Smoke clung low over the King's road.
The fight was over, but it hadn't gone quietly. Horses lay where they'd fallen, legs twisted, steam curling off their flanks in the cold. Ghost bodies in black robes were scattered among them like dropped shadows, porcelain masks staring up with that same frozen, shocked O of a mouth.
Lockhart and Roses riders moved through the wreckage in jerks and starts—checking pulses, hauling the wounded into rough clusters, dragging the dead toward the ditch. Someone had started a fire at the roadside. The crackle of kindling sounded wrong here.
Henry stood in the middle of it all, chest still rising a little too fast. The last of the gold light had faded from his skin; his aura was banked down to a dull glow behind his eyes. Mud streaked his greaves. Blood—his and not—spattered his cloak.
He walked to the nearest Ghost corpse that still had its mask.
Up close, the thing was worse. Glossy white, cheeks painted pink, huge round eyes, tiny puckered mouth—like a toy someone had tried to make human and failed.
Henry curled his fingers under the edge.
"Creepy little bastards," he muttered. "Let's see who thought killing my brother was worth the coin."
He pulled.
The mask came away with a wet, sticky sound.
Underneath was a young woman. Barely older than William. Chun-cut hair was plastered to her forehead with blood. A thin scar along her jaw. A black tattoo curling up behind her ear in characters he couldn't read.
Her eyes were half-open, staring past Henry into the flat grey sky.
Henry's jaw clenched. "Damn."
William realized only then that he'd stepped closer. The mud sucked at his boots. The stink of iron and burnt paper filled his nose.
He looked down at her face—
—and it wasn't a Ghost anymore.
It was Osric.
Rain instead of smoke. The south gate instead of the road. Osric on his back on the stone, armor split open, spear jutting from his chest.
William remembered the weight of him in his arms, knees in cold water, hands slipping on blood as he tried to lift him.
"Up," William had said, stupidly. "Come on, Osric, we still need—"
The old soldier's hand had slid off his sleeve, leaving a dark smear. His eye had already gone glassy.
"William." Marsh's grip had closed on his shoulder. "My lord. South Gate's damaged. If it breaks, this was for nothing."
Two villagers had knelt, dragging a cloak up over Osric's face while William stood there, soaked and shaking, feeling like something had been scooped out of his chest.
He hadn't looked again. He'd turned and run for the south wall.
Now that same hollow feeling opened under his ribs.
The Ghost girl at his feet. Osric under a cloak. The wall. The rain. The bodies.
His breath went thin and fast. Sound stretched—the crackle of the fire, a hurt horse's whimper, boots squelching in mud—too loud and too far at the same time. His fingers had locked around his sword hilt; he could feel his pulse hammering against the leather.
"Will."
Henry stepped into his line of sight, blocking the dead girl's face.
"Look at me," he said, voice low but edged. "Not at her."
William dragged his eyes up. It felt like lifting a shield that had soaked through.
Henry's face came into focus: blood-splash across one cheek, bruise forming along the jaw, hair damp with sweat. No halo now—just his brother, steady and stubborn.
"You're breathing like we're still in it," Henry murmured. "We're not. The fight's done. You hear me?"
"I…" William's throat was tight. "I keep seeing him."
Henry didn't ask who.
"Yeah," he said. "Osric. Makes sense."
He pried at William's fingers, peeling them off the hilt one by one. They'd gone white without William noticing.
"Remember Harrow," Henry said. "Bucket and tap. In."
He tapped his own breastplate in rhythm.
William's body obeyed before his thoughts did.
He pulled air in through his nose. One, two, three, four.
"Hold," Henry said. "Two, three, four. Out."
William let it go. It stuttered, but it went.
"Again."
They did it. In. Hold. Out.
The shaking in his hands eased from violent to just a tremor. The tunnel around his hearing widened; the road settled back in around him—mud, smoke, cold. Osric slid back to his place, not gone, but not crushing his lungs either.
Around them, everything kept moving. Healers knelt by the wounded, palms glowing faintly as they worked salves and base Muti into torn flesh. Men dragged Ghost bodies toward the ditch, masks bumping together with hollow clicks. A wounded horse screamed until someone cut its throat and quieted it.
Then, from behind them, a loud, theatrical groan rose over the noise.
"Ohhh, what artist dies with me…"
Aldric.
William blinked and turned.
The Roses heir was sprawled on a cloak in the mud like a fallen prince from a bad play, one knee bent, coat pushed aside to show the bloody wrap on his thigh. A healer knelt beside him, yanking the bandage tight without sympathy.
"Stop moving," she snapped. "It's a clean cut. You'll live."
"My leg disagrees," Aldric declared. "William, my beloved cousin, I can feel at least half my genius leaking out. You must carry on my legacy of poor decisions and impeccable hair."
The healer gave the linen another vicious tug.
Aldric yelped. "By all the saints! See? Torture. Remember this when you sing of my sacrifice."
It was dumb. It was petty.
It was exactly what William needed.
A broken sound jerked out of his chest. It took him a heartbeat to realize it was a laugh.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, breath finally starting to feel like air again, and gave Aldric a weak glare.
"Shut up, Aldric," he said.
It came out hoarse, but there was a real curve to it.
Aldric brightened instantly, like that had been his plan.
"There!" he told the healer. "Witness. I bring joy amid carnage. This is clearly medically significant; you should be gentler."
"Hold still," she muttered, but there was a twitch at the corner of her mouth.
One of the Lockhart riders nearby snorted. Another chuckled under his breath and looked guilty until Henry didn't yell at him.
The sound spread in small ripples—tired, shaky laughs that didn't erase the blood, but kept it from swallowing everything.
Henry squeezed William's shoulder once, solid and grounding.
"There you are," he said quietly. "Save the proper falling apart for when we're not standing in a ditch full of corpses."
"Great," William muttered. "I'll pencil it in between 'getting yelled at by the King' and 'trying not to humiliate myself in front of a princess.'"
Henry huffed—a tiny, almost-laugh.
He straightened and raised his voice.
"Lockhart! Roses!" he called. "Strip the Ghosts for anything useful. Masks, tags, anything with writing. Burn the rest. Healers, you've got one hour. Then we ride. Double scouts, no one rides alone."
Men moved. Orders gave their hands something to do other than shake.
William took one last slow breath—in, hold, out—and glanced toward the ditch where the Ghost girl's body would disappear under others, mask tossed on top like a broken toy.
Then he turned away.
There were wounded to haul into the carriage, tack to fix, reins to check. Albion still waited down the road with its white towers and sun banners and warm halls where people wanted a story about Ashford and the Lockhart boy who wouldn't stay dead.
For now, he could do this much: keep moving.
Behind him, Aldric sighed deeply.
"If anyone asks," he told a nearby rider, "I personally slew at least twelve Ghosts before this grievous injury felled me."
"You slipped in the mud and got stabbed in the leg," the man said.
"History improves in the retelling," Aldric replied. "Don't ruin this for me."
William shook his head, an actual smile in place now, and stepped in to help a wounded soldier to his feet.
The road ahead was still long. But his feet, for the moment, remembered how to walk.