Hidden behind a false oak panel of Tristan's room, a narrow staircase spiraled to the very top of the Tower, leading to a tiny room that had long ago been forgotten. In its corners were shoved stacks of ashy tomes and scrolls and wooden figures, their once-bright paint crumbling away. The room and its trove were covered in dust and unknown by all except Tristan, whose curiosity as a child had led him to find it, and his introversion as an adult led him to keep it a secret.

There was just one large, westward looking window set into a deep stone frame. What remained of the stained glass was still mounted to the frame, knife-like shards of color that reflected jewels across the cold gray floor and walls in the weak morning light.

Tristan liked to curl his long legs on the sill as he leafed through the bound vellum pages, mystified and entranced by the carefully rendered little pictures and poems in scripts he could not read, trying to recall the brief moment in time when he was a child and his mother had tried to teach him her own, far-away language.

One particularly entrancing illustration depicted a group of wan personifications of Death, their pale skin split, their spider-like arms thrown high in dance. They led a group of others: a king, a crone, a peasant. The monstrous things clutched at their hair and clothing and marched them away from their homes and castles and fields, down towards their awaiting grave.

At the back of the group was a young woman, one nervous hand at her heart, the other delicately curled around proffered skeletal fingers. There was a kindness to that particular couple that comforted him, and he often went back to gaze at them, eyes fixated on the woman’s pale and frightened face. The reassuring gesture of Death, though gaunt and terrifying, showed her no ill will, offering only to be a gentle guide into the inevitability.

Tristan carefully traced where their hands met, his mind far away, until he could ignore the pangs of hunger no longer.

Sighing, he gingerly set the book next to the abandoned notes he had been distracted from earlier. He glanced once more at his clumsily penned sketches of hemlock and bog rosemary, the lines made unsteady by his anxious hand.

He climbed down the steep, narrow stairs, and pushed past the oak panel to his chamber. He stumbled on the last step and fell forward, only just barely catching himself. His head spun and his vision went white.

Tristan had become quite accustomed to the sensation, and he patiently waited for the spinning to stop. He would need to go to the Hall and at least make a show of eating something, as though that would trick his stomach. Maybe he could selfishly nibble the bread meant to be saved for charity while no one was looking. That, he doubted, would be poisoned. He swung his dark cloak over his shoulders, shivering a little.

He couldn’t help but look forward to the warm, spiced wine downstairs, fatal or not, and he hurried down the flagged stone corridor. He figured that if he were to die, sipping on wine was one of the more preferable ways.

The winter was always quiet and still inside the Tower, but there was an unusually heavy snowstorm after Tristan’s birthday- one that had yet to abate. The muddy waters of the bog that extended for miles around them were frozen and covered in ice, making them traversable, for once, to a determined enemy. They were vulnerable. Tristan's father closed the Tower from the inside out, shutting up the windows and doors from the cold and the enemy. A handful of the luckier soldiers were posted guard inside, and the rest continued the battle on the outside.

Tristan would often peer out, trying to spot the rest of the men, but the mist was too thick. He sometimes imagined the echo of a yell, or the metallic ring of swords clashing.

Now, most of the movement that occurred within the walls was accounted for by the flickering hearths or the gentle sway of a tapestry as it blocked a draft. The majority of those living there spent their time in the Hall, where they took their meals and where the soldiers slept in great heaps of hay that lined the wall. They huddled together and moved only when necessary, in shadowy corners, too cold to speak.

Tristan took his seat next to his father. The king did not acknowledge him, but Tristan was accustomed to that and, frankly, preferred it. He grimaced at the sound of his father chewing the tough cut of mutton, the iron crown wobbled on his head as he ate.

Next to him sat Tristan’s stepmother, a new queen, younger than he was. His father had plucked her from a village nearby a year ago.

Her name was Agnes, but Tristan was told that she had been called Nest before she came to the Tower. Her hair and skin were powdered so fair that he couldn’t tell where her forehead met her shaved hairline, her eyebrows disappearing altogether. Tristan had yet to hear her speak.

She gave him a weak little smile around her goblet as she caught his eye, her tiny, pale hand smoothing over her stomach, huge and nearly due. He tried to return it, but the muscles of his face were so unused to the expression that it took him a moment. It didn't matter in the end; he realized that she had in fact been smiling at Bran, a young, tall soldier sitting next to him.

Cheeks burning, he looked away and murmured a thank you to the person who had just poured his wine for him. As inconspicuously as possible, he sniffed at it.

He ignored his plate of meat and cheese, the guilt pooling thick in his stomach as he felt the wistful eyes of the men. They gazed at his meal from down the table as they worked their jaws around hunks of dark, dense bread.

Beside him, Bran stared at Tristan’s plate with huge, puppy-like eyes. Tristan sighed and before he could overthink it, slid the meal over to him, earning a delighted laugh from the large man. Tristan doubted any poison was potent enough to take down someone Bran’s size.

“I heard the fighting last night,” Tristan said, ashamed that it had frightened him so terribly that he spent the rest of the night in the hidden room, “But the fog was too thick to see anyone.”

Bran only glanced at him, great forkfuls of food disappearing into his beard. “Impossible. You’d have to have heard them from miles away.”

But Tristan was sure he’d heard the screams in the distance.

“Don’t fear, my Lord. A messenger is arriving tonight from the south. From the way things have been going, we should be receiving good news.”

“I’m not afraid." Tristan replied, feeling mysteriously disappointed. Perhaps the boredom of winter was getting to him.

“Our brave young Lord,” Bran said, smiling and clapping him on the shoulder.

If it had been anyone but Bran, Tristan might have taken offense, reading his words as sarcasm, for Tristan certainly didn't consider himself brave.

Like the ebb and flow of a tide, the neighboring kingdom would come too close to the Tower once every year, and Tristan would be sent with a calvary to drive them back again. These battles were the only time he was permitted to leave the Tower, and to him, the outside world was a wasteland of mud and gore. He feared it.

And yet, deep down, he desired it more than anything. For beyond the mist of the bog there must be something beautiful.

It took four men to pull apart the doors, releasing a flurry of snow inside the Hall. From the cloud, a knight in pale armor stepped forward, his saffron cloak whipping behind him in the wind. He removed his helmet as the doors closed behind him, revealing his hair to be nearly as white as the storm that blew him inside.

No one moved. No one spoke. Shimmering motes floated around the knight as his sharp eyes flitted over every detail of the room, like a bird of prey searching a field. Finally, his gaze settled on Tristan with startlingly bright, amber eyes.

“Morgan!” Bran cried. The man’s chair clattered on the flagstones behind him as he rushed forward, and the knight smiled.