Vortalis managed a strained laugh, a farce of humor. “That, too,” he said, and then, sobering: “Listen to me, Holland. Of all the ways to die, only a fool chooses pride.”

A servant entered with a loaf of bread, a bottle of kaash, a pile of thin cigars. Despite the crown, the castle, Vor was still a man of habit.

He took up a tightly rolled paper, and Holland snapped his fingers, offering the flame.

Vor sat back and examined the burning end of the taper. “Why didn’t you want to be king?”

“I suppose I’m not arrogant enough.”

Vor chuckled. “Maybe you’re a wiser man than I am.” He took a long drag. “I’m beginning to think that thrones make tyrants of us all.”

He blew out the smoke, and coughed.

Holland frowned. The king smoked ten times a day, and never seemed to suffer for it.

“Are you well?”

Vor was already waving the question away, but as he leaned forward to pour himself a drink, he put too much weight on the table’s edge and it upset, the Ost chips raining down onto the stone floor as he fell.

“Vortalis!”

The king was still coughing, a deep, wracking sound, clawing at his chest with both hands as Holland folded over him. On the floor nearby, the cigar still burned. Vor tried to speak, but managed only blood.

“Kajt,” swore Holland as he clutched a shard of glass until it bit into his hand, blood welling as he tore open Vor’s tunic and pressed his palm against the king’s chest, and commanded him to heal.

But the toxin had been too fast, the king’s heart too slow. It wasn’t working.

“Hold on, Vor….” Holland splayed both hands against his friend’s heaving chest, and he could feel the poison in his blood, because it wasn’t poison after all but a hundred tiny slivers of spelled metal, tearing the king apart from within. No matter how fast Holland tried to heal the damage, the shards made more.

“Stay with me,” the Antari ordered, with all the force of a spell, while he drew the metal shards free, his king’s skin soaking first with sweat and then blood as the metal slivers pierced vein and muscle and flesh before rising in a dark red mist into the air above Vor’s chest.

“As Tanas,” said Holland, closing his fist, and the shards drew together into a cloud of steel before fusing back into a solid piece, cursework scrawled along its surface.

But it was too late.

He was too late.

Beneath the spelled steel, beneath Holland’s hand, the king had gone still. Blood matted his front, flecked his beard, shone in his open, empty eyes.

Ros Vortalis was dead.

Holland staggered to his feet, the cursed steel falling from his fingers, landing among the abandoned Ost chips. It didn’t roll, but splashed softly in the pool of blood. Blood that already slicked Holland’s hands, misted his skin.

“Guards,” he said once, softly, and then, raising his voice in a way he never did, “Guards!”

The room was too still, the castle too quiet.

Holland called again, but no one came. Part of him knew they weren’t coming, but shock was singing him, tangled up with grief, making him clumsy, slow.

He forced himself up, turned from Vor’s body, drawing the blade his king—his friend—had given him the day they stood on the balcony, the day Vor became the Winter King, the day Holland became his knight. Holland left his king and stormed through the doors, into an eerily silent castle.

He called out to the guards again, but of course they were already dead.

Bodies slumped forward on tables and against walls, halls empty and the world reduced to the drip drip drip of blood and wine on pale stone floors. It must have happened in minutes. Seconds. The time it took to light a cigarette, to draw a breath, exhale a plume of cursed smoke.

Holland didn’t see the spell written on the floor.

Didn’t feel the room slow around him until he’d crossed the line of magic, his body dragging suddenly as if through water instead of air.

Somewhere, echoing off the castle walls, someone laughed.

It was a laugh so unlike Talya’s, so unlike Vor’s. No sweetness, no richness, no warmth. A laugh as cold and sharp as glass.

“Look, Athos,” said the voice. “I’ve caught us a prize.”

Holland tried to turn, dragging his body toward the sound, but he was too slow, and the knife came from behind, a barbed blade that sank deep into his thigh. Pain lit his mind like light as he staggered to one knee.

A woman danced at the edges of his sight. White skin. White hair. Eyes like ice.

“Hello, pretty thing,” she said, twisting the knife until Holland actually screamed. A sound that rang out through the too-quiet castle, only to be cut off by a flash of silver, a slash of pain, a whip closing around his throat, stealing air, stealing everything. A swift tug, and Holland was forced forward, onto his hands and knees, his throat on fire. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t spell the blood now dripping to the floor beneath him.

“Ah,” said a second voice. “The infamous Holland.” A pale shape strode forward, winding the handle of the whip around his fingers. “I was hoping you would survive.”

The figure stopped at the edge of the spell, and sank onto his haunches in front of Holland’s buckled form. Up close, his skin and hair were the same white as the woman’s, his eyes the same frigid blue.

“Now,” said the man with a slow smile. “What to do with you?”