Prologue -The Crystal

I raise the sword against the gnashing of teeth.

The mist is not natural. Nothing crawls this thick and this fast off a cold rain; one of the beasts dragged it in, and now I cannot tell my own knights from the things trying to kill us. Bodies already litter the snow. Servants, mostly, sent out for supplies and caught in the open when the shrieking started.

A griffin's cry rolls through the fog, and the lesser beasts come with it. Nameless things. All teeth and claws and weight.

I cut one down as it strikes me. Again. A set of jaws swings for my throat and I take the head off before it closes. Magic floods my veins, and the crystal blade forged from the Nibheis peaks drinks it down and throws it back as light, a blue beam that shears the fog apart.

Then I see it.

A black shape through the pines. Unhurried. Patient. The air goes cold, and the goosebumps spread across my skin. It’s the leader of the squad of dark beasts.

“It's in the trees!” Sir Rarian of House Lade drives his spear forward and releases a flurry of watery strikes with his spear. “The leader's in the trees!”

“For Eloria!” I shout and charge to the edge of the snowy pines.

The griffin twists aside from the beam of my sword. Its lion-like paws shatter through several trees as it lands on me. I keep my blade up, but I do not get out of the way in time. The blow folds my arm the wrong way. I scream in pain as I'm pushed back several feet, my arm fractured from the force of the blow. That's when I realize, after catching my breath, that my sword has been thrown from my grasp by the intensity of the impact.

I try to reach for my sword, but something pierces me.

It had started to snow, I realized. I look down and see crimson against a sheet of white. A gurgle escapes me. But I will not go down so easily. I turn to face the beast, because I will not die with my back to it.

The cold does not reach me anymore. I lift the blade one more time as a ball of swirling light forms in its beak. Then everything goes dark.

It's okay. You're safe.

You're safe.

I whisper to myself over and over again until I believe it.

Slowly, the room comes back into place. The cold hearth, the one guttering candle on the nightstand table, and the shutter that never quite closes. Several books line the shelves along the walls.

I’m safe and back in my room.

My home.

The crystal sits cold in my palm, dark blue, clouded at the edges where I have worn it thin. Inside it is just a memory. A message. All knights carry transporter messages to be sent back to the castle through these same crystals, a form of alchemized communication. Which is why, technically speaking, I am not supposed to have the record at all. Convoy-sight belongs to the garrison, not to a bastard princess no one has thought about since breakfast. But no one thinks to watch me, and that, as it turns out, is its own kind of key.

My mother asked me to look. That is the only reason I go hunting through a dead man's eyes at all.

I searched the record again. Past the beast, past the knight, to the shapes scattered across the snow behind him. Servants. Maids among them, sent with the supply train. One of them is meant to be Orla, who worked beside my mother for twenty years, who nods to me in the corridors and never stops to talk. I look for her among the fallen. I look for her among the few still crawling.

She is not among the living. I cannot even find her among the dead. There is only so much a dying man's eyes will show. I decided to check one more time.

But then I see it, her body in the corner and my stomach drops.

She didn’t make it.

At least I think that is her mangled body that I see in the corner. I sit there with this knowledge, trying to think of how to tell my mother about it when under the hush of the snow and the last of his breath, I hear it.

Not the beast.

Not the wind.

Something small and sweet and entirely wrong. It reminds me of Sunday mornings in spring, when the birds sing.

I find myself missing the sound. No, that isn’t right. I crave to hear it again. I begin to search the crystal image for it, closing my eyes as the knight's scene plays out again, this time choosing to focus on the singing. Anxious to hear it again. But every time, as soon as I catch it, it is gone.

The shard goes dark again, and I am still sitting alone in my room. Uncertain I heard anything at all.

I sigh.

This is not good news.

I know how much my mother cares for Orla, and her own condition is already weak. But she asked me to check. Her room is not far, up the curl of stairs in the eastern tower. She is awake when I come in, propped against her pillows, thin as a held breath. She has been waiting.

“Did she survive, Bree?” she asks. Gently. She always asks the hardest things gently.

I sit on the edge of the bed and take her hands. They weigh so little now. I have marked the weight of them over the months, and there is less of her to hold each time.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I don't think she did.”

The hope in her face fades, and it makes the ache in my chest bloom. She squeezes my hands, tears prickling her eyes.

“Thank you, my dear.” Her fingers tighten on mine.

Her eyes watery with grief. “For checking.”

I just nod. Unsure how to respond. Unsure of the twisted emotions inside. Knowing there are no gentle words that can make her feel any better.