They did not turn toward the Dawn Spire. Instead, they followed the curve of the inner wall until the square narrowed into a long colonnade. The building at its end was familiar: tall arched windows, shutters latched against the rain, a broad staircase worn in the center by generations of civic feet. The council hall. Once, she’d walked its upper gallery with Elder Tanel, listening to him explain how the city’s laws were read aloud here, how justice must be seen to be believed.
Now its doors were guarded by two full ranks of Brighthand.
The bloodwyrms halted at the edge of the square. One of them hissed, steam wreathing its muzzle. The Brighthand on the steps flinched as a ripple of that sound passed over them.
Morgan drew his horse to a stop. “They stay here,” he said over his shoulder. “Let the city see we’re willing to trust.”
The Veinwright bond tightened with calculation at those words. It wasn’t trust at all, but a different kind of pressure. He could leave them here because they were his.
She climbed down from the wagon. The rain had thinned to a mist that beaded along her antlers and veil. She gave one lingering look to Sena before the girl put a hand out for her, and the two of them grasped each other briefly before Lain faced the hall with Sena at her right. Mallow dismounted beside her without a word, falling into place at her left. His presence was undeniable, steady and infuriatingly reassuring.
A Brighthand officer descended the steps to meet them, helm ducked under his arm, swordbell chiming with every step. He was not the officer they’d met outside the gates; this was the officer of the city guard. The sigil on his breastplate was dark with oil and rain. “Lord Balthir,” he said, inclining his head just enough to be respectful without conceding equality. “The High Glinnel Triad await you inside.”
Morgan smiled in that small, knife-bright way of his. “Then let us not keep them from their prayers.”
They climbed the stairs together.
Inside, the air was cooler, thick with the smell of incense. The council hall was as she remembered: a long chamber with a raised dais at the far end, tall windows high on the walls letting in more gray than light. Benches lined the sides for witnesses and petitioners. Today they were filled with quiet bodies, the silhouettes of priests and city elders hunched beneath their veils and hoods.
At the center of the dias stood three High Glinnel, robes white and heavy with embroidered bells. Their seats waited behind them. High Glinnel Seli stood at the center, her sleeves chiming as she shifted her hands. The other two flanked her, one older and bent at the shoulders, the other spare as a prayer-staff. Their names were Peter and Anthony. To their right stood the captain of the Brighthand city guard, armor polished to a dull glow, helmet on, face unreadable.
Morgan and his chosen guard halted at the line marked in the stone: the place where citizens had to stop when petitioning their rulers. Lain felt the old reflex of bowing tug at her back.
She would not.
“Lord Balthir,” Seli said, her voice carrying effortlessly. “Ivath welcomes you under truce.”
“Generous of Ivath,” Morgan replied. His tone was polite, almost warm. “Though perhaps a measure late, given last night’s hospitality.”
A faint stir moved along the benches. Seli’s jaw tightened by the smallest degree. “There are… questions about what occurred at your camp,” she said. “No order was given by the Triad nor the Brighthand Knight-Commander. Investigations are underway. If there has been error, it will be corrected.”
“Your concern is touching.” Morgan folded his hands before him. “You have agreed to parlay. I offer you first rite.”
Seli inclined her head in mild gratitude. “Very well.” The three High Glinnel sat. “You stand before the Triad of the Dagorlind of Ivath to arrange a peaceful resolution to your grievances. We wish first to acknowledge the grief of those who have lost kin on both sides. Whatever disagreements lie between us, the dead are owed respect.”
She paused, letting that settle. “As a sign of good faith, we ask that the bodies of our fallen be returned to us, that we may commit them to the Underserpent’s care according to our rites.”
Lain’s stomach turned. She could still see the bloodwyrms that morning, jaws slick, scales shining with rain and gore. She’d assumed Seli would have been told already that this was impossible; perhaps she had, and this was a show, forcing Morgan to confirm the desecration before those gathered here.
Morgan did not flinch. “I am afraid your request comes too late,” he said. “There are no bodies to return.”
A low murmur swept the hall, shocked and disbelieving. The youngest of the High Glinnel spoke over the rumble with a tense and testing voice.
“We saw pyresmoke from your camp this morning, and Captain Var reported your own dead were burnt. Do you mean to say you have disposed of our dead with your own?”
They were giving Morgan an opening, a second chance at his answer. An unconsecrated pyre was a dishonor, but cremation still cleansed the dead. Morgan shook his head.
“The dead have been reclaimed.”
Seli’s gaze sharpened. “You have defiled the bodies of consecrated guardians by feeding them to your bloodborne monsters.”
“I have passed the power of their blood to the agents of their liberation,” Morgan said evenly. “Call it defilement if it eases you. You defile my people’s memory with every Veinwritten blade you forge and every Tracker you raise to hunt their own. You have defiled every sacred space you have ever set your torches to. How many Brighthand, how many Dagorlind errors are yet in need of correction, High Glinnel?”
Seli’s mouth opened, but Morgan’s hand rose slightly, forestalling her reply. “Rhalir,” he said. “Tell them.”
Rhalir stepped forward from the line of captains, rain still clinging to his armor, the faint shimmer of his Veinwritten mark visible at his wrist. When he spoke, his voice carried like a blade drawn from its sheath.
“They call it Wyrmrot,” he said. “The sickness that takes root where Kelthi once lived. You say it’s the serpent’s wrath, a plague born from our heresy.”
He shook his head slowly. “There was no sickness. There was fire and smoke from the homes you burned and the bones of wyrms you left to die.”
The hall stirred; one of the younger priests circled himself.
“You said our songs brought corruption,” Rhalir said. “But the truth is simpler: we were their keepers. Their kin. Long before your bells, before the Dagorlind bound the wyrm to this tower, the Kelthi walked with them below our hooves. We fed them from our rivers. We sang to them when they molted their scales. They guarded our villages the way a heart guards its body.”
A murmur rippled through the benches, shock and denial.
“You came to our valleys and saw that bond,” Rhalir said, his voice rising. “And you feared it. You called it blasphemy. You called it Wyrmrot so you could name your murder mercy.”
He turned toward the dias, his tail flicking once in anger barely contained.
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“You chained the wyrm beneath your sanctuary. You split its scales for talismans and lights and said the corruption was ours. But the rot was born the day you silenced our people.”
He took one step forward, meeting Seli’s gaze.
“The Kelthi never worshiped the wyrms. We listened to them. You are the ones that made gods of the natural order.”
The air in the hall crackled with charge. Even the priests who had scoffed moments before were still now.
Rhalir lowered his head, voice quieter but still sharp. “You burned our homes to keep your silence intact. You killed your witnesses and said they were cleansed. And now you wonder why your sacrificial lamb, your first Bellborn to survive your soulless blood cult, has risen before you as a saint come to cleanse you instead.”
He met Lain’s eye, and her heart slammed against the cage of her ribs.
He stepped back beside Morgan, the echo of his words hanging in the vaulted chamber like the aftertone of a bell.
One of the other High Glinnel leaned in, whispering something. Seli listened, then straightened. “This rhetoric serves no one. The Kelthi have always spoken such lies.”
Lain gasped, fists clenched in fury; Rhalir’s nostrils flared. Both their tails flicked in anger.
“We summoned you here to prevent further bloodshed, not tally it,” Seli continued. “Lord Balthir, you have taken up arms against the Dagorlind. You march on Ivath with beasts at your command. What is it you want?”
Morgan let the silence breathe before answering. “You know what I want. To have your people heard. You have received hundreds of messengers carrying the will of the people, signed in my hand. You have sent each messenger back without reply. Hear it now in my voice. We want your bells off the throats of the innocent. We want safety from the castoff disasters of your city, and protection from the torches of your barehand murderers. We want justice for every man, woman and child the Dagorlind have crushed in their grasping fist. We want the Bellborn cycle to end.”
The words hung heavy as storm clouds. Morgan’s eyes were lightning, his voice thunder.
“And hear this, too. I am Lord Morgan Balthir, Veinwright, the last true-born of my kind. I have more cause to hate you than any living thing. But I do not seek revenge for what cannot be changed. Instead I look to the future, in the name of those whom you’ve not yet erased: the Kelthi. The Underserpent must be freed from the chains you’ve wrapped around its mind. You must give us this, or there can be no peace.”
A stir moved through the chamber. One of the younger priests shifted on his bench. Another muttered a prayer beneath her breath, and finally several shouts rose:
“It’s impossible!”
“It cannot be done.”
The High Glinnel on Seli’s left straightened as if to speak, but Morgan lifted his hand.
“On the contrary. We are certain it can be done. Perhaps you’ll see the truth when spoken by one of your own.”
He turned slightly, gesturing at his left. “Elder David, if you will.”
The man who stepped forward looked nothing like the threat they seemed to expect. His robes were travel-worn, the white dulled to gray. His expression was much like the one Lain had last seen on him, calm, thoughtful, filled with a searching kindness. He bowed to the dias, not deeply, but as one who still remembered what worship feels like. Even Lain was touched by the obvious respect he still held for this chamber.
“High Glinnel,” he said. “Brothers, Sisters. I speak only because you once trusted me to know your scripture.”
Seli’s mouth tightened. “You were dismissed from our ranks for presumption.”
“Compassion,” he corrected softly. “But as you say, I am not here to settle that account.” He lifted his eyes to the gathered priests. “The Bellborn cycle is not meant to be. The texts speak of one to wake the Underserpent, not to keep it sleeping forever. You taught the people otherwise.”
Several of the younger clergy exchanged confused looks. One, a novice scarcely older than Lain, rose half from her bench. “The Underserpent doesn’t sleep by our hand,” she said. “It rests of its own will. When it wakes, it is in pain.”
David looked at her with pity. “No, child. It was bound. You have been praying to its captivity. Each Bellborn sacrificed is forged into its chains. It takes a reversal of the song to free it, and a dissolution of its bindings to return it to the earth, where it belongs.”
The sound that followed was brittle, several voices rising at once in disbelief or outrage or denial. A few of the older priests went pale with obvious guilt. Others looked to Seli, waiting for her to speak, waiting for her to call their former Brother a liar.
The floor vibrated faintly beneath Lain’s hooves, as if the Underserpent had turned in its dreaming.
Seli found her voice. “Enough,” she said, sharp as the crack of a staff on stone. “These are heresies of a wandering scholar. The Underserpent is eternal, and peace is its gift.”
David inclined his head. “If peace is the gift of chains, then perhaps we have misunderstood the giver.”
The hall erupted again – cries of blasphemy and madness. Through it all Morgan stood still, his expression unreadable, watching the uproar spread like water through a cracked floor.
Lain’s pulse pounded in her ears. She looked at the faces of the priests, the fright of the younger ones, the elders furious – and saw something she hadn’t before: uncertainty. Genuine uncertainty. They hadn’t known. They had believed the Underserpent slept of its own will.
For the first time, she pitied them.
“Lain,” said Morgan. “You have seen the chamber of the Underserpent. You have read forbidden texts on its enslavement. Please describe what you have seen.”
Seli’s gaze flicked past Morgan, fixing on Lain for the first time.
Lain hadn’t known she was meant to speak, and her whole body shuddered with fear, her palms instantly damp with sweat. Then Morgan found her through the bond, and drew off the anxiety the way he’d drawn off her nightmare. She was desperately grateful. Thus soothed, she stepped forward.
She realized with sudden righteous fury that she had never stepped hoof here without her caps covering her claws. She held fast to that thought. That she was here not as a submissive Sister, but as a free Kelthi, bare-hoofed on floors where she had once been bound.
“In the chamber of the Underserpent, I saw a creature in chains, a living spirit suspended over the earth in a pool of water. It suffered there, half-awake, desperate for release.”
Her memory flashed back to the day – the pain in her middle, the burning in her gut, the taste of the Starbloom, the scales sliding through tepid water.
“I was given the Starbloom to transfer the poison of sleep to the Underserpent. But the Underserpent knew my distress, and interceded, saving my life.”
“You misremember,” Seli said. “Understandable, given the circumstances. You failed because you could not sing. Your Kelthi Heat confused your bond to the Underserpent.”
“I did not fail,” Lain said, realizing it as she spoke, furious at this revision of what she knew to be true. “I survived because the wyrm wished me to.”
“Sister Lain,” she said, and hearing the old title in that voice made something inside Lain twist. Sing, Bellborn. “We have much to say to you. Much to explain.”
Lain swallowed. Her voice felt smaller than she wanted it to be. “You had your chance to explain,” she said. “Before you poisoned me for sacrifice. Before you sent me away to be slaughtered like a goat.”
A ripple passed through the hall. Seli did not look away. “You were chosen for sacred duty. What was done to you was done for Ivath. For the world.”
“What was done to me was done without full knowledge. I could not consent.”
High Glinnel Anthony shifted. His voice, when it came, was worn, fraying at the edges. “Consent is a complicated thing when the world itself is at stake,” he said. “You were a child, Bellborn. Children do not understand the weight of what they carry.”
Something about his cadence tugged at her attention. The slight gravel in it, the careful way he shaped certain consonants as if tasting each word before releasing it.
“I am not a child now,” she said.
“No,” he agreed softly, his eyes rising once to her antlers. “You are not.”
Seli raised a hand. “There will be time for private conversation,” she said. “For now, Lord Balthir has made his aims clear, and they are unacceptable. We must determine whether there is any reasonable path to escape bloodshed.”
Morgan’s smile was thin. “There is freedom,” he said. “Your choice is whether you walk toward it or are dragged.”
The hall swelled with competing murmurs – anger, fear, something like hope from scattered corners. Lain felt the Underserpent’s slow, distant pulse under the stone, as if the entire room were balanced on the back of a sleeping beast.
Seli lifted her hand for silence. “Then perhaps another voice might speak where ours have failed.” She turned slightly toward the doors behind the dais. The guard standing there pulled the door open at her nod.
And there he was.
Dark hair curled at his neck, robes plain beneath the mantle of his station, his expression marked by the calm, sorrowful gravity that had once steadied her more than faith itself. His hands were ink-stained as ever, folded neatly before him as he stepped into the light.
Lain felt her pulse quicken.
“Tanel,” she whispered.