Vermia’s mornings are always cold, I have learned this quickly. Not the gentle kind of cold that nips at the fingertips, but a sharp, disciplined cold that feels almost intelligent. It sneaks under collars, curls into lungs, and settles behind the ribs as though claiming territory. Despite this, the light here is beautiful: Aureate, Organic, Warm.

  With this, I stand on the terrace overlooking the eastern courtyard and feel nothing but triumph. I watch the courtyard below spring to life. Servants scurry between the stables and the armory. Guards march in pairs across the battlements. A few nobles wander the gardens, stiff-backed and slow, like ornaments positioned to prove the realm still thrives after the witch scourge.

  It is peaceful now. They owe that peace to me.

  A grim sort of satisfaction settles in my chest at the thought. I let myself hold it, savor it, because I earned it. The crusade through their forests was not some heroic story carved in marble—it was years of choking smoke, sleepless nights, and creatures whose screams pierced bone. Vermia may never fully understand what I did for them, but they benefit from it all the same.

  The frost glittering across the stones below resembles a battlefield still smoking after dawn. There is a kind of poetry in it—beauty carved from brutality. It reminds me, faintly, of the surrounding wood after we burned the largest witch coven. Ash drifting through moonlight like black snow. The smell of scorched earth. Witches weep. Witches scream. Their cries are hollow things, little more than the wind passing through dead branches.

  I close my eyes, inhaling the cold. Letting it bite.

  Letting it affirm that I am far from Doloron—far from the palace that never wanted me, far from the lineage that saw me as a footnote.

  Be

  Invisible.

  Here, however—and this truth thrums in my veins like fire—here in Vermia, I am seen. Not for my birth order, not for my etiquette or lack thereof, but for something I carved out of my own flesh and will.

  I earned this. Earned it with blood under my nails and soot in my lungs.

  The image of Doloron’s welcome—fantastical, impossible—rises again behind my eyelids. I see myself riding through the gates, a conquering hero. The crowds roaring. My father stepping forward to clasp my shoulders. My brothers, maybe even my sister, bowing—not deep, but enough to acknowledge that I had surpassed them.

  It is pathetic how much I once craved it. Craved their words. Craved their attention.

  Now, in Vermia’s silver morning, the ghosts of those desires feel distant. Like childish things left behind in the woods.

  Still, bitterness coils in my stomach, thick as old smoke.

  I can picture my father’s real expression so easily: the faint tightening around the eyes, the dismissive nod meant to appear regal. My sister away, somewhere with her husband. My brothers exchanging looks—half amused, half inconvenienced—at the idea that I had accomplished something noteworthy. They would whisper behind goblets, exchanging smirks, already calculating whether my deeds threatened the delicate hierarchy of inheritance.

  I clench the terrace railing hard enough that my glove creaks.

  No matter how large the coven, how dark the woods, how many witches I slaughtered with my own hands, in Doloron I would always be the spare left at the edge of every painting.

  Perhaps that is why killing witches thrilled me more than it should have. It made the world sharp. Clear. I was no one in Doloron—but in the forest, every creature that lunged from the dark knew my name. They hissed it. Shrieked it. Feared it.

  Fear is a form of recognition.

  And Vermia? Vermia knows what I did for them. Their king knows, even if he speaks of it sparingly. Nobles watch me with a mixture of awe and unease. Servants bow a little deeper. Guards straighten when I pass.

  I feel it in the air: the subtle shift of a world beginning to bend in my direction.

  That thought warms me more than any fire.

  I let it fill the room as I turn back toward the bed where my armor lies in its trunk. I lift a gauntlet, running a thumb along the scorched, blackened grooves. Some call these marks ugly. I find them exquisite—sigils of duty, of purpose.

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  Of victory.

  Witchfire doesn’t clean easily. It stains deeply, as though the creatures imbue their death throes into the metal itself. I like that. I like that my armor remembers the ones who fell at my feet. Even if the world forgets me—as Doloron did—my steel will not.

  A low laugh escapes me. It surprises even me with its genuine delight.

  The silence returns—heavy, like snow-laden branches. I take a slow breath and notice it again: a faint unease in the air. The kind that prickles the back of the neck. Vermia has been quieter since the crusade, yes, but quiet like a wound healing over, not like health returned. The darkness is gone, but its echo remains.

  How blind my father was. How blind my brothers remain. They thought courts and tutors and politics defined strength. They thought inheritance determined worth.

  But power is not given. It is taken. Sometimes quietly, sometimes violently. Sometimes by gutting the monsters lurking beneath the trees.

  Sometimes by gutting the weaknesses in one’s own soul.

  I set the gauntlet down and step toward the tall windows, looking again toward the gardens. Among the hedges, I see movement—Princess Genevieve’s golden skirts sweeping around a corner. Delicate. Graceful. Fragile.

  A prize.

  No—more than a prize. A symbol. Proof that all my choices were righteous. A future secured by my deeds, not my birth.

  I watch her slow steps, the way she turns her face toward the wintry sunlight as though she is unaccustomed to the cold. The kingdom treasures her. The realm adores her. She is all softness and serenity—qualities Vermia feared it would lose to the witches’ spread.

  But she will not need to fear anything anymore.

  She will have me.

  I imagine, briefly, how my father would react upon hearing I was to marry her. Would he mask his shock? Would my brothers grit their teeth behind polite smiles? Would they mutter indignantly in the hall after supper, wondering how the forgotten son returned bearing a crown larger than any of theirs?

  The fantasy pulses bright and intoxicating.

  Now they will see me, I think.

  Now they will understand what I am capable of.

  But even this imagined vindication feels fragile. I push it away before the ache behind it can surface.

  I have no use for Doloron’s approval anymore.

  Vermia sees me. Vermia rewards me. Vermia recognizes my strength.

  And Vermia still needs me.

  Because I did see something earlier—something real, not imagined. A shadow slipping between the hedges. A figure too slim, too graceful, to be a guard. A witch scouting, perhaps. Not all covens were accounted for. Not all creatures meet the pyre without trying to flee.

  A witch, perhaps, scouting. Testing boundaries. Their kind drifts like smoke—always searching for cracks in the light.

  My fingers brush the hilt of my sword, and every muscle tightens with recognition.

  The hunt is not over. Vermia may celebrate peace, but peace is only real when someone violent guards it. Their nobles forget that. Their bards certainly do. Even my father forgets it.

  But I never have.

  I earned the right to protect this land. To cleanse its shadows. To sit at its throne.

  To be the blade Vermia wields.

  My heart beats steadily, confidently. Pride expands in my chest—rich, heavy, gratifying.

  My father would not understand this feeling. He knows duty, not triumph. He knows heirs, not forgotten sons who claw their way into relevance. If he stood beside me now, perhaps he would finally see I was right to go. Right to fight. Right to do what my brothers never dared.

  I am no forgotten prince here.

  I am no afterthought.

  I am the answer to Vermia’s fear.

  The reflector of their need.

  The proof that darkness retreats only when met with greater darkness.

  I pull on my cloak, straighten my shoulders, and step toward the corridor.

  But I am here now.

  And with me comes safety.

  With me comes purpose.

  With me comes the certainty that shadows will never touch this land again.

  My footsteps echo down the hall, steady as a heartbeat.

  Let the witches linger at the edges.

  Let them think Vermia is soft again.

  Let them dare to test this peace.

  I will show them—as I showed all the rest—

  that Vermia now belongs to a hunter.