Chapter 4
The wind whipped across my bare cheeks, biting and raw.
I reached up with a gloved hand and touched the hollow of my throat.
The skin beneath my tunic was damp. When I pulled my fingers away, the leather of my glove was not stained with sweat.
It was stained with a single drop of clear, fragrant resin, weeping directly from the center of the healed scar.
The fluid soaked into the leather, warm as blood. My dead nostrils still breathed only cold air, but deep in the marrow of my bones, an alien memory flared into resonance.
A phantom resonance of cedar.
Of mountain lightning.
And of home.
The Ash Valleys did not welcome the living.
Where the Silverwood ended, the earth cracked open like a split carcass, spilling out miles of jagged basalt gorges choked in perpetual grey soot. It was a barren, dead expanse formed centuries ago by dying volcanic vents, where black snow drifted against petrified timber and the wind tasted of sulfur, cold iron, and pulverized bone.
Ordinary trackers avoided this wasteland. The pumice dulled iron crampons, the sulfur blinded the keen noses of hunting hounds, and the winding defiles created natural choke points where an entire imperial platoon could be slaughtered without a single horn blast escaping to the plains.
I loved it.
To me, the Ash Valleys were quiet. The soot muted my footsteps. The biting fumes masked the natural scents of sweat and leather that even an assassin could not completely shed. And in a world choked in ash, a girl who smelled like empty air was a ghost among shadows.
Yet as I climbed through the high scree of the first gorge, my throat would not let me breathe.
The phantom heat had not faded. If anything, it had burrowed deeper into the hollow beneath my clavicle, curling around my sternum like a living vine woven from barbed wire and fire. Every three strides, the dead scar pulsed. Each beat sent a shockwave of foreign longing into my bloodstream, leaving my skin prickling, my mouth dry, and my pulse hammering at an erratic, desperate cadence.
*It’s an aura poison,* I told myself savagely, crushing a handful of frozen soot in my gloved fist to ground my racing mind. *The heretic is using an ancient relic to warp my nervous system. It’s an illusion. A weapon.*
I reached up and pulled my woolen scarf higher, wrapping it tight across the weeping scar. The resin had dried into a stiff, crystalline crust against my skin, but beneath the cloth, the heat throbbed like a fresh brand.
A sharp clatter echoed from the basalt shelf thirty paces ahead.
I dropped instantly, flattening against the leeward slope of a soot bank. The black dust rose in a silent puff around my white-and-grey winter harness, swallowing my outline.
My left hand brought the dwarven crossbow to my shoulder with practiced, noiseless ease. The prod was already cocked; the steel quarrel sat flush in the groove, tipped with tempered bodkin steel capable of piercing a bull elk’s skull.
Through the drifting veil of grey sleet, three figures emerged from the canyon mouth.
They moved in a staggered delta formation, checking the high ground with fluid, rehearsed discipline. They were massive—warriors in the half-shift, their forearms covered in thick brindle fur, hands tipped with three-inch combat talons, their jaws elongated enough to expose the deadly curvature of their canines.
*Lucian’s vanguard.*
My training took over before my lungs could draw another breath. Glenn’s voice hissed in the dark corridors of my memory: *Rogues are vermin, Diana. When cornered, they tear like rabid dogs. Strike first. Strike the throat. Leave none to howl.*
I aligned the front sight with the chest of the point warrior. A hulking male with silver-streaked brindle fur, scarred across the nose, wielding a heavy iron-banded boarding axe. Eighty paces. Downhill angle. Wind blowing east-northeast at seven knots.
My finger settled on the cold curve of the trigger.
The point warrior stopped.
He didn't raise his axe. He didn't drop into a predatory prowl. Instead, he lifted a closed fist, halting the two behind him.
"Hold," he grunted, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that barely carried above the whistling gale. "The perimeter wire wasn't tripped. But the scree slid."
"Could be a mountain hare, Dennis," the wolf to his left muttered. A younger female, sleek-muscled, carrying twin curved cleavers at her hips. Her nostrils flared, testing the sulfurous air. "I smell nothing. Just ash and old ice."
"That’s what worries me," the older wolf replied, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the black ridges above. "The hound from the capital is behind us. If it were one of Glenn's Iron Fangs, we’d smell the sanctum incense and pig-fat grease on their armor from two leagues out."
"Then she isn't here," the girl snapped.
"She’s here," the third warrior said softly. He was the wounded one from the Silverwood trail—his shoulder still thickly bound in clean linen, though he carried a short spear in his uninjured left hand. "The Alpha felt her on the pass. He told us: if we cross her path, we fall back. No engagement."
The young female snarled, baring her teeth. "Fall back? From one assassin? Dennis, we have thirty miles of open tundra to cross before the sanctuary! If she pins our rear guard in these gorges, the templars will catch up with the heavy siege engines. We butcher her now and leave her pelt on the rocks!"
"You touch a single hair on her head," Dennis growled, turning on the girl with the sudden, terrifying snap of an elder Beta, "and Lucian will rip your arms from your sockets before the Moon Mother can blink."
I froze behind my sight.
My finger remained rigid on the trigger, the iron cold biting through the leather of my glove.
*What?*
"She’s imperial filth," the girl hissed, though she stepped back from Dennis's bared fangs. "She serves the monsters who burned the Western Marches! Why does the Alpha shield her?"
"Because she doesn't know," Dennis said, his voice dropping into a solemn, aching register that sent a bizarre shiver across my scalp. "She was an infant when they cut her away. She thinks she’s their hound. But she is the last blood of the High Throne. If you force her hand, you defend yourself with shields—no blades. No claws. If she draws your blood, you swallow it."
"And if she shoots to kill?" the girl challenged, her voice trembling with bitter frustration.
Dennis stared up into the swirling soot, looking along the ridgeline. His gaze drifted past my position, sweeping the rocks without seeing me.
"Then we die," Dennis said flatly. "And pray the Alpha reaches her before she breaks her own soul."
My breath caught in my windpipe.
*High Throne? Infant? Cut away?*
The words tumbled through my mind like broken glass. It was absurd. It was treasonous, deranged rogue madness. I was a gutter orphan, a scentless defect pulled from the freezing mud outside the capital gates by Glenn’s benevolence. The Elders had kept me alive, given me shelter, taught me to be useful despite my broken body.
*They are lying,* my imperial training screamed. *They know an assassin is hunting them. They are staging a farce to confuse my quarry instincts!*
