Tek shook her head. “Nay, I—”

The older stallion, too, came forward. “Why did you let her climb that dangerous cliff?”

“I wasn’t with her—”

The younger stallion snorted.

“Why not?” the older, the dark blue, interrupted. “These slopes are steep.”

“And forbidden to any but king’s Companions,” his comrade added.

The pied mare blinked. No such proscription had been announced. She backed another step as the pair continued to advance. She could barely make them out now for the snow and the gathering dark. Heads together, the two began conferring in low voices, never taking their eyes off Tek.

“If she wasn’t with her, she should have been. Sa was an old mare.”

“It’s a crime not to protect the king’s dam.”

“Crime?” Tek’s jaw dropped. What new laws were these? The two stallions ignored her.

“Aye, but if she’s lying?” the spattered younger one asked. “What if she was with the mare?”

“What are you saying?” Tek demanded sharply. The snowy wind moaned. The air was grey and dark.

“Everyone knows you’re a wych’s child,” the midnight blue said. “Your dam was born beyond the Vale.”

“Korr banished her for magicking.”

“My mother lives in the southeast hills by her own choice,” Tek exclaimed. “She was never banished!”

“She enchanted Jan the prince when he was no more than a weanling,” the younger stallion insisted.

“To protect him from wyvern sorcery,” Tek snapped, outraged. Her mother, the Red Mare, had ever used her mysterious arts for the good of the herd.

“You’re no better than your wych mother,” the older stallion growled. “You seduced our good prince from the path of Alma.”

“Liar!” Tek burst out, astonished, stung. How dared the king’s lackey spit such filth at her?

“Traitor,” the other stallion continued. “You ran away when the prince was assailed by gryphons, leaving him to his death.”

“Untrue!” shouted Tek, half choked with wrath.

Her words echoed off the cliff. The king’s Companions tossed their heads, champing. The two of them continued toward her across the slippery, rocky ground. Tek could do little but retreat up slope. The narrowed eyes of the spotted Companion glinted at her from their mask.

“Ring breaker—you ran. Everyone knows it! It’s common knowledge.”

“ ‘Common knowledge’ to those who were not there!” She wanted to fly at him and skewer him. She wanted to trample him underhoof.

“You befriended our king’s dam,” cut in the other, older unicorn, “that you might share her cave and eat her forage when your own sire cast you out. Her kind heart was her own undoing.”

“What do you mean?” cried Tek.

The other bared his teeth. “That you lured Sa here, to dangerous cliffs, on the pretext of finding forage. That you were with her at her death and failed to inform the king.”

“Perhaps you caused her death,” the younger guard pressed.

“Never!” gasped Tek. “I had only just come upon—”

They gave her no time to finish.

“A cunning tale. The mare is cold. She’s been dead hours.”

“I wasn’t with her!”

“The king will decide.”

“Come with us,” his younger companion said. “Come willing, or we’ll compel you.”

Panic gripped Tek. If she went with these two now, she realized, she was as good as dead. They had the king’s ear, and their groundless accusations would carry far more weight with him than any truth. Then the king might do whatever he wished. Banish her, even attack her. Who was to stop him now? Under the watchful eye of the king’s wolves, the whole herd would stand silent, cowed.

The two stallions stood waiting. The spotted one’s eyes gleamed, gloating. Tek wondered what forage he expected in exchange for giving her life to the king. The dark blue stallion motioned impatiently with his head.

“Come,” he told her. “It grows dark, and the sooner this is dealt with, the better.”

“The sooner you will feed, you mean,” grated Tek.

A cold rage such as she had never known seized her, displacing fear: it would not be simply her own life lost, she realized in a rush, but that unborn within her as well.

“You lying wolves!” she cried. Through the gathering darkness, the rising wind and snow, they were little more than blurs to her. “Those of you who still have your wits, yet willingly follow him are worse than Korr! I carry the late prince’s get in my womb. Therefore harm me at your peril!“

Eyes wide, both stallions studied her midsection uncertainly. “Her belly’s swollen,” the older blue murmured.

His companion tossed his head as if to dodge a meddlesome fly. “Great with hunger—just as ours,” he snorted. “All the mares that conceived this fall past have miscarried, the weather’s been so foul and the forage so slight—her doing. Wych,” he snarled. Then, louder, “Wych!”

He started forward, but the older blue nipped his shoulder to stay him. “List! What if what she says is true, that she carries the late prince’s heir? That would make her more fitting regent than Korr….”

Hearing him, the pied mare started, appalled suddenly at how hunger and grief had dulled her wits. She had never once since discovering her pregnancy considered that as the late prince’s mate and mother of his unborn heir, she herself held a better claim to the regency than Korr. The king therefore could only view her burgeoning belly as a threat, invalidating as it did his young daughter’s claim and making him, as Lell’s regent, into a usurper. For an instant, surprise blinded her.

To what lengths, Tek wondered starkly, would his chosen Companions go to protect both their leader’s—and their own—unfounded authority? All at once, in wild alarm, she realized how rashly she had spoken. Her words, intended to keep these two at bay, were having the opposite effect. Their eyes—particularly those of the younger Companion—had grown even more hostile, and though she was a trained warrior, young and strong, one of the finest, she knew that, big-bellied now and half-starved, she had not the slimmest hope of matching two such strapping opponents. The pair glanced at one another.

“She lies. She’s a wych,” spat the younger, his spots shifting and shuddering as his skin twitched with cold. “If she carries a foal, it can’t be that of our late prince! Yet she’ll claim so to the herd—if we let her. She’ll sway them with her lies and turn them against the king.”

The other appeared dubious, but also alarmed. Despite the dimming light and thickening snow, Tek spotted the thin rim of white circling his eye.

“What are you saying?” he whispered.

The younger Companion set his teeth. “That we settle the matter without troubling the king. She’s clearly guilty of the grey mare’s murder. And she abandoned the late prince to his death by gryphons—that’s as good as murder.”

His eyes upon the pied mare narrowed. He dropped his voice yet lower still.

“We’ll say she resisted, tried to flee when we made to stay her.”

Fury filled Tek. She felt reckless, bold.

“Would you kill me?” she spat, coming forward. She snorted, teeth set, anger throttling her. “Alone on this hillside without witnesses to thwart or even question you? Who would be murderers then?”

The older blue fell back a pace. The spotted Companion champed impatiently, ignoring her.

“Nonsense! None would dare dispute us. We’re the king’s chosen Companions, empowered to act in his name.”

“Then the worst you may do me is banishment,” growled Tek. “You have heard that sentence from the mouth of Korr himself!”

Halted now, the older Companion shifted from hoof to hoof, tail switching one flank, clearly in a quandary. His eyes flicked from his fellow to Tek. Angrily, the younger stallion champed him.

“Coward! Are you afraid of a mare?”

“A wych,” he whispered. “A wych, you said.”

“The prince’s mate,” cried Tek. “Mother of his heir.”