The Midnight Prince

The Fight Under Moonlight

Princess Moon



Some wore bounty wolf leathers. Some had rogue markings carved into their armor. Others moved strangely, eyes clouded, mouths slack, like spell-bound minions pulled by invisible thread.

And they were fighting each other.

One hunter shoved another into the wall.

A rogue snapped at a mercenary’s throat.

A minion climbed through the window like a spider and was immediately kicked back out by Nara with a sound that was half fear, half fury.

“They all want the bounty,” Solan said.

Ashen’s face hardened.

The softness from the hidden room vanished.

In its place stood the boy who had defended a cabin from a prince without knowing his name.

“Moon,” he said. “Behind me.”

“No.”

He did not have time to argue.

The first hunter lunged.

Ashen lifted his hand.

The floor beneath the man’s feet froze. His boots locked in place, and Ashen drove an elbow into his throat before sending him crashing backward into two more attackers.

I drew the blade Solan had given me earlier and met a rogue at the doorway.

Storm rose inside me, furious and bright.

This was not the ballroom.

Not court.

Not the soft ache of a bond I did not understand.

This was survival.

Steel rang.

Snow blew into the cabin through the broken door.

Veyra threw a handful of glittering dust into a minion’s face. The creature sneezed violently and turned into a very confused ferret for three seconds before turning back.

“Temporary,” she snapped. “Do not judge me.”

Nara grabbed a fireplace poker and slammed it into the knee of a hunter twice her size.

“Nara!” Ashen barked.

“I am busy!”

A hunter climbed through the side window.

Solan met him with a clean strike to the jaw, then winced as if offended by his own rustiness.

“I need to train more,” he muttered.

I ducked under a blade and drove my shoulder into a mercenary’s ribs. Pain sparked through my side, but not mine.

Ashen’s.

I turned.

He had taken a s***h across his arm but kept fighting, teeth clenched, frost coiling from his hand.

The bond was sharper now under danger.

Too sharp.

A bruise of his became pressure under my own skin. A scrape at his ribs became heat across mine. Not wounds. Echoes.

Warnings.

His pain calling to mine.

“Ashen!” Nara screamed.

I saw it too late.

One of the spell-bound minions had slipped behind her, blade raised, its cloudy eyes fixed on the back of her neck.

Ashen saw it before anyone else.

Of course he did.

He crossed the room like the world had narrowed to only his sister.

The blade came down.

Ashen stepped in front of it.

Steel sank into his side.

The pain tore through me.

I screamed.

Not because I saw it.

Because I felt it.

White-hot agony ripped across my own body in the exact place the blade entered his. My knees almost gave. My hand flew to my side, expecting blood.

There was none.

But the pain was there.

His pain.

Ashen staggered.

Nara’s scream broke open the room.

“No!”

Ashen caught the minion by the throat and threw it through the shattered window with one hand, but his other hand went to his side. Blood spilled between his fingers.

Too much.

The fight disappeared.

The hunters.

The room.

The decree.

The crown.

Everything vanished except Ashen bleeding because he had taken a blade meant for his sister.

I ran.

“Moon!” Solan shouted.

I did not stop.

Storm screamed inside me, mate, mate, mate, and the bond pulled so hard I could barely see.

An attacker lunged from my blind side.

I did not notice.

Solan did.

He stepped between us.

The first edge of moonlight slipped through the broken roof of the trees outside.

Full moon.

Solan lifted one hand.

For one second, nothing happened.

Then the moonlight bent.

It bent around him like silk caught in water.

The attacker slowed.

Not stopped.

Slowed.

His blade moved inch by inch through the air, trapped in a pale stream of light that wrapped around his arm.

Solan’s face tightened with strain.

“I am,” he gritted out, “very out of practice.”

Another hunter charged him.

Solan turned, and the moonlight shifted.

The hunter stumbled as time sped beneath one foot and slowed beneath the other. He crashed face-first into the floor.

Veyra stared. “Oh. Royal mouse has tricks.”

“Do not,” Solan snapped, “call me that while I am saving your life.”

Moonlight spilled through the broken door now, stronger as the full moon rose over the pines.

Solan’s eyes glowed silver.

He spread both hands.

The air became heavy.

Every attacker in the room slowed at once.

Not frozen by ice.

Frozen in moonlit time.

Their movements dragged. Blades hung in half-swings. A rogue’s snarl stretched into a low, warped sound. Minions twitched against invisible pressure.

Solan’s jaw clenched.

Sweat broke across his brow.

“I cannot hold them long.”

Ashen was on one knee now.

Nara was trying to press both hands against his wound, sobbing and furious.

“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Ashen’s bloody hand covered hers.

“Stop,” he said, voice strained. “Move first. Apologize later.”

Moonlight flashed behind us.

A burst.

Solan tried to push more power into the room, something sharper, brighter, explosive.

It flickered.

Failed.

He cursed.

“Rusty,” he snapped to no one.

The moonlight-time hold trembled.

Veyra grabbed my shoulder. “Princess, we have to go.”

“I am not leaving him.”

“No one is leaving him. Help me lift him.”

Ashen tried to stand on his own.

Of course he did.

He made it half an inch before his face went gray.

I caught him under one arm, Nara under the other.

The bond burned with pain.

His breathing was too shallow.

“Ashen,” I whispered.

His head turned slightly toward me.

Even now, bleeding and hunted and newly named heir by a room we were about to abandon, he looked more worried about me than himself.

“Are you hurt?”

I almost laughed.

It came out like a sob.

“That is the stupidest thing you have ever asked me.”

His mouth twitched.

A terrible, beautiful almost-smile.

Veyra moved to the wall of the hidden room and tore down one of the old maps. Then she grabbed the letter from where it had nearly fallen from Ashen’s coat and shoved it deeper inside.

“Proof first, bleeding later.”

Solan backed toward us, hands still raised, moonlight shaking around him.

“Whatever you are doing, do it now.”

Veyra sliced her palm with a tiny silver dagger.

Fae blood hit the air.

A doorway opened.

Not clean.

Not stable.

A rough tear of green-gold light splitting the kitchen from somewhere dark and wooded beyond.

Lord Pebblewick shot through it first with a deeply offended coo.

“Coward,” Veyra hissed.

Nara helped me pull Ashen toward the portal.

He stumbled once.

I felt the wound flare again and nearly dropped with him.

Solan released one hand to shove a slowed hunter backward. The time field buckled.

The room snapped into motion.

Hunters shouted.

Blades fell.

A rogue lunged.

Solan threw the last of his moonlight into a sweeping wave. It burst across the room, not explosive enough to destroy, but strong enough to knock bodies backward and slow them again for a handful of precious seconds.

Then he staggered.

Veyra grabbed him by the back of his cloak and yanked him toward the portal.

“I thought you were going back to the palace,” she said.

“I was,” he snapped.

A blade flew past his head and buried itself in the wall.

Veyra smiled. “Plans change.”

We fell through the portal together.

Cold swallowed us.

Branches whipped my face.

The cabin vanished behind us with a violent snap of magic.

For one second, I saw it through the closing tear.

Mother’s cabin.

Elowyn’s hidden room.

The portrait.

The banners.

The life Ashen had not known he came from.

Then the Frostveil symbols across the floor blazed.

The cabin folded inward.

Not burning.

Not collapsing.

Hiding.

The walls twisted around the hidden room like hands closing over a secret. Ice swallowed the broken doorway. Snow rose from the earth in a white spiral, shielding everything from the hunters left screaming inside.

Then the portal sealed.

We hit the ground in a forest I did not recognize.

Night had fully fallen.

The full moon hung above us like a watching eye.

Ashen collapsed.

“Ashen!”

I dropped beside him, pressing my hands over the wound. Warm blood slid between my fingers. His and not mine, yet the pain still echoed in my side with every breath he took.

Nara fell to her knees across from me.

Her face was wet with tears.

“He took it for me,” she whispered.

Ashen’s eyes opened halfway.

“Would do it again,” he breathed.

Nara made a broken sound.

Solan staggered to a tree and leaned against it, breathing hard, silver fading from his eyes.

Veyra knelt beside Ashen, but when she lifted her hands, he caught her wrist weakly.

“No fae healing.”

Her face tightened.

“Ashen—”

“It hurts.”

For once, Veyra looked like she might argue.

Then she looked at his face and did not.

I pressed harder against his side.

“We need to stop the bleeding.”

Veyra pulled supplies from her bag with shaking hands.

Solan looked back toward the direction of the cabin, though there was nothing to see now but trees and moonlight.

“Well,” he said hoarsely, “my plan to return to the palace has suffered a minor inconvenience.”

Nara let out a watery, disbelieving laugh.

I would have laughed too, if Ashen’s blood had not been soaking my hands.

He looked at me then.

His face was pale. Too pale.

But his eyes were open.

And in them, beneath pain and exhaustion, I saw the question that had been haunting him since the hidden room opened.

Why was his mother with Torren?

Why had a ruling princess left her kingdom?

Why was his wolf chained?

What destiny had been buried under the name omega?

His hand moved weakly toward his coat, where the letter rested.

“Heir,” he whispered, like the word still did not fit in his mouth.

I covered his hand with mine.

“Yes.”

His eyes searched mine.

“I need answers.”

“I know.”

This time, those words did not feel empty.

They felt like a vow.

I looked toward the northern dark, where his mother’s uncle’s pack waited somewhere beyond the kingdom that now wanted him dead.

“We will find them.”

Behind us, far off through the trees, horns sounded again.

Hunters.

Still coming.

Solan straightened with a wince.

Veyra wrapped Ashen’s wound as quickly as she could.

Nara wiped her tears and picked up the bloody knife that had nearly killed her brother.

And I stayed beside my mate, one hand pressed to his wound, the echo of his pain burning through my own body.

The cabin had given him a name.

The world had given him a death sentence.

Now the only way forward was north.

Toward Frostveil.

Toward the uncle who might know why a princess had loved a man like Torren Drakewood.

Toward the truth of Ashen’s wolf.

Toward whatever destiny had been waiting for him long before the kingdom learned to fear his name.