Page 4 of The War of Four Winters

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.

Thestonestairsspiraledinto darkness. Each step felt worn beneath my boots, centuries of use smoothing the rough edges until they gleamed like polished glass. Shadows pooled in the corners, thick as spilled ink, broken only by the cold blue light of ritual markings. The necromancer walked ahead of us, silver Silfein tattoos catching what little light there was.

Aryn moved silently beside him, my half brother's silver hair gleaming faintly. Their shoulders nearly touched as they descended, a closeness that spoke of growing familiarity. The sight made something in my chest tighten. Aryn had always held himself apart, fiercely guarding his privacy and personal space. Even among family, he maintained careful distance. Yet here in the darkness, he seemed to gravitate toward Daraith with an ease that made me wonder what had changed between them.

My boots scraped against stone as we descended deeper. The sound echoed back wrong, distorted by the curve of the walls and whatever magic lingered here. Beside me, Elindir's breathing grew measured, controlled. He was forcing himself to stay calm. I wanted to reach for him, to offer some anchor against the oppressive weight of this place, but touch felt forbidden here. The dead had their own rules.

The temperature dropped with each turn of the spiral, until our breath clouded in front of us. Not a natural cold, but the deep chill that came with death magic. My skin prickled with it, an instinctive rejection of what we were about to do. The copper taste of old blood filled my mouth, though I knew it was just memory. My own death sleep had left marks that resonated with this place.

We reached the bottom, where the passage opened into the true undercroft. Centuries ago, this had been a temple to Náthella, goddess of unsanctified dead. Now it served a darker purpose. The circular chamber stretched away into darkness, its ceiling lost in shadow. At its center stood the ritual table where I had died for Elindir. My fingers found the spot beneath my ribs where Daraith had carved out his price, the phantom pain as sharp as memory.

The messenger's body lay there, already stripped and prepared. His skin had the waxy pallor of recent death, but the wounds that killed him were clean now. Someone had arranged his hands at his sides, closed his eyes. Just as they had done for me, those small attempts at dignity felt obscene in this place. My jaw clenched as I forced myself to look at the table, to master the instinct to flee from this place that had claimed part of my soul.

"We eased his passing," Daraith said, his voice barely above a whisper. The sound carried, bouncing off the curved walls until it seemed to come from everywhere at once. "He was given cloudwine before the end. His spirit lingers willingly to speak with us."

Aryn moved to stand beside him, their shadows merging in the ritual light. His usual silence held, but his ice-blue eyes fixed on the corpse with cold understanding as he reached for one of the silver needles. His hand brushed Daraith's arm as he passed it to him, the gesture casual but lingering.

I caught the way Daraith's expression softened when Aryn's fingers brushed his, a glimpse of warmth in this cold place that made me look away, suddenly feeling like an intruder. Whatever understanding had grown between them felt private, precious in its rarity. Aryn had spent years building walls between himself and others, accepting touch from almost no one. To see him willingly bridge that gap now stirred both hope and protective concern in my chest.

Elindir moved closer to the table, his face set in hard lines. The sight of the dead messenger seemed to pull him back to darker memories, and I saw how his hands clenched at his sides.

The necromancer began laying out his tools while Aryn assisted. They moved in practiced synchronization, as if they had done this dance countless times before. Silver needles caught what little light was available. A bowl of water so dark it looked like liquid shadow. Bones, carefully arranged in patterns.

Each item increased the wrongness in the air until breathing felt like swallowing ice.

"You've both experienced death," Daraith said, not looking up from his preparations. "You know the risks of calling someone back across that threshold. Even briefly."

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