Night had long since fallen, and the blizzard had blown in. Through the driving snowfall, the mountains were dark jagged peaks against the midnight sky. Roark crouched in the trees at the edge of the Graf Manor—his manor, no matter what that dolt Albrecht said—his only concession to the cold was a dark woolen jacket. The jacket’s many pockets were filled with scraps of parchment, each one inked in his neat, precise hand.

Since leaving the Rebel Council, he’d spent the better part of the evening writing out every spell he might possibly use if this assassination became a battle for his life. Shield barriers, entanglements, stunners, illusions, elemental attacks, projectiles, poison, and plague—everything he could possibly have foreseen sorted carefully into offensive and defensive attacks and ready for deployment. Plus one special pocket, filled with a surprise, just in case.

And for those necessities he couldn’t foresee, his pen knife was tucked into the breast pocket of his jerkin. The knife was his own design, forged not long after the Bloederige Noct, the Night of Blood. Its blade was thin and small as a nib, its handle long enough to hold like a pen. With it, he could cut flesh as precisely and quickly as a pen could write. That little knife had saved his life more times than he cared to count, and his left arm was laced with the scars to prove it.

From his vantage point in the trees, Roark could see down the southern wall of the estate. A small squad of Ustars hunched inside their cloaks at the carriage gate, stomping their feet and rubbing their hands together to keep the blood flowing. He’d already been around to the west side of the manor and seen the pair of snake-helmed guards watching over the much smaller servants’ entrance, both complaining loudly about whose nether regions they hadn’t kissed enough to end up stationed outside in a bloody blizzard.

Roark stole through the forest to the north, the accumulating blanket of white silenced his steps. Snow-padded memories of late night wolf hunts with his father, uncles, and elder cousins in these same woods flashed through his mind as he ran.

It’d been the highlight of his ninth year, finally being old enough to join them. Though he’d tired almost immediately and his stomach ached with hunger, he hadn’t complained for fear they would send him back to the house with the women and the babies. He could still remember the rush of accomplishment he’d felt when they caught up to the huge beast. His cousin Dirk had made the kill, but Roark had kept up with the men all night long, packing his own spear, never once giving away their position. He was a man just like they were, and the slap on the back he’d earned from his father as they dragged the wolf home had proven it.

Somewhere high in the mountains a lone maka-ronin—king of the wolves—howled, bringing a smile to Roark’s face. It felt good to be on the hunt again, and in his home territory, too.

He stopped at the edge of the forest, watching the northern wall of the Graf estate. The tall stone barrier lay only yards from the mountainside, a snow-covered scree of fallen rocks bridging the distance between the two. Without even a gate to guard, no Ustars had been posted along this side of the estate. Arrogant fools.

Roark slipped out of the trees and melted into the shadows along the northern wall.

What these intruders didn’t know about Graf Manor was that generations ago, the lady of the house had gone somewhat … eccentric … and become convinced that one of the roaming bands of Lyuko travelers had cursed her. As a result, she’d had several secret entrances and exits built into the estate in case of attack. Of course, she’d also slept in a coffin and worn a necklace made from her late husband’s teeth, but thankfully those precautions hadn’t outlasted her ladyship. The whole family had had a good laugh at the irony when, nearly a hundred years later, Roark’s father took a Lyuko tsarina for his wife—though his mother liked to joke that the marriage was all part of the curse.

It took some kicking around in the snow and rockfall, but Roark located the heavy iron ring lying tangled in the dead grass like an ancient bit of trash. He grabbed the ring with both hands and pulled, straining until the frozen ground opened with a rusty creak.

He winced. Could use a bit of grease, those hinges.

Roark took a moment to toss down a scrap of paper containing an illusion to camouflage his passing—An area fifteen foot square from the edges of this paper appears as if it has not been disturbed by humans in the past hour.—in case anyone came looking for the source of the noise. When the paper hit the snow, the magic went into effect, and he could see nothing but an undisturbed blanket of white from his boots to the tree line. The illusion would last only ten minutes or so, but that would be plenty of time for the blizzard to remedy the situation.

Satisfied with the working, Roark climbed into the blackness of the mountainside tunnel and eased the trapdoor shut behind him. The darkness closed in, thick enough to feel pressing in from all directions. This might have almost been frightening if he hadn’t grown up playing hide and seek in these passages. He pulled another scrap of paper from his pocket and rolled it into a tube. The end smoldered for a moment, then caught, lighting the passage with a tiny green flame.

The tunnels running under the estate grounds weren’t so different from the secret corridor under Cambry’s fabric store. Mortared stone lined the walls from top to bottom, and thick wooden beams protected them against cave-ins. Roark followed the mountainside tunnel to its first fork—the right leading to the stables and the left to the eastern wing of the manor house—and took a left. From there, he hooked right, right, and then left again, easily snaking through the maze meant to confuse pursuers. He’d lost his little sister Talise in there once purposely and been spanked soundly for it.

The smirk died on Roark’s lips at the bottom of the stairs. He extinguished the burung fire and followed them up. At the top, he found the hidden window that looked out into the courtyard, its pane dusty from going so long unused. From the outside, the hidden window looked like just one more in the line of glassed-in small archer slits along the manor’s eastern wing. But from the inside, the window and the stairs were concealed behind a false wall in the corner of what his family had called the blue sitting room.

Roark’s hand came to rest on the catch that swung open the false wall, but he didn’t spring it yet. Instead, he looked out into the courtyard, the last place he’d seen his family alive. Most of them, anyway. His father had been cut down in the sleeping quarters trying to defend his mother and Talise, who still hadn’t outgrown her habit of sneaking into their bed at night. After his father, four of his uncles, an aunt, and three cousins were killed. The Ustars had dragged the remaining von Graf men, women, and children outside and executed them in the courtyard. All except for Roark.

He flinched at the memory of his mother throwing herself over the tiny shadow of his little sister as the Ustari blade fell. The two of them had died beside the wellhouse, just over there.

That night had been chaos and screaming and the clash of steel on steel. The servants who hadn’t run were slain where they stood. Roark had done the only thing he could think to do as the Ustars closed in on him—grabbed the hunting knife from his fallen cousin and carved I am invisible. into his left forearm. It was the first time he’d improvised magic, the letters sloppy and haphazard with the overlarge blade, but mercifully, the spell hadn’t killed him.

Out of the twenty-seven members of the von Graf family, only the eleven-year-old Roark had escaped the slaughter. Fitting, then, that twenty years later, he would be the one to end the Tyrant King’s reign in the very same house. And thanks to the Rebel Council’s cowardice, he would do it alone, just like he’d done everything else since Bloedrige Noct.

Roark triggered the catch and the false wall swung open, silent as a ghost. He crept out into the sitting room, his boots whispering across the faded blue rug. The musty scent of emptiness and neglect hung in the air like a fog.

At the center of the room, the long blue fainting lounge had been overturned and never righted. Here and there, wingback chairs lay on their sides, their legs chopped off for firewood. The remains of an end table and an oil painting lay in the fireplace together half-burned. Though Roark remembered seeing it hanging on the sitting room wall in his youth, he couldn’t recall which of his ancestors the portrait had depicted. It was too late now to ask since anyone who might know was long-dead.

Taking care to avoid the blackened floorboards in the doorway of the sitting room—old blood, marking where his Uncle Jorik had perished—Roark stole silently into the hall and toward the main sleeping quarters. The closer Roark drew, the more blood spots he encountered, the only physical memorials of his family. There was the place where Uncle Gareth fell. And there, cousin Dirk. Cousin Res. Aunt Caena …

And in the corridor just outside his parents’ chambers, the dried pool of black where his father had made his last stand.

The heavy oak door was shut, but no Ustar stood guard outside. The short-cropped hairs down the nape of Roark’s neck prickled. No guards patrolling the halls and only a token show of force outside the manor? He’d been so caught up in memories, he hadn’t given the lack of ready adversaries a thought, but this wasn’t at all like the Tyrant King. That bastard never went anywhere without his personal entourage of the most brutal fighters in all of Traisbin.

Roark pressed his ear to the intricately carved panel of the door, holding his breath and straining to hear any hint of movement. Long seconds passed with nothing but the sound of his own pulse.

Then, finally, the muffled creak of leather.

It was like that old joke about the saucy milkmaid—How many heavily armed Ustars could fit in one antechamber?

Well, that was a problem easily solved. Roark snuck back down the corridor into the nursery his sister hadn’t lived long enough to outgrow and sprung the catch on the false panel in the wall. It swung open silently. Little Talise had used the shared passage as a shortcut between her bed and their parents’, though its original purpose was a quick escape. Between the two bedchambers lay a staircase leading down into a tunnel, which exited a few feet outside the carriage gate. Roark crossed the landing and pressed his ear to the panel on the opposite side.

Snoring.

Roark slipped the wickedly curved Lyuko dagger from his belt. A fitting present from the son of a murdered tsarina.

Careful not to make a sound, he tripped the catch and eased the panel open a crack. The snoring continued undisturbed.

A fire crackled merrily in the fireplace, its yellow-orange light dancing along the walls. The huge canopied bed that had once belonged to his parents stood just outside the false panel, the source of the snores. The bed’s heavy green curtains had been drawn to protect against stray drafts, hiding the sleeping Tyrant King inside.

Unfortunately, it also hid the door to the antechamber which lay on the opposite side. He couldn’t see whether it was open or shut. If Marek cried out or put up a struggle, they would come running, and the few seconds a closed door could afford him would be invaluable.

There was nothing to be done for it, however. Roark had come too far and would not be denied his chance at vengeance. Creeping around the bed just to check on a door only increased his chances of making a sound that would wake his quarry and end this assassination before it began. Better to get the job done and deal with the consequences as they came.

Like a Mist Wraith, Roark crept to the bed. Taking a fold of the heavy bedcurtain in hand, he raised the dagger, preparing to drive its curved blade into the Tyrant King’s black heart. Silently, he pulled the curtain back.

The bed was empty. The curtains on the opposite side hung open.

A dozen battle-scarred, bloodthirsty warriors and one red-robed mage stood at the ready. A bearded Ustar with a wide-bladed battleax grinned as he made exaggerated snoring sounds.

And at the center of the bodyguards stood the Tyrant King Marek Konig Ustar.