The day was dying and the shadows stretched long across the Broken Plains, burying the men that hunted me in darkness.

Mother was right, I thought as I reined Thorn in on the top of a low hill, silhouetting us against the darkening sky. It’s dangerous out here. A lone woman on a pale horse, what an easy target I must look – and I smiled as I waited for the men to take the bait.

They were almost silent as they moved through the shadows, but my senses were keener than my hunters could imagine. I listened to the whisper of the dry grass as they closed in, heard the thin creak of their bowstrings being drawn. When they fired, the twang of those strings was as clear as thunder to me, and I whirled Thorn around.

The nomads made their short bows from wood and bone, and they could launch an arrow surprisingly fast. Thorn was still turning when the missiles reached us; she’d moved enough for the first three to cut harmlessly past, but the fourth one struck her in the chest, the barbed steel punching between her ribs, and she tossed her head at the impact, annoyed.

The last arrow came in higher, streaking for my throat, but my bright sword was in my hand. I spun the blade and it flashed like the heat lightning that danced along the horizon. The arrow tumbled into the grass by Thorn’s hooves, cut in half, and I looked at the nomads crouching before me.

‘Oh no,’ I said mockingly, parting my lips wide to let my fangs flash in the dying light. ‘An ambush.’

‘Spirits protect,’ one of the men gasped. ‘It’s the dead princess.’

Princess. ‘My name,’ I snarled, ‘is Nyssa Volari.’ In my chest, my still heart lurched, stirred to movement by my anger, and my cold blood began to move. I dug my knees into Thorn’s sides and drew my other blade with my left hand. My mount charged forward and the surprise on the men’s faces switched to terror. The raiders’ easy target had become a vampire riding a Nightmare, fangs bared and carrying a sword in each hand, one dark as the night sky, the other bright as the stars that studded it. They saw me coming for them, and they scattered, screaming.

You’re always right, Mother, I thought to myself. It is dangerous out here. I raised my swords, and then they fell as the rich scent of blood filled the air.

‘Nyssa has returned, my king.’

Arvan was tall and broad-shouldered, and he almost filled the door to the chamber. But his head was bowed low, his black eyes down. So humble. I set aside the book I was reading, keeping my face carefully blank. There was a thread of ambition hidden in that submission, which made me dislike Arvan. Corsovo, of course, was amused by him.

I swear my lover sometimes selected the more difficult members of his brood with an eye towards annoying me.

‘Excellent.’ Corsovo rose, a tall man whose pale skin contrasted with his long, dark hair, violet eyes, and the black claws that tipped each finger. Even in his lounging robes of dark silk stitched with crimson roses, he looked imposing, royal, until he flashed his smile at me and winked. ‘I told you your daughter would be back safe.’

I swept to my feet, frowning. ‘You encourage her too much.’

‘Are we not a family?’ he asked, walking with me from the royal apartment into the hall outside.

‘We are vampires. We are Kastelai. We are death,’ I said. ‘Why attach such a ridiculously mortal notion as family to us?’

‘Because there is power in connection, Vasara.’

‘And pain,’ I said.

‘True.’ Corsovo, king of the Broken Plains, smiled again, fangs flashing in the dim passage. ‘They go hand in hand, my queen.’ His claws pressed against my skin as his hand took mine, and we swept out into the ash-dusted courtyard of our Grey Palace.

In the centre of the yard, Nyssa stood beside Thorn, a line of horses drawn up behind them. She was tall, with dark hair and brown skin, ruddy from recent feeding. Her eyes shone with that new blood too, thick red striations marking the dark brown of her irises. They were her best feature, but they couldn’t hide the problem of Nyssa’s face. She wasn’t beautiful, her lean features too sharp for that, but that wasn’t the issue. It was how young she looked. No one knew how old Nyssa was when Corsovo had taken her mortal life and given her this one, but she couldn’t have been out of her teens. Almost seventy years had passed since then, but Nyssa’s face hadn’t changed. It was as young as it had been that last day of her first life, and the mind behind that face seemed just as rash and reckless as the girl who’d once tried to kill a vampire lord with a kitchen knife.

‘Nyssa,’ Corsovo said. ‘What have you brought us?’ He let go of my hand and strode to her while I stood back, watching them embrace. I wondered about the strange bond that lay between my lover and his adopted child. It wasn’t unknown for a vampire to feel affection towards their progeny, but the feeling usually faded fast. The two of them, though, seemed to share a genuine bond, one that did echo a mortal’s attachment, enough so that I had started calling them father and daughter. A jibe that had come back to bite me when they decided to include me in it.

‘Mother,’ Nyssa said as she stepped back from Corsovo. She did not move towards me for an embrace, of course. She just tilted her head to me, a gesture I fractionally returned. Nyssa was not my progeny, and I did not share Corsovo’s odd affection for her. Though I did acknowledge that we shared a kind of bond through him.

‘Band of the Fist,’ I said, nodding towards the horses. They were Nightmares, actually, though it wasn’t obvious. They moved with the easy grace of living animals. But I could see the empty sockets where their eyes had been, filled with wisps of vapour, and the slow stirring of their manes and tails even though no wind moved in the courtyard. The pennants that hung from their halters were still, untouched by that grave wind, and bore the band’s marks. ‘Did you find them, or did they find you?’

‘A little of both,’ Nyssa said. ‘I saw signs of riders, and I cut across where they were heading, letting them find my tracks. To see if they would follow.’ She looked back at the Nightmares. Across four of them, lifeless bodies had been tied over the saddles. ‘They did.’ Nyssa smiled. ‘It seems no one told them that it was dangerous out on the Plains.’

I frowned. Nyssa, always pushing, always taking chances. And always throwing it in my face when she got away with it.

‘They know now,’ Corsovo said, smoothly cutting off my retort. He looked down the line of dead riders and undead mounts. ‘Did one get away?’ he asked, staring at the single empty saddle.

‘Get away?’ Nyssa rolled her eyes, as if the suggestion that one could escape her was beneath contemplation. ‘No. That one–’ She stopped, and I could see the frustration on her face. When she saw me looking, she tried to smooth her features the way I’d been trying to teach her, to look cool and haughty, but it was a miser­able attempt. ‘He wasn’t worth bringing back.’

She avoided my eyes, but Corsovo put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about it. The Nightmares you raised from their mounts are some of the best I’ve seen. You have a gift for them.’

He wasn’t lying. Nyssa could raise a dead animal into its second life with amazing skill. Mortals though… Not worth bringing back, she’d said. I’d seen the zombies Nyssa had attempted to raise. Most couldn’t even walk. They just lay on the ground, moaning hideously as their limbs jerked and twitched uselessly. Not her talent, Corsovo had said, and he was right. But what was, besides making Nightmares and getting into fights?

‘Where were they?’ I asked.

‘Past Skulltop, where the Broken Plains flatten out.’

‘The Band of the Fist grow bold,’ I said. ‘Sending raiders that far.’

‘They’re bold to send raiders at all.’ Corsovo frowned, his dark eyes tracing the stripes of dried blood that marked his adopted daughter’s armour. ‘They grow reckless, daring to attack a Kastelai. Clean up, Nyssa, then meet with us. We need to decide what to do about Celas, and his band.’

Mother was frowning at me when I walked into the chambers she shared with my father, the king. That wasn’t unusual, she was usually frowning at me, and her eyes were flicking over me, cataloguing the faults she found in my appearance.

‘You were supposed to clean up.’

‘I did.’ I waved a hand at my armour, boots and swords, all cleaned and polished by the Grey Palace’s mortal servants. They’d even stitched together a few of the rents in the dark leather. I’d washed the dust and blood from my skin and had a servant plait the thick, unruly strands of my hair into some semblance of order, contained with a circlet of beaten steel. I’d cleaned myself, but I knew I looked nothing like Vasara wanted. Nothing like how she looked.

Mother was, as always, the picture of Kastelai elegance. She was beautiful in her gown, poised and perfect as a painting. Her face was set in its usual disdainful expression, a gorgeous armour that concealed whatever she truly felt. Our appearance is as much a part of our arsenal as our blades, our magic, our teeth, she always told me, and in her I could see that truth. But it was an arsenal I lacked, and I hated the way she kept pointing that out.

‘If you insist on being part of this… family,’ Vasara said, rolling the last word out distastefully. ‘You need to remember that we are royalty. Not zombies, newly raised.’

Father laughed, cutting off my reply. ‘If our zombies were like her, we’d have conquered the Broken Plains years ago, and moved on to the rest of Aqshy.’

Aqshy. Over half a century ago, the Crimson Keep, home of the Kastelai Dynasty, had appeared in this hot, ash-strewn realm, materialising out of the shadows that clung to the ruins of the Grey Palace. It had happened many times before, in this realm and others. The Crimson Keep was cursed to move from ruin to ruin, appearing always near a battle, and every time it appeared we Kastelai would ride out and fight. I’d done so a dozen times with Father and Mother and the rest of our cohort of Blood Knights, and we did it again here on the Broken Plains, though we didn’t know or care what the name of the place was then. We just rode out to join the battle, a nomad attack on Maar, one of the Plains’ few cities. We’d smashed into them, shattering the attack and driving the nomads back so fast and hard that when we’d finally turned, blood-drunk and victorious, the Crimson Keep and the other Kastelai were far behind us. So far we could barely see it when the shadows swallowed the Keep again and took it away, without us. Leaving us to fall to the curse that touched those bound to the Crimson Keep. Leaving us to die.

We’d ridden too far, lost in the killing, and been abandoned. Most of our cohort had died, taken by the curse, but not all of us had. My parents and I survived, and four others. Deserted here in Aqshy, we would’ve been refugees if it hadn’t been for my father. Corsovo had come up with a mad plan and convinced the mortals at Maar that we were their saviours: the new rulers of the Grey Palace, so long deserted, and somehow we made it work. We claimed Maar and the surrounding lands for our own, became rulers instead of refugees, and spread our might across the Broken Plains. We’d rule all of them soon, from sea to wastes, and then… who knew? The Soulblight that lived in our blood gave us a second life that did not end. With eternity stretching before us, why not conquer a realm?

For my father, I would do so.

But for my mother, who was always so sure to tell me what to do… I was not going to wear a damned gown.

‘I thought she was one of Salvera’s when she walked in,’ Mother said, still frowning.

I glared at her. Comparing me to a zombie was one thing, but saying I could be mistaken for one of Salvera’s Wolf Knights… ‘Wait,’ I said, the fuller meaning of what she said sinking in. ‘Is he here?’

‘Lord Salvera has dropped by to discuss our strategy for taking Gowyn.’ My father said the words with such careful precision I could hear the irritation behind every syllable. Salvera was one of the other Kastelai left behind by the Crimson Keep, and like the others he’d gone off to form his own noble house once we’d claimed this part of the Broken Plains. But nobility was a loose concept when it came to Salvera. He was a powerful vampire, but the beast was close to the surface in him. Too close.

‘You mean he’s come to tell you what you should do,’ I snarled, hands finding the hilts of my swords. ‘Salvera–’ Is too much like Mother was what I wanted to say, but that would have earned me a reprimand from the king. Trying to think of what I should say instead, I sensed something. The sound of boots in the corridor, and the smell of death and old blood and fur. ‘He’s coming.’

‘I smell him too,’ my father said. He straightened in his seat, and Mother shifted also, her face going from annoyed to smooth, cold, regal. I moved to stand to my father’s right side, hands still on my swords, and tried to school my face in imitation of my mother’s.

‘King Corsovo.’ Salvera’s words came out a rasping growl as always, twisted by the thicket of teeth that filled the wolf-like muzzle that was his lower face. He wasn’t carrying the heavy scythe that was his favoured weapon, but he was dressed in his armour, which, even freshly cleaned, smelled of old blood. Behind him came two of his Wolf Knights, vampires he’d sired since coming to the Broken Plains, also dressed in well-used armour. The sight of them, their appearance so rough compared to the cool, regal poise of my parents, made me see Mother’s point. Always right, I thought, and the irritation of that realisation destroyed any chance of me acting cool and haughty.

‘Queen Vasara. Lady Nyssa.’ Salvera nodded to my mother, as close as he came to a bow, and said my name as an afterthought. Behind Salvera and his knights, two vampires sired by my father stood silently. Rose Knights, guardians of the Grey Palace, and I recognised these two. Rill and Erant had both served me when they were still mortals, before they had been granted the blood. They were young but strong, well respected for their abilities, and Mother had probably tasked them personally with the job of following Salvera around. Of all the other survivors of our original cohort, he was the one who most obviously questioned why Corsovo was king. I’d asked more than a few times for permission to carve the answer into Salvera’s hide, but my father wouldn’t let me.

‘Lord Salvera,’ Corsovo said. ‘You honour us with a visit.’ The question of why he was visiting was left unasked. Salvera answered, but I was already not listening. The older Kastelai, even Salvera, liked to play their social games, duelling with words instead of swords. A frustrating waste of time, and I ignored most of it as I stared at the Wolf Knights. I knew one, a woman named Gir whose face and arms were covered with short grey fur. I’d bested her in several bouts, easily dodging her powerful but slow strikes. The other was new, though, a man who looked too pretty to be one of Salvera’s except for the forked tongue that flickered occasionally from his mouth. If he was part of Salvera’s retinue here, he must be good, and I watched him, looking for hints on how he’d fight from the way he moved.

‘Nyssa!’ The whisper, low but sharp, cut through my thoughts and I looked to Vasara. She was sitting poised as always, but I caught the tiny motion of her finger, directing me to Corsovo. His face was mostly smooth, but there was a hint of a tiny smile on his pale lips as he leaned back into his chair.

‘As I said, Lady Nyssa has just had an encounter with the Band of the Fist.’ Corsovo spoke smooth and slow, letting me snap back to my bearings. ‘She would be pleased to tell you what she saw.’

I drew myself together and nodded, then explained the fight in quick, terse statements. When I thought I was done, Salvera and my mother sank questions into me like fangs, bleeding me dry of all information before they finally let me go.

‘And that, Lord Salvera, is why I haven’t marched our forces south yet.’ My father stood from his chair, sweeping his long hair back with one hand. He was vain in his own way, something I knew Salvera mocked him for – but behind his back. Corsovo was also a deadly fighter, and even wrapped in a robe, without his sword, he moved with dangerous grace. ‘The city of Gowyn is the last holdout, the only place on the Broken Plains that hasn’t submitted to the Rose Throne. To our rule. But marching on them when there is an enemy at our back is dangerous.’

‘So we waste more time fighting nomads?’ Salvera snarled. ‘This campaign should have ended years ago.’

‘We don’t waste time dealing with the Band of the Fist,’ Cor­sovo said. ‘However we do it.’

However. I glanced at Mother. That statement had the stench of diplomacy, and that was her specialty. She looked back at me serenely, then rose. ‘The light is beginning to come through the windows,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we remove ourselves to cooler chambers to discuss this further.’ She took Corsovo’s arm and they nodded to Salvera. He frowned, but went with them into a darker, more private room. I turned to follow, but Mother glanced over her shoulder at me.

‘Nyssa, could you please see to it that our guests are comfortable? Thank you.’ Then she was gone with Corsovo and Salvera, the doors closing behind them and leaving me with the Wolf Knights, who looked as unhappy as I felt. I glared at the closed doors, considering what kind of lecture I would get if I simply kicked them open and followed. They were off to do their Kastelai business, negotiating with each other, but damn it, I was Kastelai too. What did she think? That I’d pick a fight with him? Only if necessary. It was galling. I might have only been at the Crimson Keep a handful of years before we were abandoned here, but I was their peer, not some child.

Whatever Mother thought.

Then the new Wolf Knight, the one I didn’t know, growled. ‘How dare that–’ He paused as I turned my head slowly to look at him. ‘Queen,’ he continued, choking down another word, ‘dismiss us like that.’

‘Dismiss you like what?’ I snapped. ‘Like she has every right to do?’ I turned and put my back to the doors. Leave me with the children? Fine. I could at least give lessons. ‘The Kastelai don’t need your advice, Wolf Knight.’

‘Apparently they don’t need yours either,’ he said, his serpent’s tongue flickering.

My irritation over being excluded flashed into anger, and I dropped my hands to my swords. ‘Would you mock me?’ I said, voice low. ‘A Kastelai? A vampire who has trained in the Crimson Keep? Would you risk me calling challenge on you?’

He stared at me, arrogant. He was new to his second life, but he must have been strong, and the Soulblight had made him cocky with power. He must have heard about me, but he was probably convinced that nothing could touch him now. My palms itched, eager to show him his error.

‘Call challenge?’ he said.

‘Durin, no,’ Gir hissed, and Erant stepped forward, one hand raised, looking worried, but Durin and I ignored them both.

‘We have the time,’ Durin said, and his tongue flicked out as he drew his sword. ‘Why not?’

In my chest, my heart beat, stirring my blood, and I drew my swords and spun them in a lazy circle. ‘To blood,’ I said, going straight to the point, not bothering with the usual formal words of challenge. This was no ritual fight. This was going to be a lesson.

‘To blood,’ he answered. We raised our weapons, took our stances, still as statues. The grey-furred Wolf Knight and the Rose Knights waited and watched. Then Durin moved.

He struck fast, like a serpent, lunging at me with the point of his sword. That speed had probably earned him many tastes of blood before. But it wasn’t fast to me. I slipped out of the way, moving just enough to avoid the strike, then slapped him on the cheek with the flat of my bright blade. The metal left a mark on his skin but drew no blood. How many? I wondered.

Many, it turned out.

I danced around him, avoiding his strikes, slapping with the flats of my blades. He had speed, but not my speed, and his skill was profoundly lacking. The Wolf Knights were like that, they believed ferocity could counter finesse. Maybe, at times, but I had been trained for decades by Corsovo. I slipped and moved and slapped, losing count, and Durin raged, the beast in his blood rising until he stopped and hissed at me, fangs flashing in the light that spilled through the windows, his forked tongue flickering from his mouth.

My dark sword moved, and I cut that hideous tongue off, then speared the end of it on my blade. It twisted there, like a dying snake, while Durin stumbled back, the stump streaming blood down his chin.

‘First blood to the Kastelai,’ I said, and flicked the still-squirming tongue away.

Durin grunted some curse but I couldn’t tell what, the words were mush. Then he spat at me, a mouthful of cold, dead blood. I slapped at it with my sword, knocking some away, but the rest splashed onto my armour and face.

I felt the blood touch me, and I raged. My swords came up, and I flew towards Durin. The point of my dark blade took him in the shoulder of his sword-arm, shoving him back and pinning him to the wall. My bright sword flashed back as I prepared to cut through his neck the way I’d cut through his tongue, but then a shout echoed through the chamber.

‘Stop!’ Vasara’s voice instructed, and I froze, then slowly turned my head towards her. She was looking at me intently, her eyes hard. Mother’s blood carried magic in it, like all of us, and one of her gifts was being able to give commands that couldn’t be refused or ignored, except by the most powerful. She hadn’t used that power on me, she’d just given me an order, like a huntsman to a dog. But I swear I could feel the threat of that power in her. It was something I’d always feared.

She stared at me, and I stared at her, for one long moment as anger and fear and loyalty battled inside me. Then I stepped back, pulled out my sword, and let Durin slide to the floor in a heap.

‘There,’ I said. ‘He’s comfortable.’ Then I turned and stalked away.

The Nightmares’ hooves crashed noiselessly onto the dry ground, dust and ash rising from every fall. It was part of Nyssa’s magic, a gift of her blood, that she could wrap silence around us, but as we put miles between us and the Grey Palace, I thought it was time to talk. Riding forward, I matched my dark mount to Nyssa’s pale one and made a cutting motion with my hand. Nyssa scowled at me, but suddenly the silence was gone and I could hear the thudding of hooves and the rattle of armour.

‘Yes, Mother?’ Nyssa said. The tone of her voice made me want to bare my fangs, but I kept my face smooth.

‘I want to discuss our meeting with Celas, and his band.’

‘What’s to discuss?’ she said. ‘You want diplomacy. So here we are, riding out into an ambush.’

I gripped the reins tighter. ‘An ambush is a possibility. Which is why you’re here, and the knights.’ There were thirteen of us in total: Nyssa, eleven Rose Knights and me, the number we’d agreed upon with Celas.

‘Wouldn’t need an escort if you followed Salvera’s plan.’ She said it grudgingly, as if it hurt her to suggest that Salvera had anything useful to say.

‘Just kill them all?’ I said. ‘Then raise their dead to fight for us? We could, but it would take time and blood. If we can make them join us, we don’t have to spend resources fighting them and they’ll serve us twice, once in their first life and again in their second.’

That argument had been enough to persuade Salvera. Eventually. After I’d soothed him about finding his knight impaled on one of Nyssa’s swords.

‘That only works if they really want to join us,’ Nyssa said. ‘If this isn’t a trick.’

‘Celas is mortal. I think he doesn’t want to be,’ I said. ‘He wants the gift of our blood. Which he’ll only get if he serves us.’ Nyssa frowned, but she stayed silent, and I wished I didn’t have to go on.

‘We will stay cautious though. When we reach the meeting place, I’ll go to the tent with two guards, as we agreed with Celas. You’ll stay behind with the rest of the Rose Knights and watch.’

‘Stay behind?’ Nyssa stared at me, the red in her eyes flaring. ‘No. I’ll be with you, and if Celas dares try anything I’ll cut him to ribbons.’

‘You are our best fighter,’ I said, ‘which is why you’re staying back. If Celas does betray us, he won’t win at even odds. He’ll need ten mortals for each knight, and more for me, and that’s not even factoring in my magic. I can make Celas cut his own throat with a word if he displeases me. If they attack, it’s going to be a large force from the outside, so that’s where you’ll be.’ Which was true enough. What I wasn’t telling her was that I didn’t want her temper anywhere near Celas. These last negotiations would be delicate, and Nyssa had the finesse of a drunken ogor.

‘I don’t like it.’

‘You don’t have to,’ I said. ‘You just have to do it.’

‘Fine,’ she snarled, and when I started to speak again she shook her head. ‘You’re right. You’re always right, aren’t you?’

As usual, Nyssa pushed me to anger like no other, even Cor­sovo, but I reined it in. I kept my face smooth and nodded. We crested one last hill and there was a small cluster of tents below. One tent was twice the size of the others, and over it flew a banner, a fist holding five arrows. The meeting place.

We took our time riding into the camp, examining it. There were the agreed upon twelve warriors as guard, but there were also another dozen mortals, unarmoured and unarmed, and a few children. Servants, who were never mentioned in the negotiations. I could see Nyssa’s hands move to her swords.

‘Queen Vasara.’ A man stepped out of the shade of the largest tent. He was average height but broad, his hair done up in the nomad style: sides shaved with a broad strip of long hair down the middle, woven into complicated braids. He wore the nomads’ leather armour too, but it was ornately decorated.

‘Celas.’ I nodded to the man, gauging him. He stood straight, but his hair was grey and his skin was like old leather. There was a faint scent to him, almost covered by the smell of mortal sweat and the campfires in the smaller tents, but I caught it. A nasty thread of sickness and rot. Celas looked healthy enough, but some disease was eating him up on the inside. No wonder he wanted to bargain with us. My worry over the servants fell away. Celas must be desperate for a deal.

I turned to Nyssa. ‘Wait here, and watch.’

‘He brought more–’ she started, and I cut her off.

‘Wait. And. Watch.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ she said, her voice a low snarl. Angry, but she was listening, and that’s all I needed. I slid off my Nightmare, and my Rose Knights flanked me as I went to join Celas in the tent.

The nomads weren’t formal, but they had their rituals, and I spent a while performing them with Celas before we got down to it. The tent was almost empty, just him and me and our guards, sitting on woven carpets spread across the lumpy ground.

‘The Rose Throne will move soon on Gowyn,’ Celas said. He leaned back, seeming at ease, but he rested a hand on his belly as if something pained him there. ‘The Band of the Fist can help you do this. Or…’ He trailed off, shrugging. Leaving unsaid what raiding they would do to the rest of the Broken Plains while we were occupied. ‘But there is a price.’

‘Your people will be given a share of the spoils when we take Gowyn,’ I said, but he waved that away.

‘That is not the price I am speaking of,’ he said.

‘You want the blood,’ I said. ‘You’re dying, but you have no wish to see Nagash. So you bargain to sell your people for eternal life.’

‘You… simplify,’ he said. ‘But you speak some truth. Blood.’ He shook his head. ‘I spilt so much of it, forging five bands into one. And when I’m finished? I spill more, every time I piss. My shamans tell me the ghosts of my dead enemies gnaw me from the inside. So I must become something more frightening than a ghost. A vampire, Soulblight cursed, and immortal.’

‘We can give you that gift,’ I said. ‘If we want to. But we choose carefully, from our most loyal servants. You must prove yourself first.’

Celas considered me. ‘I thought you’d say that. You want me to lead my people to Gowyn first? A reasonable request. But the ghosts that gnaw me are hungry. I’ll be dead before I can do that.’ He laughed. ‘I am, Queen Vasara, like you already. I am dead, but I walk still. Just not for very long. I don’t have time for this. I need your blood now, and all I can offer for it is my word.’

His word. I considered Celas carefully. What was his word worth? From the stories of the other nomad bands, not very much. The only reason I’d even agreed to this meeting with him, had argued Corsovo into it, was knowing that a clever mind lay behind Celas’ capacity for treachery. He was smart enough to know the price of trying to trick us. ‘You’re known for your clever­ness, Celas. Your victories have come from guile as much as from the bow. Why should we trust you?’

‘You should not,’ he said, and then the world went black.

I jerked, caught up in something dark and heavy that wrapped all around me. The carpet, the damn carpet I had been sitting on. The lumps hadn’t just been hard ground, there had been ropes there too, and now the thing had jerked up around me, trapping me like a beast. A beast. I snarled and my nails stretched into claws and I shredded the carpet around me. The cords beneath it were tougher, and a net of them still held me as I ripped the carpet to tatters.

I could see now though, could see the Rose Knights I’d brought caught in their own carpets, tearing at them, but they lacked my claws. Celas’ guards had rushed forward and were stabbing up into the nets that held them, blades sinking in over and over while servants rushed forward with wide bowls to catch the blood that poured down.

‘Damn you, STOP.’ I poured my magic and rage into that word, and it should have frozen every mortal in the place. But even as I spoke, I realised I couldn’t hear my own voice, couldn’t hear the guards or the servants, the stabbing spears, the falling blood. Silence enveloped the tent, like the silence that Nyssa could wrap around herself. I looked for her, wildly, wondering if she was close, but instead I saw a woman. Dressed like a servant, but she was standing in the middle of the tent, her hands glowing with a dull orange light. A shaman, casting a silencing spell, and my ability to command was gone.

I cursed myself then, cursed my own stupidity for being tricked, for underestimating the impudence of this barbarian nomad. But as I cursed I tore at the cords, ripping them apart. The guards came for me with their spears then, and I felt the blades stabbing into me, into my back and legs, ripping through my leather armour and my flesh beneath, but in my anger there was no pain. I lashed out through a hole I had torn in the net and snatched one of the stabbing spears away from the guard. I spun the weapon in my hand and cut the rope holding the trap closed. The net went loose around me, and I ripped myself free.

I threw the spear at the shaman and the weapon punched through her chest and sent her sprawling, blood spewing from her mouth. I could hear her scream as the spell fell apart, could hear shouts and curses as I pulled my sword and levelled it at Celas. He was moving back, but I snarled ‘Stop,’ again, and he froze in place. I walked towards him, dimly aware of the sounds of battle outside, my hunger huge within me. Pain and anger had brought my beast close to the surface.

‘A trick, Celas?’ I said, jerking back his head with my hand, exposing his neck. ‘I thought you were clever. I thought you wanted to live.’

‘There is nothing in my life that I didn’t take,’ the nomad growled. ‘I never begged or bargained for anything. I wasn’t going to start now, just because I was dying.’

I could hear shouts, the clash of blades, but the smell of his blood filled me. ‘You are dying,’ I told him. ‘Now. And because of your stupidity, you’re taking your people with you.’

His mouth stretched into something like a smile. ‘I know. I counted on that. Destroy them all and make them follow me into death. Because if I can’t have them, no one will.’

I stopped, my teeth pressing into his skin. Here was why I hadn’t seen Celas’ betrayal. I’d been assuming he wanted to live, when what he wanted was to bring death to his people for the sin of living after he was gone. ‘You’re a monster, Celas,’ I whispered to him, then I bit into his neck

I drank deep, feeding the beast, barely noticing the light that suddenly flared through the tent.

‘Wait and watch,’ I whispered, staring at the tent. The sides were down, and even when the servants ducked in and out, carrying trays of food and drink that must have been piling up untouched beside Mother, I could see little. I could hear their voices though, too faint for words but calm.

I growled and pulled my eyes away. Wait and watch. I looked out over the camp and the hills beyond, looking for any plumes of dust, any gleam of steel. It made me itch to look away from that tent, but… But Mother was always right, right?

The Rose Knights were arrayed behind me, silent, unbreathing, unaffected by the heat, all staring out, looking for trouble. Except for two of them. I frowned at Rill and Erant, flanking me on their mounts, their eyes on me as much as they were the camp.

‘What?’ I asked them.

‘We were told to stay with you,’ Erant said carefully.

‘By the queen?’ I said, my voice hard. ‘To make sure I’m obedient?’

‘No,’ Rill said. ‘By your father, to guard you.’

By the hells, now him. Frustrated anger rolled through me, and I desperately wished I had something to stab. Or bite. Then I saw the nomad warriors on the other side of the camp stir. Half of them had turned their mounts and were riding away, not at a gallop but purposefully, heading up over one of the hills. Watch. Wait. ‘Which one, Mother?’ There wasn’t going to be an answer for that, so I looked to the knights.

‘Keep an eye on the tent. If there’s trouble, sound the horn and move in. Kill any mortal that even looks at you wrong. I’m going to see what that’s about.’

I turned, heading after the nomads, and Rill and Erant fell in behind me. I almost snapped at them to stay back, but they were under orders of the king, weren’t they? So we followed the nomads over the hill, to the valley beyond. They were moving down a trail at the same steady pace, backs to us, and I slowed, suspicious. Something was wrong… Then I smelled it. The astringent scent of vesin sap, mixed with the dust. Those thorny trees were common in parts of the Broken Plains, but none grew around here. I stopped, looking ahead.

There.

There was a line across the ground ahead of us, faint against the grass and dust. Riding slowly forward, I could see that it was a trench, carefully dug so that it was almost invisible from the direction we were coming. Not deep, but the bottom of it was lined with sharpened wooden stakes, waiting to impale whoever followed the nomads.

‘Damn it, Mother,’ I swore. The riders ahead of us spun their horses around, charging back as they pulled their short bows out. ‘This is a terrible time to finally be wrong!’

I whirled Thorn, and it was good to see that Rill and Erant were moving with me, Rill pulling out a bow of her own as we started riding back towards the camp. I was going to warn her not to waste time with it, but she was twisting in her saddle, facing backwards and firing shots at the pursuing nomads while her Nightmare galloped forward. Erant was pulling a huge two-handed sword from the sheath across his back, and my blades were already in my hands. A few arrows buzzed past, but none of them struck and we were over the hill, racing back to the camp. All was quiet, the Rose Knights still in their place, but even as I watched I could see a flurry of activity from the smaller tents. Armed nomads were appearing around them, seeming to pull themselves from the earth. They must have dug pits to hide in and covered them with the tents. It would have been an admirable bit of treachery, if it weren’t being used against me.

An arrow sliced across my armoured shoulder and I snapped at Erant and Rill to keep our pursuers off me. Then I was in the camp, cutting through the nomads who rushed at me.

Thorn fought too, hooves and teeth flashing, while my swords whirled around me, bright metal and dark, carving wounds. My heart was beating steadily in my chest, moving my blood, making me fast. I was a blur as I cut a path through to the meeting tent. When I reached it, I dived off Thorn and cut a hole in the cloth side, bursting in.

‘Mother!’ I shouted, blind as my eyes adjusted from the too-bright outside. There. She was across the tent from me, bleeding from a dozen wounds but striding forward. Celas was before her, frozen in place, shouting for her to listen to him, to bargain, but she had him in her hands and was bringing her teeth to his throat.

A nomad rushed at me, sword up, and I stabbed him through, but there were two more behind him driving in with spears, trying to shove me back. I slapped their weapons away, focused on Vasara, and then I saw him. A boy, a nomad child standing at the edge of the tent staring wide-eyed at my mother, and in each hand a flickering lantern. Screaming, he threw them both. One smashed behind Mother, its oil making a burning pool across carpets and dried grass. The other hit behind Celas, splashing flame across the back of his legs and onto the side of the tent.

When the fire touched the dark fabric, it roared up. Whatever the nomads had used to waterproof the tent, it burned fast and hot. Flames raced up the tent wall and across the roof, spreading faster than a horse could gallop.

‘No!’ I charged forward, smashing one spearman aside, but the other managed to slice at my side. The tip barely grazed me, but cutting his throat out slowed me just enough. The other nomad, the one I’d just dropped, drove his spear up into the back of my knee, cutting through tendons and grating off bone, and I was on the ground, rolling.

Smoke filled the air, black and stinking, reeking of oil and burning flesh. I could hear screaming, could see the glow of flames. They roared overhead, the whole tent catching, but I stabbed a sword into the eye of the nomad who’d speared my knee and crawled forward. The flames were roaring around me, and my hair was starting to smoke, but I kept going. Before me I could see Vasara standing up, dropping Celas’ lifeless body to the ground. Blood marked her lips, and she was beautiful and terrible in the roaring firelight. She turned to me, about to say something even as the fire roared around us, poised and sure… and then with a crack the supports holding up the tent gave way and the roof caved in, blazing cloth and wood pounding down over her and rushing towards me. Then hands grabbed my boots, pulling me away from the inferno that roared around where I’d last seen Vasara. The queen of the Broken Plains, the woman I had taken as my mother, was gone behind a curtain of heat and light, lost to this damned Realm of Fire.

It was night in the Grey Palace, and the volcano behind the ancient keep was spilling out smoke again and everything reeked of ash.

I sat in my apartments, silent. I’d barely spoken since I had dug Vasara’s blackened bones from the tent’s wreckage. What did I have to say? That for once I’d been right, and Mother wrong? Should I brag about it, when all I wished for was that it had been the other way, and that I’d been wrong again?

When the door to my rooms opened, I did speak – two flat words. ‘Get out.’ Rill and Erant had been taking their new duties far too seriously, hovering around me. But the door kept opening, until King Corsovo stepped through. He stared at me carefully with his amethyst eyes, then stepped in and set a dark bundle down on the table beside the door.

‘Your mother would order you to clean up,’ he said. I ignored him, not even rising as I should. A few days dead, and all the etiquette Mother had taught me had burned away too. Father stared at me silently for a few moments, then nodded. ‘I’ve prepared a tomb, a resting place for Vasara’s bones. There will be a ceremony tonight at midnight. You will be there.’

‘Why would you want me there?’ I said. ‘I failed you. I failed her. Now she’s dead.’

‘Wrong. On all three statements.’ When I looked at him with eyes that had gone almost completely brown, he met my gaze until I had to look away. ‘You did what I told you to do. You did what she told you to do. And she is not dead.’

‘You’re placing her bones in a tomb,’ I said.

‘To wait and rest,’ he said. ‘Death is a fleeting thing to those blessed with the blood, Nyssa. Vasara will be back. It may take years, centuries, but she will be with us again. I feel it in my blood. For now, though, she rests and we go on. We are immortal, Nyssa, and the years pile up behind us. It’s too easy to get caught in them. Don’t dwell on what happened. Focus on what you will make happen.’

‘Which is?’ I said.

‘Getting up and getting dressed.’ He tapped the bundle. ‘Vasara ordered this made for you.’ Corsovo reached out and laid his clawed hand on my shoulder. ‘You’ll wear it tonight. For her.’

Then he was gone, and I was alone in the room with the bundle. I stared at it until the day died, and darkness swallowed everything. Then I finally rose and unwrapped it.

It was armour, perfectly tailored for me, done in black leather. But it was so much finer than the plain armour I usually wore. The dark leather was tooled with thorny rose vines down the sleeves and legs. The vines bloomed into red roses on the shoulders and collar. On the back, below blood-red blooms, there was a skull in white. I stared into its empty eye sockets.

What was I supposed to do with this?

Put it on.

The words echoed through my head. They were in her voice, perfect, as if Mother was standing inside my head. I shuddered, staring at the skull. I would. But first I’d find the mortal who’d made this and have him craft two more roses, one for each empty eye socket. One for my father, one for my mother, the family of my second life, my family in death.

When it was finished, I would wear it for my mother as we put her into her tomb.

Then I would wear it again as I rode out onto the Broken Plains to hunt down every member of Celas’ band, so that I could bring their blood back and bathe her bones with it.