Kaelen didn't wait for the attacker to clear the frame. He moved with the practiced, predatory economy of a man who had spent half his life in a saddle. He lunged, the short-sword Valerius had gifted him sinking into the gap between the attacker's helmet and gorget. There was a wet, choked sound, and the man slumped back into the snow.
"Out! Now!" Kaelen barked.
He didn't look to see if Valerius followed. He kicked the door wide and rolled into the slush, his boots finding purchase on the uneven mountain pass.
The scene was a chaotic tableau of gray and red. Their driver lay facedown in the ruts of the road, a black-fletched arrow protruding from his spine. Three riders—Huntsmen of the North, draped in the heavy, mottled furs of the Prince's elite trackers—were circling the carriage, their horses huffing great plumes of steam into the midnight air.
"The merchant! Bring me his head!" one of the riders shouted, drawing a broad-bladed scramasax.
Kaelen stood his ground. He felt the familiar hum of adrenaline, the way the world slowed down until he could count the individual snowflakes landing on his knuckles. He was weak, yes—his muscles screamed from the weeks of starvation and the lingering traces of the Southern sedatives—but a Lion, even a dying one, knew how to use its weight.
Valerius tumbled out of the carriage behind him, his own dagger drawn. He looked less like a Prince and more like a cornered animal, his pale hair plastered to his forehead by the sleet.
"Stay behind the wheel!" Kaelen commanded, parrying a downward swing from the first rider. The impact vibrated up his arm, threatening to shatter his collarbone. "They have the height advantage. Force them to dismount!"
"I don't take orders from—" Valerius started, but his words were cut off by the whistle of another arrow. It thudded into the wooden frame of the carriage, inches from his ear. He ducked, his face going ashen. "Fine!"
Kaelen didn't wait. He whistled—a sharp, piercing note that mimicked a Northern hawk. The lead horse, startled by the sound and the sudden scent of blood, reared back. Kaelen stepped inside the beast's reach, slicing the cinch of the saddle with a single, fluid motion.
The rider went down in a tangle of leather and fur.
Before the man could regain his feet, Kaelen was on him. But as he raised his blade for the finishing blow, a sudden, sharp pain flared in his side—the old wound Thorne had given him. He stumbled, his vision blurring for a terrifying second.
The downed Huntsman saw the opening. He lunged with a hidden boot-knife, aiming for Kaelen's throat.
Clang.
The sound of steel meeting steel rang out, brittle and high. Kaelen blinked, his vision clearing just in time to see Valerius standing over him. The Prince's dagger had caught the Huntsman's knife mid-air. Valerius wasn't a master swordsman—his form was frantic and untrained—but his eyes were burning with a cold, desperate ferocity.
With a guttural snarl, Valerius drove his weight forward, burying his dagger in the Huntsman's chest.
"I told you," Valerius panted, his breath hitching as he looked down at the dying man. "I didn't buy you to watch you die in the mud."
"Behind you!" Kaelen roared.
The second rider had dismounted and was charging with a heavy mace. Kaelen grabbed Valerius by the back of his fur mantle and hauled him out of the way just as the mace shattered the carriage's lantern, spraying oil and glass across the snow.
The fire caught instantly.
In the flickering orange light of the burning carriage, the two of them stood back-to-back—the Fallen General and the Ghost Prince—surrounded by the shadows of the North.
"Can you ride?" Kaelen asked, his voice low and steady.
"Better than I can fight," Valerius replied, his hand trembling as he gripped Kaelen's arm for stability.
"Then take the bay horse. I'll take the black." Kaelen pointed to the two riderless mounts milling nervously near the edge of the cliff. "We have three minutes before the rest of their patrol hears the struggle. If we stay on the road, we're dead."
"The Blackspire Pass?" Valerius asked, looking toward the jagged, moonlit peaks that seemed to pierce the very stars. "Even the goats don't climb that in winter."
Kaelen looked at the burning carriage—the last remnant of his "servant" identity—and then at the blood on his hands. For the first time in a month, he felt like a man again.
"The goats don't have me to lead them," Kaelen said. "Move, Prince. Unless you'd prefer to wait for your brother's hospitality."
They scrambled for the horses. Kaelen mounted the black stallion with a grunt of pain, his fingers knotting into the mane. He looked back once, seeing the third rider—the one who had been circling—fleeing into the woods to fetch reinforcements.
"He'll be back with twenty men," Valerius warned, pulling his horse alongside Kaelen's.
"Then we'll have to make sure we're twenty miles deep into the stone by the time he arrives." Kaelen kicked his horse into a gallop, heading straight for the vertical shadows of the mountains.
The Shelter of the Crags
Four hours later, the adrenaline had faded, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion that felt like lead in their veins. They had climbed high above the tree line, where the wind was a constant, screaming presence and the path was barely wide enough for a single horse.
They found a shallow cave, tucked behind a curtain of frozen ivy. It was barely big enough for the two of them and the horses, but it offered a reprieve from the wind.
Kaelen slid from his saddle, his legs giving out the moment his boots hit the stone. He slumped against the cave wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
Valerius was silent. He busied himself with the horses, unsaddling them with practiced, if somewhat clumsy, movements. He didn't speak until he had laid out a single, heavy fur blanket between them.
"You saved me," Valerius said. It wasn't a thank you; it was a statement of fact, whispered into the darkness.
"I saved my meal ticket," Kaelen replied, his eyes closed. "If you die, my family dies. It's a simple calculation, Valerius."
"Is it?" Valerius sat down across from him. In the gloom, the silver mask he had put back on was a haunting, ghostly white. "You could have taken that sword and run. You could have joined the Huntsmen. They would have paid you a fortune for my head."
Kaelen opened one eye. "And spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for your brother's assassins? No. I've had enough of kings and their whims. You're a monster, Prince, but you're a monster I understand."
Valerius reached out, his gloved fingers hesitating before he touched the iron collar still locked around Kaelen's neck. The metal was frigid, biting into Kaelen's skin.
"I lost the key in the fire," Valerius whispered.
Kaelen felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. "Then I suppose I'm still your property."
"No," Valerius said, his voice dropping to a register that made the hair on Kaelen's neck stand up. He leaned closer, the scent of cedar and woodsmoke clinging to him. "Property doesn't bleed for its master. Property doesn't have eyes that look at me with such... magnificent hatred."
Valerius pulled back, the mask hiding whatever expression he wore. "Rest, General. Tomorrow, the real climbing begins. And if you drop dead of exhaustion, I'm not carrying you."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Kaelen muttered.
But as he drifted into a fitful sleep, Kaelen realized with a jolt of alarm that he was no longer thinking about the gold he'd sent home. He was thinking about the way Valerius had looked in the firelight—terrified, broken, and yet somehow, more alive than anyone Kaelen had ever known.