Morgan waited near the gate, dressed in traveling black, his hair bound neatly at his nape. The silver in his eyes caught the winter light. Around him, his men moved with precision, deferential but alert. There was a palpable excitement in the air, some with nervous laughs, others saying their goodbyes to lovers, neighbors, family.
She spotted Rhalir, discussing something with several uniformed men who stood at attention for him. He met her eye and gave a brief, respectful nod.
“Ah, Sister Lain,” Morgan said when they approached him. His smile was measured, warm. “And Sena. The morning suits you both.”
Sena dipped her head, her ears dropping back politely. “We’re ready, my Lord.”
Morgan regarded her with mild amusement. “My Lord,” he repeated gently. “You’ve worked in my house for months, child. You may call me Morgan.”
Sena flushed and nodded. “Of course, sir. It’s an honor to serve.”
He gave an indulgent smile. “I hope it will feel more like purpose than service.” He offered Lain his gloved hand to help her into the cart. She took it, and for an instant her Tuning strained to reach him, only to meet silence.
“Stay warm on the road,” he said. “The south wind can be cruel.”
She nodded. When Sena climbed into the cart beside her, Morgan gave the driver a signal. The gate creaked open, and the caravan began its slow procession south.
The landscape beyond the outpost unfolded in pale gradients of white and gray, snow-thin fields giving way to stretches of frozen scrub. The horizon shimmered with distance. A faint warmth lingered in the air from the rising sun, but the light landed cold on her skin.
For a time, the beat of hooves and creaking wood filled the silence. Sena watched the passing trees with quiet awe, her tail curled neatly around her knees. Morgan rode a short distance ahead, his posture unyielding, every movement deliberate.
Sena leaned close, her voice low but bright with conviction. “Isn’t he beautiful? The world is opening again. It feels like the beginning of something.”
Lain followed her gaze to the frost gilded hills. “It feels… different,” she said. She couldn’t shake the sense that each mile carried them further from something she understood.
Sena smiled. “Lord Balthir says the Underserpent stirs because it remembers. He says every tremor is the world waking itself from sleep.”
“You believe that?”
“Of course I do.” Sena’s tone was matter-of-fact, but not unkind. “He saved me when no one else would. The sea took everything, and he gave me a home. He believes the wyrms can make the world whole again.” She looked at Lain with quiet awe. “And now you’re a part of that. The Bellborn herself, come to save the Underserpent. Don’t you feel what that means?”
Lain hesitated. She wanted to say no, that she only felt unease, a hollow ache in her chest, the tremor of something vast inside the earth. But Sena’s expression was so full of hope that she couldn’t bear to break it.
“I feel… something,” she said.
Sena nodded, satisfied. “He’ll change everything. You’ll see.”
Ahead, Morgan’s horse crested the ridge. He turned briefly in the saddle, his silver eyes meeting Lain’s across the distance. She couldn’t tell if the gesture was reassurance or reminder.
By noon, the road narrowed to a frozen pass. The wind rose in fits, sharp with ice. Morgan lifted his hand, and the company slowed in perfect synchrony.
Sena seemed to take comfort in it. “He’s like a true Warden,” she said, her voice hushed. “He doesn’t need to speak to be obeyed.”
Lain watched the silent riders, the way they moved as one. “That’s not how Wardens lead,” she murmured.
Sena tiled her head. “How would you know that?”
For a moment, Lain almost told her about Vaelun. Shouldn’t another Kelthi know about the hidden oasis of their people?
But she would not have told Morgan, and to tell Sena was to tell Morgan, almost surely. She didn’t know why, but she felt in her heart that such a secret must be held as long as possible.
“I suppose I don’t,” Lain said.
The wheels jostled over uneven ground, and the world beyond the ridgeline opened into a vast expanse of valley, frozen river curling like a vein through the snow. Far below, the land trembled faintly, a whisper through her hooves that set her Tuning thrumming.
She looked toward Morgan again. He was motionless atop his horse, staring south. Even from this distance, she could feel it: the pull of something buried deep, the slow pulse of a living god.
Sena touched her arm, eyes bright. “Do you feel it too?”
Lain swallowed. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I think I do.”
By dusk, the wind had turned heavy with snow. The caravan crested a final ridge, and below it the lights of a village glimmered like small stars against the dark.
Several cheers went up around them, laughter at the end of the cold day coming into sight.
“Kelthi,” Sena breathed, leaning over the cart’s edge. “You see? There are others here.”
Lain stared down at the clustered roofs of timber and stone, each with smoke rising from the chimneys. A small group crossed the lane, and that’s when she saw them: antlers.
When they descended into the square, the sound swelled. A crowd had gathered, spilling from the tavern and nearby houses. There were humans and Kelthi alike, though mostly human. Lain hadn’t realized, at first, what they were saying. Then she caught it: her name, spoken with wonder.
“Bellborn,” someone whispered. “The Bellborn walks with Lord Balthir.”
Another voice: “A saint come north again.”
“A Kelthi saint.”
Lain froze in the cart, heart stammering. The people curtsied or bowed as they passed, men and women, Kelthi and human.
Sena’s eyes glistened. “Do you see?” she said softly. “They already know what you are.”
Lain wanted to tell them to rise, to hide under her cowl. But the words would not come. The look on their faces stopped her, that fragile mixture of hope and awe she’d seen only once before, in the cloister, when Ivathi folk came to thank her for sending off a storm.
Morgan rode ahead, acknowledging the crowd with a faint nod, neither encouraging nor denying their devotion. But when he dismounted and turned to her, his gaze was steady and unreadable.
“Come,” he said, offering his hand again. “Let them see you.”
She took it. The moment their palms met, the crowd bowed lower. A shiver went through her, half terror, half awe.
Then a song began – something hummed at first, a tune that started as one voice, then was picked up by others, one line at a time.
The frost took the barley, the storms took the grain,
The wyrm took the thunder, but hunger remains.
We prayed to the stones and we burned what we could,
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Till the Singer rose up from the ash and the wood.
Someone stomped a foot in time to the song, and another person slapped their thigh to add to the rhythm, and soon the whole square was singing.
So raise up your cups and your hearts if you can,
For the song comes again through the throat of the land.
Where the dead bells lie silent, her voice will remain
Our Singer of sorrow, our fire through rain.
It wasn’t a song about her – but it could have been. It was close enough that the resemblance was uncanny. She could not meet anyone’s eye. Morgan’s hand tightened over hers, and he brought his other hand to her chin, a finger to lift her face so she would see.
Now fields break their shackles, the cold rivers rise,
The wyrm stirs beneath us, remembering skies.
We’ll march on the Spire till the heavens are torn,
For the Singer is coming, the world to be born.
The cheers that came next filled the village, clapping and whistling so loud she thought they’d hear it in Ivath. A man approached Morgan with a grin and beckoned them into the town’s small pub, Morgan guided Lain inside, where she was fed, where people danced, where Kelthi and men alike brought her close and thanked her and shook her hands. In her Tuning she felt everything – their hope, their trust, their relief, the tension of all their desires heavy upon her shoulders. Even the Heat was overwhelmed by the complexity of touch and feeling. She barely remembered what was said, only recalling that dizzying sense that the world was watching her, that these people had seen her, and believed.
They were given quarters in the hall that night, a small fortress of stone and wood at the town’s edge. Lain had barely changed from her travel cloak when a servant arrived with word that Lord Balthir requested her company. Sena squeezed her hand before she went.
The meeting was set in a private chamber much like the one at the outpost: firelight, a small table, two chairs. Morgan poured her wine before taking his own seat.
“I hope the welcome didn’t unsettle you,” he said gently. “They’re simple people. They’ve lost much.”
“They think I’m something I’m not,” she said.
He regarded her across the table, the firelight catching on his hair. “What if you are exactly what they think you are?”
She blinked. “I’m not divine, Morgan.”
He smiled faintly. “And yet you sing the earth awake. You calm storms. You survived the grove of starbloom without withering. If that isn’t divinity, what word would you choose?”
“Grace,” she said. “I do those things by the grace of the serpents. I only ask.”
“Grace comes from something,” he said softly. “Even grace follows a design.” He paused to regard her. “I never did learn why you left the Spire,” Morgan asked. “Were you on some sort of pilgrimage? I had heard that the Bellborn was meant to be sacrifice, yet here you are.”
The warmth of the wine and the ale she’d had in the pub loosened her tongue.
“It’s true,” she said. “The death of the Bellborn is meant to keep the wyrm sleeping. I failed. I survived. They sent me away.”
Morgan paused in his eating. He set his fork aside and met her eye, his expression sad and thoughtful. “It’s barbaric, what they’ve done to you,” he said softly.
“When we left the Spire,” she said at last, “the Brighthand tried to kill me. Said that a –”
She paused, surprised by the rush of tears that met her eyes, but she swallowed and blinked them away. “Said that a Kelthi could never be a saint. One of them, the older one, held a sword to my throat, he’d trussed me up like a – like a goat –”
In two strides Morgan was at her side, pulling her seat back just enough so he could kneel beside her and hold her close. The suddenness of the touch blindsided her, and like wind blowing over dry leaves it all came tumbling from her as Morgan held her. For once she didn’t have to think about what this made him feel – for once she did not have to see the reflection of her own feelings in someone else through the Tuning – and so she grieved on her own, and the space for it felt expansive.
“He said he was sorry,” she cried. “The Brighthand. Darrin. He said he was sorry, that he’d been there when they burned my village, when Elder Tanel – Elder Tanel saved me from the snow, but he wasn’t there, he wasn’t there at the ceremony –”
Morgan rocked her a little, holding her head against his chest, the rumble of his voice pressing fast to her ear. “Horrible – you poor creature –”
“Darrin said he was sorry – that Tanel should have left me to die, and they hunted me down – sent a Tracker like a hound to fell a deer –” She couldn’t go on. She sobbed into his shirt.
“They were trying to kill a miracle.”
“I’m no miracle.”
“You are to me.” His grip tightened, soothing. “I’ve seen power twisted into every shape – cruelty, greed, fear. But never grace. Not until you.”
Lain took a deep breath, coming back to the room, breathing through the hurt as the fire crackled softly behind her. He ran soft fingers up and down her back.
She thought of the people singing in the square, of Sena’s bright faith, of her own doubt. And then of Morgan, centuries old, hollowed of song, believing again only because she was here before him.
Morgan’s hand came up to cradle the back of her head. “You don’t have to be strong right now,” he murmured. “Not for me. Not for anyone. The world has taken enough from you.”
“But I will – I will have to die, to save the Underserpent.”
He met her eye, startled. “Why would you believe that?”
She drew in another breath, unsteady, the fabric of his sleeve rough under her fingers.
“They made you believe that pain was holy,” he said, in the cadence of a confession reversed. “That sacrifice was virtue. But they lied, Lain. You were never meant to be given. You were meant to end the giving.”
Her breath caught.
“If you and I perform this rite together, you will survive it. Don’t you see?”
She was too stunned to speak, to ask how, and the hope that fluttered in her heart was too much to bear.
“Every saint they’ve ever made was born from blood,” he said. “Every miracle demanded a body.” His thumb traced the line of her jaw, the touch so light she leaned into it. “But you survived it. That’s what they can’t forgive. That can’t stand that you’re truly sacred.”
She shook her head weakly. “I don’t feel sacred.”
He smiled faintly, eyes luminous in the firelight, rising to her antlers, then back to her face. “You wouldn’t. Saints never do. They only feel what the world can’t: the burden of its suffering.”
Her chest hitched again, softer this time. The words were a balm, each one sliding into the cracks left by grief.
“They tried to unmake you,” he went on, voice quiet but insistent. “But when they buried you, the wyrm stirred. It answered. You think that was coincidence?”
“No,” she whispered.
“It recognized you,” he said. “It knows what you are.”
He drew back just enough to look at her, searching her eyes with an almost painful tenderness. “I envy you. To be seen by the Underserpent, to be chosen from the ashes – you carry a power older than any priest’s name for god.”
Lain swallowed hard. “If I’m meant to carry this, why does it hurt so much?”
“Because the world doesn’t yet deserve the mercy you’re bringing it.” He smiled, small, human, devastating. “And because you haven’t learned to forgive yourself for surviving.”
The firelight trembled between them.
Morgan brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “You don’t need to hide your pain from me. I know what it is to live inside a song that no one else can hear.”
The words slipped through her like water through a well-worn channel, natural and clean. All the loneliness, all the guilt, softened under his voice.
“You’re not alone anymore, Lain,” he whispered. “You never were. You just needed someone to see you.”
His hand still rested at her cheek, and when he spoke again, his voice had gone almost mythical, a man recalling ancient origins.
“You carry so much sorrow in so small a frame,” he said. “Even your silence is a kind of prayer.”
She opened her mouth to answer, but the words slipped away.
Morgan’s other hand came to rest at her shoulder, fingers splayed at the hollow between her collarbone and throat. “Do you feel that?” he said. “That pulse. It’s the same pulse that moves the wyrms under the earth. You think it’s just your heart, but it isn’t. It’s creation itself, moving through you.”
Lain’s breath trembled. “You make it sound holy.”
“It is.” His thumb brushed the edge of her lower lip. “You are.”
The hearthlight painted him in amber. She should have pulled back, but his expression was so full of grief, so utterly undone by awe, that she could only stay still and let him look.
“I think they fear your song because it’s stronger than theirs,” he said.
He leaned forward, close enough that the heat of his breath met her temple. “I don’t want your worship. I’m not like them.”
Her body betrayed her. A tremor passed through her as she met his gaze. “Then what do you want?”
“I want all of us to stop kneeling.”
He tilted her chin upward and pressed his mouth gently to hers.
The contact was electric and impossibly tender, a communion.
He pulled back to press his forehead gently to hers. “You’ve been told to kneel your whole life,” he whispered. “If you stay with me, you’ll never kneel again.”
The promise shuddered through her like music.
Morgan drew back enough to see her face. The faintest smile ghosted across his mouth. “Sleep, now. You’ve earned your rest. Tomorrow, the road will be long.”
When he stood, the loss of his touch felt immediate, sharp as cold air. He gathered his jacket from the chair, fastened it once more, and his composure returned as though it had never been broken.
At the door, he paused. “Whatever you’ve been before tonight,” he said, “let it die here. You owe nothing to their gods. From now on, your song belongs only to the living.”
The latch clicked softly behind him, leaving her alone with the fading warmth of his hand on her skin.