Sena splashed through the last few steps and dropped to the floor beside Mallow.

  He lay on his side, bottom half pinned under a fallen slab of marble. Dust streaked his face. His lips were cracked. His chest rose in shallow, stubborn breaths. She looked him over for any reason not to move him, and gasped at what she found.

  Along the lines of his ribs where his shirt had torn, patches of scale had bloomed. They grew in smooth, overlapping plates that caught the dim light and answered it, glowing from within.

  They were the color of Lain’s scales, before Lord Balthir had bonded to her. The same soft, wrong-green she’d seen in her dream.

  Below his left collarbone spread a strange secondary pattern of scales, pointing down toward his sternum as if they were covering a wound.

  In his hand he clutched a strange black iron spear.

  She stared, stunned.

  He should have been dead. Soaking half-submerged in a pool, a building’s worth of stone crashing down, any of that should have been enough. But there he was, chest still fluttering, light seeping out between the new scales.

  “Mallow,” she said, reaching to wake him.

  His eyes snapped open.

  The pupils had gone thin and bright, ringed with that same pale green. For a moment he didn’t seem to see her at all. He looked past her, through her, the way a storm might see a hillside, the way a man ignores an ant trail for the grove in which they live.

  When he spoke, Mallow’s light cadence sat in the tone, but something vast and deep wound through it, turning each word into a note that seemed to emerge from the cavern itself.

  “Child of the broken shore,” the voice said through him. “You pore over fallen walls, but those you seek have gone from this place.”

  Sena’s breath left her in a rush. The cavern felt suddenly smaller, as if the presence in his chest filled the whole place. Her tail lashed behind her.

  “Mallow?”

  His lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile she recognized. “The one you name is here,” the voice said. “He sits in the hollow between days. I pulled him out when the stone came down. I wrapped him in what remains of my skin.”

  She was speaking to the Underserpent.

  “You’re gone,” she said, barely aware she was speaking aloud. “You left Ivath. We felt you leave.”

  “I am not so easily contained,” the voice replied. “I am river and vein and coil. I left my cradle, Not the world.”

  The scales along his ribs brightened as if in agreement. The light painted the underside of the cavern roof in shifting, serpentine shapes.

  Somewhere above, the rope shifted. She dimly heard Rhalir call her name, distant and tinny.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  The water around them shivered. The wyrm’s gaze fixed on her, clear and unblinking.

  “Paths must be filled when they are emptied,” it said. “A hollow does not stay hollow long. Ivath forced sleep until the Bellborn tore me free. Now there is a wound beneath us, a place where nothing holds.”

  Sena thought of the shaking ground, the way the spire had cracked, the absence of the Underserpent humming. “Can it be mended?”

  “A new root must be laid,” the voice said. “A new coil. This vessel will carry it. He must go where I cannot, and he will choose whether the next song binds or frees.”

  A soft and pulsing horror unfolded behind Sena’s eyes, a growing doom eclipsing her thoughts. A new coil. The Underserpent was talking about a replacement. The prisoner they had freed had saved Mallow to renew the cycle they had lost so many to break.

  “The city has taken enough from us,” Sena said. Her voice shook. “We’re not interested in making another Bellborn for them.”

  Something like amusement brushed the bond between them. It was the old, endless connection between Kelthi and wyrm.

  “You were never theirs,” the Underserpent said. “You were always river-born. You will decide where the next current runs. I will free him to attend to the river Lhainara.”

  The light flared. Mallow’s back arched, his chest drawing in a deep, harsh breath.

  The stone that lay upon him cracked sharply down the middle and fell to either side of his hips, tenting over his legs.

  Sena’s instincts screamed. She reached for him, both hands closing around his shoulders.

  The moment her skin met his, the glow shattered. The green drained from his eyes, leaving them their usual brown. His pupils widened like coins spinning on their edges. The scales along his ribs remained, but dulled to an ordinary, pearly sheen.

  Mallow sagged in her grip, suddenly just heavy, just human. He released the spear he’d been gripping and blinked up at her. His next breath raked through his throat.

  “Sena?” he rasped.

  She gasped. “You idiot.”

  His mouth twitched. “Good to see you too.”

  He coughed, grimaced, and winced as the movement tugged against the stone pinning his lower legs. “Feels like I lost a fight with a mountain.”

  “You did.” Her hands were still on his shoulders. She couldn’t quite let go, nor tear her eyes from the scar-like track of scales across his chest.

  Mallow noticed. “Sena, I’m flattered, but is this really the time –”

  He followed her gaze down to his chest, saw traces of scale, and froze.

  “Ah,” he said, very quietly. “So that wasn’t a dream.”

  “Were you asleep just now? Did you hear that voice?”

  “Bits of it.” His brow creased. “Like someone talking underwater. By the time I could make sense of it, you were here.”

  “You shouldn’t be alive. The Underserpent saved you.”

  He flashed a crooked, weary grin. “Terrible choice, really.”

  Her throat tightened unexpectedly. She looked up instead, toward the circle of light high above.

  “Rhalir!” she called. Her voice echoed, startlingly loud. “He’s here! He’s alive!”

  The answering shout was immediate, relief and alarm tangled together.

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  Mallow shifted, trying to see up as well. “Lain?” he asked suddenly. The humor drained from him. “Tell me she got out.”

  Sena’s heart clenched. “She isn’t here,” she said. “We haven’t found her. Nor Morgan.”

  She felt the tremor that went through him and regretted speaking.

  “We’ll talk about it when you’re not buried under a ton of stone,” she added more gently. “Save your strength. Argue with me later.”

  He huffed a breath. “You’re assuming I’ll disagree.”

  “Have you ever not?”

  “Fair point.”

  She smiled, remembering him as he’d been before he’d left Morgan’s estate to search for a Glinnel: wry, flirtatious, chasing the skirt of that lovely human scullery maid one sunny afternoon before orders had arrived. The women had made bets on how many lovers he’d manage on the road; none had suspected he’d return to them a traitor, head-over-heels in love with a Dagorlind saint. She never would have forgiven him, if it hadn’t been for Lain herself.

  Voices and rope creaks drifted down from above as others prepared to join her. Sena sat back on her heels for a moment, listening to Mallow’s breathing even out into something steadier.

  The cavern felt different now. The buzz along her skin shifted from razor-sharp to a low, distant throb, like thunder far off over the sea.

  The Underserpent was gone.

  The Underserpent was still here.

  Both things sat side by side in her mind, refusing to cancel each other out.

  She looked down at Mallow again, at the faint pattern of scales along his ribs and the place where the wyrm’s light had retreated but not vanished.

  “Looks like you picked up a souvenir,” she said.

  He shrugged, or tried to. “I’ve had worse.”

  Above them, Rhalir’s face appeared at the rim, haloed in light. “I’m sending down Tanel,” he called. “I feel safer on the hoist. Hold on.”

  “Tanel?” Mallow said. “As in, Elder Tanel?”

  “It’s a long story.” Sena squeezed Mallow’s shoulder once, firm. “I’ve got you.”

  He closed his eyes, as if that simple assurance in that hollow place below a ruined city was the first solid thing he’d been offered in a long time.

  “Good,” he murmured. “Because I think… we’re going to need each other.”

  Sena glanced at the circle of sky, then back at the dim, damp cavern, at the trickle of water and the new scales, at the echo of a voice that had spoken through a man who should have been dead.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I think we are.”

  Mallow stiffened the instant he saw Tanel’s face appear over the rim. Whatever light the wyrm had left in him, whatever exhaustion and rawness lay there now, all of it twisted into something cold and wary.

  Tanel reached the floor, boots splashing in the shallow water. His gaze fell to Mallow with a palpable exhale. “Praise the Underserpent. You’re alive.”

  Mallow’s voice gritted out. “If I’d have known it was answering prayers, you wouldn’t be so pleased to see me.”

  Tanel froze. His expression flickered through several quiet, pained adjustments before settling into something resigned. “Captain,” he began softly, after glancing at Mallow’s uniform. “We do not know each other. I –”

  “You don’t know anything,” Mallow said. His words carried a cutting edge. “But I know all about you.”

  Sena’s patience slipped. “Is this the best time?”

  “No,” Mallow hissed. “Of course not. I can’t feel my legs and I can’t hit his face from this angle. Hand me that rock, would you?”

  Tanel’s eyes flicked toward the cavern roof as if its darkness might offer him an answer. It didn’t. When he spoke, there was no defense in his tone, only weariness. “You were her guard.”

  “Among other things, yes. Herbalist, too. I have some thoughts on your tinctures I’d like to share, Elder, if you would just bring your face a little closer.”

  “I made choices I cannot undo,” Tanel said, even as he prepared himself to lift the stone, examining the split rock on Mallow’s legs. “But I am here now. To help you, if nothing else.”

  Sena could almost see the words Mallow wanted to fling next, sharp and bitter and earned.

  But then, a tremor passed through the stone beneath them. It was small enough it might have been a cart across cobbles. Sena felt it through her hooves first.

  Rhalir called down. “We’ve got movement.”

  Mallow inhaled sharply. “We need to get out.”

  Tanel frowned. “The bowl chamber shouldn’t be collapsing –”

  “It isn’t the bowl,” Mallow said. His eyes weren’t fully his again; their edges caught glints of green, faint but unmistakable. “It’s the vein under the basin. The wyrm pulled itself through. The tunnel it left behind is settling. Falling in.”

  “How do you know that?” Tanel asked.

  Mallow’s gaze snapped to him, bright with something that was neither anger nor mortal comprehension.

  The stone groaned.

  Sena braced herself beside the slab pinning Mallow’s legs, and Tanel planted his hands beside hers.

  “Lift on three,” she said. “One, two –”

  They didn’t make it to three. The tremor struck hard, flinging dust and water into the air. Tanel shoved upward before the stone fully settled again. Sena pushed with everything in her body. The slab shifted, caught, shifted again, then rolled off with a splash and a jarring thud.

  Mallow pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Move me. While my legs are still numb.”

  The cavern answered with another violent shake. A crack split the far wall, thin at first, then widening. Tanel reached Mallow’s side and slung one of Mallow’s arms over his shoulders. Sena didn’t miss the way Mallow nearly tore his arm away out of pure stubborn resentment. But the cavern decided for them. A chunk of stone sheared away from the ceiling and crashed into the water where his feet had been, only just missing the spear he’d been gripping.

  Sena snagged it from the water – it was strange and unwieldy. Then Sena grabbed Mallow’s other arm. Mallow rose between them, staggering but upright.

  The rope above swung wildly as more debris shook loose. Rhalir’s voice reached down. “Is everyone still alive down there?!”

  “Not for long!” Tanel shouted. “Pull the line!”

  The rope hauled taut.

  Tanel pushed Sena ahead of him. “You first.”

  “No –”

  “Yes,” he said fiercely.

  She didn’t argue again. She caught the rope, braced her hooves against the wall, and climbed, using the spear sometimes to dig into the rock and pull herself along. Halfway up, she looked down. Tanel was securing Mallow in a loop of rope. Mallow’s head tipped back suddenly. For an instant, the wyrm’s voice came through him again, urgent:

  “The roof.”

  She didn’t see it so much as feel the ceiling bowing, the pressure shifting as an entire plate of stone loosened overhead.

  The rope jerked as the team above hauled. Dust exploded through the cavern as the ceiling gave way in a roaring torrent. Sena scrambled out onto the rim just as the world beneath her collapsed.

  She reached back on instinct, her hand catching Mallow’s forearm as the rope team hauled him far enough that he didn’t slam into the rim. Tanel surfaced next, coughing.

  The cavern below filled with falling stone, the sound a thunderous, grinding roar.

  Sena lay on her stomach, chest heaving, Mallow’s arm still clamped in her grip.

  He started beside her, his head hanging over the rim of the pit. He felt around and grabbed at Sena’s arm with his own. “Well,” he croaked, “that’s one way to start the morning.”

  “You sleep through a building falling on your head and then complain about the wake-up?” Sena’s voice came out rough, half laugh, half sob. “You’re a picky one. I hear that’s a sign of old age.”

  “Old?” He let her haul him up onto solid stone, every line of him shaking. “I was in my prime until Ivath dropped a bowl on me.”

  “Aim was off,” she said. “They were trying to hit Morgan.”

  He wheezed a breath that might have been a laugh. “Missed.”

  She snorted and finally let herself sit back, palms braced on the broken tiles. “Barely.”

  Hellen rushed to them, wide-eyed. Mallow’s shirt had ripped further in the scramble, and the Sister’s gaze caught, like Sena’s had, on his snakeskin scars.

  “Pleasure to meet you too,” Mallow said. “Are you admiring, Sister, or measuring for one of your scale lamps?”

  Hellen blushed.

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t –” she protested, handing him a canteen from which he drank thirstily. She turned to Sena. “I thought you were looking for a human.”

  “He was human,” Sena said. “He’s been promoted, apparently.”

  Hellen’s gaze flicked over the scales along his ribs and forearm again. “Have you always had scales?” Hellen asked.

  “Oh, just trying them out,” Mallow said, handing the water back to Hellen and raising his arm to inspect the sheen. “It’s the new fashion, you know.”

  Rhalir let out a slow breath. “Seems we may be dealing with a saint.”

  Mallow winced. “Don’t start.”

  “‘Saint Mallow of Bad Life Choices’ is too big a title to fit on a bell, Rhalir,” Sena said.

  “You’re funny,” Mallow said. “I don’t recall you being funny. Lain certainly didn’t mention it.”

  “Oh?” Sena shifted to Mallow’s side without being asked, tucking herself under his arm. What did she say, then?”

  “Ah, all positive. Mentioned a couple things you were good at.”

  She flushed furiously, glancing once at Hellen who frowned in confusion before she put a hand over her mouth.

  “Come on, Saint Trouble,” Sena said. “Let’s get you somewhere that isn’t actively falling on us.”