Saer Halcyn found Elanah Kindlebright standing alone at the edge of the field.

The old woman stared at the party in the distance, her shoulders low and her eyes red. He didn’t know if she’d been crying, or if she was just that angry. It was dangerous to approach her either way. The Blight Witch had a temper, and not even a prince was spared from it.

And especially not him, who was once her apprentice.

But he approached her regardless.

“So you met him,” he said, stopping to stand beside her. The two of them watched the dinner ongoing in the distance, full of clamoring soldiers and lute-led song. The immortal stood in the center, laughing. The stolen son. He bounced around with a weave, his true form invisible to all but other immortals and Elanah.

She stood there in silence, her irises flashing with shifting colors. A truesight potion, no doubt. Ones that placed her eyes in a different realm entirely. Those work-tired eyes stared at the ground, sharp enough to chip rock at a glance.

“I should have guessed,” Elanah whispered, and Halcyn noticed the adamantine sheen of her skin. He felt the ripple of magic all around her, and something dark and evil dripped from her sleeve, swallowing the ground around them. Pooling like hissing, black malevolence. She turned her eyes to him.

It was a frigid, sharp glance. Akin to a cut from a dagger of plague ice. The world around the two of them distorted, twisting like claw-scarred paint.

“You were always too smart for your own good. Always plotting and plotting, moving things behind the scenes,” she muttered, and Halcyn stepped back, away from the spreading lake of dark poison. “Your House already had my loyalty. But trust is never enough, is it? Always contingency after contingency, layered over each other like a withering snake’s skin. You did something to someone important to me. And now I don’t even know his face.”

She raised her arm. Darkness exploded from her sleeve. Blackwater. Poison. Anger. Plague. Halcyn took it straight on, and the toxins melted his skin. They blackened his flesh and ate his bones, corrupting marrow and ripping at cartilage.

Halcyn stepped out from the torrent, a half-melted skeleton. Elanah clenched her fist. A spark. A flame.

A boom shattered the world.

It shattered the twisting vistas, breaking the hallucinations Elanah had cut into his mind. They stood in the middle of the blight, miles away from the camp. Alone. Halcyn faced her, a scorched corpse, standing on his two feet.

And then he flickered, and he was whole once more. Unharmed.

Bloodthorn. The Mirror Prince.

In front of him, Elanah’s skin began to turn black from her own poisons. Her flesh sloughed off, exposing rotting bone. Burns spread across what flesh that remained. She slashed a potion-tipped fingernail up her arm, and the wounds closed as quickly as they appeared. She watched him with enough heat to scorch the sun.

The Blight Witch approached him, and the blight melted. Her new poisons flooded the earth, spreading with every step she took. The very air turned toxic, liquefying Halcyn’s lungs with every breath. He shrugged it off. Elanah did the same to the damage he reflected to her.

“Who is he, Halcyn?” she hissed, grabbing him by the cuff of his shirt. The Blight Witch’s touch blistered his skin. Elanah roared, “Who did your Fae take away from me!?”

Halcyn gripped her wrist. His hand boiled.

“Your first son,” he replied. “The one you always bragged to me about. ,̶'̷̡͍̙̀́̿̈́͊͝;̵̜͉̝͕̦̦͋͋͌̔̽͆.̸̗͂̊̓͐,̵̗̤̗̝̩̬̅̋̽̈́͠'̴͍͚̻̹̳̤̎̃̕͠;̷̭̟͒.̶̛̛͖̥̉̿͂͑͠,̴͔̯̝̉̆̿̈̀͝͠;̵̧̲͗̆̓̃'̴̡̗̭̅̅̀̂.̴̮͙̘̓̊̃,̸̛͇͎͆̒̈́̕ Kindlebright.”

She was killing him. Over and over and over. And she was killing herself, too. But she repaired her frail body, enhanced to the limit by the strongest potions she could brew. Her grip was iron and her strength colossal. Her eyes saw all and not even the whisper of a shadow could escape her ears.

But for all her terrifying power, Halcyn only pitied the look she had on her face. It was a realization. A painful puzzle piece clicking into place, hiding behind an anger that threatened to swallow him whole.

“I can’t remember him,” she whispered. “I can’t see his face or hear his name. It’s just blank. A clean slate.”

“He’s Nameless. Someone took his Name away from him.”

“They killed him.”

“They made him immortal. Like Primordial and Fae.”

“At what price?”

Halcyn looked at the woman in front of him. She was so very old, now. So much weaker than before. The Elanah Kindlebright of his childhood was a rock in a silk glove. Stoic and unfazed, striding through the world with a confidence that was matched only by her skill.

Now she was simply a mother in her late years, grasping at what straws she could draw from thin air. He sighed and tapped her wrist, enduring the immense pain of rot that blossomed with every touch.

“Let go of my collar, miss Elanah. You know I didn’t do it.”

“Then tell me who did.”

“No.”

She lowered her head, and her voice was low. Quiet. Elanah’s hand fell away from his neck, “Give me a name, Halcyn. I just need a name.”

Halcyn opened his mouth reply, but his shadow extended first. It grew along the trees, expanding, forming into a huge, jagged shape. It was a great, maned beast. Emerald-eyed and fierce, with fur like splinters and horns like earthen blades. Freyarch stepped out of the woods and loomed over them, casting Halcyn under his massive shadow.

He spoke at a low rumble, “You ask for names without knowing their price, Elanah Kindlebright.”

Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “Don’t make me hurt you, Sunchaser Lion. This isn’t your conversation to join. Not unless you have the answers I want.”

Elanah’s words sent chills down Halcyn’s spine. She was serious. Even now, her veins burned and shriveled under the stress of her concoctions. But as long as they ran in her blood…

Even immortals would have to tread lightly.

Freyarch bared his fangs.

“You cannot kill me. Not in this form.”

“Your kind touched my family, and you have the gall to stand in front of me?” she asked. The veins running up her neck were black. Like little cracks on her skin, spreading up her jaw and into the whites of her eyes. “I’m old, but you stand on my soil, lion. Your form has flesh to flay and blood to rot. Death is the least of what I can do to you.”

“And the same goes for the people you seek vengeance on. Stop this foolishness, Elanah. The trade was equal and made with consent.”

“It was offered to a child.”

“Wrong,” Freyarch growled, and he raised his massive paw. The tip of a scythe-curved claw pressed against her chest. Right over her heart. “It was offered to a boy that became a man in your absence. He is one of my kin now—immortal. The very same who saved your husband when you could not. Insult his trade’s conviction another time, and I will burn your mind with as much pain as you dare to inflict.”

Elanah grit her teeth, “Tell me what court he was from. The one that tricked my son. Answer it, and I’ll ask no more.”

“And if I don’t?”

“My answer to that question isn’t something you want to experience.”

Freyarch and Elanah stared at each other, the air bristling. Halcyn felt then, the sensation of being between two giants. Ones that could ravage entire ecosystems at will. Beings with catastrophic abilities, each pushing for their own desires. Each capable of turning the tide of the wars the realm now fought.

It was only good, then, that he’d grown up with them both. Halcyn crossed his arms and spoke.

“The Winter Court, miss Elanah. That’s what you’re looking for.”

“Horace!” Freyarch roared, but Halcyn interrupted him with a hand before the old cat could launch into another scolding. The saer faced Elanah with a grim look, stepping forward. He left Freyarch’s shadow and stood. Right in front of his oldest mentor. He met her eyes.

“There’s your answer. Do with it what you will. But know this—” he said, taking a pendant from underneath his shirt. An amulet of four parts, twelve segments. Four seasons. Twelve Houses. “The moment you move against the immortal that stole your son’s Name, you declare war on all the Twelve Houses. Including the Summersky House. Including us. Will your risk your family, just for that?”

She frowned, “No one will target Rugsh or Cael. Your pride won’t allow it. Nor will the Ancestors.”

Halcyn shook his head, “I’m not talking about your mortal son, miss Elanah. I mean the one out there, taking refuge in the camp. As the crown prince of my House, I would have no choice. An immortal is too large a potential threat to be left alone.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Not unless you cross the line first.”

Elanah’s jaw tensed. Her teeth clenched. Halcyn watched the anger ripple through her, squeezing her muscles and bringing her magic to a boil. She was a kettle without a lip—boiling, filling with steam, ready to burst. Halcyn smiled.

Hook, line, and sinker.

Before the Blight Witch could drown them in her wrath, he swiped a hand across the space between them. Fast and sharp, enough that the gesture startled her out of her wrath. Halcyn lowered it and shook his head.

“War is about timing, miss Elanah. The start of a war often decides how it ends,” he said, facing to turn towards the blight around them. The Crimson Tide pulsed in silence. Almost as if it were listening. “Right now, we’re on the verge of a third Convergence War. Caereith can’t afford to rot from within while parasites like Blackrend and Kalsdyn look to destroy us from the outside. If this next war starts alongside internal struggle between the houses, we lose. The realm dies.”

He turned to her, meeting her eyes.

“So wait. Bide your time. Wait for this war to end before you go and start another. And when the time comes, cross that line with me. You will have my support then.”

Halcyn smiled, then, and he offered her a hand to shake; the offer of a trade.

They weren’t immortals. But Halcyn knew that the echo of this moment would ripple forever. Far, far into the future. Elanah stared at his hand. Then up at him. And for once, the old woman seemed to realize that he was a boy no longer.

He was saer Halcyn. Crown prince of the Summersky House. The Bloodthorn.

A future emperor.

“A unification war,” Elanah muttered. “How long have you been planning this?”

Halcyn shrugged, “I make things up as I go along.”

“Liar.”

“Would you trust me if I wasn’t?”

Elanah shook her head, then reached forward. She took his hand. Shook.

“Ten years. That’s the longest I’m willing to wait. After that, no number of threats is going to stop me from hunting down the immortal that touched my family.”

“That’s a generous amount of time.”

The Blight Witch shook her head again. She turned away from him, and towards the direction of the camp. It shone in the distance, bioluminescent blossoms lighting the tops of druidcraft buildings and walls. There was an immortal there. A son. And he was performing for a crowd for the first time in his life.

“My son,” she said. “The way he looked at me was like a stranger. Did he lose his memories of me, too?”

“No.”

She smiled bitterly, nodding.

“Then ten years isn’t nearly enough. I have been a stranger to my son for over thirty years, Halcyn. I can't hope to make up for that in a decade.”

Elanah Kindlebright strode down the path, moving through swathes of poisoned blight. The melted flesh was already taking longer to recover than before. Halcyn watched her head for the camp, where her estranged son sang to forget about her. Beside him, Freyarch’s gigantic form shrunk back into the size of a simple tabby cat. Orange fur and emerald eyes.

The Fae was no longer frowning, but grinning. Why wouldn’t he be? It was another ally secured. And potentially another immortal, in the from of a promising young bard. More pieces to place atop the board. It all made for a much more interesting game.

And immortals were all about interest.

Halcyn’s entertaining ambition was the reason they were together at all.

The saer faced the camp.

“I’ve spoken to his friend, Aami,” he said, calling out after Elanah. “And she says he likes schaa. The same kind that you like.”

The Blight Witch paused, then nodded.

She continued on her way.