Oh, my queen, see how I will fail you? He and I, we are brothers in failure, bound as lovers to a singular flaw. And when your day comes, Glyph, your final day of the war, he will lead you, not I. Or so I will pray. Better him than Narad, who will, I fear, take the coward’s path.

In this winter, all thoughts of redemption seemed as frozen and hidden as the ground beneath its mantle of snow.

* * *

Glyph watched the other packs slipping away from the camp, and then turned to the four hunters gathered behind him. ‘We must clear the forest of these invaders. Iron not flint for your arrows. Today, I am not interested in seeing them suffer. Quickly done, a return to winter’s silence.’

Lahanis stood among the small group. She alone carried no bow, no quiver of arrows. He would rather she stayed behind, as he had little faith in her woodlore. Borderswords were not trained in forests. Their world had been open land and denuded hills, the tundra of the north. They had often fought from horseback.

But now the Borderswords were no more. Slaughtered in a battle with Houseblades. Lahanis was the only survivor to have joined his people. He would rather she hadn’t. The smooth, round face before him was too young for the ferocity in her eyes. Her weapons invited the kind of death that was delivered with an embrace. Not for her the distance of an arrow or a lance. She would fight and don the blood of those she killed, and this red dress was one she yearned to wear.

She frightened him.

But then, so too did Narad, his first brother since his rebirth. The visions plaguing the Watch, as much as Narad had told him, seemed to promise conflagration and endless slaughter. It was as if Glyph had somehow stumbled into an unexpected destiny, making for his people a role none sought, and it was the Watch who would guide them into it.

But I cannot know. Does he share my love for my people? He would see us used by the First Son. But we owe nothing to the black-skinned Andii, and less to the Liosan, who now wear the guise of bloodless corpses.

A hunter spoke, ‘We are ready, lord.’

And this! Lord! They had given him a title, Lord of the False Dawn. Glyph did not understand it. He saw no significance in any dawn, false or otherwise. Nor could he determine who had first fashioned for him that honorific. It seemed to have sprung up from the frozen ground, or perhaps drifted down with the flakes of snow. He did not like it, but as with Narad, the Watch, there was no fighting this tide. Something now grasped them both, and its hands were cold and unyielding. ‘Very well. Lahanis, we must travel in silence, with not a single misstep. These Legion soldiers are their scouts, their trackers.’