They walked for two days without incident, which made Mallow uneasy. He had learned young that roads rarely stayed quiet out of kindness. Silence usually meant someone else was doing the listening.

  The land softened as they went north, the hills folding into one another like an old quilt patched too many times. Winter had not quite released its grip, but early spring was stubbornly prying at its fingers. Thin green grass grew along the ditches, buds tight and stubborn in the hedgerows. Meltwater cut shallow channels through the earth and pooled in the low places, reflecting the sky in dull, broken mirrors.

  Tanel walked a few paces behind, hands folded into his sleeves, bells muffled against his wrists. He didn’t speak much; neither did Mallow. Pain made conversation expensive, and Mallow’s ribs still pulled with every breath, and his leg ached as he limped along. The scales along his flank itched, a constant reminder of what he now carried, whether he liked it or not.

  They passed a farmer with a swollen ankle who stared openly at Mallow’s crutch and the faint glow beneath his collar. When Mallow asked about his ankle, he said he’d tried compresses and such to no effect. Mallow hesitated, then knelt with a wince and pressed two fingers to the man’s skin, murmuring. He brought out a bottle of rosemary oil and slathered it on the swollen ankle, and the wyrm inside Mallow pushed itself toward the work eagerly like a child bored and insistent upon helping in the kitchen.

  The swelling eased. The farmer circled himself three times and backed away as if from a fire.

  Mallow stared at his own hand afterward, flexing his fingers.

  “That doesn’t count,” he muttered.

  Tanel said nothing, but his eyes lingered.

  Later, a child with a deep cough watched them pass from the edge of a lane. Mallow offered her water from his flask and a little hard ginger candy that was meant to help ease her throat. And as he passed it to her, the wyrm flared from his fingertips to her palm, and her cough loosened, changed.

  The girl laughed, startled, then ran for her house.

  Mallow limped on, clenching his teeth.

  “That was a coincidence,” he said aloud.

  “If you say so,” Tanel replied mildly.

  By the second night, Mallow knew for certain they were being followed.

  The biggest sign was the birds. They went quiet too early, and stayed that way too long. Something paced them just far enough back to remain unseen, which demonstrated a strong restraint, given the glacial pace Mallow was setting for the pair. The person was good at their job; they listened, waited, let the land do the work.

  Mallow said nothing to Tanel. He suspected, in fact, that the tail was Tanel’s doing, though he had no way to prove this until whoever was following them showed themselves. Better to let them think Mallow was unaware.

  That night, they stayed in the pilgrim’s rest where Mallow had bonded with Lain, and he could feel nothing for Tanel but bitterness, and wished more than anything he could tell the stupid Elder exactly what had happened to her here, the way the Dagorlind Tracker had meant to rape her before killing her. Those were his people. That was his cause.

  The pilgrim’s rest stood crouched behind the road like a thing that had learned to survive by not being noticed. Its stones were patched in some places, newer mortar pale against the older work. Someone had repaired the shutter in recent days, some Brother’s springtime work, he supposed. The door opened without complaint.

  Inside, it was clean. The firepit had been swept. The pallets were stacked nearly against the wall. The blankets had been folded with care and set aside. A jug of water waited on the table, stoppered against dust. Whoever had been here last had stayed long enough to be thoughtful.

  Mallow stood in the doorway longer than necessary, trying to overlay this clean room with what remained of his memory. Tanel hovered behind him, hesitant, as if sensing the shift.

  Tanel stepped inside, gaze moving over the space with careful attention. Recognition flickered across his face. The pilgrimage resthouses were similar in design, and there were signs here and there of its purpose: wyrm script, little bells in small alcoves, a locked box with a thin slit for tithes.

  “We slept here,” Mallow said finally, nodding toward the far pallet. His voice was flat, but the turmoil inside him was almost unbearable. “By the wall. She liked to be able to see the door.”

  “She was afraid,” Tanel said softly.

  “She was careful,” Mallow corrected. He limped further in, set his pack down hard. “There’s a difference.”

  But she had been scared, and she’d had every right to be. He could see it. Lain curled tight against the chill, ears twitching at every sound. The way she’d been breathing. The way she watched him with those brilliant violet eyes, measuring danger even while wanting – desperately – to trust. Finding that trust there, in him, when he was so undeserving. Choosing it in the Kelthi bond.

  And then the morning.

  Sunlight through the cracks in the shutters. Her laughter, surprised and unguarded. The way she’d pressed her face into his chest afterward, breathing him in like she was memorizing his smell. Like she was afraid the world might take it back if she didn’t anchor it in her body.

  Mallow swallowed.

  “Mallow, Lain clearly means a good deal to you.” Tanel cleared his throat. “How did you meet her?”

  The question landed carefully, as if he’d been carrying it for miles and only just found the courage to set it down.

  Mallow didn’t look at him. “She came on to me.”

  Tanel blinked. “She –”

  “She was in Heat,” Mallow said. “And with two Brighthand guards. I knew right off that she was a Glinnel, but it took a moment to figure out she was Kelthi, of all things. She touched my hand.” He saw the look on Tanel’s face and shook his head. “By accident, Elder. She was burning with so much Heat she might have let me follow her to her rooms.”

  “Yet you didn’t.”

  “A low bar to clear,” Mallow said. “I killed your men and saved her life instead.”

  The silence stretched.

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  “I loved her,” Tanel said then.

  Mallow laughed, sharp and humorless. “Yes. I know. Like a shepherd loves mutton.”

  Tanel flinched, but didn’t retreat. “It wasn’t simple.”

  “It never is,” Mallow said. He finally turned, fixing Tanel with a look that had broken harder men. “And I suppose all the Elders love their little Sisters, don’t they?”

  The words were ugly on purpose. Mallow let them sit there, souring the air.

  Tanel went very still.

  “Careful,” he said quietly.

  Mallow stepped closer instead. “You’re thirty-six,” he said. “She was… what, fifteen, sixteen when her Heat first took her? Trapped in a cloister full of men trained to treat her body like a problem to be managed. So tell me, Elder. Did you keep her close because you loved her? Or because she was yours?”

  Tanel’s face drained of color.

  “I never touched her,” he said once, too fast.

  Mallow smiled without humor. “Low. Bar.”

  Tanel swallowed. His hands curled in his sleeves, bells chiming faintly with the movement. “I never took advantage of her,” he said again, slower this time. “Not once. Not when she was in Heat, not when she begged it of me.”

  Despite himself, Mallow believed him. “If you knew she wanted you, why did you stay?”

  “Because if I left, someone else would have taken my place,” Tanel said. “Someone without restraint. Someone who would have told themselves they were being merciful.”

  Mallow stared at him. “So you kept her as a kind of… ward?”

  “As a responsibility,” Tanel shot back, the first flash of anger breaking through his composure. “As a debt I could never repay. She never knew it, but on more than one occasion I slept outside her door. I dosed her with suppressants – don’t give me that look, I tried to make her something that worked.”

  “You don’t get points for not raping her,” Mallow said flatly.

  “I know,” Tanel said. His shoulders sagged. “I know.”

  Mallow exhaled through his nose. “Did you ever think,” he asked, quieter now, “that what she needed wasn’t someone standing guard over her virtue, but someone willing to choose to save her life?”

  Tanel didn’t answer right away.

  Mallow shook his head, something tired and bitter loosening in his chest. “Tell me something I’ve been wondering since the day I found her trussed up like a goat with a sword to her throat. If you loved her so much, why didn’t you leave?”

  The bells at Tanel’s wrists chimed faintly as his hands tightened.

  “I thought –” he stopped. Tried again. “I thought staying might keep her safe.”

  Mallow stepped closer, anger coiling tight and controlled. “Safe from what?”

  Tanel opened his mouth. Closed it.

  “From your people?” Mallow pressed. “From the Order that would’ve burned her alive if she were free? Safe from the vows that told you loving her was a sin but letting her suffer was acceptable?”

  “I didn’t know how to be both,” Tanel said, and for the first time there was no defense left in his voice. “What I was… and what she needed.”

  Mallow stared at him for a long moment. Then something in him eased. He didn’t forgive this man, but at least he had an answer that made sense.

  “She didn’t need a priest,” he said quietly. “She needed someone who would choose her.”

  Tanel nodded once, slow and painful.

  “I’m grateful,” he said. “That she found you.”

  “No, Elder. I found her, not the other way around. I’m like you that way. But she chose me. That might not mean much to the Dagorlind, but it meant everything to her.”

  They stood in the cleaned, borrowed quiet of the room, two men shaped by the same woman in ways neither had fully survived.

  Outside, the night pressed close. And somewhere beyond the walls, unseen, someone listened.

  On the third morning, the road narrowed into a familiar rise, and the trees thinned.

  Tanel slowed. The ground dipped away into a shallow hollow. Snow lay thinner here, crusted and dirty, revealing scorched stone beneath. Blackened walls jutted up from the earth like the remains of a collapsed jetty. Charred beams leaned inward, some half-buried, ends splintered and pale where fire had bitten deep. Meltwater pooled in the lowest places, dark and still.

  It was the Edran Shrine. The Kelthi chapel of Lain’s origins.

  Tanel stopped.

  Mallow took two more steps before he realized the bells behind him had gone quiet. Mallow turned to take in the ruins again. The place had a strange kind of quiet, something that pressed inward instead of opening out. Even the birds avoided it.

  Tanel stood at the edge of the hollow, staring down at the ruins as if they had reached up and caught him by the throat. His hands were clenched inside his sleeves, shoulders drawn tight, breath shallow. He looked younger like this; too young for the weight he carried.

  “This is –” Tanel began, then faltered.

  Mallow watched his face carefully. Recognition bloomed there, uninvited and unwelcome. Memory seemed to resurface, piece by piece.

  “Yes,” Mallow said. “This is it.”

  “I haven’t been here since –”

  “I know.”

  The chapel lay open to the sky. Blackened stone, collapsed beams. The bell still hung, cracked and pitted, swaying faintly in the wind. Anger settled cold in Mallow’s gut, an old and familiar feeling.

  Tanel took a step forward as if to go around the ruins.

  Mallow stepped into his path.

  “You stop here.”

  Tanel blinked, dragged back into the present. “What?”

  “You’re not coming any farther,” Mallow said.

  “There isn’t anywhere farther,” Tanel said, confused. “This is just a shrine.”

  “Exactly,” Mallow replied. “And this is where you stay, until I come back.”

  Tanel frowned, unsettled now. “Captain –”

  “No,” Mallow said. “You wait here.”

  The bells chimed softly as Tanel’s hands shifted. “You’re injured. You can’t mean to –”

  “I mean it.”

  Tanel searched his face, clearly trying to understand what wasn’t being said. “What’s beyond this?”

  The question tightened noose-like around Mallow’s throat.

  “Nothing you need to see.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s the only one you’re getting.”

  Tanel wasn’t an aggressive man, but Mallow felt the tension stretching between them, and he wondered idly what it would take to goad Tanel into violence. If he’d been as cowardly as a boy as he was now.

  There was no ash in the ruins after all these years, but Mallow could picture it.

  “This place matters to me,” Tanel said quietly.

  “I know,” Mallow replied. “That’s why you’re not coming.”

  Tanel stiffened. “You still don’t trust me.”

  “Of course not.”

  “You think I’ll interfere with something?” Tanel asked.

  “I think you ask too many questions,” Mallow said.

  Tanel huffed. “You’re asking me to stand in the ashes of my own past and do nothing.”

  “I’m telling you to,” Mallow said. “For her.”

  Tanel’s breath caught. He looked toward the shrine, toward the bell, and Mallow imagined this to be the place where his life had bent out of shape and never quite straightened again.

  “How long will you be gone?” he asked.

  Mallow adjusted his grip on the crutch. “Until I come back.”

  Tanel glared at him. “And if you don’t?”

  “Then you walk south. You don’t follow. You don’t search. You go home.”

  Tanel sighed. “I’ll return to the rest house.”

  “There’s a good Elder.” Mallow tapped the ground twice with his staff and turned away. The ground beyond the hollow changed quickly. Snow thinned, then vanished. The air warmed, damp and green. Tree roots twisted across the path, as if the mountain were closing ranks behind him.

  Mallow looked back once. Tanel had his back turned, facing the chapel, unmoving.

  After a time, the ground sloped down into shadow, and there, half hidden by roots and stone, was the fissure he remembered. Narrow. Easy to miss if you didn’t know where to look.

  Mallow paused at the threshold, one hand braced on the rock, expecting a Kelthi – Lain's uncle Soryn himself, perhaps – to stop him. But no one interfered.

  Mallow stepped forward, into the dark, toward Vaelun.