Selida Coralglass knew that the only way to keep a secret was never to think of it; to become a new person, unbothered by its existence.

Today, she was failing.

As Dulcis plowed up the sandy hill beneath her, Selida felt her heart glaze with lead—heavy, poisonous and maddening. She eased back in the saddle when they reached the crest of the bluff. The peninsula unfurled before them, but nothing she saw lightened her mood. Beyond her mare's ears, leviathan cliffs of white fog veiled a jagged tongue of land. Wyvernsvow Keep crouched unevenly on the horizon, watching over sharp rocks and gray ocean: a structure as oppressive, tiresome, and thoroughly Dawnlander as the oppressive, tiresome men who had built it.

"This war will not truly end until that ungainly monstrosity falls into the sea." Her Tidelander father had made his prophecy on this very rise, twenty years ago, as his cavalcade of exhausted knights tramped towards the then-new castle, built like a sneer over the broken bones of the coast's grandest Temple of Aluna. Ostensibly, they came to negotiate a surrender. Young as she'd been, even Selida knew that Lord Coralglass intended Laurence, his son and heir, to continue the Tidelander's war, no matter what words they signed to parchment.

The Dawnlanders had been smarter, their treaties patient, and the years corrosive to rebellion. Now, Lord Coralglass was gone, and Laurence was landless. Selida had taken Orders, buried the past in the beachwood box where it belonged. But each year when Aluna's ministry took her to this cursed rise, her father's words returned like an echo, embedded in the roar of the sea. Expectant. Waiting.

Each year, she ignored them.

An alarmed shout penetrated the fog.

Relieved, Selida brushed the familiar ghosts aside.

On the road below, a miserable knot of farmers and fishermen clustered around a cow which had collapsed among their carts. It bellowed with distress. The travellers, short tempered with fatigue, tried to prod it back into motion with pitchforks and invectives.

Selida's neck prickled. The harvest had been short. Hunger was starting to spread, and banditry alongside it. This lane was ripe for an ambush.

She murmured a prayer, and the ocean-colored flags adorning the keep snapped into focus as Aluna's grace sharpened her vision. Steel helmets paced between crenelations. Both arbalests stood ready. The towering drawbridge denied entry.

Several children hidden in the snarl of wagons began to cry. Selida lowered her eyes to the hairpin turn ahead of the refugees.

There.

Brigands.

They wore ragged leathers and carried rocks and cudgels. To her surprise, they crouched in the low brush all along the ragged column. Why had they not yet attacked? Where was Wyvernsvow's escort?

Then Selida saw him—a lone knight, previously obscured by boulders, guiding the front of the column up the switchback path. The grille of his helm covered his features, but her heartbeat knew him. His assurance. His grace. Even in the gray light, he gleamed, and his black warhorse bristled with weaponry. His imposing presence had dissuaded the brigands thus far, but as he turned back down the path to investigate the delay, their mood changed.

Selida saw one raise a horn. The men hidden in the scrub drew axes and slings.

Well, we can't have that. Estimating distances and timing in her mind, she leaned forward and urged Dulcis into a gallop.

***

Kahldar had noticed the ruffians cowering in the brush, but only saw the one in the tree when the man loosed a stone directly at the youth standing at the lead cart horse's head. He screamed and clutched his forehead. The beast beside him shied, threatening to upend the vehicle behind. The road erupted into chaos.

"Backs to the wagons!" Kahldar bellowed to the farmers. He spun his mount Ispen to meet the foes as they closed in. "Guard the children!"

He extended his shield, deflecting a missile headed for a boy whose white-knuckled hands gripped a pitchfork. The lad yelped and swung wildly at the air around his cowering siblings.

Four wagons, fifteen refugees, at least twelve bandits. Kahldar kicked Ispen into a knot of them before they could skewer a pair of shaking stablehands.

Exoeras damn that cursed Tidelander treasure.

If young Lord Lydris had not found that secret horde of elven treasure in the caves under the castle, the Fox would never have raised an army of pirates and dispossessed Tidelander knights to reclaim it. And if rumors of their impending siege had not interrupted the harvest...

Just this morning he had warned the Knight Commander, "Tripling the guard at Wyvernsvow until the King's taxmen arrive will leave any latecomers unprotected."

"You've seen the great hall — they're already stacked to the rafters," Ser Aegison had replied. "There's no room for more, and almost all of our serfs are already accounted for."

"Indeed. Still, we are charged with protecting all of Lord Magnus's people, not almost all of them."

"Go, then, if you are so determined," Aegison scowled. "But with rumors of the Fox's army mounting daily, I will not spare one more man from the walls."

Now surrounded, Kahldar parried an axe swing and knocked another brigand back with the flat of his blade. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw three more bandits advancing on a woman defending a cartload of children in the rearmost wagon. He was never going to reach them in time. Kahldar shouted to draw the men's attention. Flipping his sword to his shield hand, he reached for one of the javelins holstered at Ispen's flank.

Before he could launch the weapon, a horse the color of surf materialized out of the fog at the back of the column. Astride it, sea-blue robes streaming behind her, crouched a Lady Cleric of Aluna. That Lady Cleric of Aluna. A whirlwind of memories assailed him—the joust—last year's festival—that dangerous moment in the stables—Kahldar shifted his weight involuntarily and Ispen took a step in her direction. It was futile. He grit his teeth as the bandits swiveled their spears from the cart to meet her charge.

Instead of shying aside, the cleric rose in her stirrups, right hand flying skyward. As her horse gathered itself and leaped into the air, her voice rang forth. "Serpents of the earth!" she called, "Aluna bids thee answer!"

She threw her hand downward.

The wood of the brigands' weapons—every spear, cudgel, and axe haft— turned into angry snakes. Fat brown pythons, little black adders, and hooded, venomous cobras, all heaving coils of muscle, scales, and teeth.

The bandits screamed. They flung the beasts away from themselves, but to no avail: Fangs leapt straight for faces, striking noses, eyes, and mouths. Behind him, Kahldar heard the nearest ruffians fall to the ground, thrashing. The rest fled screaming into the scrub.

The farmers stared for a moment, as disoriented as their attackers. Then, they raised their weapons.

"Aluna! Tidemother!" came cheers of full-throated relief.

The Lady Cleric bowed in her saddle and trotted her horse around the wagons. Kahldar halted Ispen at the top of the column and sought to compose himself. His breathing slowed, but his heartbeat refused to steady. His relief dissolved into a familiar irritation.

After accepting accolades from each farmer and fisherman, their savior paused her dancing horse before his. She was still grinning, cheeks flushed, eyes glittering. Elven ancestry made her appear ageless, but it was the exultation in every line of her body that riveted his gaze.

He had made a mistake, those long nights of guard duty, allowing himself to think of her. His memory had worn her temptress smile translucent, and left him vulnerable to the tidal-wave force of her actual vitality.

"Ser Kahldar Whitepeak," she caroled. "Blessings of Aluna upon you. How are you enjoying this season's harvest of bandits?"

"Lady Selida. As fond of serpents as ever, I see."

Her grin flashed white. "Serpents lie at the root of all Aluna's creation and, to my joy, they never tire of my company. Unlike, perhaps, yourself?"

He drew breath so that when he spoke he would not sound as churlish as he felt. "Excuse me. If you are done with your impetuous show of force, I must go ensure that your people do not now beat their assailants to death."

She shrugged and glanced to where the farmers were now converging on the fallen bandits. "Both predictable and inefficient. As you like. I will mind these carts, and make sure the piglets do not run off as we await your Dawnlander judgment."

As Kahldar turned away, he saw the tangle of snakes crowding the road slither up to her horse and stiffen obligingly back into cudgels.

Exoeras save me.