The Midnight Prince

Unchecked Power

Future Ashen.

“Papa,” my daughter whispered, “did Aunt Nara leave him?”

I looked up from the fire.

The question was small, but the room went quiet around it. My son stopped picking at the loose thread on his sleeve. My daughter held her blanket tighter, eyes bright with the kind of worry children felt when stories stopped being only stories.

“No,” I said. “She did not leave him.”

“But she went away.”

“For a little while.”

“That sounds the same.”

I smiled faintly. “It feels the same when you are the one watching someone disappear.”

My son frowned. “Then why did he let her go?”

I looked at the ring on my finger.

“Because love is not always holding someone behind you,” I said. “Sometimes love is letting them step into the place they are afraid to go, because that is where they become who they were born to be.”

My daughter was quiet for a moment.

Then she asked, “Was he scared?”

I turned the ring once.

“Terrified.”

The hunters were closer than they sounded.

That was the first thing I knew when I opened my eyes.

Not because of the horn.

Not because of the howls rolling through the trees like hunger given a voice.

Because the forest had changed.

Birds had gone silent. Wind moved wrong through the branches. Snow slipped from pine needles in small, nervous falls. The whole world had gone watchful.

Moon was in my arms.

For one quiet second, before the danger fully took shape, I felt her breathing against me. Warm. Steady. Trusting.

Then the second horn sounded.

Closer.

Her eyes opened.

I felt her wake through the bond before she moved. A flicker of confusion. A brush of fear. Then awareness.

She sat up quickly, hair slipping over one shoulder. “Hunters?”

“Yes.”

Across the clearing, Solan was already on his feet with a blade in his hand, though his face still carried the gray exhaustion of the moonlight power he had overused the night before.

Veyra stood beside him, silver-green eyes fixed on the trees.

Nara sat a few steps away, one hand pressed to the center of her forehead.

The crescent moon wrapped in frost glowed beneath her fingers.

Not bright.

Not yet.

But alive.

“Nara,” I said.

She looked at me.

Her eyes were not fully hers.

Silver-white light moved through them like clouds passing over the moon.

“They took the easy trail,” she whispered.

Solan glanced at me. “Who?”

“The hunters,” Nara said. “But it is not the real trail.”

Veyra’s gaze sharpened. “What do you see?”

Nara swallowed. “Two paths. One smells like pine and running water. That is the trap. The other smells like blood and old snow.”

“That sounds like the one we avoid,” Solan said.

“No.” Nara stood slowly. “That is the safe one.”

Solan looked at me. “We are following the girl with the glowing forehead toward the blood-and-snow trail?”

I looked at Nara.

Her hand shook, but her gaze stayed steady.

Elowyn’s letter whispered through my mind.

Protect her, but do not cage her.

“Yes,” I said.

Solan sighed. “Wonderful. I hoped someone would say that with confidence.”

Moon touched my arm.

Only briefly.

But it steadied something in me.

We moved within minutes.

Veyra scattered ash over the small remains of our fire, whispered something into the smoke, and sent Lord Pebblewick circling above us with strict instructions not to “lead death directly to our heads for once.”

The pigeon looked offended.

He always looked offended.

Nara walked near the front now, not behind me.

That was harder than I wanted to admit.

Every instinct in me wanted to put her at my back. To hide her behind my body where I could take the blade, the bite, the spell, the consequence.

But the mark on her forehead glowed every time the trees shifted wrong.

She saw things I could not.

A broken twig that had not yet broken.

A footprint that vanished when touched by moonlight.

A strip of air between two trees that shimmered like a web.

Twice, she stopped us.

Once, because an ordinary patch of snow hid a snare threaded with blood magic.

Once, because the scent trail ahead had been laid too perfectly, too clean, too easy.

“False,” she whispered, touching the mark on her forehead. “It wants us to trust it.”

Solan crouched near the trail and brushed two fingers through the snow. “She is right.”

Nara looked surprised.

He glanced up at her. “Do not look so shocked. I can admit when a glowing child priestess is correct.”

“I am not a child.”

“You are very small and recently luminous.”

Veyra smacked the back of his head.

Solan straightened slowly. “Was that necessary?”

“No,” she said. “But it pleased me.”

Their arguing should have annoyed me.

Instead, it made the forest feel less like a mouth waiting to close.

For a while, Nara’s power helped.

Then it changed.

We had reached a narrow dip between two ridges when the air turned sour.

Not with rot.

With magic.

Veyra stopped so abruptly Lord Pebblewick nearly collided with the back of her head.

“Blood snare,” she said.

Nara’s mark flared.

Her hand flew to her forehead.

“I see it.”

Moon moved beside me. “Where?”

Nara pointed toward the hollow between the ridges.

At first, I saw nothing.

Then the snow shifted.

A circle appeared faintly beneath the white, drawn in dark red lines. Symbols twisted through it like thorns. Not fae. Not wolf. Something else.

Witchwork.

Solan stepped closer. “That is not meant to catch us.”

“No,” Veyra said softly. “It is meant to mark us.”

My stomach tightened.

“A beacon?”

Veyra nodded. “If we cross it, every hunter tied to the spell will know exactly where we are.”

Nara breathed harder.

The crescent on her forehead brightened.

“I can break it.”

Veyra turned to her quickly. “Wait.”

“I can break it,” Nara repeated, but her voice sounded far away now.

“Nara,” I said.

She did not look at me.

Silver light filled her eyes.

Novett’s presence pushed through the air around her, wild and frightened and powerful. The snow beneath Nara’s boots began to melt, then freeze, then lift in small glowing flakes.

“Nara, stop,” Veyra said. “You do not know how to control the backlash.”

“I have to break it before it calls them.”

“It has not called them yet.”

Nara took one step forward.

The blood circle pulsed.

Her mark answered.

A beam of white moonlight shot from her forehead into the snare.

The world exploded.

Power burst out of Nara in a violent wave.

Not light.

Moonfire.

It tore through the hollow, silver-white and blinding. Trees cracked. Snow lifted from the ground in a spinning wall. The blood snare shattered, but the broken spell did not vanish.

It screamed.

Then Nara screamed with it.

“Nara!” I shouted.

Moon was beside me one heartbeat.

Gone the next.

The blast struck her full in the side and threw her backward. Her body hit a tree with a sickening crack before she dropped into the snow.

“Moon!”

I moved toward her, but Solan was already running into the center of the blast from the other side, moonlight gathering around both his hands.

“I can slow it!” he shouted.

Veyra’s face went white. “Solan, no!”

He stepped into the wave.

For half a second, it worked.

Moonlight-time bent around the blast, slowing the outer edge of Nara’s power. The silver-white fire dragged through the air as if caught underwater.

Then the priestess light struck him.

Solan’s body arched.

His moonlight shattered.

The blast took him off his feet and hurled him backward.

I caught him before he hit the ground a second time.

The force of him slammed into my arms hard enough to drive me back a step. His head rolled against my shoulder, blood already darkening his lips.

He was too still.

“Veyra!” I shouted.

She appeared beside me as if the world had thrown her there.

All the mischief was gone from her face.

Gone from her eyes.

I lowered Solan into her arms. “Keep him alive.”

Her hands shook as she pulled him against her. “I intend to, you i***t prince.”

The words were for him.

Not me.

I wanted to check Moon.

I needed to check Moon.

She lay too still near the tree, her hair spilled across the snow, one hand open beside her.

But Nara was still burning.

The blast had not stopped.

It rose from her in a pillar now, shooting straight into the sky, splitting clouds, turning the forest silver. She stood in the center of it with both hands pressed to her forehead, sobbing.

“I can’t stop!” she screamed. “Ash, I can’t stop!”

The light was a beacon.

Every hunter in the north would see it.

Every bounty wolf.

Every witch.

Every creature with a reason to follow blood.

I looked once at Moon.

Her chest moved.

Alive.

Then I turned back to my sister and walked into the moonfire.

It should have burned.

It did not.

The power bent around me, wild but recognizing. Not obeying, exactly. More like a frightened animal that knew my scent.

Nara saw me and shook her head.

“No! Don’t come closer. I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

“I hurt them.” Her voice broke. “I hurt Moon. I hurt Solan. I can’t stop.”

“You are scared.”

“I am dangerous.”

“Yes.”

She flinched.

I kept walking.

I would not lie to her.

Not now.

“You are powerful,” I said. “And you are scared. That makes the power dangerous. But it does not make you evil.”

“I can’t hold it.”

“Then don’t.”

Her eyes widened.

I reached her through the storm and pulled her into my arms.

Nara collapsed against me.

The second my arms closed around her, the moonfire folded inward.

It did not disappear at once.

It rushed back into her so violently she choked, fingers twisting in my shirt, the crescent mark on her forehead blazing bright enough to blind.

I held her tighter.

“I have you.”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, Ash. I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

“I almost killed them.”

“I know.”

The light cracked once.

Then died.

The forest plunged back into gray silence.

Nara shook in my arms like she might come apart.

I wanted to tell her it was fine.

It was not.

I wanted to tell her no one was hurt.

They were.

So I pressed my mouth to the top of her head, where I used to kiss her hair when she was small and frightened, and said the only truth I could give her.

“You need training.”

Her breath hitched.

Then she nodded against my chest.

“I know.”

Only then did I let her go.

Only then did I run to Moon.

I dropped to my knees beside her and pressed two fingers to her throat.