The scent of woodsmoke and oiled leather filled her nose. Light pressed dimly through canvas walls.
Lain blinked. The ceiling above her swayed with the movement of the cart. Her head throbbed, and when she tried to rise, a dull ache pulled through her leg. But the pain was mostly gone, the wound healed.
Outside, she heard hooves slowing in the snow, the low murmur of men’s voices. The cart lurched once, then stilled.
The sudden stop made her pulse jump. She sat up. The blankets around her were thick and unfamiliar, smelling faintly of myrrh.
A moment later, the flap at the back of the cart lifted. The man from the forest ducked inside.
“You’re awake,” he said. “Good. I was beginning to worry.”
He smiled, eyes soft and unhurried. In the light that filtered through the canvas, he looked younger than she remembered, though his silver eyes were much older. He had an accent she couldn’t place, foreign and open.
“Where are we?” Her voice rasped, rough with sleep.
“Halfway to the valley road,” he said, crouching beside her. “My men are taking a rest. You needed it, too.”
He reached into a satchel and drew out a wrapped parcel of lentil cake and dried fruit. “Eat,” he said, offering it to her. “You’ve lost blood.”
She hesitated before taking it, her fingers brushing his.
The Heat flared.
He blinked, glancing at her antlers before returning his gaze to her face. His hand was cool to the touch. Oddly, nothing came to her through the Tuning, no hint of feeling or trace of response.
The wool of her leg was stiff with dried blood, but beneath it her skin was whole, not even a scar. “You healed me,” she murmured.
He inclined his head modestly. “A small thing.”
“How?”
His smile deepened, faintly wistful. “There are older magics than the ones your priests allow. The Dagorlind didn’t create such gifts; they buried them. Hid them away. Some of us still remember the words.”
She studied him, the easy way he spoke, the gentleness of his tone. “Who are you?”
He sat back on his heels. “Morgan Balthir,” he said.
Her mouth went dry. Morgan Balthir. The reformist, the exile noble who stood against the Dagorlind. The one whose soldiers hunted the Bellborn. The one Mallow had been working for.
She tried to breathe evenly. “You?”
He laughed softly. “Not as terrible as the stories make out, I hope.”
“What do you want with me?”
“You’ve nothing to fear,” he said, noting her distress. “My quarrel isn’t with the Kelthi, or even the Unsung. I only want an end to the tyranny that keeps us all kneeling.”
“You’re against the Dagorlind,” she said quietly. “You’re a Veinwright.”
“I am. And I’m against anyone who builds their god on another’s grave.”
His words felt heavy and precise, as though chosen long ago for this moment.
“You were traveling with a man,” Morgan said after a pause. “A man who shares some of those goals.”
Her throat closed. She said nothing.
“He and I were in contact.”
Her fingers went cold. She thought of the hawk Mallow had sent, at the village where she’d first met Morgan’s soldiers. She looked away.
Morgan sighed, soft and almost sorrowful. “And you’ve only just learned this.” He tilted his head, studying her face as though reading something behind her eyes. “Did he hurt you? Abandon you to the bloodwyrms?”
“No,” she said, defensive. “He – he was –” But she went quiet again.
“He thought he was protecting you,” Morgan said.
She stared at him, barely breathing.
He watched her for a long time, then said, quieter, “He’s a man who’s been living on ghosts for years. The Dagorlind took everything from him. His home, his kin. That kind of loss can rot even the gentlest heart.”
Lain swallowed hard. “He’s not – not rotten. He told me. About Lethen Bay.”
“Ah.” Morgan nodded slowly. “Then you know why he despises the Underserpent. Why he despises what the Dagorlind made of it. It isn’t hatred of your kind, not truly. It’s hatred of the people who puppeteer you.”
She wanted to believe that. “He wants to kill the Underserpent,” she said before she could stop herself.
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Morgan went very still. Then he spoke carefully, as if stepping through her words one at a time. “Did he?”
“He said he wanted to end all of it.”
A faint sadness crossed his face. “Revenge often wears the mask of righteousness. Even the best men can mistake destruction for salvation.”
Thoughts of the Brighthand flashed through her mind – Darrin, apologizing even as he held a blade at her throat, the Dagorlind believing in the cause of destroying her, her people. She, Bellborn, a sacrificial lamb. Destruction.
He leaned forward slightly, voice lowering. “And what about you? What do you want?”
She blinked, startled. “Me?”
“Yes.” His gaze held hers, intent and unhurried. “You’ve seen the rot from both sides now. The cloisters, the mountains. What do you want the world to become?”
She hesitated. “I want the Underserpent freed from the Dagorlind. I want the killing to stop.”
Morgan’s smile bloomed, slow and luminous. “Then we want the same thing.”
She frowned.
“I don’t wish to destroy the wyrm,” Morgan went on. “I wish to liberate it. The Dagorlind chained it beneath their altars, bled it dry to fuel their miracles. You’ve felt it, haven’t you? The dreaming where the wakefulness should be?”
Her eyes widened. He sounded like someone who knew as much about the wyrm as the Glinnel did.
Morgan’s tone softened further, threaded with admiration. “You were meant to be sacrifice, were you not?”
Her eyes grew hot with a flood of unshed tears. That Mallow would tell him this – that Mallow would send off word that he was traveling not only with a Glinnel but the Bellborn herself – was more than she could bear, knowing how the world hated the Bellborn, knowing the danger it would put her in to be discovered.
“But you lived,” Morgan went on. “You survived the Starbloom, according to the information I’ve gathered. Do you understand how rare that is? No one alive could do what you did.”
She flushed, uncertain. “It wasn’t me. It was the Underserpent. It woke, and saved me.”
“No,” he said gently. “It didn’t wake alone. It woke for you.”
Her pulse skipped.
“What is your name, Sister?”
Briefly, she considered giving him her true name. But he had called her Sister, and only one name paired with that role; it would be the name he likely already knew. “Lain.”
He reached for her hand, slow enough for her to pull away if she wished. When she didn’t, he took it lightly in his palm. His fingers were cool and dry, his grip tender but unyielding.
“You’re proof that the world still remembers how to heal itself,” he said. “That’s why they fear you. The Dagorlind would rather call your kind abomination than admit they’ve lost their god.”
Lain stared at him, unable to speak. The Heat moved through her Tuning, sussing out this strange new man, and his smell reached her nose – sweet, perfumed, clean.
Morgan’s smile deepened, softer now, intimate. “You’re the most extraordinary creature I’ve ever seen. You’ve moved mountains. And you’ve been wandering in the cold, thinking yourself cursed.” His thumb brushed the ridge of her knuckles. “You’re not cursed, Lain. You’re chosen. Not by their false heaven, but by the living world.”
Her breath came uneven. “Do you… truly believe that?”
“I do,” he said simply. “More than anything.”
“Your people want me dead.”
“No,” he said. “Once they understand what you are, they’ll bow to you like the saint you’re meant to be.”
Her Tuning reached toward him again instinctively, the thread of connection she always felt when someone touched her. Again, she felt nothing. No echo, no warmth nor cold. Only a hollow stillness, stone beneath running water.
But the Heat didn’t care about that void. It cared about the animalness of him, the maleness of his scent.
Morgan’s gaze flicked briefly to her antlers, then back to her eyes. “You’re trembling. I’ll see that you’re warm before nightfall.”
He released her hand, rising to leave. The canvas shifted with the wind as he opened the flap. Light spilled around him, washing his dark silhouette in pale gold.
“Sleep, Bellborn,” he said softly. “The world is almost ready for your voice.”
He stepped out, leaving her heart hammering, her pulse echoing in the emptiness he left behind. When he was gone, the silence folded around her like a curtain. Only the sound of the horses shifting outside broke it as the carts began to move once more – the slow grind of snow beneath hooves, the soft jingle of tack.
Lain stared at the flap where he’d stood. His voice echoed in her mind, gentle and sure, winding through her like smoke.
She’d met priests, Elders, soldiers, zealots. None of them frightened her the way his kindness did.
She drew the blanket closer, the myrrh-scent heavy in her nose. Her thoughts moved in sluggish circles. Deliver you and the Starbloom.
Morgan knew her. He’d known before she woke, before she’d even spoken her name.
Her hand went to the pouch at her hip. The Starbloom pressed faintly against her palm through the cloth, warm and alive. She felt suddenly certain that if Morgan touched it, it would die.
Mallow had been terrified of him. He’d practically begged her not to try to save the Underserpent. He’d said Morgan’s people wanted her dead.
Her breath trembled. She could run. She could vanish into the trees before they broke camp again. She could make for Vaelun.
But when she shifted, the ache in her limbs caught her. The weariness settled deep. The exhaustion tracked behind her visions, the drain of her Heat, the half-healed terror of the bloodwyrms. The gnawing worry that she’d broken the world open by summoning the tremor. The wound of her broken heart. Even if she made it out of the caravan, she wouldn’t get far.
She wished she had Mallow.
She slumped back against the wall of the cart, pressing her fingers to her temples. The world swayed faintly with the motion of the wheels.
Morgan’s voice drifted through the canvas, quiet and measured, giving instructions to his men. They answered him with reverence. He didn’t command like a warlord. He didn’t have to. People wanted to follow him.
The thought chilled her.
She looked down at her hands, at the faint shimmer of pollen still dusting her skin, gold caught in the creases. The world is almost ready to listen, he’d said.
She remembered the grove, the wyrm’s voice singing through her bones, the plea it had whispered: Wake our lost brother wyrm.
Her chest tightened. Did Morgan truly want to free the Underserpent? Why would Mallow follow him, if his goal of killing the Underserpent conflicted with Morgan’s plans?
She drew the blanket up to her shoulders, curling inward until her antlers brushed the canvas wall.
She told herself she would wait until nightfall. Just rest a little longer. Then she’d decide what to do.
But when her eyes closed, sleep came before choice, heavy, dreamless, and deep as a well.