The great gates were open just wide enough to show the glimmer of spearpoints within. Banners hung in dripping folds. At their base, a narrow canopy of white silk had been erected, clean and stark against the ruin of the morning. The messengers waited there: three riders in gilded mail, and behind them a dozen Brighthand, their armor scrubbed bright for show.
Morgan reined his horse before them, Rhalir at his side, Lain just behind. The bloodwyrms fanned out on either flank, six shadows steaming in the cold. Their presence made the Brighthand horses shy and sidestep; one bolted outright before its rider could steady it.
The central rider removed his helm and dismounted. A middle-aged rider emerged from beneath the visor, with a short ruddy beard. “Lord Balthir,” he said, his voice steady. “I am High Captain Var, emissary of the Triad. I am bidden to welcome you to Ivath and offer our condolences for the dead on both sides.”
Morgan gave an empty smile. “Your Triad’s condolences come late.”
The captain swallowed. “War breeds errors of zeal, my lord. The Triad regrets the blood that was shed. They ask that, as a gesture of good faith, you return the bodies of our fallen for consecration in the city. Allow our bells to guide our men home.”
The camp behind Morgan stilled. The request hung in the air like the smoke of the pyres.
Lain’s stomach turned. Her nose flared with the scent of iron on the wind, the clean bones left behind where the wyrms had fed. There were no bodies to return.
Morgan studied the captain for a long moment, as though weighing the word faith. “You wish your dead back.”
“It is our rite,” Var said carefully. “Our duty to the Underserpent.”
Morgan’s smile thinned. “Your rites were written on the backs of heretics. The Underserpent sleeps below us all, Captain; it has no need of your bells or your dead.”
A ripple of anger moved through the Brighthand. Spears lifted, then froze as the nearest bloodwyrm hissed a low rattle. The guards fell silent.
The tension hummed like a plucked string through the bond. Morgan’s calm was terrible, poised at the edge of cruelty.
He leaned forward in his saddle. “You want your dead, but there are no bodies left to give. Your purification worked too well.” His voice lowered. “They have been made sacrifices for the sake of wyrms allowed to wake.”
Captain Var’s expression faltered. “You desecrated them.”
“No,” Morgan said softly. “I fed them to the truth.”
A hush fell.
The captain looked at Lain then, desperation flickering in his eyes. “And you, Bellborn? Is this what you wish? To make monsters your priests?”
Lain’s mouth went dry. The crowd behind her waited. She thought of the wyrms crawling through the corpses at dawn, the way the Ashborn had watched in silence and awe. She thought of Mallow, of what he would have said.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Darrin’s blade at her throat. I’m sorry they made you believe a Kelthi could be a saint.
“Yes,” she heard herself say. Her voice was steady, even as her heart lurched. “Better monsters that hunger than saints that starve.”
The words resonated. The captain flinched as though struck. The Triad’s envoys conferred in quick whispers; one circled himself and turned away.
Morgan sat very still, a faint satisfaction blooming across the bond. “We accept your invitation to parlay,” he said. “Tell your masters we come under truce, but we do not kneel.”
He wheeled his horse and rode back toward the host. The wyrms shifted with him, scales rasping, claws scraping at the stone road. When they moved, the Brighthand line broke, pulling back behind the gates.
As the column re-formed, the bells of Ivath began again in warning.
Lain looked up at the towers. The smoke of morning still clung to them, rising dark against the gray. She thought she could hear the Underserpent’s heart beating beneath the stone, slow and enormous, waiting.
The gates of Ivath opened at noon. The Ashborn waited in formation below. A slow coil of six bloodwyrms ringed their masses. The beasts crouched at rest, heads low, feathered manes ruffling in the wind. Every so often one of them exhaled, the steam curling from between its teeth.
Lain sat near the edge of the clearing, fiddling with her cloak, then pressing her hand to the starbloom vial at her chest to feel its reassuring vibration.
She lowered her hand to the earth.
The ground was cold and slick beneath her fingertips, but beneath that cold – deeper than the river, the roots – something moved.
She closed her eyes.
There. The Underserpent.
It was coiled under the city. She felt it breathe, an inhalation dragging through water. It vibrated through her, through the starbloom’s pulse, through the marrow of the earth itself. It was listening, as it always had.
Her lips parted without meaning to. “I’m coming,” she whispered. “I’ll set you free.”
The Underserpent did not answer. It receded into strange and muddled dreams.
The murmur of men’s voices carried from the ridge. Morgan spoke to his captains, gathering with them in a half-circle. Rhalir stood to Morgan’s right, the new Veinwritten recruits behind him. Lain couldn’t hear the words, only the cadence of command and ascent. Then the circle broke apart.
Rhalir approached her. “You’re wanted.”
Lain rose, brushing the damp from her skirts. “For what?”
He didn’t answer, but his tail flicked, nervous and stiff. His face was unreadable.
Morgan waited beside his horse, armed for the road. The mist haloed him pale. When she drew near, he turned and gestured to someone standing behind him.
For a heartbeat she didn’t understand.
Then Mallow stepped forward.
His hair was wet, his eyes rimmed red from lack of sleep. His coat was mended where a blade had split it; a black strip of cloth now circled his arm – the Ashborn captain’s new mark. He stood at attention, not meeting her eyes.
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Lain’s breath stilled. “What is this?”
Morgan smiled slightly. “A precaution. The Bellborn travels under protection.”
“You can’t mean –”
“I can and do.” He turned to Mallow. “You know her better than any man alive. You’ve already bled for her. You’ll ride at her side until I say otherwise.”
Mallow said nothing, but his eyes said it for him.
“This is what you agreed to when you chose to live,” Morgan said to Mallow, the warning obvious in his voice. “The Ashborn can forgive a great many things, Captain Ren, but desertion will no longer be one of them.”
Lain stared between them, the words tangling in her throat. “You made him captain?”
“I elevated him.” Morgan’s tone was reasonable, mild. “A soldier of proven worth. A Veinwritten who’s learned restraint. And a man whose presence comforts you.”
A protest formed in her mouth, but the bond flared, cutting the words away. Heat flooded her veins, a warning, and she swallowed whatever she meant to say.
Morgan stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You’ll find it easier if you stop seeing enemies where I provide allies. We march as one now. Is that not what you wanted?”
He turned from her before she could answer, calling to the others to form ranks. The conversation was over.
Lain stood frozen, the roar of the river filling the silence between them. When she finally looked at Mallow, he was already mounting his horse. His expression was fixed, unreadable, but she could feel the old ache of their Tuning ghosting through her skin. Rhalir had said she would feel her own pain twice – that of the broken bond, and the ghost of what Mallow once felt. Now she felt guilt, fear, and a shudder of something like an apology.
And as she reached into the bond with Morgan, to test his feelings for reasoning, what she found surprised her: affection. Affection for Mallow.
She dug a little deeper. She sent her mind out to other thoughts of his, tried to piece the bits that were his Veinwritten men, and there she found what was unmistakably Rhalir. There was affection there for him, too.
It was not the care of a man to a lover, or a warlord to a conscript, but a father to a child.
Perhaps every one of his Veinwritten people moved in his affections like they were his own blood, after all.
But she couldn’t rely on feelings alone for her answer. There must be more to it. Before Rhalir could depart, she took his arm. “Why is Morgan doing this?”
“We lost several captains in the night,” Rhalir said softly. “We do not have the luxury of letting a good swordsman go to waste. And Lord Balthir is not blind. He knows the power he commands with our people by redeeming a heretic.”
The logic made sense to Lain. Morgan was not an emotional man; the dull ache of any feeling he had formed in her Tuning was a small thing, hardly visible at all. If there was good sense in having another strong soldier at his side, Morgan would take it.
But there was a third reason, she knew: Morgan was too perceptive not to see the bond between her and Mallow, the one not of Tuning and Heat but of history. If he couldn’t break it cleanly, he would contain it. Giving Mallow rank would keep him close, visible, and ultimately subordinate. She sensed he enjoyed the quiet cruelty of making Mallow serve the same power he despised.
Rhalir put a hand on her shoulder. “Hold fast, Bellborn.” He moved with the column, the chant of Ashborn rising again. Lain gathered her cloak and climbed onto the wagon beside Sena.
When she looked back, Mallow was riding just behind her cart, his hand resting lightly on his sword hilt, eyes scanning the road ahead.
Morgan’s voice carried over the rain. “The Bellborn rides under my banner and the guard of Captain Ren. Any man who disobeys his word disobeys mine.”
The cheer that followed was half relief, half dread.
Rhalir moved down the line, calling names. Twenty in all: Veinwritten captains, several of the more presentable soldiers, the former Elder David, Sena, a scribe. Mallow, of course. And Lain.
Lain sat rigid as the bloodwyrms slithered from the edge of the group, black manes lifting in the wind. The march had begun, and she could not tell which frightened her more – Morgan’s control, or the fact that Mallow would die to enforce it.
The indecisive rain began once more as they processed through the gates. Banners of the Dagorlind hung limp from their poles. Water coursed through the seams of the cobblestones. Bells tolled from somewhere unseen, slow and arrhythmic.
No citizens lined the streets. The people had been driven inside. Windows shuttered, doors barred. What few shapes moved were city guards and the Unsung Sisters, their gray habits trailing behind them. They worked in silence at intervals along the main road, lighting censers, sprinkling blessed oil over stones, whispering prayers.
Morgan rode ahead, his hood thrown back as if the rain were a benediction. The bloodwyrms led the column, their scales glistening black beneath the gray light.
Lain’s throat tightened as they entered the square. It was smaller, colder than she remembered. The cobbles were freshly washed, the gutters gleaming. The air smelled of myrrh and burnt juniper.
There, at the base of the great bell tower, stood the Sisters, half a dozen of them moving carefully between the censers, refilling them, coaxing thin flames from the wicks. The smoke spiraled upward, a pale ribbon against the white stone walls.
And among them, Sister Hellen.
The young woman straightened from her work, her veil slipping back just enough for Lain to see the curve of her cheek, the red of her hair damp against her temples.
Hellen froze. Her gaze met Lain’s across the square, unguarded, startled, alive with a hundred unsaid things. The censer in her hand swung to a stop. A line of incense ash scattered to the wet stones.
Hellen stepped forward from the Line of Sisters, her voice breaking through the rain. “Lain!”
The guards reacted instantly, one moving to block her path, another gripping the haft of his spear. Mallow was down from his horse in an instant, sword drawn, held low. “Stand back,” he warned. His voice was controlled.
Hellen didn’t retreat. She stared up at Lain, disbelief and joy warring in her face. The cart slowed as the procession rounded the corner. Lain lifted her hand before she could think, her heart leaping into her throat.
Lain half rose. “Hellen!”
“Stay seated,” Mallow warned, his voice low but urgent. Rain dripped from his chin. “Please.”
She ignored him. “Calvin, stop the cart.”
“Apologies miss, but –” the driver’s eyes darted toward Morgan’s back.
“Please!”
Sena smacked Calvin’s shoulder. “You stop those nags this instant! Don’t you know you’re driving the Bellborn herself?”
The horses jolted to a halt. Staring into the face of what she once was, the robes of the Glinnel, the incense swinging in Hellen’s hands, Lain leapt down. She stumbled on the damp stones, then ran to Hellen. Mallow swore softly and followed, his hand already on the hilt of his sword. The crowd noise swelled. The guard stepped aside in surprise. At the same moment Hellen broke past them, her censer dropping to her feet with a clatter of smoke and ash. She and Lain collided, arms tight around each other, laughing and crying all at once. Hellen’s veil clung damply to Lain’s cheek. “You’re alive,” she gasped. “By the Underserpent, you’re alive!”
Lain pulled back, breathless. “So many things have happened, Hellen – I thought I’d never see you again. They’ve lied to us about everything –”
Hellen’s hands caught her face, trembling. “We heard nothing. No funeral, no songs. Some of us thought you were –” she glanced at Lain’s antlers, eyes shining. “Serpent’s mercy, look at you. What have they done?”
Before Lain could answer, movement at the front of the column drew her attention. Morgan had stopped. He turned in his saddle, watching the scene with that still, patient expression that chilled her more than anger ever could.
Mallow stepped closer. “We need to get back to the cart,” he said quietly. “Now.”
Lain shook her head. “Just a moment –”
“Lain,” he warned. “Don’t make him –”
“Enough,” Morgan said. The word rolled across the square like a slammed door. The Sisters flinched. He dismounted, walking between them, his cloak dragging a dark edge through the puddles. The bloodwyrms stirred, their heads rising in unison. Even the guards and other citizens of Ivath fell back, whispers hissing through the rain.
“Lay down your anger,” Morgan said, not loudly but with the weight of command. “You stand before the Singer who saved your city. The Bellborn who held storms when they would have buried you all. Is this how Ivath greets its deliverance?”
The guards stepped back at his command, Hellen with them. She bent for her censer then stood rigid, her hands clenched around the chain. Smoke curled like a shield between them.
Morgan turned to Lain, his hand finding her elbow, steady and possessive. “You forget, my dear,” he murmured, “that truth sounds like heresy to ears that have only heard lies.”
She flushed, realizing what she had said to Hellen, how the words must have sounded to the crowd.
“Lain,” Hellen said, pleading.
Morgan’s gaze softened as he addressed Hellen. “Sister, your devotion does you credit. But this is not your concern. Return to your duties.”
Hellen bowed her head, but her eyes sought Lain’s one last time. “You shouldn’t be here,” she murmured. “Not like this.”
Morgan’s hand found Lain’s elbow, firm and possessive. “On the contrary,” he said. “She is exactly where she’s meant to be.”
Then, quietly, to Lain: “Come.”
She obeyed because there was nothing else to do. Mallow fell beside her as they returned to the cart, rain running in sheets off his shoulders. His eyes met her briefly, an apology without words, and then he looked away.
As the procession began to move again, Lain looked back. Hellen stood below the bell tower, veil wet with rain, the censer still smoking in her hand. She looked small against the towering gates of the cathedral, but she was not bowed. Hellen mouthed something through the rain: Be careful. Or perhaps Be strong.