Chapter 1 CHAPTER ONE: Born Again (And Already Annoyed About It)
PROLOGUE: The Last Night of Zane Ardell
I did not feel the poison at first.
That is the thing they never tell you about betrayal. It does not hurt right away. First it is warm. Almost peaceful.
I was sitting in my chair by the window, still in my battle armor, too tired to take it off. We had just won. Seven thousand soldiers. Three enemy generals. One kingdom brought to its knees. I had done it all for King Aldric, the way I had done everything for the past twenty years.
And then the warmth turned to fire.
My hands stopped working first. I knocked my cup off the table without meaning to and watched it fall in slow motion. Then my legs. I slid off the chair and onto the stone floor and just stayed there, looking up at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the old grey stone.
I heard the door open.
I heard footsteps.
I could not turn my head to look.
"General Ardell."
King Aldric's voice. Soft. Almost sorry.
"You were always too good," he said. "That is the problem with men like you. You do not know when to stop being loyal. And men like that cannot be controlled."
I tried to say something. I do not know what. Maybe his name. Maybe a curse. Nothing came out.
"The histories will remember you as a traitor," he said. "It is cleaner that way."
The footsteps moved away.
The door closed.
I lay on the cold floor of the room I had bled to protect and I thought, stupidly, about nothing important. The color of my mother's eyes, if I had ever known her. Whether dogs dream. What rain sounds like in the mountains.
And then I thought: I was not afraid.
And that was the saddest thing of all.
I closed my eyes.
Then I opened them again.
And everything was red and loud and too bright and someone was crying and I was crying too, though I had no idea why.
Oh.
Oh no.
CHAPTER ONE: Born Again (And Already Annoyed About It)
The first thing I noticed after I was born again was a bad smell.
Wood smoke and something herbal and unwashed wool and underneath all of it, a kind of damp cold that told me whatever room I was in, it was small and it was winter.
The second thing I learned is that babies cannot do anything.
Not a single thing.
I, Zane Ardell, General of the Valdris Kingdom's Eastern Army, victor of the Battle of Redmoor, the man who once broke three ribs and finished the fight anyway, could not lift my own head.
I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling of a tiny room and processed my situation with the calm, collected mind of a seasoned military commander.
What in the absolute hell.
A face appeared above me. A woman. Round cheeks, dark skin, brown eyes full of the kind of tired that does not go away with sleep. She had a smear of something on her chin. She looked at me like I was the most important thing she had ever seen.
"Hello, little one," she said, very softly. Like she was afraid of breaking something.
I stared at her.
She blinked. Then smiled. And something in that smile did something strange to my chest that I am not going to describe because I am a decorated military general and I do not get emotional about things.
Another face appeared. A man. Broad jaw, tired eyes, a healing cut above his eyebrow, and the kind of smile that takes over a person's whole face without warning. He looked at me and his eyes got shiny.
"He looks like you," the man said.
"He has your nose," the woman said.
"That is a terrible thing to do to a baby."
"Colt."
"I am joking. He is perfect."
He reached out one big finger and touched my hand. I grabbed it. I did not mean to, it was just a reflex, but he made a sound like I had just done something miraculous.
"He grabbed my finger! Mira, he grabbed it!"
"He is a newborn, Colt. That is what they do."
"Still."
I thought: I was a king once. A general. A man armies feared.
I thought: these are my parents now.
I thought: this is going to be very complicated.
The first months were an exercise in patience.
I had a lot of time to think, which was the only advantage of having a body that could not do much else. I organized what I knew. I observed. I built a picture of the world slowly, the way a good general builds a map before marching.
We were in a place called Croft. A small city, or a large town depending on who you asked. Made of stone and wood, always a little cold, full of working people who got up early and came home late. My father, Colt Ardell, worked at a forge two streets over. My mother, Mira Ardell, sewed garments at home and sold them to a shop in the market.
They were not rich. But they were not desperate either. They fed me, they kept me warm, and every night before I fell asleep, one of them would sit with me in the dark and just be there.
I had not had that before. Not in my whole past life.
I did not know what to do with it.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I watched. I listened. I waited.
And in the quiet, between the sounds of the forge and my mother's humming, I began to feel something deep inside my small chest. Something I had no name for in either life.
It did not feel like magic.
It felt like ash. Cold and still.
I pressed my tiny hand to the center of my ribs and felt it sitting there. Waiting.
Not yet, it seemed to say. But soon.