Morning broke soft and gold over Doreth Vale, and Lain woke to the feeling of a second heart beating beside her own.

  Morgan lay propped on one elbow, watching her.

  For a moment she forgot everything – who he was, where they were, what they had done. The bond made her feel weightless, whole. There was little about the night before she remembered clearly, but in her now was a lurch of affection that surprised her.

  “You didn’t sleep quietly,” he said softly. “You kept stealing the blanket.”

  Lain blinked, disoriented, then saw the evidence, a twisted heap of linen gathered in her arms. “That’s not true.”

  “It is,” he murmured, mock-serious. “I nearly froze to death.”

  She gave a small, incredulous laugh. “You? The immortal Veinwright, undone by a blanket?”

  He gave her one of his rare boyish grins. “Even gods get cold.”

  That startled another laugh from her. “You’re not a god. And I’m just a lonesome Kelthi girl in need of a little extra warmth, thank you very much.”

  “I’m not a god yet,” he said, teasing, then caught her gaze and softened. “And I hope you don’t feel lonesome.”

  The joke faded into silence. His hand brushed her shoulder, trailing down her arm until their fingers met. He leaned over her to press his mouth to her jaw.

  “You were trembling in your sleep,” he said quietly.

  She frowned. “I don’t remember dreaming.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he said. “I took it from you.”

  She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  He smiled with an unusual shyness. “The bond allows small mercies, if one knows how to listen.”

  The thought should have unsettled her, that he could reach into her dreams. But it didn’t. The way he said small mercies made her want to believe he had known none for a very long time.

  “What did you see?” she asked quietly.

  His eyes were distant. “The sea,” he said. “Always the icy sea. That was the last thing I saw before they buried our home. I think the blood remembers cold before it remembers pain.”

  “Our… You mean your family.” She thought of the names crossed out of the book.

  “Yes. My wife. Her mother. My sons.”

  She paused for a long time as the grief found her through the Tuning, afraid to ask more, desperate for the details anyway. “I didn’t know the Veinwrights lived so far north.”

  “We lived everywhere,” he said. “Until nowhere would have us.” He shifted, the feathers at his shoulders catching the morning light, black edged with purple. “Now look at me. Reduced to stealing blankets from saints.”

  It was meant as humor, and they both laughed, but something in the self-mockery of it – something unguarded – drew her closer. She touched the edge of his jaw, tracing the faint shadow there. “You don’t have to be alone anymore, either,” she said.

  He turned his face into her palm, the motion almost instinctive, as if they had been lovers for years and had always shared such tenderness. “That’s the cruelest kindness you could offer me,” he said. “I’ve grown used to the quiet.”

  “Then I’ll sing until you’re not.”

  He laughed quietly. “You’ll make me mortal again with that sort of talk.”

  He sensed the questions waiting on her tongue, but she didn’t ask. He met her eye and gave a sad nod, as if deciding something.

  “Her name was Siobhan,” he said. “Our sons were Michael and Logan, two and three. We were young parents, only just finding our place in the world.” His eyes glassed over as he stared into the middle distance. “My wife still had her wings; she was from an older lineage than I. Her feathers…” he paused, eyes unfocused with memory. “All orange and blue and white, like a cliff swallow.”

  He brought his hand to Lain’s white hair, gently coiling his fingers in her curls. Her scalp tingled with pleasure. She had no envy for Siobhan, but she wondered if he found her ugly, with her scales and horns, all absent of feathers. She wondered if he was imagining what she would look like, with a spray of soft plumage across her chest. There was something comforting about the idea, a return to what she knew.

  “I first laid eyes on her on the Cliffs of Noverral, by the sea,” he continued. “Our people flew freely, those that had their wings. And the hillsides were full of our aeries. The grass was so green it might as well have been jeweled.”

  He traced a finger down the scales at her collarbone, which were still a strange black and green, like beetle shells.

  “Our leader was a sharp-witted Veinwright. She and several others had overseen the creation of the bloodwyrms. There were other designs attempted, but these worked best for our purposes. The Dagorlind were furious. We had agreed not to kill, not to take blood from the unwilling; we were not animals. So the bloodwyrms seemed a logical solution, feeding only upon the dead.”

  She could imagine the fury of the Dagorlind, knowing that their attempts to control the power of the Veinwrights would be thwarted by something so reasonable.

  “The Dagorlind sent an army first,” Morgan continued. “But they couldn’t reach us there. We were too numerous, and they could not fly. With the power of the bloodwyrms, we grew stronger each time they fought us. So when we would not meet their demands, they sent an earthquake. The whole cliff-face was shorn off. It tumbled into the sea.”

  He sighed and in the Tuning she felt the old ache of it, a wound that never quite healed.

  “Siobhan and several others flew to the rubble – we all had a useless hope that we might find our loved ones alive among the debris. It took me longer to get down. The stairs had gone with the cliffs, and nothing was stable.”

  Lain pictured it, the Veinwrights who could not fly finding a path down to the place where the bodies of their families rested, trying to salvage them before they were taken by the hungry sea.

  “But the ocean was fierce. A wave came while we were searching the coastline, larger than any wave I’d ever laid eyes on. Perhaps an effect of the tremor. I told Siobhan to flee, but the stubborn woman never listened. We were your age then.”

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  He gazed at her face for a moment before carrying on, something wistful in his features until his expression hardened with the inevitable end of the tale.

  “My wife caught me up in her arms. She dragged me as high as she could, but the wave struck us both, and we were separated. I woke half drowned. I never found her body. But I knew from our Veinbond that she was gone. The Dagorlind took them all.”

  She knew what that loss felt like; the ache was in her still, though the space was filled now with Morgan’s presence. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “No one should have to lose everything they love.”

  He gave a soft, bitter laugh. “Grief is the only inheritance I have left.”

  She sat up beside him, the linen shifting over her skin. The early light caught on the faint sheen of feathers along his arm. For a moment she hesitated, then reached out, resting her hand over the place where the feathers gave way to skin. The pulse beneath her palm was slow and certain, older than hers, but no less alive.

  “You still have a heart,” she said quietly. “You didn’t let them take that from you.”

  Morgan’s expression changed, somewhere between astonishment and sorrow. “You shouldn’t waste your mercy on me.”

  “It isn’t wasted,” she said. “You carry enough ghosts. You shouldn’t have to carry them alone.”

  The silence that followed was full of the confirmation of their joined blood. He looked at her again, but this time as a man who had been lonely too long. The hardness in him softened. His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist in a gesture so tender it felt like confession.

  She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. His arm came up around her without thought, the touch steady and encompassing, protective and real.

  His fingers brushed the hollow of her throat. The warmth that followed was immediate and real, like a tide drawing back from pain. He kissed her, and this time when he spread her legs with his own and found her Heat still wanting, he moved with slow persistence, summoning her pleasure forth through the bond of the Veinwright.

  He was not like Mallow. But she didn’t need him to be.

  Later, on the high terrace where the Veinwright tower had once stood, smoke curled faintly from a low brazier. The air was damp with rain that had not yet fallen.

  Lain stood beside the basin in silence, her cloak drawn against the cold. Her body ached from the night before, and the continued exploration this morning. Every breath she took hummed with Morgan’s heartbeat, deep and steady beneath her own.

  Sena moved quietly behind her, bringing the last of the water to the basin. Lain opened the linen pouch. Inside was the starbloom. Their petals shimmered faintly in the daylight, purple at the core, gold at the edges, their pollen glowing faint as dust in the sun.

  Morgan crouched beside the brazier. His shirt was open midway, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, the faint sheen of feathers visible. He took the cup from Sena, poured clear water into a shallow crucible and held it above the flame.

  “It must be brewed in full daylight,” he said softly. “No shadow between it and the sun. The Dagorlind half-brewed theirs at dusk to make the serpent sleep, and to make the drinker a vessel of sacrifice.”

  Sena’s tail flicked nervously. “And this will keep her safe?”

  Morgan glanced at her, and though his expression was kind, it silenced her at once. “It will make her whole.”

  She crushed the petals between her palms as instructed. Gold dust streaked her skin. When she dropped them into the water, the liquid brightened, shifting from clear to luminous blue.

  Morgan brought a piece of vellum from his pocket, unfolding it carefully. “I have the song,” he said. He handed the parchment to Lain. “If you would do the honors, Bellborn.” He gestured at her bandolier.

  She removed her bell and gave it one solid ring, then brought the lyrics before her face. The song came naturally, the words just a conveyer for what she meant to do.

  Drink of the sun, oh heart of the sky,

  Break now the bond that fetters the flame.

  Root into blood, and let sorrow fly

  What wakes shall remember its name.

  A faint hum rose in the air, layered and rich.

  There was a wyrm beneath this mountain. Awake, listening. It seemed to breathe over the concoction, the bits of flower sizzling until the color faded to ink.

  Morgan turned the crucible gently. “Do you hear it?”

  “I do,” she whispered.

  “The serpents know what we mean to do,” he said. “When the chains fall, they will answer you.”

  Lain swallowed. “And you?”

  He smiled. “I will bear the weight with you. The song will pass through us both, Veinwright and saint, bound by the same will.”

  He poured the glowing liquid into a sealed flask. The light inside pulsed faintly with life. “It’s ready.”

  Sena looked between them, uneasy by reverent. “Will you drink it now?”

  “No,” Morgan said. “Not until Ivath. When we stand over the wyrm’s prison.”

  He corked the flasked and wrapped it in cloth, pressing it into Lain’s hands. “Keep it close. It knows you now.”

  The weight vibrated faintly in her palms, shivering like a mouse in her hands.

  Morgan turned to his followers gathered at the edge of the terrace. “We leave within the hour. By dusk, we will reach the river road.”

  He looked once more at Lain. The sunlight gleamed against his feathers, turning them to black glass. He put a hand to her face. “Are you ready?”

  Lain nodded. She was going home. Come what may.

  By midday the road had narrowed into the mountain’s spine. She’d been here only days before, traveling in the opposite direction on foot with two Brighthand guards. Now, she rode with her head high, and realized with sudden and inexplicable joy that she had done exactly what they had told her she must do to save the wyrm: she had gone to the mountains, retrieved the starbloom, and returned with an army of true believers.

  Behind them stretched Morgan’s soldiers, men and women carrying the banner of Morgan Balthir: a falcon in flight, stitched in white thread on a black background. There were perhaps a hundred of them. The best of them carried old blades, recently sharpened at one of their outposts. Some only had staves or hunting bows. Aside from the more seasoned fighters their armor was mismatched, leather and mail, whatever could be scavenged. Yet the air around them thrummed with purpose.

  On her chest she had the same sigil, a falcon stitched in silver thread. They’d traded her wool for black velvet, and had fitted her head with a cowl that was sewn to free her antlers for the world to see their violet beauty. She sat proud and tall in the cart, with Sena at her side, and Morgan riding before them.

  The air pressed down upon them, carrying the sharp scent of rain. Below, the valley plunged away into mist, the far edge lost to cloud. Ahead, a narrow bridge spanned a rocky gorge, a strip of stone arched over the roaring river below. The river was near bridge-level with the winter thaw; much of the mist in the air could be attributed to its roil. The river was narrowest here, but Lain knew it was deceptive. The gorge ran deep, its banks rocky and treacherous.

  The first thunder rolled.

  Lain drew her cloak tight. The weight of the starbloom vial pressed faintly against her chest, its pulse thrumming in rhythm with her own. Morgan rode ahead, unhurried, his black horse moving like shadow through the gray light. Sena’s wide eyes glanced often toward the sky.

  When they reached the bridge, Morgan slowed and raised his hand. The company halted.

  Lain’s ears twitched – she and Sena heard it before the others did: the dull rhythm of boots beyond the bend on the other side of the river, the ring of metal on stone, the sound of swordbells.

  A column of Brighthand riders emerged from the fog.