Mallow’s thumb stroked idle circles at her spine. “Lain?”
She hummed, cheek resting against his bare shoulder. “Mm?”
He swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
She stiffened a fraction. “For what?”
He huffed a humorless breath. “Where do you want me to start?”
She was quiet. He went on, voice roughed by spent pleasure and something sharper beneath it.
“I left you. When you needed me. I broke the bond because I thought it would save you. I ran like a coward instead of staying to face what I’d done. I betrayed your trust, by telling Morgan who you were.”
She lifted her head to look at him. His eyes were on the cracked ceiling, as if he couldn’t quite bear to see her while he said it.
“I told myself you’d be better off without me. That you’d be safer without a half-wild sellsword dragging at your ankles. I laid violent hands upon you – I pushed you to the ground. And then Morgan found you, and –” His throat worked. “He turned you into a weapon. I came here because I thought if I saved you I could make it right. But this doesn’t… doesn’t feel like it balances anything.”
“Mallow –”
“No.” He turned his head, finally meeting her gaze. Regret sat in him like something carved and permanent. “Let me say it. I’ve thought about it every night since I left you with those bodies. I thought if I guarded you well enough now, it would mean something. If I died in front of you instead of disappearing behind your back, it would mean something.”
His hand slid up, cupping the back of her neck, and his voice quieted.
“But the truth is I failed you. And there isn’t a road long enough to walk that debt clean. There isn’t a pilgrimage in the world that ends with me worthy of you again.”
She saw herself on the ice-road, in the robes of an Unsung Sister, swordbells chiming, every step meant to scrub her soul into something acceptable. She saw Tanel’s face when he called her little one and taught her mercy had a cost. She saw the Spire, swallowing girls and names and calling it holy to do so.
She gripped fast at the blade of his shoulder. “Don’t.”
He blinked. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t speak as if there’s some altar you’re meant to crawl to until you’ve bled enough to earn the right to stand beside me.” She shook her head, antlers scraping softly against the stone. “I’ve had enough of that kind of love.”
His brows drew together. “I’m not the Dagorlind.”
“I know.” She softened the words with a thumb against his cheekbone. “So stop talking like them.”
He was silent, breathing shallow under her hand.
The thought came clear as she spoke it. “They took what I was and turned it into a ledger. Every kindness a debt. Every blessing a price. You’re doing the same to yourself. ‘If I suffer enough, if I serve enough, if I die at the right time and in the right way, maybe I’ll earn forgiveness.’” Her mouth twisted. “I don’t want that. I don’t want you on a pilgrimage.”
His eyes searched hers. “What do you want?”
She looked at the lines exhaustion had carved at the corners of his mouth, at the scar by his temple, at the way his eyes had never quite lost their brightness. Her Mallow. The man who’d carried her out of the woods and danced with her at Vaelun and slept with his arms about her at the peak of her Heat because he was afraid of what the world would take if he let her hold it all alone.
“I want this,” she said. “You. Here. Choosing me. Not to make up for something, or because you think the world will balance better if you do. I just want to walk forward with you, out of whatever rubble we’re under.”
His breath hitched. “Even after –”
“Yes.” The conviction surprised even her arriving gilded with certainty. “You broke the bond because you thought it would save me. It hurt more than anything I’ve ever felt. You can’t do that to me twice, Mallow.”
“I wouldn’t –”
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“– I know you wouldn’t, because it would kill me if you did. But I understand why you did it. And then you came back. You came back.”
He stared at her, like he was trying to find the trick in it. “It doesn’t erase what I did.”
“Nothing ever will. It can’t.” She gave him a faint, crooked smile. “But it doesn’t have to. The Dagorlind taught me that forgiveness is a ledger. Morgan thinks redemption is like… fuel. But I…” she paused, getting her mouth around what her heart knew. It was what the Warden had told her, all those days ago. “I think all that matters is what you do next, with the chance you’ve been given.”
She shifted closer, pressing her forehead to his. “If I made you pay and pay and pay for the rest of your life, how would that be any different from what they did to me? I don’t want to be your Spire, Mallow.”
Some trembling thing inside him opened, a cocoon releasing a moth still damp with becoming. His fingers flexed again at her neck, his eyes shining with sudden and dangerous brightness. In her Tuning she felt him fighting the urge to believe her, the habit of it clinging to his guilt like armor.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered.
“Of course not,” she said, a little laugh breaking at the edges. “But you’re what I want. I’m choosing you again.”
A breath of amusement escaped him. “Terrible choice, really.”
They both laughed, and sniffed, and he wiped a tear from his eye, and he did the same for her, because that’s what lovers do.
“Alright, Little Hooves,” he said softly. “But we’re not the same, you and I. You do have to grant me a gift, if you want to keep me.”
“Is that so?”
“That is so.” He nodded judiciously, then softened. “If you want me to forgive myself, you have to do the same.”
“I’ve already forgiven you.”
“No. That’s not what I meant.” He put his hand to her cheek. “You need to forgive yourself.”
She blinked. “For what?”
“For surviving.”
She gasped, her eyes going wide, her ears falling back as if she’d heard some horrible grating sound. “What?”
“You have to forgive yourself for surviving the ceremony.” She trembled in his hands and almost pulled away, but he didn’t let go. Her tail thrashed against the curtains. “Forgive yourself for the deaths of those Brighthand who meant to kill you. Forgive yourself for escaping.”
“Mallow, I –”
“Forgive yourself for not dying when they fed you poison.”
The tears streamed down her face and he pulled her against his chest. She let out a muffled bleat.
“And for saint’s sake, Lain, you must forgive yourself for being Kelthi. You must.”
He kissed her, her forehead, her temple, and rocked her a little in his arms, and when all her tears had ascended and receded, she felt some hollowness at where they had been, but it didn’t hurt. It felt clean.
Outside, somewhere far from them, a wyrm bellowed again, the sound muted by distance and stone. The chapel held them like a cupped hand, Saint Fillan’s carved face watching over them.
“I want something too, then,” she said.
“Here it comes, that abuse of power.”
She smiled, rolled her eyes. “When this is over, if we survive freeing the wyrm and burning the Spire and whatever madness Morgan has planned –” she swallowed, and backed up a little, so she could meet his eye. “Come with me and Sena to Vaelun. We’ll build a house, like Soryn and Atheri. And we’ll have no saints or debts or sacrifices. Just… bells, and soup, and dances around the square.”
He stared at her as if she’d handed him some impossible treasure. “That’s all? That’s what you’d take instead of redemption? Chopping wood and mending roofs and yelling at children to stop climbing the wrong trees?”
“And carrying water,” she said. “And muttering about how Kelthi hooves are better than boots on ice.”
He huffed a laugh. “They are.”
“And kissing me whenever you feel like it,” she added. “And also whenever I feel like it. And Sena gets to kiss me, if she wants to.”
“Sena?”
“She’s very good at it.”
Mallow laughed in surprise. “I was wondering what was going on between you two. Is she your girlfriend, then?”
She shook her head. “I think she loves Rhalir, actually.”
“Rhalir! But he’s so old. And ornery.”
She shrugged. “Everyone has a type.”
He laughed again. Then, his expression softened. “Lhainara,” he said, and the way it left his mouth made cheap the bond with Morgan. “If we live through this, I’ll go wherever you go. I’ll build whatever you want built. I’ll fill your belly with all the Kelthi children you wish for. I’ll carry whatever weight you’ll let me have. You can kiss any pretty thing that catches your eye, Kelthi or no. I’ll do it all just to be near you.”
She reached up, thumb brushing away the damp at the corner of his eye. “Then we’re even,” she said. “You want me, I want you. We walk forward. No pilgrimages.”
He searched her face one last time, as if making sure.
“No pilgrimages,” he echoed.
He kissed her again, this one slow and unhurried, a seal instead of a plea. The bond flickered in the background, restless as ever, but she kept it there, outside the circle of their shared breath.
When they broke apart she tucked herself against his chest, listening to the steady drum of his heart.
“Sleep,” he murmured. “Saint Fillan watches.”
“Saint Fillan’s dead,” she mumbled.
“Then she’s got nothing better to do.”
She huffed a sleepy laugh. His hand drew lines along the scales at her spine, and bit by bit the noise inside her quieted. Morgan’s distant satisfaction dulled. The battle, the river, the shrieks of the drowning – all of it receded to the far edge of the world. In the little chapel of failed and weary souls, Lain let her eyes close, and her first dream came with ease: little hooves running in soft grasses in a mountain village where her family waited.