Morgan and Lain reached the village by midmorning, the path descending from the cliffs into a shallow bowl of fields and low stone houses huddled against the wind. Nets were strung between posts to dry, their floats knocking together softly, and the air smelled of fish and salt in the honest way of places that lived by the water. Gulls cried overhead, brazen and hopeful.

  Morgan slowed as they entered, his posture shifting in a way Lain had learned to recognize: the careful openness of a man who knew he was seen and known. Heads turned. A fisherman straightened from his nets, squinting, then lifted a hand in greeting that was half wary, half warm.

  “Lord Balthir,” he called, not unkindly.

  Morgan inclined his head. “Good morning.”

  There were murmurs then, glances sliding toward Lain, curious and intent. A woman carrying a bucket paused outright, her gaze fixing on Lain’s ears, the way her posture curved protectively inward despite herself.

  “Bellborn,” she whispered.

  Lain stiffened, but Morgan’s hand came light to the small of her back, grounding without claiming. He did not speak for her.

  An older woman pushed her way through the small gathering, her gray hair bound in a knot so severe it looked like it had never once been loosened for sleep. Her eyes were sharp, assessing, and when they landed on Morgan her mouth curved into something like satisfaction.

  “You look half-dead,” she said briskly. “And she looks worse. Come inside before you keel over and make work for everyone.”

  That was how they came to be lodged in her house, a narrow stone place with steep stairs and windows set deep against the wind. Lain barely remembered being guided to the back room, only sudden blessed warmth of water, the way her clothes were taken to be replaced by a soft, worn shift that smelled faintly of soapnut.

  The herbalist arrived not long after, a woman with hands stained green and a voice like dry leaves. She pressed fingers to Lain’s wrist, then her temple, then nodded to herself.

  “Nothing dangerous,” she said, but then she frowned. “But I have not treated the Kelthi before, young woman. All I can say for certain is your body seems to have endured much.”

  She brewed something bitter and fragrant, coaxing Lain to sip it slowly. It settled her stomach enough that the trembling eased.

  Morgan did not leave her side. He fetched water. He sat on the edge of the bed and held the cup steady when her hands shook. When she dozed, his hand rested lightly over hers.

  Later, when she woke again, the house was quieter. Sunlight slanted through the narrow window, catching dust motes in its path. Her body still ached, but it was a distant ache now, dulled by warmth and care.

  She rose slowly, drawn by the sound of voices from below.

  Halfway down, she paused. Morgan stood at the long table in the kitchen, sleeves rolled, flour dusting his forearms. The woman, apparently the house’s undisputed authority, stood opposite him, watching with narrowed eyes as he worked a lump of dough between his hands.

  “No, like this,” she said, rapping his knuckles lightly with a wooden spoon. “You fold it back into itself. You don’t fight it.”

  “I know,” Morgan said, laughing under his breath. “I’m only saying, if it weren’t for her, I’d still be eating soaked beans and calling it a meal.”

  The woman snorted. “You’d be dead, more like.”

  “Possibly,” he conceded. “She taught me this.”

  The woman paused, studying his hands more closely. “Bellborn, then?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And better company than I deserve.”

  The woman’s expression softened, just a little. “I haven’t seen that look on you since you first came through here, Morgan. After your ship crashed up against the Mohr Rocks, do you remember?”

  “I remember a very fetching young fisherwoman untangling me from her net. She was rather ornery about the whole ordeal. Tormenting me with a fishing spear.” The woman laughed and he carried on. “And now a very fetching older fisherwoman is tormenting me with a spoon.”

  She sighed. “Alas, my hands betray me.” She lifted them to show her wrinkles. “Age has come at last.”

  He didn’t lift his hands from his work, but he watched her hands – curious in a new way, as if the act of aging had always been something others did, and now he was examining something that may be in his own future for the first time.

  “They’re just as beautiful as they were twenty years ago, Afina,” he said.

  “Thirty-five,” Afina said. “That was thirty-five years ago.” She gave him another harsh examination. “And normally I would say you haven’t aged a day, but there’s something different in your face now.”

  “Maybe I’m just learning,” he said softly.

  “Then you’d best keep learning,” she said, turning back to her work. “Food made with care keeps people alive longer than prayers.”

  Morgan smiled at that, something open and unguarded, and for a moment Lain simply stood there, chest tight with a feeling she couldn’t quite name.

  That night, when the house settled into sleep and the wind rattled softly at the shutters, Morgan laid out a blanket on the floor beside her bed. He moved with quiet care, folding the fabric once, then again, smoothing it with his palm as if it mattered that it be done properly. Through the bond, she felt his restraint: a careful holding-back born of knowing how easily his presence could become pressure.

  Lain lay on her side, watching him through half-lidded eyes. Her body felt heavy in a way that was no longer painful, just spent. Safe, for the moment. The room smelled faintly of baked bread and soapnut and the trace of sea air that permeated everything.

  “Morgan,” she said softly.

  He looked up at once. Through the bond came a flicker of concern, quickly banked. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You didn’t,” she said. She paused, then shifted, pushing the blanket back an inch. His attention sharpened, careful and utterly still. “You don’t have to sleep there.”

  He hesitated. The bond stirred with his awareness of her: how thin the line still was, how much she’d lost, how easily he could take more without meaning to. “I’m alright,” he said. “I’m fine here.”

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  “I know,” she said, and let that knowing travel through the bond as warmth rather than reassurance. She lifted the edge of the blanket again, this time an unmistakable invitation. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  The moment landed between them with gravity. Through the bond she felt it register fully: the offering, the fragile courage it took for her to ask. He nodded once, as if agreeing to a small and sacred thing.

  He climbed onto the bed with deliberate care, keeping space between them until she reached back, fingers brushing his wrist. The contact was brief, light, but it carried a will through the bond that left no doubt about its meaning. He shifted closer, settling behind her, his arm resting along her waist without pulling, without claiming, waiting for her to decide.

  She leaned back into him.

  The bond bloomed with his recognition, with his awe. His arm tightened, just enough to hold her there, a promise in the shape of restraint. They lay like that, quiet and still, her back warm against his chest, his presence steady and contained, as if he understood that this closeness was not given but a gift.

  It was a long time before sleep came.

  And sometime later – she couldn’t tell how much later – she surfaced from a dream to the hollow absence beside her. The bond shifted, not broken but thinned, Morgan’s presence pulling away with careful intention. The sheets were already cooling, the room holding only the sound of the sea and the quiet certainty that he had left without waking her, carrying with him the full weight of what she had given.

  They left at first light.

  Afina stood in the doorway with her arms folded, her shawl pulled tight against the morning wind. She pressed a small bundle into Lain’s hands: flatbread still warm at the center, a little crock of honey sealed with wax, and a pouch of dried herbs that smelled faintly of mint and something bitter underneath.

  “For the road,” she said, then paused, studying Lain’s face with a shrewdness that had nothing to do with suspicion and everything to do with care. “Yo don’t owe me anything. Just don’t be foolish with yourself.”

  Lain smiled, tired but sincere. “Thank you.”

  Afina’s gaze flicked to Morgan. “And you,” she said. “If you run her into the ground, I’ll haunt you. I don’t care how long you live.”

  Morgan inclined his head, solemn as a penitent. “That seems fair.”

  She snorted, then surprised them both by stepping forward and cupping Lain’s cheek in her weathered hand. The touch was firm. “You find a doctor where you’re going,” she said quietly. “You do that first.”

  “I will,” Lain promised, though she didn’t know why the words lodged so painfully in her chest.

  They walked out of the village with gulls crying overhead and the sea breaking white against the rocks, the path narrowing quickly as it climbed back toward open ground.

  Morgan set a hard pace. She knew he had fed in the night. It was clear in how bright his eyes were, how fluid his gait. At first Lain didn’t comment. She understood the urgency humming through the bond, the raw absence left behind by the loss of the Dóthain, the way his hunger – no longer sharp, but deep and spreading – pressed at the edges of his focus. His belief in following the Dóthain was absolute. He believed that if they didn’t, the thread they’d lost would be gone forever.

  “She’ll go to Ivath,” he said more than once. “The Underveins will pull her. You felt it.”

  “I felt something,” Lain replied, breath already thinning as the path rose. “That doesn’t mean we’ll catch her.”

  “We must try.”

  He said it again later, more insistently, his stride lengthening. Through the bond she felt his fear harden into resolve, and beneath it, something frangible, panic held together by action.

  By midday, the sky had gone pale and windless. The land rolled with deceptive gentleness, every shallow rise stealing a little more from her legs. Lain’s hunger gnawed, not sharp enough to command attention, but constant. Her mouth tasted faintly metallic. Thinking felt like wading through cold water.

  “Morgan,” he said at one point, stopping despite herself. “I need to rest.”

  He turned once, concern flashing through the bond, but it was quickly eclipsed by his urgency. “Just a little farther. There’s another village ahead. We can –”

  She nodded, because nodding was easier than arguing, and because she could feel how badly he needed her to keep moving.

  They reached the village in the late afternoon, little more than a scatter of stone houses crouched against the hills. Lain barely registered it. Her vision tunneled, the edges graying, sounds arriving a moment too late to make sense of themselves. The bond flared suddenly with Morgan’s alarm as her steps faltered.

  “Lain?” He caught her arm.

  “I’m fine,” she said automatically, the words slurring together. Her knees buckled.

  The world tipped.

  There was a brief, distant sense of falling, of Morgan’s hand tightening, his voice calling her name with the sharpness that through the fog too late to matter. Then the ground rushed up, mercifully cool, and everything went dark.

  At first she heard only the cadence of low voices rising and falling somewhere nearby, the scrape of wood against stone, the faint clink of glass. Lain floated in it without context, aware only that the air smelled different, cleaner than the road, touched with soap and herbs instead of salt and dust.

  Then touch. Hands at her wrist. Fingers pressing lightly at her throat.

  Her eyes flew open and she recoiled with a sharp intake of breath, heart hammering, the old instinct flaring white-hot. Her body tried to curl on itself even as her mind scrambled to catch up.

  “Lain,” Morgan’s voice cut in at once, close and urgent. “Lain, it’s alright. You’re safe.”

  She turned her head toward the sound of him, breath still ragged, and only then took in the room: a wide bed beneath her, linen sheets tucked smooth, a heavy quilt folded back from her legs. Sunlight filtered through clean windows. An inn room, well kept, the sort meant for merchants with coin rather than pilgrims scraping by.

  A man stood at her bedside, his hands half-lifted now in a gesture of careful distance. He was older, with graying hair pulled back neatly, his expression composed in the practiced way of someone accustomed to fear that did not belong to him. Beside him stood a woman with a cap pinned over her hair, her eyes kind but alert, one hand resting protectively at the doctor’s elbow.

  “Easy,” the man said. “You fainted. You’re among friends.”

  Lain swallowed, her mouth dry. The bond thrummed with Morgan’s anxiety, biting and unguarded, flooding her chest. He stood to close, hovering at the edge of the bed as if sheer proximity could keep her anchored.

  “She startled,” the nurse said, her tone brisk but not unkind. Her gaze flicked to Morgan. “You’re not helping.”

  Morgan straightened, guilt flaring immediately through the bond. “I –”

  “Please, sir. Can you give us a moment?”

  Morgan hesitated. Lain felt it like a hook in her chest, the instinct to refuse, to stay. But the nurse was already shepherding him toward the door, the doctor following with a murmured word she couldn’t hear.

  “It’s alright,” Lain said hoarsely, though she wasn’t sure she believed it yet. “I’ll – I’ll be here.”

  Morgan’s eyes met hers, dark with worry. “I’ll be just outside.”

  The door closed behind him, the latch clicking softly into place.

  The room felt quieter at once, though Lain could still feel him, pacing, fretting, his thoughts circling her like a wounded bird unsure where to land.

  The nurse returned to the bedside and pulled up a stool. She sat without ceremony, folding her hands in her lap and studying Lain’s face with an attention that was almost maternal.

  “Now, dear, you’ve reached the right place. I may be the only nurse in a dozen villages with any experience working with the Kelthi. Not even the doctor, Serpent bless him. Knows a thing or two about your kind, mind you, but couldn’t tell you they don’t eat meat.” She laughed softly and the edge of Lain’s mouth tugged up. “How long have you been feeling ill?”

  Lain frowned. “I’m not ill. I’ve just… been tired. Nauseous sometimes. It’s stress.”

  The nurse nodded slowly, as if that answer had been expected. She reached out, not touching this time, only gesturing toward Lain’s abdomen. “May I?”

  Lain hesitated, then inclined her head.

  The nurse’s touch was gentle and practiced. She pressed lightly, then again, her brow furrowing in concern.

  “Oh,” she said quietly.

  “What?”

  The nurse met her eyes. “You’re with child.”