As I made my way through the keep, I heard a voice in a side hall ahead.

"Hanna!"

A small shape flitted from behind the corner. I froze at the unexpected movement, hand going to my dagger, but I caught myself at the last moment. It was just a child. A girl of perhaps nine years. She moved behind my cloak and hid there, clutching at the worn wool.

Another figure appeared from behind the corner, this one a woman in her thirties. She wore a frustrated look.

"Vanya," I greeted the maid. I'd heard someone had gone back to the manor to retrieve her, in case the Burnt Rider broke free and went on a rampage. Many of the local settlements were seeking shelter in the shadow of the Hunting castle during the crisis.

Which explained who the girl hiding behind my cloak was. Just not why.

Vanya forced a smile onto her tired face, masking the anger I'd briefly glimpsed. "Ser Alken. I'm terribly sorry about this."

Her eyes flicked to the girl and hardened. "Hanna, stop bothering our lady's guest and come here."

She held out a hand. Hanna hesitated, tightening her grip on my cloak.

"Go on now," I murmured softly. "Back to your mother."

I ushered her forward gently, and the child went to Vanya without a word. The maid put a hand on her daughter's shoulder. Hanna wouldn't look at either of us, keeping her face downcast. Her brown hair and long face resembled her mother's. She even had similar freckles.

Vanya took a calming breath. "She's irate with me for leaving her here so long. Willful, just like her father." She frowned down at the girl, then adopted a smile and returned her attention to me. "I was glad to hear that both you and Lady Emma survived the battle at Orcswell unscathed."

"Not sure I'd say unscathed," I said and winced as I rolled my shoulder.

Vanya's face softened. She knelt and said something to her girl. Hanna scampered off eagerly. The maid watched her go with a pensive expression.

"Not much of a talker," I noted.

"Never was," Vanya said sadly, pursing her lips after her daughter. "Do you have children, Ser Alken?"

I shook my head. Then after a moment's hesitation I added, "Emma and I are leaving."

Vanya's eyes shot to my face with startling speed. "What? To where?"

"Best you don't know the details, but we may be gone some time." I took a step forward and lowered my voice. The hallway was empty, but I felt wary of eavesdroppers. "The Burnt Rider is only stalled, not beaten. We're going to try to put an end to this. It's a gamble, and dangerous as hell."

I didn't mention how literal I meant that last. Vanya looked worried. Her fingers, long and cool, found my wrist.

"You should stay here where it's safe," she told me.

"Nowhere's safe and you know it. Emma is only still alive because this revenant doesn't actually want her dead. This is all some twisted kind of revenge, but I think there's a darker will behind it that's just using Orley."

I sighed and shook my head. "I just have hunches. But you and your daughter should stay here. Don't go back to the manor, not until we return."

"When will you be back?" Vanya asked.

I shrugged. "Some days. No more than a week." The Westvale border wasn't far, and Emma had told me her family's castle lay in the country's north.

Seeing the worry on Vanya's face, I tilted my head. "You really do care about her, don't you?"

The maid's lips formed a wistful smile. "She's like family. I owe her grandmother my life."

When I gave her a questioning look, she blushed. "It's a long story, and there's no time for it. Are you leaving tonight?"

I nodded. "Before dawn."

Her fingers were quite cold. Then again, so was the castle. I folded her hand in mine and lifted it, meeting her eyes more directly than I usually dared with anyone. Hers, a soft shade of green, widened and took on a slightly paler hue as they reflected the light in mine.

"I will bring her back safe," I said firmly. "You have my word."

The muscles in Vanya's neck moved as she swallowed. Her fingers were very cold.

Before I broke the gaze, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine. It took me off guard, and didn't last long enough for me to decide whether to reciprocate or not. Vanya was a tall woman, but even still she had to stand on her toes to reach me. She pulled back as I blinked in confusion at her.

"I don't know why I did that," she whispered softly.

I was too surprised to say anything at first. The maidservant bit her lower lip, her eyes fixed on my mouth. "I suppose… take it as my favor for your quest? And a thank you for helping us."

"I'm not sure I deserve it," I admitted. "Someone very dangerous did coerce me into being here."

"Even still. Thank you. Bring her back safe? She's precious, little Emma. More so than you know."

I nodded, still surprised and at a loss for words. Vanya only smiled and pulled back, though her gaze lingered on me some steps before she turned and went after her daughter.

I lifted my fingers to my lips, still feeling hers.

I met Emma at the stables. Dawn was still some hours off, and while the castle slept there were guards. I'd had to use glamour to avoid notice after my run-in with Vanya in the halls.

Qoth already had the coach ready to go. Emma wore her androgynous aristocrat garb, almost a mirror to the outfit she'd worn during our first meeting.

"You're late," she admonished me.

I ignored her irritation. "We need to get moving. Something tells me Brenner isn't going to be happy to let you run off."

I recalled how he'd reacted to Ser Gors's suggestion that the young noblewoman be sacrificed to the revenant. He'd proclaimed he wouldn't, but the speech had seemed theatrical to me. I'd watched him, and I did not trust him.

Emma began to climb into the couch, but a sound made us both freeze. I scanned the stable yard, which lay mostly in total darkness on the overcast night save for a few lanterns. My eyes cut that darkness, and I knew something lurked in it.

"Show yourself," I ordered. I laced my breath with aura. A strong willed mind or one ready for such tricks could easily resist the command, but it had a tendency to catch the unwary off guard.

A low chuckle filled the air. "No need for that, my friend."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The armored, gray cloaked form of Renuart Kross slipped out of the night. He studied the coach.

"Running?" He asked curiously.

Emma had dropped a hand to her sword. I held up a hand to stall her, noting that Kross's fingers didn't linger on his own weapon.

"We're leaving," I corrected. "To deal with this our own way."

Kross nodded. "I don't believe Brenner and his household will see it that way. They will assume the girl is abandoning them to their fate, that Orley will burn them all to ash when he's free while she's halfway across Urn."

I shrugged. Despite my show of nonchalance, I knew he was right. We needed to get moving, get as much of a head start as we could manage before our absence was noted and riders were sent out.

"Don't try to stop us, priest." Emma tilted her chin up haughtily. "You are but one man."

I winced. Kross only smiled.

"One man who can raise this entire castle with a shout," he noted dryly. "But do not fear, my lady. I am not here to stop you. In fact, you should find the gate open and your exit unmarked. My companion will see to that."

"Your companion?" Emma asked.

"I'll explain later," I told her before returning my attention to the knight-exorcist. "Why are you helping us?"

Kross considered a moment. "Because I suspect I know what you're intending to do, and I agree with it. The young lady must find a way to end this curse on her own terms or it shall be the doom of her.

His choice of word wasn't lost on me. Kross met my eyes evenly, and once again I wondered how much about my role he actually knew.

"And you?" I asked.

"I shall remain here and do what I can to stall. It's also best one of us be near to keep an eye on the Scorchknight.

He nodded to the coach. "Go. I can't promise there will be no pursuit, but I will waylay it as long as I can."

I nodded, then ushered Emma into the coach. Qoth watched the paladin from the bench with a wariness I hadn't seen in the changeling before, but took the reins in hand readily enough when I nodded to him.

I grasped hold of the side of the coach as it started to move, heaving myself up onto the bench next to Qoth, who didn't complain. As I passed Kross, the man gave me an odd smile I couldn't read.

"We cannot run from our fates," he told me as we passed. "Best to face them."

With those words lingering in my ears, we departed Antlerhall and forged out into the countryside.

We traveled for three days. The Hunting fiefdom receded behind us into a tangle of woods, hills, and fields still veiled by the early snowfall. The distant mountains grew larger.

"It will take some days to reach Liutgarde," Emma told me at the end of the first day when we stopped to let the chimera rest. "Once we get near I'll remember the way."

"Are you sure?" I asked her while Qoth and I fed the animals. "You were very young last you were home."

A note of uncertainty entered the girl's face, but it fled quickly. "I will know the way. It's only once we're there that I'll need your help. I'm not at all certain what to do once we arrive, but…"

"But you believe this is the right choice," I finished for her. "You feel it."

Emma pressed her lips and nodded wordlessly.

"Well, we shouldn't have to worry about Brenner's knights. We've left his lands, so he's got no power over you now." I patted the chimera and folded my arms under my cloak against the chill evening air. "I do want to know what we're going into. I've never been this far west."

She knew what I meant, and looked reluctant to answer. "You want to know just how ill my welcome shall be upon my homecoming."

I nodded. Emma pursed her lips.

"Well, the castle has been abandoned for years and is considered quite haunted. I doubt anyone's touched it since my family made our egress."

I gave her a wary look. "You know that's not what I meant."

She shrugged, and avoided conversation after that. It wasn't until the third night that she finally broke her brooding silence.

We were camping. The mountains loomed large on the near horizon, framed by a dazzling constellation of stars. The Greater Moon rose high into the sky, a vast green sphere dominating the heavens. Its light turned the foothills and the wooded country into a tapestry of green shadows, lit enough to give an impression of the space while leaving its contents a dangerous mystery.

The forest ghosts murmured outside the light of our fire. Their voices were bitter and needful in equal measure. They'd gathered in greater numbers ever since we'd left Antlerhall. I suspected the Carreon drew nearly as much as I did.

"It's like this all the time for you?" Emma asked me. She stared warily into the night.

I shrugged. I'd caught a pair of shriekhares and managed to kill them before they'd called more to swarm me. I chewed on a leg, lost in thought.

Emma stared into the fire. "You want to know more. About my family, and what we left behind when we fled our home."

I tossed my stick away and settled back against the bags piled behind me, focusing on the girl. Emma began to speak.

"After House Orley was destroyed, the Carreons were the undisputed rulers of the Westvales. Astraea gave birth to my grandmother mere days before she was crowned queen of this land. The first queen in all this country's history."

She waved at the surrounding hills. We'd passed the border into her homeland hours before setting camp.

"But it soon became obvious not all was well in paradise. There were accidents. Assassinations. Poisonings. House Carreon became brutal even by its own standards to quell the unrest, but it was obvious something more dire than simple rebellion was at work."

Emma lifted a finger to her lips, as though pondering something as she stared at the crackling fire. "Astraea only ever had one child. By all accounts she took no other husband after her precious Jon."

"Precious?" I snorted. "Didn't she cut out his heart practically mid-coitus?"

Emma sniffed at my churlishness. "You really don't know my family well at all, do you?"

That comment disturbed me, and I stopped interrupting.

"My clan was large back then," Emma continued. "Astraea's cousins, uncles, aunts, and other distant relatives started dropping like flies. Diseases, murders, freak accidents… you name it. By the time my grandmother was a grown woman, there were less than a dozen members of the branch families. It was clear to everyone that House Carreon was cursed."

Emma finally looked at me. Qoth sat with the chimera, the three of them curled up near the fire in a breathing pile. The elf looked oddly childlike as he slept, even with his bestial face exposed, though I wondered if he were faking it.

"By the time my parents married, there was no extended family. Do you know I had brothers? Three of them, all dead before I was old enough to remember their faces. We are matrilineal, us Carreons, so I was considered… precious. My mother and father insisted on abandoning our home before some ill fate befell me. My grandmother resisted, but in the end she never could persist without family. We packed all the treasures we could into that Night Coach and left Liutgarde and all of this."

I stared at Emma, who seemed very calm and relaxed. "You could have been a queen."

She shrugged. "Perhaps I will be? That's what Brenner wants, to have me marry into his family and press a claim to the whole of the Westvales. Hendry would be king-consort, Brenner the grandfather of monarchs. House Hunting ascendant, House Carreon restored."

She snorted and tossed a twig into the campfire, which sparked. "The other nobles of this country submitted to us out of fear, but in the end we fled in terror of a death that hounded us implacably. The Burnt Rider killed my grandfather in a duel, drove my parents off a cliff… but his justice to the rest of our blood and all its allies ranged into the macabre. We weren't the only family to be destroyed by this, and people haven't forgotten."

She sighed and leaned her head back on the saddlebags she'd been using as a pillow. "Maybe I could reclaim my birthright, but it would be difficult to hold it. A life of intrigue and power. You know it wasn't even the Orley revenant in the end who drove us from our castle? It was our own people, the knights and armies of the Westvales. They besieged us, and we fled."

Emma lifted her hand and studied the blood ruby on her ring finger. She trailed off, leaving the camp in a quiet only broken by the burning sticks.

I almost asked, but clammed up just before the words left my lips.

If she managed to end a generations old curse, secure an alliance with the Huntings and their network of allies, and reclaim her family's castle, the valefolk would probably accept her right to rule. The last scion of a High House was a treasure. The Westvales would bow to her banner. She could become a new power in the land, a rival to both the Accord and the remaining Recusants.

She might even tip the scales to one side or another, which could mean war.

No, she definitely could. And I had to wonder if that was truly why she wanted to go back home.

Was I helping create another monster? Or perhaps I was helping give rise to something better. I could be at Emma Carreon's side like I'd once been with Rosanna, but older and wiser this time, less prone to the same mistakes. I could guide her to a more constructive path.

I could…

No. I would never be a knight again, no matter what the elves might call me or what half-baked personas I adopted for convenience. What I imagined was a childish fantasy. Emma was Nath's disciple, and of the blood of Shrikes.

And I was doing exactly what Brenner, Nath, and all the rest were doing. Seeing her as a tool, a means to some end. No matter what pretty words I covered it up with, I'd be using Emma for my own ambitions. My own redemption.

Stop That. That way you look at me. Like I'm some mirror showing you all your own mistakes.

Emma wasn't Rosanna. And she wasn't my redemption. She was her own person with her own future.

I just needed to keep her alive long enough to choose one. After that…

My eyes went to my ring. The fomorisite stone was almost entirely red.

Emma woke me in the middle of the night. I was up in a flash, my rondel in my fist. The night was bitterly cold. The fire had burned down to cinders, but Qoth was on top of the coach in his cat form, growling into the darkness. Something fell from the sky in slow flakes. More snow.

No. Just ash this time.

Emma's face looked pale and drawn. "It's him," she whispered in a hoarse voice. "Orley. He's freed himself. He's coming for me."

I sheathed the dagger and stood. "Get in the coach."

We didn't have enough time for rest. Liutgarde was near.

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