Snow pressed against his feathers like a second skin.

  Blightcrest stood on the broken crown of a dead oak, higher than the village watchtower, higher than anything that could answer him. The forest below lay stiff and pale under winter’s weight. Smoke from distant chimneys rose in thin, straight columns. No wind took it. The world held its breath.

  Again.

  The thought came with a faint curl of disgust at himself. He had found this tree three nights prior, and the ridge beyond it three nights before that, and the ruined stone outcrop beyond the ridge a week earlier. Always higher. Always further from the warm clutter of human voices and the restless shifting of his Ward’s sleep.

  The cold had brought a restless itch under his skin, a pull that stretched him out across the valley. It walked his talons along ridgelines and riverbanks; it turned his gaze outward, away from that one fragile human, toward everything else that moved and killed and stalked in his domain.

  My domain, something in him whispered, old and certain.

  He ruffled, sending a spray of frost-dust from his feathers, and dropped from the oak.

  The ground rushed up. He opened his wings at the last instant, caught a pocket of air, and slammed into the snow with a thud that shattered the crust. Ice shards leapt up around his ankles. He shook them off and moved into a loping run, long strides eating distance, wings half-spread for balance.

  Hunts blurred behind him in his memory—a stag with ice on its beard, a boar whose breath smoked black in the moonlight, a winter wolf that thought itself clever until his beak closed on its spine. He had ranged far these past days. Further than he intended each time.

  He would slip away from the village in the gray hour before dawn, intending only to bring back meat, and the cold would whisper in his bones.

  Higher.

  He would find himself on some distant cliff as the sun slid down the sky, watching shadows lengthen over valleys whose names he did not know, feeling neither hunger nor fatigue, only that bright, thin alertness that came with the season. The village, the inn, the soft clatter of bowls and the smell of boiled roots—those shrank to pale, unimportant things at the edge of his thoughts.

  Only when darkness deepened and the stars pricked the sky in familiar patterns did the other pull return. The smaller one. The one that wore Emily’s face.

  His Ward.

  He would think of her thin shoulders bowed under armor that weighed more than her good sense, of the way she squinted at distant trees as if numbers floated over them. He would remember the way she slept, all sharp elbows and stubborn jaw, breath hitching when her ribs pained her.

  Reluctance always came then, thick as mud around his talons.

  I should return.

  But the night sang around him, and the wind tasted of distant prey, and he would stay one hour more. Two. A night. When he finally turned back, the village lights already burnt low.

  In between, there were dreams.

  They ripped him out of sleep without warning. He would wake on some high perch, claws locked around stone or frozen bark, wings thrust wide as if to break through invisible walls. Heart hammering against his keelbone. Feathers standing on end.

  He never remembered the dreams.

  He only knew he loathed the silence afterward. The way sound seemed to drop away, leaving him stranded in a world made of ice and breath and the faint ticking of cooling stone. His chest would ache with a word he could not recall having spoken.

  On those mornings he made noise. Low rumbles, sharp clicks, harsh cries that sent smaller birds exploding from underbrush. He listened to his own voice as if it belonged to someone else, testing it, weighing it, making sure the sound still carried.

  Then he hunted until his muscles burned and his lungs flared with cold.

  Today, the air tasted wrong.

  He slowed to a trot, head lifting. The sharp, clean scent of frost and pine stood unchanged. Under that, though—fatigue, sickness, thin blood. Predators. Many, and too near.

  He reached a stream, frozen in mid-leap over its stones. Snowdrifts lay smooth and undisturbed on one bank. On the other, something had churned the white into a mess of gouges and splashes. He stepped onto it.

  Wolf prints. Several. Heavy, close together. The stride told him they came in a pack, not scattered hunters. The pads bit deep. Gaunt animals, driven hard.

  Another scent caught him, copper-bright.

  He followed.

  Trees pressed close as he left the stream. Branches scraped his flanks, shedding powder over his back. The smell grew stronger. Not old and sweet like rot. Sharp. Fresh.

  He stepped into the clearing and stopped.

  The snow wore red streaks and ragged hollows. Broken shafts of arrows lay scattered like snapped twigs. A spear, its tip chewed and bent, jutted from the ground at an angle. In the center, five shapes lay half-buried.

  He moved closer.

  Men. Hunters, by their gear. Leather stiff with old grease, wool cloaks, one with a carved bone charm at his neck. Throats torn out. One face still held an expression of surprise, eyes clouded, mouth open around a shout that never finished.

  Wolf tracks crisscrossed the bodies. No wolves lingered. They had eaten and gone.

  Blightcrest lowered his head. Breath steamed around his beak. The metallic tang of blood coated his tongue.

  You died poorly.

  They had not fallen in careful formation, not backed against a rock with weapons presented. They lay where they had run, or slipped, or turned to flee. Fear had ruled their last moments.

  He itched to shake his feathers, to rid himself of the smell. It clung to him.

  This is not my Ward, he reminded whatever part of him reached inward with something like sympathy. Nor my cohort. I did not lead this hunt.

  Yet as he stared at them, another image rose: Emily, standing square before a charging boar, hammer swinging in awkward arcs, determination tightening her jaw while her blows smeared off thick hide and left her panting. The look on the villagers’ faces when they realized their plated savior could not land a strike.

  Fragile. Reckless. Confused about her own limits.

  Humans would call her brave.

  He called it something else.

  He clicked his beak, a sharp, irritated sound.

  She stands between such teeth and soft young. She limps home with new bruises each week and thinks herself fortunate. And the wolves grow bold.

  He turned in a slow circle, scanning the treeline.

  The forest answered with stillness. No movement. No watching eyes that he could see. That, more than anything, set his feathers on edge. A healthy pack would contest his presence here, circle, test, threaten if not attack. Silence meant they had eaten and moved on with purpose.

  Toward where?

  He lifted his head and tasted the air again. Smoke. Faint, to the south-west. Oakhaven lay that way, tucked by its river bend, ringed by its bright new fence.

  Too near.

  His talons scraped once against frozen earth.

  Ward first. Territory later.

  He sprang forward.

  Snow flew in white sheets behind him as he ran. He used the trunks like pillars, bounding between them, wings beating once, twice, to clear dips and drifts. The cold air bit through his feathers, not as an enemy, but as something that sharpened him.

  He covered ground fast.

  The scent line of the wolf pack crossed his path twice, always bending toward the same distant point. Each time he passed it, unease tightened in his chest. These were no starving loners skulking at the edges. They moved with intent, drawn along the same invisible paths that led trade wagons and shepherds.

  Near midday—or whatever passed for it under the low, pale sun—another smell cut through everything. Stronger. Closer.

  One wolf, ahead. The air around the scent carried the dry ash of village smoke.

  Blightcrest slowed, then dropped to a crouch. Snow brushed his belly. He eased forward, placing each talon with care. His breath came light and shallow.

  Branches parted.

  The frost wolf stood in the hollow beyond, a gray-white shape against gray-white ground. Frost clung along its back in spines, glittering faintly. Scar tissue twisted one ear. Its eyes fixed on something through the trees—toward the south-west. Toward Oakhaven.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  It had not yet scented him.

  He watched the muscles slide beneath its pelt as it shifted weight, testing the wind. The wolf’s ribs showed under its coat, but its stance held strength.

  You go to see my Ward.

  Heat flared in his chest. Not from anger alone. From something older, like a line drawn in the snow between worlds. On one side, his Ward’s small village, with its patched roofs and resin fence. On the other, everything that thought to gnaw at it.

  No.

  He stepped from the brush.

  The wolf froze.

  They regarded each other for a heartbeat. Its lips drew back, teeth bared in a white, curved line. A vapor of cold hung between them.

  Blightcrest spread his wings.

  Feathers unfurled in a dark wall, edges catching what little light reached the forest floor, swallowing it. The air around him cooled further, as if winter itself leaned nearer. His talons dug furrows in the snow.

  He gave the wolf one low, rolling call. Not a warning. A verdict.

  The wolf lunged.

  It came low and left, intending his flank. He snapped a wing down, pivoted, and met it head-on. Teeth scraped against his armored leg. He felt the pressure, the strength, but his bone held. His beak drove down, hooked, and found the thick fur at the base of its neck.

  Warmth burst across his tongue.

  The wolf twisted, back legs scrambling for purchase, claws raking his chest. Feathers tore. Pain flared bright, sharp, clean. He welcomed it.

  He tightened his grip and shoved with his full weight, driving the wolf into the ground. The impact sent a dull thud up through his keel. Snow sprayed. The wolf thrashed once, twice.

  He held.

  The fight bled out of the beast in a rush. Its legs kicked, then slowed. Its eyes clouded over, the feral focus draining. Finally its body sagged, weight going slack under his talons.

  Blightcrest kept his beak locked for another breath. Two. Then he released and straightened.

  He stood over the carcass, chest rising and falling, breath streaming white.

  You should have stayed to the high passes, hunter.

  He looked toward the south-west. The smoke there climbed thin and straight, unaware.

  He leaned down, tore a strip of meat from the wolf’s flank, and swallowed. Strength slid warm into his gut.

  Then he turned and began the trip back toward his Ward, dragging along his prize.

  Beakly, who refers to himself as Blightcrest, perches on the roof on the Inn as guard sentry, and listens to the faint conversation below. Emily, Finn and the other villagers are trying to decide on what to name the kitten, who has earned herself a name now that she consistently kills mice. They have also discovered that the kitten is female, not male as they'd assumed, a fact which pleases Lysa greatly. Brenna suggests a dignified name, but it is quickly voted down. Lysa says the kitten should have a tougher name, because it is a ferocious female hunter, of which Lysa heartily approves. Finn asks Emily to think of a name. She suggests Executioner, which makes everyone laugh and they agree to name it Executioner, or Exy for short. Beakly scoffs at this. The kitten has tried to challenge him before, but he disdains to respond. He is irritated and a little jealous of the attention Emily is giving it, though of course he would never admit this to himself.

  Slate bit cold through his talons.

  Blightcrest balanced on the inn’s highest ridge, wings half-spread to the wind, the whole village laid out in dim smears of lamplight and chimney smoke beneath him. Frost filmed the tiles. His claws left little crescents where they gripped.

  Below, the Weary Wanderer breathed warmth into the street. Firelight pulsed through the crooked shutters, voices rose and broke, a river of sound that tugged at him even while his eyes swept the dark tree line beyond the fence.

  A burst of laughter tumbled up through the roof.

  He angled his head, one eye on the forest, the other toward the common room. The words came muffled through timber and thatch, but he had hunted through snowstorms and heard the wingbeat of owls under drifts. Human planks held little mystery.

  “…earned it, if you ask me,” Elspeth’s voice floated up, thick with pride and exhaustion. “Three mice in one night. Little monster nearly dropped one in my stew pot to show off.”

  A high, delighted giggle spiked above the lower murmur.

  “That was the best bit,” Finn bounced in his seat by the sound of the chair legs thumping. “You should’ve seen her, Mam. She dragged it by the tail like—like—” wood scraped as he flailed for comparison “—like Beakly with that boar leg.”

  Blightcrest’s feathers lifted along his spine.

  Beakly.

  The indignity of such a comparison made him think less of the Finn-creature. He flexed his talons and watched a stray flake of ice skitter down the roof.

  Inside, another voice cut in, dry and clipped.

  “And you’re quite sure,” Brenna Cole’s careful enunciation pressed through the boards, “that it is a she.”

  “Yes,” Lysa answered, quick, pleased. “You don’t mistake that twice.”

  Finn wrinkled his nose.

  “How can you tell? She just looks… fluffy.”

  “A hunter and a lady both, that’s how,” Lysa knocked something—probably her mug—against the table in emphasis. “Told you from the start. Any creature that small and that vicious had to be a girl.”

  A few of the younger lads hooted at that. Chairs creaked as they shifted.

  Blightcrest knew the creature in question. The scrap of fur had stalked his tail once in the yard, all puffed spine and sideways hops, rear end wiggling in some ridiculous attempt at menace. He had watched until she batted at his flight feathers, then turned away with all the hauteur he could muster.

  Do not duel with feathers, little vermin, he’d thought then. You are barely fit to be lunch.

  He clicked his beak once now, softly, a private comment to the wind.

  “Whatever she is,” Elspeth rustled in her apron, “she can’t go on being called ‘that cat’ forever. Brenna, you kept cats, didn’t you? Your old tom—what was his name?”

  “Bastion,” Brenna answered. The name landed square and solid. “A dignified creature. Quiet. Efficient mouser. Lasted fourteen winters.”

  “Bastion,” Elspeth rolled it around her mouth, testing. “Bastion’s nice.”

  “That’s a boy’s name,” Finn groaned. “She’s not a boy.”

  “I can adjust,” Brenna replied without missing a beat. “Bastia. Or perhaps—” a faint scrape told of her reaching for a scrap of paper “—Hearthmist. Reliable. Respectable. A name that invites longevity, not mischief.”

  “Hearthmist?” Lysa choked out a laugh. “She’s a cat, not a spinster aunt.”

  Blightcrest almost huffed. At least the woman aspires to dignity.

  Finn’s chair screeched as he bounced higher.

  “What about ‘Princess Sparkleclaw’?”

  Groans rose in chorus.

  “Absolutely not,” Elspeth cut that off with the speed of a veteran mother.

  “Mousebane,” one of the farm lads called from the corner.

  “That’s not bad,” another chimed in. “Mousebane’s good.”

  “Mousebane sounds like a cheap ale,” Brenna muttered.

  “It sounds like something I’d buy,” Lysa countered. “Half the lads in here already drink things that taste like dead mouse. Might as well be honest on the barrel.”

  More laughter. The roof under Blightcrest’s feet thrummed with it.

  Inside, wood creaked as someone shifted closer to the hearth.

  “She needs a strong name,” Lysa insisted. “Look at her. Half the size of a boot, thinks she can tackle the world. That deserves steel, not lace. Call her Fang. Or Claw. Or Blood—”

  “Absolutely not ‘Blood’ anything,” Elspeth cut across with the weary snap of someone who already scrubbed enough stains from floorboards. “I’m not shouting ‘Blood’ out the back door when I want her in.”

  “‘Claw’ then. Or ‘Storm.’ Or—”

  “Mam,” Finn broke in, breathless, words tumbling. “Let Emily name her. Emily names things good.”

  Oh, now he listened.

  Blightcrest shifted his weight until one eye peered down along the eaves. Through a gap where old thatch refused to meet new, he caught a sliver of the common room: firelight, the edge of a table, Finn’s elbow, flour dust on Elspeth’s sleeve.

  Emily sat with her back to the hearth, armor stowed somewhere upstairs. In her lap, the kitten sprawled on her back, paws tucked, throat exposed, drunk on warmth and attention.

  Emily traced a finger down the tiny ribcage.

  “Names are a big responsibility, Finn.”

  Finn nodded solemnly, as if she spoke of battle formations.

  “You named Beakly,” he pointed out.

  Blightcrest froze.

  Every face in the room tilted toward Emily. Even the kitten’s half-lidded eyes focused on her, as if she understood the weight of the moment.

  Emily’s mouth twitched.

  “That was less ‘responsibility’ and more ‘terrible impulse control.’”

  “You could still fix it,” Brenna murmured, but there was no real heat in it. “No law says a king must answer to mockery.”

  I answer to none, Blightcrest thought, feathers stirring.

  Emily brushed a thumb under the kitten’s chin. The scrap purred loud enough that the vibration tickled Blightcrest’s talons through the roof.

  “He doesn’t seem to mind,” Emily went on. “Besides, it suits him now. Imagine shouting ‘Blightcrest, Devourer of Armies’ in the yard every time I need him to come for dinner. The neighbours would complain.”

  “You could shout it quietly,” Finn suggested.

  Elspeth snorted.

  “Less talking, more naming, you lot. I’ve washing to start.”

  Finn leaned across the table, eyes wide.

  “Please, Emily. You pick. Proper hero name. For a proper hunter.” He jabbed a finger at the kitten. “She’s like you.”

  Blightcrest’s grip tightened on the ridge. Snow crunched under his talons.

  Emily looked down at the mite stretched over her knees. Tiny paws flexed, unsheathing pin-needle claws that snagged in Emily’s borrowed skirt. A faint smear of mouse blood still marred one cream-coloured paw.

  “You,” Emily addressed the kitten, voice soft but steady, “terror of crumbs and skirtings, scourge of small scuttling things. Hm.”

  Lysa leaned forward, elbows on the table.

  “Told you. Steel, not lace.”

  A slow grin curved Emily’s mouth.

  “All right, then.” She lifted the kitten under the forelegs, brought her up to eye level. “Executioner.”

  Silence held for a heartbeat.

  The kitten stared back, cross-eyed with the effort, tail dangling.

  Finn burst first.

  “Executioner!”

  He laughed so hard he wheezed, clutching his stomach. Chairs groaned as others doubled over. Elspeth pressed a floury hand to her lips, shoulders shaking. Even Brenna’s composure cracked; a small, startled huff escaped her before she could smother it.

  Lysa slapped the table.

  “Oh, I like that.”

  “Bit grim, isn’t it?” someone near the bar chuckled.

  “Grim for mice,” Lysa shot back. “She’s earned it.”

  Brenna cleared her throat, but there was a smile in it now.

  “At least it avoids diminutives. No ‘Fluffy’ here.”

  “Executioner’s far too large a word for that size of cat,” Elspeth pointed at the little bundle, eyes bright with amusement. “She’ll trip over it.”

  “Then we cut it down,” Emily answered. “Executioner when she’s on duty. Exy when she’s just… catting around.”

  “Exy,” Finn tried it out, soft. “Exy, Exy, Exy.” He reached for the kitten. “Come here, Exy.”

  The newly named Executioner squirmed in Emily’s hands, then launched herself with startling precision straight at Finn’s sleeve. Tiny claws caught, hauled her up his arm. She ended perched on his shoulder, tail flagging, green eyes huge in the firelight.

  Finn froze, then grinned so wide the gap in his teeth showed.

  “Look! Look at her! That’s definitely an Executioner.”

  “You know they usually execute prisoners, not crumbs,” Elspeth warned.

  Finn craned his neck toward his own ear.

  “Execute… mice, then. And spiders. And—and any warg that tries to get Mam.”

  General laughter rose again, a tide of sound that rolled through the beams and out into the cold.

  On the roof, Blightcrest fluffed and resettled his feathers, an instinctive swell at the base of his neck that made him look even larger in the starlight. The title hung in the air below him.

  Executioner.

  They flung such words around with reckless joy. King. Executioner. Hero. As if crowns and axes weighed nothing at all.

  A tiny paw batting at a crumb. A tiny mouth full of milk teeth. Executioner.

  He clicked his beak once, sharp.

  That scrap of warmed dust kills vermin and receives a title of dread. I devour wolves that threaten their walls, and they call me… Beakly.

  His wing tips twitched.

  Through the gap in the thatch, he saw Emily stretch a hand to rub the kitten’s back where she perched on Finn. Exy arched into the touch, rumbling, eyes slitting to contented green crescents.

  “You like it?” Emily asked.

  Finn’s voice dropped to something almost reverent.

  “She likes it. Look at her. Exy the Executioner, Mouse-Slayer of Oakhaven.”

  Lysa whooped.

  “I’ll carve that on a bit of plank for over her favourite corner.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Elspeth swatted at her with a dishcloth, though her eyes shone. “Last thing we need is guests thinking we execute folk in the kitchen.”

  Blightcrest tore his attention from the scene, deliberately. He turned his head back toward the tree line, neck stretching, eyes narrowing at the dark smear of forest beyond the resin-hardened fence.

  The wind cut across the ridge, colder this close to the clouds, but the chill pleased him. It scoured away the soft sounds below, left only the hiss of snow and the faint rattle of bare branches.

  He settled deeper into his stance, talons hooked, wings folded in tight. His feathers lay sleek again, every barb in order.

  Let them coo over their tiny executioner, he told himself, watching the shadows between the trees. My Ward already has a guardian. She has no need of a kitten’s claws.

  Something moved near the fence—a fox, most likely, pacing and then veering off. Blightcrest tracked it with calm, measured focus until it vanished into the white.

  He did not look back toward the light leaking from the inn windows. He did not listen for Emily’s laugh as Finn tried out “Exy” in every tone he could manage. He kept his gaze on the dark and the drifting snow and the line of the world he had claimed.

  His shoulders remained a touch too tense.

  He blamed the cold.