The camp was careful and disciplined: tents arranged in a ring of firelight, sentries posted along the river’s edge, horses tethered where they could drink but not bolt. The rain had stopped but the sky hung heavy, the storm lingering just above them. The men sang under their breath while they worked, half to keep rhythm, half to keep courage.
Lain stayed near the central fire, cloak drawn tight, watching the way the light gilded the mud into mirrors. The warmth soaked into her knees until she felt boneless. She could still feel the echo of the wyrm deep below, restless but spent, its presence pressed into the marrow of the world. Sena had spread their cloaks close to the flames as servants set pots of broth to boil for the camp.
Sena was better at pretending peace. She’d coaxed two of the servants into giving her a pan and was browning flatbread over the coals, humming something Kelthi and bright. The tune reminded Lain of spring, wild honey and festival banners in the wind.
“You should eat,” Sena said, glancing up at her. “You’ve gone quiet again. You’ll make them think you’re plotting.”
Lain tore a piece of bread and ate it, chewing absently. “I’m tired of being looked at like a plot.”
Sena smirked. “Then stop doing such interesting things.”
Morgan’s tent stood a little part, marked by a pair of torches at the entrance. Inside, he met with his captains and the Veinwritten men who carried his messages. None of them came near the women’s circle except to deliver orders. Sena said it was because Morgan wanted them seen as equals, not captives or concubines. “It’s strategy,” she said, spooning a taste of broth into her mouth. “If he favors us, the others will whisper. This way we’re both above reproach.”
Lain didn’t answer. The idea of being equal to Morgan felt like being equal to the fire: close enough to share its light, but also close enough to burn.
The murmur of voices from Morgan’s tent rose and fell. Every now and then, laughter broke through, sharp, confident, and masculine. Lain found herself glancing that way despite herself, half expecting to feel his gaze in return. Half wanting to feel it, too.
“Don’t,” Sena warned softly, following her eyes. She tore another piece of bread and handed it over. “Eat before your soup gets cold.”
Lain obeyed. The broth was simple, root vegetables and barley, but the salt and heat steadied her. The camp glowed around them, everything coppery in the firelight. Sentries passed by with their halberds and torches, the reflections sliding across their armor like restless sprites.
Somewhere upriver, a nightbird called in a single, long note. Its echo drove down the water and vanished.
Sena was right. She was furious with Morgan, but she was enthralled, too, and she felt suddenly like a dog with a cruel master; there was a certain worship in that. Her ears fell back with shame.
“Tomorrow,” Sena said, “We’ll see Ivath. Think she’ll remember you kindly?”
Lain laughed. “They’ll think I’ve risen from the dead, if anything.”
Sena gave a low hum of agreement. “A true saint indeed.”
By nightfall, word had gone out to Ivath. A courier was sent up the road, carrying Morgan’s seal and the demand for parley. When the horse and rider disappeared into fog, the camp settled into a tense, watchful silence.
Lain and Sena were given a shared tent, one of the newer ones from Morgan’s supply train, the canvas still smelling of fresh oil and dye. Inside, it was large enough for a mattress, a low brass lamp, and a basin of water. Sena ducked in first, shaking the rain from her ears; her curls sprang loose, glinting in the lamplight.
“By the wyrm, I thought I’d never be dry again,” Sena muttered, tugging at her cowl. “How do soldiers stand it? Everything’s always wet or smokey.”
Lain smiled faintly and helped her with the ties. “Maybe they forget what it’s like to be dry.”
“Maybe they forget everything.” Sena tossed the jacket aside, slipped out of her slacks, and stretched her legs under the blanket. “If we’re lucky, we’ll reach the city before the next rain starts.”
Lain looked away. She had no opinion on the rain. To her, luck would mean no more bloodshed.
Lain undressed in silence after that, the sound of it gentle, the whisper of fabric and the soft pat of wet clothing against the ground. Lain’s linen shift clung to her skin. She rubbed her arms, trying to chase the chill away. Sena, noticing, lifted the blanket in invitation.
“Come on then,” she said, smiling. “We can’t have the Bellborn catching cold. You’d undo the whole campaign.”
Lain slid beneath the covers. The air under the blanket was warmer, carrying Sena’s scent of rose oil and damp wool. The smaller woman pressed close shamelessly, pooling into Lain’s arms and pressing her face to Lain’s chest. They giggled and shivered and readjusted until they found still comfort, Lain’s mouth pressing to Sena’s forehead. The fire outside cast shifting gold through the seams in the tent; it looked almost like candlelight through stained glass.
“Is this strange to you?” Sena asked after a time.
“Is what strange?”
“All of it. Being here. Him.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of Morgan’s tent, though neither of them could see it. “It feels like something enormous is happening, but no one knows what shape it’ll take.”
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Lain exhaled, the air rushing over Sena’s ear, which flicked reflexively. “Everything’s been strange since the Spire. I keep thinking if I stay still long enough, it’ll make sense.”
“Does it?”
“No.”
Sena hummed in response, a sound so small it might have been a sigh. “When we reach Ivath, do you think they’ll let you walk free? Or will they try to throw you back into your cage?”
Lain thought of the city’s white walls, how they’d gleamed once with frost and rang with hymns. “I don’t think they’ll have a choice,” she said at last. “Not this time.”
Sena shifted closer. “Good. I like it better when you sound dangerous.”
Lain laughed softly, the sound catching her by surprise. The warmth of it loosened her shoulders, her neck. “And you?” she asked. “Are you afraid?”
“Always,” Sena said, unbothered. “But I’d rather be afraid beside you than safe behind anyone else.”
The rain had stopped again, leaving the air clean and cold. A nearby horse stamped and snorted.
Sena rolled to her other side, pressing her back to Lain’s chest. The two coiled about each other as the Heat simmered pleasantly under Lain’s skin, its peak long since past, its want for touch gentling to easy comfort. She buried her face in Sena’s hair, pulling the smaller woman close, eased by the sweetness of her curves and the lingering smell of sweat and rose oil. She reached for Sena’s hand beneath the blanket and felt her fingers curl back around hers. The contact was steadying. Outside, the river’s voice filled every gap in the night.
“If you can’t sleep,” Sena murmured, “You could sing something.”
“I don’t think that’s wise.”
“Just something small. Just a little.”
Lain did, a few notes barely formed in her throat. Nothing divine; just a tune she half remembered from the convent’s washing yard, sung when the sisters thought no one was listening. “Rub and rinse, and wring it clean, let the river keep what’s been. Silver water, soft and wide, carry the stain to the other side.”
“That’s nice,” Sena whispered. “Makes me feel all clean, too.”
Lain closed her eyes, listening to the faint echoes of the camp outside. Creaking armor, the restless shift of guards. She let her body grow heavy against Sena’s warmth. The bond between her and Morgan flickered at the edge of her senses, distant but watchful. She pushed it aside.
She was nearly asleep when a crack woke her. At first it sounded like horses breaking tether – hooves on stone, shouts, the quick rising panic of command. Then a scream, cut short.
Sena sat up. “Raiders?”
“I don’t know.” Lain reached for her bandolier and threw it on over her nightrobes. Sena grabbed her jacket in a rush.
The flap burst open. A man staggered in, breathless. The torch behind him made his face impossible to see. “The guard sent me,” he gasped. “We’re under attack – we must get the Singer clear!”
Two more followed him that must be Morgan’s scouts, their armor half-hidden by cloaks. They moved fast.
Lain caught it first: the sharp, resinous scent of alchemical oil. “Wait, they’re not –”
The nearest one seized Sena’s arm with a bare, anointed hand. The other caught Lain by the throat and slammed her against the tent pole, hard enough to tear the canvas above. She saw the edge of a blade, small and curved, gleaming with the sigil of the Brighthand.
“Which one?”
Lain met Sena’s eye. They didn’t know which one of them was the Bellborn.
“Take them both,” hissed the man at her ear. “Sort it later.”
Sena shouted, driving her elbow back, and the tent erupted in a chaos of hands, cloth, rain, firelight. Outside, someone yelled for the captain. The camp’s alarm bell was already ringing.
By the time Lain and Sena reached the tent’s opening, the camp had turned to wildfire. Tents collapsed as men ran shouting through the smoke. Sparks leapt from the spilled oil and caught in the canvas seams, the air suddenly thick with fire and at once rain began to fall once more.
“Stay down!” someone shouted. “Archers on the ridge –”
The sentence choked off under the snap of a bowstring.
Sena grabbed Lain’s wrist and pulled her toward the riverbank. Shapes darted through the smoke: Morgan’s men, disoriented, shouting orders. The rain turned to sleet, driving sideways across the plain. Horses screamed in the dark.
Lain cried out for help. A hand seized her from behind. She twisted, nearly slipped in the mud, and for a heartbeat she thought it was one of their guards until she saw the edge of a cuirass beneath the cloak, white and gold glinting under the torchlight. Dagorlind armor.
“Get your reeking hands off me –” Sena’s voice cracked somewhere ahead. Two men had her arms, dragging her backward.
Lain tore free long enough to stumble toward her, but another shape lunged out of the haze and caught her around the waist. She slammed her head back, felt her antlers connect, but the man only grunted and tightened his hold.
“Kelthi,” he hissed against her ear. “Always thrashing.”
The fire roared higher as a store of pitch ignited. Shadows pitched across the camp – men running, some breaking toward them. Morgan’s soldiers, a handful armed, charged in from the west, blades drawn. One struck down a false scout where he stood and shouted, “This way! Get the Singer clear!”
The man took Lain by the hand and another held fast to Sena. The man holding Lain dropped his grip and she pulled clear. They fled their would-be kidnappers, hope flaring.
Then in the sudden darkness around them what looked like the shadow behind a tent gorged itself on the night, growing into the steady shape of a bloodwyrm.
Then another emerged behind it, and Lain caught only a glimpse as two men screamed in surprise, one knocked prone by the fathered wyrmbeast.
A third one appeared from the shadows, and that’s when Lain saw him: Morgan, his hands moving, his eyes on the beasts, directing them as a conductor directs a choir, the creatures following his gestures with brutal intent. They seemed to know which men were Morgans and which were not, and Lain watched with quiet horror as they tore into one Brighthand guard after another. Their teeth parted the steel cuirasses as easily as the flesh beneath.
He’d told her they were bred only to eat the dead, and that killing had become a necessity of their survival.
She wondered how she could have been so foolish, after all the lies she’d fallen for in her life.
Then arrows cut through the rain. Lain and Sena’s rescuers dropped, their torches spinning away into the mud. The girls were wrenched in the opposite direction, dragged between two tents and out into the dark fringe of trees.
“Morgan!” she cried. “Mor–”
One of her captors threw a vicious hand over her mouth.
The river’s roar dimmed behind them. Smoke clung to their clothes, bitter in their throats. Lain kicked and clawed and swung her head, but the man hauling her only laughed – a low and familiar rasp. He turned his head enough that she could see his face.
He looked like the one from the shrine on the mountain, the same eyes gone glassy with hatred. A Tracker.
He smiled, slow and satisfied. The others shoved them deeper into the trees, the firelight thinning to cinders behind. Sena screamed once, swallowed by the sound of the wind, and then there was only the wet crunch of boots and the river at their backs.