Black Hellebore (Wraith Kings)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Summer following the events of THE IPPOS KING

B rishen faced sha-Mertok in the torchlit hallway, wishing he were any place else. “Are you ready?”

Once his Master-of-the-Horse and now his second, the older man nodded and patted the pommel of the sword strapped to his waist. “When diplomacy fails, there’s always good steel.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I grow weary of strife.” Brishen gestured to the servant standing behind Mertok. “You have both maps?”

The man bowed. “Yes, Herceges.” He raised a pair of large scrolls held carefully in his arms. “The one of Haradis before the galla attack, and the most current one. Should I bring anything else?”

His eyes widened when Brishen said “Perhaps a platter for my head. They will demand it by the time this meeting concludes.” He offered a small smile to indicate he jested. Partially.

The three men approached the closed door at the end of the corridor. The sentries posted on either side saluted Brishen before one opened the door and stepped inside first. He thumped the butt of the spear he held twice on the floor and announced, “The Khaskem. Regent of Bast-Haradis. Herceges of Saggara.” The sentry stepped aside, allowing Brishen a clear view of the room crowded with Kai who faced him and bowed in unison.

Brishen entered, with Mertok and the servant behind him, giving a quick nod to those vicegerents, justiciars, and clan leaders who’d responded to his summons to attend him at Saggara. His gaze swept the dimly lit room, noting the guarded expressions alongside the puzzled ones. He paused briefly on the woman he considered his opponent and might one day be his enemy if he ever found any proof of her maleficence against the queen regnant.

He recalled his earlier conversation with Ildiko in the garden. Surrounded by the verdant bloom of white flowers whose names he couldn’t remember, she was a pale rose herself standing beneath the moonlight, her vivid hair dulled by silver luminescence.

“Are you sure it’s wise to bring the Senemset matriarch here?” The frown marring her forehead deepened. “I know we don’t have proof she was the one who planned that assassination attempt on Tarawin, but she certainly has the means, the motivation, and the ruthlessness to do it. Who’s to say she won’t try it again while she’s here?” Ildiko’s strange human eyes narrowed. “I don’t trust her any farther than I can pitch her across the training field.”

Brishen had stroked her arms in reassurance and kissed her forehead. “I don’t trust her either, wife, and your summary of her character is accurate. However, I also know that Vesetshen wouldn’t expose herself to immediate suspicion by being close to such a crime. She’s a serpent, yes, but a wily one. If she was the one who sent an assassin for Tarawin, I doubt she’ll try anything like it again, at least while she’s here. If I’m right, she’ll spend her time trying to sow discord and doubt among my vassals.”

Ildiko’s frown changed to a scowl. “Vile woman. The moment you’ve had your fill of her, tell me so. I’ll have her thrown out of Saggara so fast, she’ll wonder what horse kicked her backside through the gates.”

He’d laughed, coaxing an answering smile from her, and assured her she’d be the first to receive that command along with a request for an upfront view of the event. No doubt it would go down in the annals of Kai history. There were already numerous records detailing how the Khaskem’s human wife had killed a Kai assassin while protecting the infant queen regnant. If Vesetshen was as intelligent as he credited her for, she’d think twice before crossing him or his deceptively fierce hercegesé.

The matriarch watched him from her place among the crowd gathered in the meeting room, her citrine gaze bright with a disdain she couldn’t or didn’t bother to hide. Brishen didn’t care what her opinion of him was, only that she did not plan murder or sedition while at Saggara. She considered him weak, despite his triumph over the galla. For now, her contempt worked in his favor.

“Welcome to Saggara,” he told the group. “I trust your journeys were easy and uneventful.”

“It’s an honor to receive your invitation, Your Majesty.” Cephren Emelyin winced and corrected himself. “Herceges.”

While Brishen disliked Vesetshen as much as Ildiko did, he possessed equal—if opposing—feelings for this justiciar. Cephren Emelyin had been one of his staunchest allies during those dark days of the galla invasion, even sacrificing great swathes of his valuable dream flower fields to protect Kai farmsteads from the demonic onslaught. It was his clever daughter’s idea to flood those fields that had sparked the plans he intended to share today.

An uneasy murmur wove through the crowd when Vesetshen said, “You mistake the meaning of the Khaskem’s message, Lord Emelyin. Just as he is no longer a king but merely a regent, that was a summons, not an invitation.”

As Brishen predicted, the matriarch wasted no time in throwing down the gauntlet. He left it where it lay—for now—and ignored her. “Feel free to define my missive in whatever way you choose,” he told the crowd. “The important thing is you’re here, and we’ve work to do.” He nodded to the waiting servant. “Lay out the maps.”

With Mertok’s help, the servant unrolled the large scrolls to reveal two maps and spread them across the table set in the middle of the room. River stones held down the corners and edges while feeble light from a few sconces set in the walls highlighted the detailed work of the mapmakers and surveyors Brishen had sent to the old capital in the spring.

He stood at the room’s perimeter, watching as his vicegerents and councilors lined one side of the table, three deep, for a look at the maps. Most would say he was a patient man, and he exercised that trait now, using it to observe the reactions of puzzlement, suspicion, and even grief, that crossed the many faces of the Kai gathered here. It was an ephemeral moment of somber peace, one guaranteed a swift death once he returned the predictable volley of questions with hard, unwelcomed answers.

One of the vicegerents with an estate neighboring Saggara tapped a finger on one of the maps. “I recognize this map, Herceges. Haradis before she fell. I remember when your father commissioned his cartographers to update it when the last neighborhoods of the new town were built.” His gaze moved to the adjacent map. “This is Haradis as well but outside the city walls with—” He paused, then glanced up at Brishen. “An extensive addition of earthworks, canals, and dams.”

He left the obvious question unspoken. Why?

Brishen turned his thoughts to the several sleepless days he’d spent in the past week contemplating the best way to deliver news of his plan: one sharp blow or several gentler swats? The end result would be equally painful.

“What would you do in my place?” he’d asked Ildiko as they lay in bed during one of those days.

She didn’t answer for the longest time, and he shifted to see if she’d fallen asleep. Instead, she stared at the bed’s canopy above them, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip.

“I know you’re inclined to ease them into the idea of what you plan to do.” She lifted his hand where it rested beneath her breast and brought it to her mouth for a quick kiss before returning it to her midriff. “You’ve always been thoughtful in that way, but thoughtfulness may be a detriment in this instance. Some might see it as manipulative for spooling out the information in a slow line instead of just telling them outright.” She offered a small smile. “A few of them act like children at times, Brishen, but they’re all adults in positions of leadership. There’s no need to play nursemaid to them.”

Brishen always valued his wife’s advice. “I plan to drown Haradis,” he told the Kai delegation.

The silence was like that of a still lake right before someone tossed a rock into the water, and the splash that followed akin to a crack of thunder. The chamber erupted into gasps and shouted protests as the shocked Kai surged toward their regent, brought up short by the large table between him and them. Mertok and the two sentries just inside the doorway made to pull their swords, only halting at a wordless gesture from Brishen to stand down. He waited, silent, until the cacophony died away.

“Why would you do this, Herceges?” The grief of a kingdom resided in Cephren’s anguished question.

A vicegerent spoke up before Brishen could answer. “Haradis is the Kai capital, the heart of Bast-Haradis. Have we not suffered enough with the loss of our magic? Must we help the galla complete the destruction of our heritage?”

Their questions were valid. He’d pondered each one himself during the bright hours when Ildiko slept beside him, and he’d stared—wide-eyed and wide-awake—at the bed canopy above him and listened to the echo of Megiddo’s last word before the galla dragged his eidolon into the breach.

“Farewell.”

The monk’s awful fate would haunt Brishen every moment he breathed as he searched for a way to save his brother-in-arms from that demonic prison and unite his spirit with his body. But that was a task for another day. This one was monumental enough on its own and would incite a battle of wills, if not weapons, in this very room.

“My greatest wish,” he told his audience, “is to go back to a time before the galla, when we had our magic and Haradis was a living, thriving city full of Kai, but that is a gift for gods, not monarchs or regents.”

No one in this room had been a refugee from Haradis. They lived on country estates in the remote prefectures under Saggara’s governance, lower-ranking gentry who would have never received a royal invitation to mingle among the upper echelons of Kai nobility and had little reason to visit the capital. He wondered if any of them realized what blessings such a shunning had bestowed upon them.

“Haradis is not the heart of our kingdom—our people are,” he said. “None of you have been there since the galla invaded. I have.” Plagued by dark dreams and darker memories, Brishen usually tried not to dwell on the images seared into his mind when he first entered Haradis as an eidolon. Now, he purposefully recalled them and shared their torment. “The city is nothing more than a ruin, not even a mass grave.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “When the galla kill, they consume. Everything. There are no corpses to bury or cremate, no bones to shrive.” The memory of riding through puddles of sludge that had once been living Kai still made his soul shudder. “There’s a reason why we had relatively few orphans and widowed spouses who fled here from Haradis.”

Entire families and clans—including all but two of the royal line—wiped out in a single night and the future of the Kai changed forever.

“Can we not rebuild it, Herceges? As you say, we can’t recapture what was lost, but can we not remake it into something new?” One young justiciar stared at him with eyes that glittered with shades of hope and desperation. He wished he could tell her yes on both counts. Instead, he shook his head.

“No, unfortunately not. Haradis may be dead, but it isn’t abandoned. A galla has been seen roaming the ruins.”

Unlike the response to his declaration that he’d drown Haradis, the crowd froze, gave a collective inhalation and paled to a Kai. Every face wore the twin expressions of horror and terror. Brishen was certain he’d worn the same look when Anhuset described her close call with the galla when she’d scouted the city against his orders four months earlier.

“Then you and your human comrades failed.” Vesetshen Senemset practically spat out the words, each one coated with the venom of contempt. “King Djedor would never have allowed this to happen or allowed you to further destroy his city.”

Brishen might have ignored her a second time, even disregarded the—no doubt—intentional lack of honorific when she addressed him. Her opinion mattered nothing to him. She had, however, cast her disdain wide to include men who’d ridden into battle with him to save a people not their own and at the terrible cost of a soul.

Something in his expression must have warned Vesetshen she’d crossed a line. Her challenging demeanor changed. Her head lowered as did the proud set of her shoulders, and her gaze flickered down and to the side, unconsciously seeking support from her fellow vicegerents. There was none to be had, and she suddenly found herself occupying a solitary space directly across the table from Brishen as her peers edged back.

He stared until her shifting gaze finally settled on her feet. “Whom are you addressing?” His inquiry fell softly into the room’s hush.

A fine shiver shook her frame before she lifted her head to meet his regard. Deeper color rode along her cheekbones and striped her neck. “Forgive me, Herceges. The shock of your news made me forget?—”

He cut her off midsentence. “I asked you a question. Whom are you addressing?”

Vesetshen licked her bottom lip, her throat visibly flexing as she gulped before answering. “I am addressing you, Your Highness,” she said and this time offered no excuses.

This woman had been trouble from the start. Consumed with ambition and self-importance, she’d made the same mistakes others had made: assuming his amiable nature made him a weak ruler, and forgetting he was the son and executioner of the Shadow Queen of Bast-Haradis. He had lived years under his mother’s malevolent scrutiny and survived. Vesetshen Senemset was barely a moth compared to the hawk that had been Secmis Khaskem. She was no match for him.

“Had we failed,” he said in the same soft voice, “there would be no Bast-Haradis. This meeting would not take place. There would be no one to grieve our dead because we would all be dead. Our entire world would be overrun, human and Kai alike, devoured by abominations whose hungers are never sated.” The space around Vesetshen widened incrementally as Brishen continued and the other Kai drew ever further away from the table. “As for King Djedor—” He paused, allowing the silence to grow even fatter with tension. “What would you, Madam Senemset, daughter of lower gentry and invisible to the old royal court, know of my father?”

The ice encasing each of his words might have frozen a hearth fire had one been lit in the chamber. The color in Vesetshen’s face bled away, leaving her hideously waxen. With her head bowed, he couldn’t see her eyes or the expression in them, but the way her claws dug bloody crescent moons into the backs of her clasped hands told him what her eyes did not. He’d embarrassed her in front of her peers, and whether she wrung her hands from rage or humiliation, or a combination of the two, he couldn’t say. If she was as intelligent as he assumed, she’d just learned a lesson about crossing him. If she did it a second time—and he suspected she might—she’d strike hard. It was then he’d have to show her he wasn’t only the son of Djedor, but also the son of Secmis. There would be no third time.

He released her from the rack of his regard and turned his attentions to the others. They, in turn, eyed him with a mixture of surprise, fear, and wary respect. There were even a few faint smiles from those councilors and vassals who, for their own reasons, didn’t like the Senemset matriarch any more than he did. “As I was saying, a galla was discovered roaming the ruins. My cousin, Anhuset, barely escaped its ravages while on a scouting mission inside the city in early spring.”

He’d expressly forbidden her from entering Haradis while on her ambassadorial trip with Serovek Pangion to the Lobak Valley. She’d defied his order, but for good reason. He still wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled for doing so and nearly getting herself devoured, but the foray into the city had revealed a danger he’d hoped no longer existed.

Anhuset hadn’t made her harrowing escape from Haradis alone. Serovek had been with her, but Brishen felt it unnecessary to mention that part. This group wasn’t much going to like the idea of human Beladine farmers encroaching on the land surrounding the city as it was, much less learning a Beladine margrave had walked its streets, even if he’d been there before as an eidolon himself.

There were no more interruptions after Vesetshen’s dressing-down as he gave a brief summary of what Anhuset saw in and around Haradis. He spent most of the time describing the rough waterways dug out by Beladine citizens whose farmsteads weren’t far from Kai territory and on the wrong side of the river where they didn’t have water to stop the galla invasion.

“We need to treat this encroachment as an opportunity and build on it. A team of laborers building better, more permanent canals and dams that would allow us to control the influx of water from the Absu during both droughts and rainy seasons will allow us to trap any galla within the city walls.”

“Why not just let the Beladine finish the work they started?” one justiciar asked with a shrug. “They have as much at stake as we do.”

Brishen sighed inwardly. This Kai was a decent sort but not much of a strategist when it came to long-term planning or the game of kings. “As regent, I can temporarily ignore a group of Beladine farmers with good intentions crossing into Bast-Haradis in an attempt to stop the galla. However, if I don’t send Kai to finish the work, it will be more than a few farmers. If word gets back to Rodan of Belawat that even one galla lurks inside of Haradis and there’s nothing to keep it trapped there, he’ll send in an army to do our job for us.”

Cephren spoke up, dread in his voice. “An invasion.”

Brishen nodded. “And as regent, I’ll be forced to counter it by declaring war on Belawat. How many more Kai are we willing to sacrifice to the galla in one form or another? And all for a dead city?”

“But is it necessary to flood Haradis itself if we build this great earthwork surrounding it?” Cephren pointed to the second map with the labyrinth of canals.

Unlike Vesetshen, who asked questions as a means to challenge Brishen, Cephren asked them to better understand. Brishen had infinite patience for such inquiries. “It is,” he said. “The breach between worlds is in a chamber below-ground in the palace.” The memory of that foul place still sickened him. “We don’t know how this galla escaped, but if there’s a new crack in the breach, flooding the city itself will keep the rest from breaking free.”

“A prison of water,” one clan matriarch said as she bent over the maps for a better look. “This will take an enormous numbers to complete in a timely fashion, Herceges. An army of laborers working in overlapping shifts so there’s no stoppage until it’s done.”

“And that’s why I’ve brought you all here,” he replied. “While Saggara is now the capital of Bast-Haradis, we’re first and foremost a garrison. I can field an army from here, but a workforce of the size needed for this project must come from your estates.”

He’d anticipated their consternation. Serovek and Anhuset had discovered the galla roaming Haradis in early spring, right before spring plowing began. It was now summer, and every prefecture was eyebrow-deep in haymaking, with sheep shearing soon to follow. The work would only intensify as the season progressed and every able-bodied Kai not in military service was called to weed, harvest, process, plow, and pannage before winter set in. Taking any part of that labor force for another task posed a hardship. Midsummer was always the lean time for food stores prior to the late summer harvest in any year. Not having enough hands in the field to harvest at summer’s end and plant cold-weather crops in autumn risked a starving winter. There wasn’t a Kai in the council chamber who wasn’t aware of it, and that worry reflected on their faces.

“I didn’t tell you of this until now because we needed an uninterrupted spring planting,” he said. “And I needed the time for my engineers and mapmakers to design and map these canals. You know your number of workers best—how to divide them between tasks such as harvesting and building canals. This challenge before us presents two mountains to climb: imprison the galla and not starve in the process. We have to work together. I have a small contingent of troops watching Haradis now, but I can’t empty out this garrison to dig trenches and still be able to defend our borders if necessary.”

“I have a question, Herceges.” Brishen braced for another round of sparring with Vesetshen. He’d cowed her into silence but only temporarily. At least she used an honorific this time, and her tone and expression remained studiously bland. “Since the galla drained the Kai of magic, are they even still a danger to our people? Was it not our sorcery that made them feed upon us?”

He only wished that were so. “They’re a danger to all living things, with or without sorcery. Magic only makes their prey that much sweeter and easier to hunt.”

The gods forbid any of these Kai ever discovered it had been he, not the galla, who’d stolen their birthright. Good intentions and victorious outcomes would instantly burn to ash in the face of a primal fury that would view him not as a savior but as the worst thief ever born of Elder blood.

Another vicegerent spoke. “How many workers do you need to accomplish this task in the fastest time possible without making it look like Bast-Haradis is amassing an army near Belawat’s southern border?”

Finally. A productive question. Brishen tried not to let his shoulders slump with relief. “That will be the greatest challenge and require a constant rotation of labor working night and day in all manner of weather.” He moved to the opposite side of the table so that he could view the maps right-side up. Mertok hovered nearby while the others kept a respectful distance but close enough to follow his descriptions of the maps’ details as he traced them with one claw. “To start, here’s what we’ll need.”

Over the next several hours, he and the summoned gathering made timetables for phases of project completion, estimated how many workers each estate could afford to send to Haradis and for how long, and made the master of the royal treasury tremble in sheer horror at the cost.

Brishen allowed only brief breaks for nature’s calls until his wife who sent servants in with food, drink, and a note for him.

He broke the seal to read while servants laid out an aromatic selection of spiced dishes on a spare table and served the rest of the sejm’s participants.

Prince of Night,

I assume, since no one has stormed out of the council chamber and there isn’t blood pooling under the doors, that things are going well. I’m certain calling a halt to proceedings to have dinner in the great hall would be a poor decision, however, no one thinks clearly when they’re hungry. As such, I’ve had the kitchens prepare and deliver a repast for everyone. There’s also water and small ale to drink but no wine. I’d be doing you no favors if I sent anything stronger, and your vicegerents rendered themselves stuporous from over-indulging. They are more than welcome to drink themselves under the table once the sejm is concluded to your satisfaction.

Come to me when it’s done. I’ll be awake, even if the sun is high above Saggara. You will always find sanctuary here.

IK

As usual, her subtle wit combined with bone-deep practicality lifted his mood and made him miss her fiercely, just as he did whenever they were parted. He smothered a chuckle at her remarks about the small ale, certain he’d already overheard a grumblings from a few vicegerents who wondered why no wine had been delivered. She was a loving wife but in ways that were rarely overt, and she knew him better than anyone—except maybe Anhuset. Her promise of sanctuary spoke more of her love for him than if she’d written “I love you,” in her note. That reassurance in these hard days of his regency had often been a lifeline for him, giving him strength when the weight of an invisible crown felt exceptionally heavy.

He resisted the temptation to bring the note to his nose and inhale the faint trace of her perfume lingering on the parchment. He’d save that for later when he was unobserved by a crowd of curious vassals. Instead, he tucked the note into a hidden pocket inside his tunic and nodded to the waiting servant who’d delivered Ildiko’s message. “Tell the hercegesé her thoughtfulness is noted and appreciated. I look forward to the haven of day.”

The messenger bowed and left but not before Brishen caught the fleeting puzzlement in the man’s expression at the last part of his reply. No Kai purposefully sought daylight. Ildiko would instantly know what he meant. His woman of day always did.

Unlike the more leisurely, social dinner hosted in the great hall, this one was merely a pause in their plannings, and Brishen discouraged any lingering over goblets of ale or chats about matters outside of the plans to turn Haradis into an island.

The meal was finished in short order and his vassals put to work providing the ways and means of transporting work crews, collaborating to supplement each other’s harvesting teams while a portion of their labor force worked at the ruined capital. By the time they had a coordinated plan in place, it was early afternoon, and everyone in the council chamber was exhausted and eager to find their beds, Brishen included.

“A servant will escort each of you to your rooms. Something to ease your hunger and quench your thirst will be delivered to you,” he told them as they waited to exit the chamber. “I bid you good day.”

None paused to talk with him, stopping only long enough to bow to or salute him as they filed through the doorway, a few hiding yawns behind their hands. A handful of servants stayed behind to clean the council chamber. Mertok stayed as well, taking a spot adjacent to his regent. The two watched as more servants herded Saggara’s esteemed visitors toward rooms reserved for them on the manor’s second floor.

“I’ve assigned a shadow to each of them,” Mertok said, his eyes narrowed against the stray bits of sunlight that managed to bleed through closed shutters and the spaces between doors and door frames. “Two to the Senemset matriarch. If any of them so much as sneeze, we’ll hear about it.”

Brishen was tempted to have his sha assign a battalion of shadows to watch Vesetshen. “The sooner she’s gone from Saggara, the better I’ll feel.”

“Just say the word, Herceges, and I’ll see to it she’s tossed onto the nearest horse and sent home in the next hour.”

Brishen chuckled at the hopeful note in Mertok’s voice. It seemed Madam Senemset had earned the dislike and distrust of more than just himself and Ildiko. “Don’t tempt me. The hercegesé said much the same thing. I’d consider it if it wouldn’t stir up questions and wrong-headed rumors among the others.” He scowled. “If, however, her shadows hear even a whisper of sedition from her, I want to know immediately.”

Eager to find his own bed and fall asleep in Ildiko’s welcoming arms, he left Mertok and hurried toward the private stairwell that led to the chambers reserved for the royal household and their most trusted retainers. The pair of sentries at the stairwell’s entrance were different from those who’d stood there when he first left for the council chamber. There had been at least one rotation of guard duty since he’d met with his vassals, maybe more. The two saluted him as he strode between them, taking the steps two at a time until he reached the third floor. Only one torch was lit in the long corridor that led to his and Ildiko’s bedchamber, and that was only for her benefit so she didn’t have to navigate the hallway in complete darkness if she chose to come downstairs for any reason.

A cold tingle suddenly danced across his nape, and Brishen paused at the topmost step. The tingle became a full-blown spike of terror when he spotted two slumped figures outside the doors leading to the royal nursery and his bedroom.

While he didn’t carry his sword, he wasn’t unarmed. The knife he pulled from the sheath at his belt caught the flicker of torch flame on the blade as he crept forward on silent feet. The doors to both rooms were closed, and he eased past the one leading to his bedroom to bend down and check the first guard crumpled like a broken doll at its threshold.

To his surprise, the man wasn’t dead, nor was the guard adjacent to him. Neither had been disarmed. Brishen didn’t pause to question that oddity, only re-sheathed his knife and picked up one of the guard’s swords where it lay half-drawn from its scabbard. He rose, took a position between the doors with his back to the wall and reached with his free hand to push lightly on his bedroom door.

It didn’t budge. He pushed harder and still it didn’t move. If someone was on the other side with an arrow nocked in readiness, waiting to ambush him, the door would have easily opened. He didn’t breathe any easier. If Ildiko had barred the door from the other side, he had no way of getting in without breaking it down, and it would take a troop of people with axes to cleave their way through.

He used the same tactic on the nursery door, his heart racing when that one opened a finger’s width. Not barred but blocked. Brishen glanced down at the sliver of an opening between the door and frame and shoved harder, still keeping himself a hard target to hit with an arrow.

The door gave a little more, and this time he could see that another body, propped against it, blocked his way in. The awful silence on the other side pressed down on him, nearly drowning out the hammering heartbeat in his ears. He shoved harder this time, listening for the telltale twang of a bowstring. All remained quiet.

Satisfied there was no enemy waiting on the other side, Brishen pushed the door wider a third time, stepping over the body that held it closed. A quick sweep of the nursery confirmed his worst fears. Tarawin’s two nurses lay unconscious on the floor in front of the chairs on which they must have been seated. A pair of teacups and an overturned teapot lay between them.

He turned to check the guard. Dendarah, one of the royal guards who’d risked her life to bring the newly orphaned queen of Bast-Haradis safely to Saggara and ensure the continuity of the Khaskem line, lay much like the sentries outside, senseless. Whatever had reduced her to this state hadn’t worked quickly enough. He glanced at the door bar raised out of its brackets so that it listed to one side on the bracket closest to the hinge. Dendarah’s fingertips rested against it, as if she’d managed to lift it enough before collapsing. A guard, a pair of nurses, but no child queen regnant to be found in the nursery.

His heartbeat didn’t slow as he approached the door connecting the nursery to his and Ildiko’s chamber. There was no bar on either side, and no locks. Hope was a thing unconquered even in the face of grim reality. He knew what he would—or wouldn’t—find there, yet still he hoped.

Unlike the nursery, his bedchamber remained shuttered against the day, still swathed in shadows. But Night, and her sister Darkness, hid nothing from him. He saw the empty bed with its covers neatly made, and the table where he sometimes shared a private meal with Ildiko, its surface set with a teapot and two cups. The chair she always claimed as hers was shoved to one side as if she’d risen abruptly from her seat. Beyond that, the room was undisturbed, unoccupied, and Brishen drowned in the horror of it.

Someone had taken his wife and daughter.