The patter of the rain and the hiss of the bonfire behind me filled the hollow space that followed my words. I let it while the elven host left off its work to turn toward me, a great rustling that penetrated even the low drumming of the water all around us. The tide drew back from me, as I expected it would. No one stepped into the void, so I called them.

“Where is the council of elders? The prince and his king are prepared to take the mantle from them.”

A whisper of sound now. People muttering, exclamations, interrogative murmurs that rose like the cries of distant birds and then cut off when they were hushed.

“Will not the heads of Suleris, Nudain, and Ekadet step forth? I believe last I checked, they comprised the council.”

Someone finally entered the cleared circle. Warily, glancing once at the bonfire tended by my grim human ally, because it looked like I’d created a dueling field.

Which I had.

“I am the head of blood-flag Nudain,” said this elf, a woman, slim and lean and nigh unto androgyny with it. Had she been a man once, and given it up to be an elven woman? Did it work in both directions? Perhaps there was no purpose in wondering: she was what she was now. The rain polished her skin, which shone like obsidian, and her hair was the color of tarnished silver. I had never noticed how many graduations of shade there were in tarnished silver.

She had a voice like a lark, or a flute, or both. Like the spring, but at night, when the earth is resting from the caress of the sun, and the scents are earthier and moister. I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill her.

“Tchanu,” Amhric said from behind me, just enough for me to hear.

“Tchanu,” I said. “Where are your peers? Where are the heads of Ekadet and Suleris? Do they not wish to be the first to give fealty to the first elven king since the death of Marne?”

Someone pushed through the wall of spectators. Another male, this one slim as a lance, with eyes like a hawk’s and a voice urgent as a clarion call to battle. “Has the king at last returned to us?” He looked past me, drew in a sharp breath. “Oh, but it is so, isn’t it? Who can fail to sense it?”

“Herithor,” Amhric murmured. “Was the heir to Aresset.”

And now the blood-flag. I didn’t know how I could tell, but I could feel it in my fingertips, in my throat as a taste, as a broadness in his power... which belonged to me, and which I could claim as easily as I could make a fist. “Aresset,” I said. “Well for you that you recognize it. But where—” I lifted my voice, sharpened it like a sword, “Are Suleris and Ekadet?”

A woman’s voice, finally, and my skin pebbled instantly. “I am Ekadet’s blood-flag.”

They made way for a woman, and at the sight of her I was overwhelmed with rage, for she’d been one of the voluptuaries I’d found abusing my brother in Suleris’s breeding compound.

“You,” she sneered, with every contempt… to Amhric, little realizing how close to death she was skirting by daring to address him, much less with such lack of respect. “What are you doing here, and not spilling your blood and seed for Suleris’s little projects?”

Only his touch stayed me, reminded me that I had work here, and it did not involve bloodshed—yet. It was for me to choose my response carefully. The rain had eased, as if to listen more closely.

I said, “And here is the woman who could not even tell an elven prince masqueraded as a human, so eager was she to waste herself in debauchery.”

I had scored on her—the crowd knew it, and so did she, for her cheeks colored. She lifted her chin and replied, haughty, “You say that as if I didn’t know what I did, but I did. I knew an elf of royal gifts, and if he was too weak to hold me off then he was no king at all. And you! I have heard tell of you. Quite the actor you are. You say you are a prince? If you have the power you claim to, you would have come in force and taken what you wanted. But you didn’t, did you? You skulked, like the lowest slave. You hid behind a mask of human seeming.”

I chuckled. “If you seek to insult me, try harder.” I looked past her. “But where is your little ally in corruption? Where is the head of Suleris? Who replaced Thameis after I slew him? Was it Isis or Temeret? Or have they hidden themselves away from their prince, lest I finish what I began?”

“We rule together,” came a growl and there, at last, were the people I’d been waiting for. “And we rule here as well.”

“By what right?” I asked casually, rolling the staff between my fingertips.

“By right of force,” Temeret said.

I studied him, unhurried and unimpressed. Perhaps running Suleris didn’t agree with him, for he looked febrile and angry, an unhealthy glow shining on skin the rain seemed to slime. “Would you care to dispute that? Properly?”

“You,” Temeret snarled, “are nothing but bait. And I will gladly challenge you. We will all challenge you!”

I lifted my brows. “All of you, is that it?” I glanced at e Ekadet and visibly dismissed her. “You will follow Suleris wherever it takes you.” Ignoring her outraged gasp, I looked at Nudain and Aresset. “You, though. I think you know your king.”

“Always,” the blood-flag Aresset said, eyes fastened on Amhric.

I waited on Nudain, remembering the political map Thameis had deigned to explicate so very long ago in his study before he assaulted me. Here was the other major political force on the Archipelago—between Nudain and Suleris, I could account for almost all the land in Serala.

She looked first at Amhric, then at Suleris and Ekadet. Then met my eyes and said, “I know my king... if king he proves himself to be.”

“Then,” I said to Temeret, “You shall have your fight.”

“Excellent. Let us discuss the rules.”

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s discuss the rules. There will be no use of the genets. You will kill no human slaves either.”

“These rules are unfair!” Isis cried.

“These are the rules you will have, or you will have nothing,” I said. “But your prince is a fair man. In return for this small sacrifice—for it is small, yes? Surely you have power enough on your own to overwhelm one pathetic former slave—I will allow you to bring as many of your members to the ring to fight me as wish to.” My heart was racing. “At once.”

“Morgan,” Chester hissed, almost inaudibly.

“At once?” Isis asked, eyes narrowed. “What is the limit to this number?”

“There is no limit to this number,” I said. “If the entirety of the blood Suleris and Ekadet wishes to throw itself against me, let them come now, all at once. No line duels. No waiting. We will settle it in a single fight.”

“You are mad!” Temeret cried.

“If he is the prince,” Tchanu said, with that voice like nightingales, “then he is not mad. So... we shall see. Shan’t we.”

“I see that you are overcome with hubris,” Isis said. “We vanquished you once on the strand already. We would have killed you both on the coast of Kesina had e Sadar not arrived to succor you. Do you think to trick us into showing mercy? We will bring every member of our families to fight you! If you could not stand against two of us, how will you fare against two thousand?”

“E Suleris,” I said. “Try me and see.”

Temeret was staring at me, tense. His eyes darted to Amhric, and then the bonfire, and I could see his second thoughts in his gaze. But his sister cried, “So we shall! Only say when!”

“I give you half an hour,” I said. “Only because you will need it to plan how to fit so many of your members in such a small space.” I smiled without humor. “Start now.”

Isis stared at me, lips curled back from her teeth. Then she flung herself into the crowd, barking orders I was certain she thought would save her, and see her reinstated as the leader of the expedition. I watched her go, and Ekadet with her, and Temeret slinking away last.

Nudain approached me, quiet. I thought she was old; it was hard to tell with elves. She considered me, spoke at last. “I thought if I won enough of the Archipelago, I might replace a king.” She glanced past me at Amhric, then met my eyes. “I was wrong.”

“You did what you hoped was best,” I said, which was forgiveness indeed. She might have sought the rulership of Serala out of ambition, or to aggrandize her family. But she glowed to my sight, a softly banked glow, and I thought perhaps those darker motivations had mingled with an honest desire to see the warring of the exiled elves brought to a bloody halt. Best, I thought, to begin anew... if the elves allowed it. Some of them wouldn’t, but I would see that ended soon.

When Tchanu stepped away, my own converged on me.

“What did you say?” Ivy’s voice was tense and angry. “Chester’s gone pale. What did you say you’d do?”

Bless his wisdom, Chester said nothing. It was Almond who piped up then. “Mistress, it will be well. He is the prince.”

“What exactly is it he’s going to be well while doing?”

“I’m going to fight them,” I said to her. “All at once.” She folded her arms. I set one of my hands on her wrist. “Trust me. They won’t kill me.”

“How do you know?” Her voice was rough and soft, and I wanted to wrap myself in her and forget everything. But we were here and there was work to be done.

“Because,” I said. “The story can’t end here.”

She threw up her hands, exasperated, but I saw her fighting an unwilling smile and counted that a victory.

Drawing in a long breath I turned at last to Amhric. Resting the staff against my chest, I offered him both my hands. In the Gift, I said, “You will forgive me for what I am about to do?”

Amhric’s small fingers curled around my longer ones. He smiled a lopsided smile. “You will forgive me for making you do it?”

I laughed, sheepish, lowering my face. “My brother.”

“We are as God made us.” Amhric squeezed my hands. “And I love you, brother mine.”

So fortified, I returned to my position to wait.

Assembling all the elves Suleris and Ekadet had decided to throw against me took all the time I had given them, and a great deal of shuffling of people. I saw it as a rippling in the surrounding throng as the spectators were displaced by the duelists. There were not the two thousand promised by Isis, but there were enough, and I could readily identify them, each and every one... for unlike the others around them, they burned with an unlight, a darkness that my spectacles insisted on rendering visible.

I did not need them, now that I knew what I was seeking. I could taste the pulse of their rebellion in the magic that underpinned reality.

“Are you ready?” I said finally. “I weary of waiting on you.”

Temeret and Isis and their nameless ally from Ekadet pushed their way forward and stood proudly at the apex of their scythe of fighters. I saw the disdain and the confidence in them and grieved. This was what we had become in response to the greed and jealousy of humanity. The negativity begat more negativity, had become an unstoppable reaction that had led to the birth of the demon who was gathering strength even now, feeding on situations just like this one.

“We’re ready,” Temeret said.

“You’ll regret this,” e Ekadet added. “You’ll regret being born, imposter.”

I nodded. “Then call the start.” I smiled thinly. “I will grant you the honor.”

Temeret stared at me, disturbed, but his sister cried, “ATTACK!”

The host lunged toward me.

And stopped as I fisted my hand in their magic.

The rain fell, a whisper now rather than a drum. The bonfire crackled, hissed. No one moved until someone made the mistake of trying, and I tightened my grip. As one, they fell to their knees.

I could have killed them. In a single spasm of will, I could have starved them of the magic that fed their enchantments and they would have been extinguished. But I didn’t need to because they knew it. I was standing at complete ease in their midst, holding my staff with one hand with the other held closed at my side, and I had not shifted even a half step in their direction, but they knew that they were mine.

On the magic that linked them all, I sent my voice, and my words moved toward them like the ripple on a wave. “I am your prince, and you are mine. Yield, or I will honor your rebellion, and deliver you to God.”

In the heartbeat between my last word and my next breath I prayed that they would listen. That they would value their lives more than whatever temporal power or pride they nurtured as poor nourishment in its stead. But more of them than I wished strove against me, and I wept as I severed them from the world. In that moment, Ivy and Chester made good on their promises to me, for I felt their loving support as the bulwarks that kept me from descending into self-hatred. They made me worthy of Amhric, who shone through me like light from the firmament, and I licked the tears from my lips as elves died. The sight of their passage quelled the rebellion in the hearts of many, but spurred some others, and I had to stop them. And another wave, smaller than the second. Until at last there were no elves left who questioned our dominion, and I could not see for my weeping, though I wept in silence, and the rain washed my face and left it blameless to anyone who knew me not at all.

But Amhric did. He came forth and rested a hand on my shoulder and I looked down at him.

“Are these our people, my prince?” he asked, his voice carrying on a breeze that seemed to clear the clouds.

“They are, my king,” I whispered, hoarse.

“Then we welcome them,” Amhric said.

To this day I don’t know if he could have done what he did next without channeling the gift through me. I suspect he could have, but chose instead to wipe from my heart and mouth the feel of the deaths I had been forced to inflict. And I am grateful, so grateful. Because he drew all the magic of the world, released by Marne’s passage, and flooded me with it like autumn sunlight, and it spilled through me, out of me, into all the elves before us: those who had tried to fight and given it up; those who had held back out of uncertainty; and those who’d believed from the moment they espied us. All divisions between us were swept away in that gift; we were filled with it, made whole, made kith. Since the curse had bound us the elves had been starving for magic and turning to it in any source they could find, using borrowed demon claws to scratch it into their hollow souls. For the first time since that cup had doomed us, we felt full with a wholesome energy, nourished, well. The chains shackled us still, but we had a king again, and he would free us, and none of us, none of us doubted it.

The wave that flowed through the crowd now was every elf in it staggering to their feet in an attempt to move toward that bright source. I had quelled all our opposition. But it was Amhric who won their hearts, as he had mine, with the generosity of his spirit and the love that shone so clearly in him, a bright reflection of something divine.

Would that this episode had concluded with his contribution, but alas when he had done knitting us together in this sacred weave there were three left before us, burning too brightly to be destroyed and yet refusing us all the same: Temeret and Isis, and e Ekadet. Had he thought to heal them of their resentments and pettiness by offering them the generosity of his forgiveness? I hated that I knew better than to believe they would receive it, and be transfigured.

To speak after the glory of our binding felt sacrilegious, and yet speak I did, because there was no other choice. “You do not repent of your ambitions, I see.”

“Should we beg for what rightly belongs to us?” Isis asked. They were all kneeling and hating it. How often had I been thrown to my knees by an elf with no consideration for my feelings on the debasement? I wanted to hate them, because it was easy. I forced myself not to because of those who loved me, whose regard I cherished too dearly to give myself over to drowning in my anger.

“You need not beg,” I said, when I had mastered myself, though I was still breathing too deeply. “You need only ask and we will welcome you. Our best days are before us. You could be part of them.”

“As your lackeys.” E Ekadet pushed herself upright, staggered to her feet. She shook her golden mane back and said, “I think not.”

“You would never forgive us, and never trust us,” Temeret said.

“Whose fault would that be?” I asked, and took myself to task for falling to their level of discourse. “No matter. I will say it again: you need not turn from us. If you swear to your king, you may return to your positions. You may be again the blood-flags to which your families owe their safety and honor. You can take part in the history to come. Surely that is a better alternative to what awaits you if you forsake your vows.”

“And what alternative is that?” Temeret asked.

“You die,” I said, quiet. “And I feed you to the fire.”

Isis laughed. “As if he would. With that mewling pacifist for a ruler? Try us with another line, ‘prince’.”

I impaled her.

One quick motion: my muscles remembered. The act that had destroyed Thameis, that they had witnessed on Kesina and should have remembered me capable of... it was too easy. The iron staff slid through her torso as if the ribs were bare interruption to its quest for the earth. She screamed, and hearing it I thought of Carrington. Eyre’s torch had done just this to me, but she’d been incapable of repeating her performance on a living body. What did that make me?

And that I felt no remorse?

She lived, of course. The enchantment had gorged on the energy Amhric had so magnanimously granted to the entirety of the elven host. Even now I could sense her flesh knitting around the incised channels carved into the staff’s surface... could tell because it began to resist me when I shifted my weight against it. To kill her, I would have to electrify the metal, the way I had with Thameis, or give her to the fires the way Kemses had his opponents. For now I leaned on the staff, and ignored the hand that was weakly scrabbling at my leg. She was trying to push me off-balance. I wished her luck of that. I was not the disease-raddled invalid she’d fought before.

“I believe you were making some opinion of yours known?” I said conversationally. Isis’s whimpers underscored the words. “Do go on.”

The head of Ekadet said nothing.

“What? No riposte? No scorn?” I canted my head. “I’m shocked.” I looked at Temeret. “And you? No more witty repartee? Will you not call me ‘bait’ again? Please do. Please remind me of what I suffered at the hands of your brother. It will improve my temper magnificently, I assure you. I am already feeling less than merciful, you perceive.”

“You are a monster,” Temeret whispered.

“Is that all?” I said. “I was expecting something a little more original.” I turned the staff, breaking it free of the skin that had healed around it and inspiring another scream. “Let me make this plain to the three of you now. Amhric is king over all elves. He is all that is kind and forgiving and gentle and temperate, and you are lucky to have him. But I am his prince, and anyone—anyone who so much as casts an insulting eye on him—I will kill. I came to Serala as a human. I have seen what elves are capable of. That will never happen again, so long as I live... and I will live, you see, a very... very long time. So. Do you swear allegiance to a better man than any of you? Or do you deny him?”

For a moment I allowed myself to believe that they would yield. Amhric had not won them with love; all that I had left was to demonstrate, irrevocably, that I was a crueler adversary than them, that they could not hope to prevail against me. I wanted... I wanted the ending to this to be a happy one, and later everyone would tell me that it had been, on balance. That we hadn’t had the right to expect a better outcome. That history would remember this day as the one where a man won a nation with a gentle hand, and my part of it would remain a footnote.

It was a fantasy, but I had treasured it, and did up until the point where Isis managed to hook her hand around my ankle and yank it hard enough to catch my attention. I swayed, and e Ekadet dove for me, and Temeret lunged in her wake. I howled my rage and grief, that they should make such waste necessary, and I stole the energy from them until their enchantments throttled their breath and hearts. And then, as they gasped and rolled on the ground, I took the first by the back of the shirt and dragged. Temeret, I saw. He had hesitated. He might have thrown in with us had his sister not forced his hand. I hated him for making this necessary. I hated that my only emotion, throwing him to the fires beneath Eyre’s watchful eyes, was anger, because I didn’t want to be the kind of person who could pin a man into the heart of a bonfire and ignore his screams as he died. But I did it again with Isis, who fought me in vain. And again, with e Ekadet, and I stared into her cruel and vicious face as she spit her curses down on my head, and Amhric’s.

I was panting by the end of it and my palms kept blistering where they contacted the iron of the staff, blistering and healing, over and over.

When the last corpse was a vague black heap in the heart of the fire, I threw the staff from me. I went to Amhric and fell to my knees, bending over a stomach twisted with nausea. Did I have a voice left? I did, though it had gone tense, its edges rasped. “It is done.”

Perhaps, had I been thinking more clearly, I would have forborn to be seen in distress following the execution of my duties. If I was to be prince, and the sword arm of the king, then all should believe me implacable, without finer sensibilities: the Red Prince in truth. But I could not be that person, not and live, and all the lies I had grown up repeating to the world so that they would fail to divine the truth of my weaknesses were as nothing compared to the lies I would have to tell to show the world a face that could kill without remorse.

I had forgiven Mary Carrington. Maybe it was because I understood what had been asked of her.

The flames hissed and stung the drizzle that fell from the grimy sky. There was mud under me, and it was cold, and the air smelled like burning flesh. I thought I would vomit. I remembered vomiting daily only as a hazy memory, and did not want to reacquaint myself with the act. Swallowing carefully, I waited for the absolution I did not know whether I deserved, and yet when Amhric embraced me I did not turn from him.

“They made their choices,” he said into my ear as I clung to him.

“I could have been merciful.”

“You gave them every opportunity.” Amhric leaned back, pushed the wet hair from my face and cupped it. “The choice is sacred, if we are to be worthy of God. And they made their choices.”

He thought his speech would reassure me, but it was his face that convinced me at last: looking on his face, and recalling that those three had seen him imprisoned. I had not extended their torture, had done only the bare minimum necessary to ensure the enchantment would not resurrect them. They, on the other hand, had consigned an innocent man to abuse, rape, and torture for months.

I had executed them, that was all. I drew in a trembling breath and rested my hands over his. “And I have made mine.”

“And all of us,” said Kemses behind us, “have made ours. My liege, my king. Welcome back to Vigil.”

I pushed myself upright, found with resignation that my liegeman was awaiting us with my discarded staff in his hands. Accepting it, I said, “You held the city for us, and I thank you. I presume there were no troubles?”

“It depends on what kind of trouble you mean,” Radburn said, stomping up behind Kemses. “I’ll have you know, Morgan, that I was adamant that we should spend our time on our investigations, but Guy—”

“I am right behind you, you know—”

“But Guy insisted on seducing that girl you left with us—”

“Wait, are you discussing my student?” Carrington pushed her way through the growing crowd. “You’d better not be discussing my student!”

“It was consensual,” Guy drawled.

“It was inappropriate!” Radburn exclaimed.

“He’s just jealous that I got to her first.”

I had been suffering from grief and fear and worry for so long that I mistook the ache in my chest for more of the same until the first coughing chuckle burst from me. My fingers flew to my mouth before I could earn more than a minatory glance from Ivy. Composing myself, I said, “Please tell me that you spent at least some of the time on the research I requested. Between conquests.”

Guy rolled his eyes. “Please. There’s only so much ru—”

“Language,” Chester muttered, looking down at his feet.

“—exercising you can do before you get bored,” Guy finished with laudatory aplomb. “Rest assured, we spent most of our time in the library.”

“Protecting it from the idiots who wanted to burn it.” Radburn pointed at his chest. “That was me, mind you, as Guy was busy for—”

“Language!” Chester hissed.

“Fornicating,” Radburn insisted stubbornly. He extended his finger at Carrington and said, “Your colleagues are idiots and I spent all the time you were away wishing for Kelu to bite them.”

Kelu perked her ears. “You did?”

“I often missed you,” Radburn said. “Particularly your teeth.”

“Things have not changed much in our absence,” I said to Chester.

“We weren’t gone that long.”

“We could have been gone a lifetime and it wouldn’t have been long enough,” Ivy said.

And oh, I was glad, so glad to have them all with me again. But there was a face missing. “Where is Rose? Has the Church fared well? And did anyone come from Evertrue?”

“We’ve seen no one from your human enclaves,” Kemses said. “Your knights are impressive, Morgan. Even before the magic came back, they were adept at its usage. We’ve been training with them underground, and they’ve had patrols out since the day you left. I’m surprised, in fact, that the Vessel isn’t here to greet you.” He paused. “I trust you’ll tell us how it happened—that the magic returned. We’ve all wondered.”

“I promise,” I said. “But I’d like to see to the elves now that they’ve sworn themselves to Amhric, and release the genets. Perhaps—”

A horn sounded, and everyone above the ground halted, and in silence turned to it, for we had never heard it and yet we knew it. A clarion, calling warning, ending our reprieve.

“But it’s from the north,” Eyre murmured. “Not the south.”

In the distance, on one of the broken buildings facing the northern plains, I could just see the blower of the horn, silhouetted against a sullen sunset stained with storm  clouds. Again, she sounded it, a great, falling sound, like a moan.

“Mother’s Stand,” I said. “The remaining dead have caught up to us.”