. The silence between us held the weight of that memory as we approached the fortress gates.

Above us, Calibarra's broken towers rose stark against the white sky. What had once been a ruin was slowly transforming under our occupation. Scaffolding clung to the outer walls where masons worked to repair ancient stonework. Smoke rose from dozens of chimneys. Proof of life returning to long abandoned halls.

Inside, the courtyard swarmed with life despite the knife-edge cold. Soldiers sparred in tight circles. Breath ghosted through helmet grills. Steel kissed steel. The familiar rhythm of preparation for war. Servants darted between shadows, bent low under the weight of supplies.

Ruith's plum blossom banner dominated everything, snapping against the wind defiantly as the king who raised it. We had bled for this place. Died for it. Vinolia's battle mages had nearly reduced us to ash mere days ago. Victory had cost us dearly. Now we clung to these stones like survivors to a shipwreck.

And now Michail brought his zealots to our shores.

Enemies pressed from all sides. Taratheil's loyalist forces controlled much of the north. With Vinolia and Kalus’s combined force at Valdrenn, we were cut off from the north, and Michail’s invasion cut off the eastern sea. The Yeutlands under Kudai fought their own war for independence against the Primarch, their support for our cause as fragile as spring ice.

Our rebellion against Taratheil's tyranny balanced on a knife's edge. If Michail's forces disrupted the delicate political balance we'd established, if the Primarch's loyalists found a common cause with these human invaders... I couldn't bring myself to finish the thought.

A cluster of people huddled near the healers' quarters. Their expressions told me everything before Ruith's captain approached.

"The messenger?" Ruith’s question turned brittle.

"Passed moments ago, my lord. The poison in his wounds took him in the end." He glanced at me. His eyes flickered away too quickly. "We've moved the body to the undercroft. Daraith awaits your word."

I swung down from my mount. Snow crushed beneath my boots, the sound too loud in the sudden stillness. Rage bubbled up inside me, fresh and hot at this denial of answers. I shoved it down. Buried it deep. The dead might speak more freely than the living, if properly persuaded.

My fingers buzzed with the phantom sensation of Ruith's braids in my hands. Wind caught the plum blossom banner and cracked it like a whip against the sky.

"You don't have to be present for this." Ruith’s voice was soft, almost lost in the wind.

"Yes, I do." My eyes fixed on the undercroft stairs waiting to swallow us. "Michail is my brother. My responsibility."

His fingers brushed mine. A fleeting touch, hidden from the bustling courtyard. "Our responsibility now."

Daraith waited in the doorway’s shadow, motionless. Watching. Waiting.

My hand drifted to my chest. Traced the raised ridge of scar tissue that marked death's entry point. Daraith had pulled me back from that final darkness. Now he would tear answers from another unwilling corpse about Michail.

Wind howled between the towers, carrying winter's bite and death's sweet rot. Above us, the plum blossom banner fought against the gale. The sun broke through the clouds briefly, a flash of spring's promise against winter's stranglehold.

If we lived to see it bloom.