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"You took my camp." The voice came from the ridge, cold and level. "I'm here to take it back."
I didn't turn around. I kept my eyes on the supply crates Virrak's men were hauling out of the snow. Three days we'd held this frozen pit. Three days of counting rations and watching the tree line and trying not to think about the kill order I'd found under the command table.
"Lynn." Virrak stepped up beside me, his breath fogging in the air. "He brought two hundred."
"I can see the numbers," I said.
And I could. Floating above the ridge like some kind of sick joke. Two hundred twelve soldiers. Morale seventy-three percent. Supply lines marked in pale blue, stretching back toward the Iron Hills. Aldric Ironvow's personal guard, every one of them.
"He's asking for you by name," Virrak said.
"Good." I turned. "Let him ask."
Aldric stood at the top of the ridge, arms crossed. Even from here I could see the numbers hovering over his head. Combat rating ninety-four. Loyalty rating—to what? To himself? To the clans?—marked at eighty-eight percent. Higher than anyone I'd ever seen.
He started down the slope.
"You want me to—" Virrak began.
"No." I walked forward to meet him. "He came for me. He gets me."
The snow crunched under my boots. My fingers were numb inside my gloves. I could feel my pulse in my throat, sharp and fast, and I hated that he could probably see it too. Hated that he looked warm. Hated the way his soldiers fanned out behind him like they'd done this a thousand times.
He stopped three feet away.
"Lynn Korde," he said. "Exile. Thief. And now squatter."
"You forgot clever," I said.
His mouth didn't move. "You cost me forty men."
"You cost yourself forty men." I held his gaze. "You sent them into a bottleneck in the dark. That's on you."
"You cut the bridge."
"I won."
Something flickered in his eyes. Not anger. Worse. Interest.
"The council wants you dead," he said. "Did you know that?"
"I figured."
"They're offering land. Titles. A seat at the table for whoever brings them your head." He tilted his head slightly. "Why do you think I'm here?"
"Because you don't take orders," I said. "You take what you want."
That got him. Just a fraction of a second, a pause, but I saw it.
"You're right," he said. "So here's what I want. Single combat. You and me. Your camp against my word that I'll leave you alive."
"No."
His eyebrows rose. "No?"
"I'm not stupid," I said. "You're ninety-four. I'm maybe sixty on a good day. You'd cut me in half."
"Then surrender."
"Also no."
He stepped closer. Close enough that I could see the frost on his collar, the faint scar along his jaw. Close enough that his voice dropped low, private, meant just for me.
"You can't win this," he said. "I have two hundred soldiers. You have what? Thirty? Forty?"
"Fifty-three," I said. "And I don't need to win. I just need you to lose."
His jaw tightened.
I pulled the folded parchment from inside my coat. The one I'd found under the command table. The one with the Korde seal still pressed into the wax.
"Recognize this?" I asked.
He looked at it. Then at me.
"It's a kill order," I said. "Signed by the council. Authorized by my uncle. Sent to the camp commander three weeks ago." I unfolded it slowly, let him see the words. "'Eliminate the Korde heir. Make it look like the cold.'"
His expression didn't change.
"They were going to kill me before I ever got to the border," I said. "This camp? The one you're here to take back? It was supposed to be my grave."
I turned and walked past him. Not toward my soldiers. Toward his.
"What are you doing?" Aldric said behind me.
"Showing them what they're dying for."
His soldiers tensed as I approached. Hands went to hilts. Someone shouted a warning. I ignored all of it and held the parchment up high.
"This is what your warlord serves," I called out. "A council that kills its own blood. That sends you to die for a lie."
"Lynn." Aldric's voice, sharp now. "Stop."
I didn't stop. I walked into the space between his line and mine, the no-man's-land where arrows could come from either side, and I kept talking.
"They exiled me because I was weak," I said. "Because I was a woman. Because I asked questions. And when exile wasn't enough, they sent killers. They wanted me dead before I could prove them wrong."
I looked back at Aldric.
"You want this camp?" I said. "Come and take it. But know what you're taking it for. Know who you're serving."
I threw the parchment at his feet.
For a long moment, nobody moved.
Then Aldric bent and picked it up. He read it. Once. Twice. His face stayed stone, but I saw his knuckles go white around the edge of the paper.
"This doesn't change anything," he said finally.
"It changes everything," I said. "Your soldiers just watched you read a council order to murder a clan heir. You think they're going to forget that?"
"They follow me," he said.
"They follow strength," I said. "And right now I'm the one standing in the middle of the field calling you out."
His eyes locked on mine. The air between us felt sharp, cold, electric.
"You want a fight?" he said quietly. "I'll give you one."
"No you won't." Virrak stepped up beside me, blade drawn. "She's not dueling you. But if you want to take this camp, you'll have to go through all of us."
Aldric looked at Virrak. Then at me. Then at the fifty-three soldiers standing behind us, weapons ready.
The numbers over his head flickered. Morale in his line dropped three points. Then five.
He saw it too. I could tell by the way his jaw tightened.
"This isn't over," he said.
"I know," I said.
He turned and walked back toward the ridge. His soldiers hesitated, then followed. I watched them go, watched the blue supply lines fade into the tree line, and I didn't let myself breathe until they were out of sight.
Then my knees almost gave out.
"That," Virrak said quietly, "was the stupidest thing I've ever seen."
"Did it work?" I asked.
"You're alive," he said. "So yes."
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking.
"He'll come back," Virrak said.
"I know."
"And next time he'll bring more."
"I know."
Virrak sheathed his blade. "You have a plan?"
"Working on it," I said.
That's when the ground started to glow.
It was faint at first. Just a flicker of pale blue light beneath the snow, like bioluminescence under ice. I thought I was seeing things. Thought the cold had finally gotten to me.
Then Virrak saw it too.
"What in the frozen hell—" he started.
The light spread. Not slowly. Fast. It raced outward from the center of the camp in branching lines, like cracks in glass, like veins, like something alive. The snow above it started to steam.
"Everyone back!" I shouted. "Get away from the—"
The light flared. Bright enough to blind. I threw my arm up, stumbled backward, and when I could see again there was a woman standing in the middle of the camp.
She wasn't dressed for the cold. She wore gray robes that looked older than the mountains, and her hair was white, and her eyes were the same pale blue as the light under the snow.
She looked right at me.
"Lynn," she said.
My stomach dropped.
"How do you—" I started.
Then she said the other name. The one I hadn't heard in two lifetimes. The one I'd buried with my old body in a world that didn't have snow or soldiers or floating numbers.
She said the name I'd had before I died.
"We need to talk," she said.