The Hunter’s Lodge
The travel from wayside inn hideout to secure safehouse consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
He turned it over. Words were engraved on the inside of the band. The ring bore the Covington wolf and a single message: “Claim the heir and lose him.”
The metal was warm from his palm. Killian stared at the lettering—each stroke deliberate, a craftsman’s work. This had not been left in haste. It had been pressed into his belongings while he slept, or while he stood guard over a woman and child he’d only just learned to protect.
He pocketed the ring. In the next breath, he was moving.
“Cole.” His voice carried down the corridor of the townhouse, low and absolute. “We’re leaving within the hour. Rouse the men. The Covingtons have found us.”
Cole appeared at the end of the hall, already reaching for his coat. “How close?”
“Close enough to put their hands on my things.” Killian held up the ring between two fingers, then closed his fist around it. “They know about the boy. They know where he sleeps.”
Cole’s face did not change—that was why Killian trusted him. “The hunting lodge in Ashby Forest. Twelve miles of wood between us and any road. The men there have sworn to your father’s house, not to whatever Covington has become.”
“Aye. And it gives us room to see them coming.” Killian was already walking toward the stairs. “Wake Seraphina and the boy. We travel dark, no lanterns until we’re past the river.”
—
The lodge had stood for a hundred and forty years, built by Killian’s grandfather as a place to escape the crown, not serve it. Timber-framed, low-ceilinged, with a great stone hearth that swallowed whole logs and gave back nothing but heat. The windows were narrow, set deep into walls of fieldstone—defensible, if it came to that.
Killian hoped it would not.
He stood at the threshold as the household settled, watching Cole direct the placement of men along the tree line. The forest pressed close, oaks and ash and the bare arms of winter birches. A man could disappear into those woods and never be found. A boy, too, if he didn’t know the paths.
That thought lodged in Killian’s chest and refused to move.
Behind him, a soft lantern glow filled the main room. He heard Seraphina’s voice, low and measured, telling Max to keep his boots by the door. The boy’s answer was a sleepy mumble. It had been three days since they’d slept a full night.
Killian turned. Seraphina stood at the foot of the stairs, her hand resting on the banister, watching him. She wore a plain wool dress, borrowed from the lodge’s stores, and her hair had come loose from its pins. She looked exhausted. She looked like a woman carrying the weight of eight years of secrets.
“They’ll be asleep now,” she said. “Max hasn’t even asked about the strangers outside.”
“He’s a brave boy.”
“He’s a boy who’s learned not to ask questions.” Her voice was not bitter, only worn. “I’ve told him so many versions of the truth that I’ve lost count of which ones were for him and which were for me.”
Killian crossed the room. The fire had settled into a bed of coals, ticking and shifting as the logs broke down. He stopped an arm’s length from her.
“The ring said to claim the heir and lose him,” he said. “That’s not a warning. It’s an instruction. They intend to take Max, and they intend for me to destroy myself trying to keep him.”
Seraphina’s eyes closed. When they opened, they were dry. “Then we don’t let them.”
“No,” Killian agreed. “We don’t.”
—
Morning came gray and cold. Frost had crept across the inside of the windowpanes, and the air in the lodge carried the smell of woodsmoke and fresh bread. One of the lodge keepers, a woman named Elsie, had set a pot of porridge on the table and left a plate of thick-cut toast beside it.
Max came down the stairs in clothes that hung loose on his frame, his dark hair sticking up in three directions. Seraphina followed, her hand resting on his shoulder.
“Can I go outside?” Max asked, already craning toward the door.
The answer, from Killian, was immediate: “Stay within sight of the lodge.” He paused. “But yes.”
Max looked to his mother first. Seraphina nodded, and the boy was out the door before the nod had finished.
Killian followed at a slower pace, standing on the porch with his arms crossed, watching Max run to the edge of the clearing, then stop, uncertain, as if he’d forgotten what to do with so much open space.
“He’s never been free,” Seraphina said from behind him. “We lived in a flat above a print shop. I told him not to wander. That the city wasn’t safe for boys who asked questions.” She let out a breath that clouded in the cold air. “I made him small so he could survive.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know how to make him anything else.”
Killian was quiet for a long moment. Then he stepped off the porch and walked to where Max stood at the edge of the tree line.
“There’s a snare I can show you,” Killian said, crouching beside the boy. “My father taught me when I was about your age. You set it along a rabbit run—you can see where the grass has been pressed down, where they pass through regular.”
Max looked up at him, eyes wary, but curious. “Will it hurt the rabbit?”
“It’s quick. If you do it right, it doesn’t even know.” Killian pulled a length of wire from his coat pocket. “Here. I’ll show you how to tie the knot.”
They knelt together in the frost, Killian’s hands guiding the boy’s smaller ones through the loop. Max listened with a concentration that Killian recognized—he’d worn the same expression in front of the fire last night, watching the men outside, cataloging what he saw. Looking for threats.
Killian finished the knot and passed the wire to Max. The boy turned it over in his hands, tracing the loop with a fingertip.
“Why do you know how to catch rabbits?” Max asked.
“Because I grew up in a place like this. A hunting lodge, not so far from here.” Killian sat back on his heels. “My father believed that a man should know how to feed himself, whatever else he happened to be.”
“Are you a prince?”
The question hung in the cold air. Killian looked at the boy—his son, though Max didn’t know it yet.
“I am a man who lives in a castle,” Killian said carefully. “But that doesn’t make me any better than a man who lives in a cottage. It just means my roof leaks more.”
Max smiled at that, a crack in his guarded expression. “Your roof leaks?”
“Terribly. The east wing is the worst. I’ve lost three chairs to it.”
Max laughed. It was a small sound, surprised out of him, and Killian felt something pull tight in his chest.
“Will you show me more snares?” Max asked.
“Tomorrow,” Killian said. “We’ll set them at dusk. That’s when the rabbits move.” He reached into his coat and produced a small object—a silver seal, no bigger than a coin, stamped with the Ashby crest. “This belonged to my grandfather. He carried it into every battle, every council, every negotiation.” He pressed it into Max’s palm. “Now it’s yours.”
Max stared at the seal, then closed his fingers around it. “Thank you,” he said, in that careful, polite voice that had been taught to him.
Killian put a hand on his shoulder. “Come. Breakfast.”
They walked back to the lodge together, and Max reached up and took Killian’s hand without being asked.
Seraphina stood in the doorway, and something passed across her face—a softening, a crack in the careful wall she’d built around herself. She watched them, and Killian watched her watching them, and for a moment the cold morning felt almost warm.
That was when Max tugged his hand free, looked up at Killian, and said, “Papa, can we have honey on the porridge?”
The word fell like a stone into still water.
Killian went very still. Beside him, Max seemed not entirely to have registered what he’d said—it had come out naturally, the way a child’s words do when they trust the person they’re speaking to.
Seraphina’s hand lifted to her mouth.
Killian knelt down in front of Max, bringing himself to the boy’s eye level. There was no steel in his voice when he spoke, no command. Just a steady anchor of warmth.
“Yes,” he said. “We can have honey.”
Max beamed, unaware of the shift that rippled through the room, and ran inside ahead of Killian.
Seraphina stood frozen in the doorway. Killian rose, walked toward her, and stopped close enough that he could hear her breathing.
“He’s never called anyone that,” she said, barely audible.
Killian reached out and took her hand. “He called me Papa.”
“I heard.” Seraphina’s eyes were bright, but she didn’t let them fall. “We need to talk about what that means.”
—
The chaplain arrived that afternoon on a lathered horse, sent for by one of Cole’s riders with a sealed instruction. He was a gray man in a gray coat, carrying a worn leather satchel and a surprising warmth in his eyes.
“A private betrothal,” he said, unrolling a length of parchment. “The marriage to follow once the Church is satisfied as to consents. Simple, legal, and binding.”
Killian stood by the fire, his hands clasped behind his back. “And the boy?”
“The boy would be legitimized by the marriage. His claim would rest on that union.”
Seraphina sat at the table across from Killian, her hands flat on the wood. She had not looked away from him since the chaplain began to speak.
“Sign it,” Killian said. “Let me protect you both. Let me give Max a name that Covington can’t touch.”
Seraphina’s eyes met his. There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the hiss of the fire.
“I can’t,” she said.
The words landed like a blade between them. Killian’s hands dropped to his sides.
“Seraphina—”
“Don’t.” Her voice cracked. “Don’t ask me to explain what I can’t put into words.” She pushed back from the table, her chair scraping across the stone floor. “I know you mean it. I know you believe this is right. But if I sign your name to a contract while Owen Covington sits on the Regency Council, he will tear it apart. He will find a provision, a flaw, a thread—and he will pull until the whole thing unravels. And when it does, Max will be left with nothing but the memory of a father he barely had time to know.”
“No.” Killian stepped toward her. “He will be left with my name, and my blood, and the protection of every man who serves this house.”
“Your house is governed by the law,” Seraphina said, her voice steady now, hard with the certainty of hard years. “And Covington intends to use that law against you. The ring said so. You read it yourself.”
The chaplain cleared his throat. “My lady, a betrothal, once witnessed and sworn—”
“I will not swear anything I cannot keep.” Seraphina turned her back to them, facing the fire. “Not while Owen Covington has the power to break it.”
Killian was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was low and measured.
“Then we find another way.”
—
Midnight came wrapped in a runner’s sweat and frost.
The messenger was one of Cole’s own men, a wiry rider named Briggs who had pushed through dark woods and icy streams to reach them. He staggered into the lodge with a letter sealed in red wax—Covington’s seal, not Ashby’s.
Killian read it by firelight. His face did not change while he read. When he finished, he set the letter on the table and looked at Seraphina.
“Owen has convened the Regency Council,” he said. “A special session. The petition is to declare me unfit. Unstable. A danger to the crown and to the heir.”
Seraphina’s breath caught. “He can’t. He has no grounds—”
“He has Max.” Killian’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “The petition claims that the boy is an orphan of uncertain lineage, and that the crown must take protective custody until the matter is settled. He means to have Max put in his care. He means to use the boy to control the succession, and to use the law to make it untouchable.” He looked at her. “The ring said it plainly. Claim the heir and lose him. This is the method.”
The chaplain had gone pale. Cole stood in the corner, silent, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
Seraphina’s voice came out broken. “He has the votes.”
“He has enough,” Killian said. “The Council has feared Ashby power for decades. Owen will feed them that fear and use it to bind them to his purpose.”
“He’ll take my son.”
Killian crossed the room and took her hands. His grip was steady, his eyes clear.
“He will not.”
“You heard what you read—”
“I heard what he intends.” Killian released her hands. He moved to the table where his sword lay sheathed, and lifted it. The leather buckle of his belt slid through his fingers as he secured it at his waist. He did not look back.
“Then let them come,” Killian said, buckling on his sword. “They will have to take me first.”