Chapter 2

The feeling of being watched was a sensation Thomas knew too well. It began as a prickling at the base of his skull. An icy chill gathered at the nape of his neck that had nothing to do with winter air.

In the war, that instinct had kept him alive.

Heat flashed over him, a danger signal that was now screaming.

The feeling of danger drove him through the castle corridors at a run. His boots struck flagstones in a hard, measured rhythm, fast enough to matter and quiet enough not to invite questions. He clipped a young page at a corner; the boy stumbled, his eyes wide, and Thomas caught himself before an apology could slow him.

Morning had the castle by the throat: servants hauled baskets, doors banged, and iron rang somewhere below where the smiths were waking their fires. The noise should have been grounding, but instead, it came through as if from another room, muffled under the hammering of his heart.

The messenger’s report had been breathless and thin on detail, but Thomas had learned long ago that men lied with words. Terror lived elsewhere: in the tremor in a wrist, the way breath failed on a syllable, and the look that slid off a doorway as if it might bite.

He reached the female trainees’ quarters in minutes.

Roger and Griffin were already there, stepping into place beside him with the soundless economy of hunters who’d spent a lifetime moving through brush that punished the careless. Two guards flanked the door, neither looking at the other. One kept shifting his weight as if the stones beneath his boots were uncertain.

Thomas didn’t ask for an explanation; he lifted his hand and rapped his knuckles against the oak, making three sharp strikes that threw echoes down the hall.

“Sera, open the door; that’s an order.”

Silence answered. Not the ordinary quiet of a sleeping room, but a held breath. Thomas leaned close and put his ear to the wood. For a moment, there was nothing...

Then the scrape of a bar sliding free, iron complaining in its brackets, followed by the dull click of the latch surrendering.

The door eased inward.

Sera stood in the narrow spill of darkness, dressed in her training leathers, barefoot on the cold stone. Her hands were clasped hard enough to blanch the knuckles. She kept her gaze on her own toes as if looking up might invite whatever she’d heard back into the world.

She looked less like a promising recruit and more like a child bracing for a scolding she’d already decided she deserved.

“Why was the door barred?” Thomas asked.

He kept his voice low, not gentle but controlled, the kind of tone that told a room it would behave.

Sera swallowed, and her fingers worried the calluses on her palms until the skin shone.

“I ... I thought I heard something, my prince, in the hall.”

Thomas let his eyes flick to the guards. Two armed men stood alert and uneasy. He then looked back to Sera.

“The hall is full of my men. What did you hear?”

Sera shook her head, a tiny movement.

“Nothing I can say.” Her voice dropped. “It just ... felt wrong.”

’Wrong.’

A single word, and Thomas’s stomach tightened as if it recognized a knife before his eyes did. If she’d seen a stranger, he could hunt; if there were marks on the latch, he could track. But a feeling? A presence without a footprint?

Hair rose on Thomas’s arms. He knew that kind of wrongness; it was the pause before a predator commits, the moment the woods go quiet because they’re listening.

He didn’t let it reach his face.

“Put your boots on,” he said as he stepped back half a pace so the corridor torchlight could find her. “If you can stand, you can drill. Join the squad in the yard when you’re ready.”

Sera’s shoulders dropped on an exhale she hadn’t realized she was holding. She nodded once, too quick and too eager, and withdrew. The door closed again, as softly as she’d opened it.

Thomas turned to Roger, his old friend and mentor, who was like a second father and who’d joined him to help train the Rangers. The huntsman’s expression was a map of old weather, with lines carved by wind and patience. If the man was frightened, he wore it like cold acknowledgment.

Next to him, Griffin showed no emotion. Thomas knew he was thinking through the situation. Thomas had asked King Edward for him because he was a capable leader and tactician. Besides, he needed his own man whom he could trust.

“Work them hard,” Thomas said, the words coming out tight. “If their minds are wandering, give their bodies something to focus on. Make them sweat.”

Roger’s mouth twitched in not quite a smile.

Griffin nodded and said, “Idle hands build ghosts, my lord. I’ll see they’re too tired to listen for whispers.”

The Rangers’ yard sat inside the castle like a stone bowl catching wind. Gusts poured down from the battlements, shouldering grit and dead leaves into brief, frantic spirals. Sound gathered there too: the clang of the smithy, shouts from the stables, and the rumble of carts. It bounced off the high walls until it became a constant pressure against the ears.