Cannevar Barrial knew he should sleep. His body was aching. His eyes were raw and bleary. He would be no use to the king or the allies if the enemy struck when he was too tired to lift a blade. He knew that, but except for a few chimes of restless dozing, true, restful sleep had eluded him all night.

His mind was filled with too many memories of Talisa. He could hardly close his eyes without seeing her tear-stained face, her despair, without reliving the shocking moment of her death, when she’d leapt between her husband and a red Fey’cha blade to save her lover. Even now, Cann could feel the strike of the blade as if it had hit his own heart rather than his daughter’s back.

Ah, gods. He sat up and covered his face with his hands. He wanted to rail against her death. To believe it had never happened. But he was too much a man of the north. Too much a lord of the borders. He’d seen too much death—and worse—to wallow in grief-stricken denial.

He rose from the soft, feminine bed covered with plush, furlined silk comforters in shades of wintry blue and tender spring green. Severn and Parsis had thought him a fool for taking Talisa’s suite after offering his own to King Dorian, for torturing himself with her memory. Only Luce had understood. Luce, Cann’s wild, sweet, fey child, with eyes that saw more than most. Almost a man now, and so like his mother. Luce realized that his father needed these memories of Talisa’s life to make peace with the memory of her death.

He crossed the room to stand beside Talisa’s delicate carved dressing table. The table was all-girl, painted creamy white and laid out with brushes, combs, perfumes, and all manner of womanly mysteries. His hand closed around the pot of perfumed cream Parsis had given her for this past year’s Feast of Winter’s End. Cann unscrewed the lid and lifted the jar to his face, breathing in the delicate aroma of Talisa’s favorite flowers—the scent he would forever remember as hers. Bright, warm, sweeter than a spring morning. His eyes squeezed shut. His heart squeezed tight. But as he breathed the scent, he could see her face, alight with laughter, as she and the other maidens from Kreppes and the surrounding villages had danced around the Spring Tree, weaving brightly colored ribbons around the pine pole’s carved scenes of winter, trailing flowers in their wake as they went. Such a good day. Such a happy, happy day.

He breathed the perfume again, trying to fix that memory in his mind. When he thought of her, he wanted to remember that—not the other sight that hurt so much.

A sound filtered through the closed door of Talisa’s room. Cann didn’t even consciously recognize it, but a lifetime on the borders made his body go tense all the same.

In that one instant, his weariness evaporated, and his grief found itself tucked unceremoniously into a tight box, utterly removed from his current consciousness. Cann the grieving father gave way to Great Lord Barrial, the fierce and wily wolf of the borders. He set the perfume pot down, his hands automatically seeking the grip of his swords but finding only empty air in their stead.

“Krekk.” His weapons lay atop a bedside table, next to the rack holding the armor he now cursed himself for removing. The studded leather he’d slept in would do precious little to stop an axe, pike, or arrow strike in a full-on battle.

“We’ll wake you at the first sign of trouble,” his sons had promised when they convinced him to shed the armor. But trouble was here, and they had not come.

And that was troubling in its own right.

Cann raced across the room in swift silence, grateful for the plush furs on Talisa’s floor that muffled the sound of his footsteps. The latch on the door began to lift just as he reached the bed. He dropped down behind the bed and slipped one of his daggers from its sheath. He wasn’t half as good with the throwing daggers as the Fey, but at a distance as short as the one between him and the door, he didn’t miss.

The door cracked opened.

A voice whispered, “Da?”

Parsis. Cann let out a breath. “Here, Parsi.” Wary habit kept him crouched where he was, dagger pulled back for a throw.

Parsis poked his head around the edge of the door. Once he saw his father, he stepped quickly inside. Severn came in on his heels, closing the door behind them.

Now sure it was his sons and no one else, Cann rose to his feet. Both of them here, fully armed and armored, could only mean one thing. “So, it’s begun?”

“The king is dead but not by Elden hands. The attack came from within.” Parsis’s eyes were dark. “It’s Sebourne, Da.” He moved swiftly across the room to his father’s side and reached for the armor hanging on the rack.

“Sebourne?” That was a shock Cann had not expected. He slipped into the chest plates Parsis held out. “You’re sure?”

“Luce saw Sebourne’s men kill some of the King’s Guard.”

“Where is Luce?”

“Gone to lower the shields and sound the alarm.” Sev knelt to fasten the greaves to his father’s legs.

With the night shields up, they couldn’t spin a weave to alert the allies. Sebourne would know that and take precautions to keep those shields up, which mean Luce was headed for danger. As his sons helped him into his armor, Cann sent up a quick prayer for Luce’s safety and a quick curse for Sebourne’s insanity.

“Grief must have driven Sebourne mad.” Arrogant, hottempered, and power-hungry though he was, Cann had never known Sebourne to harbor treasonous sentiments against the king. But grief could do strange things to a man. “Who the jaffing Hells let him close enough to the king to kill him?”