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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

In the years that followed, whenever spring crept back beneath the budding branches and painted the forest in tender hues, Meri could be found nestled in the green-veiled corners of their land. The breeze stirred the scent of damp earth and blossom, soft as a breath. Birds lifted their songs from the boughs above—threads of brightness unraveling through the hush. Now and then, Meri would pause mid-task to listen, head tilted, as if the sound might answer some question she didn't yet know how to ask.

Under her papa's quiet guidance, her garden bloomed—not just in leaf and root, but in her hands. She learned to coax life from the soil with a patience she hadn't known she possessed. At first, there were only flowers—sweet pea vines, a pair of stubborn rosebushes, and a handful of daffodils that lifted their golden trumpets to the sun. Papa showed her how to turn the dirt, where to clip dying heads, how to watch for blight, and why a border of marigolds might keep the hungriest creatures at bay. He worked beside her in the early hours, boots sunk deep in loam—but by midsummer, he had stepped back, letting her find her own rhythm among the leaves.

She gave names to nearly everything she planted—soft names, secret names, as if calling them might help them grow: the stubborn roses became Old Wren and Sweetblood, while the daffodils were simply the Laughers. The corner patch where marigolds stood sentinel she called the Guard, and her favorite trowel was Mirey, after a dream she once had of a creature who fed on shadows and turned them into root.

That year, Meri turned nine, and her world both widened and sharpened. Her papa began teaching her more than before, though Eragon no longer joined the lessons. Her younger brother had taken to roaming the snowfields, chasing phantoms with a stick or building crooked forts with Elida. He couldn't keep still long enough for study—especially when the world beyond the doorstep buzzed with adventure.

Sometimes, Eragon would sneak into Meri's nook and run off with her short sword, waving it like a hero from one of her stories. She used to tackle him for it, all fire and fury, until Papa intervened—returning the blade with a quiet rebuke and a glance that said more than words: You must learn to feel without flaring. Meri didn't quite understand, but in time, she stopped lunging for her brother. The lesson had settled, somewhere deep.

When the snow began to shrink into the edges of the yard, Papa carved Eragon a sword of his own—wooden, but real in the way that mattered. From then on, the boy carried it everywhere, Elida trailing behind with the old stick like a knight's page with a banner.

Meri kept her sword close too, strapped over her shoulder with a baldric—a word her papa spoke with pride, but she met with mild disdain. She called the strap One-Hand, because that's what it took from her: a hand, always half-useless when she was climbing or catching herself from a fall. Still, it was better than leaving the blade behind. She never knew when Papa would whistle for her to train. Someday, he promised, they'd craft her a proper scabbard—one she could wear at her belt like a true warrior.

There were days One-Hand proved useful. Especially when she climbed high into the ash tree at the edge of the clearing—Ashwatch, she called it—tying the strap to a low branch so it wouldn't swing. There she'd perch, a book in her lap, eyes on the path. She'd been watching for the elves all week—ever since Mam had mentioned them at supper, her tone careful, half-expectant.

Mam had asked if Papa knew when they'd return. He only said, soon—and to Papa, soon might mean tomorrow or thirty years from now. Still, Mam had them sweep out the cabin, gather berries, and collect wild greens, though she set no snares. Elves, after all, did not eat meat.

Now that she was older, Meri was allowed to wander deeper into the woods alone. On dry afternoons, she'd climb Ashwatch with a book or a handful of parchment in her satchel. When a story or poem came to her, she'd jot it down in quick lines before the shape of it faded. Later, she might copy it into the leatherbound book she'd been given on her namesday—or illustrate the page, as Papa had once taught her, using paint she made from flower, ash, and crushed berries. Of all her crafts, painting became the one she loved best. Her favorite brush—made from horsehair and whittled ash—was called Star-Tip, because the first time she used it, she'd painted a sky and the stars came out right.

Then, one morning, the elves returned.

She heard them before she saw them—the rhythm of hooves like a second heartbeat in the forest hush. She was in Ashwatch again, the Language of the Forest open in her lap. Papa called it the Ancient Language, but Meri thought her name fit better. The words rustled like leaves when spoken low, and sometimes she thought the wind echoed them back.

When she spotted the riders far off on the trail—three tall figures on three familiar horses—she froze, heart fluttering. She knew them. The same elves from the spring before. She considered hiding. She considered running. But she stayed. Her parents had taught her not to flee the moments that frightened her. Mam called them warrior moments—and Meri wanted to be a warrior.

So she climbed down. Her scraped foot ached as it met the earth, and blood dappled the dust between her toes. She didn't care. She tucked the book—Leafword, this one—into a branch hollow, smoothed her hands nervously over her tunic, and placed her fingers to her lips as Papa had taught her—a gesture of greeting. But the words were gone. She dropped her hands, flustered, cheeks hot.

"I forgot," she murmured.

The elf-lady dismounted, her gaze steady but kind. "You will learn in time," she said, her voice shaped like music.

One of the man-elves gave a small smile. "Did you come all this way alone, youngling?"

"It's not far," Meri whispered. "I come here all the time."

Her foot throbbed. She shifted her weight and winced, trying not to show it. But the elf-lady had already noticed. Her eyes dipped to the dirt-streaked wound and narrowed with concern.

"Would you like to ride with us?" she asked, offering a hand.

Meri blinked. "Oh—yes. Thank you!" She gathered her sword and book, careful not to step hard on the injured foot. But when she reached the horse, she hesitated. There was no saddle. No Papa to lift her up.

"I don't know how to get on," she said, eyes lowered.

"I will help you," the elf said gently. "But first, may I look at your foot? Just for a moment. You shouldn't walk far if it's deep."

"It's just a cut," Meri said, quieter now. "I'll be fine."

The elf knelt anyway and brushed her fingers over the wound—light as a falling petal. Meri flinched at the touch, but then came a soft glow and the low music of words she couldn't understand. Warmth spread up her leg, and the pain began to ease.

When the elf mounted, she turned to her companions. "Shall we continue?"

They rode through the valley together, and Meri could not stop looking. At the horses. At the glowing hands. At the way the trees bent slightly as they passed, as if leaning in to listen. She wondered when she would learn to shine like that—to call light from language. Would she glow blue, like the hydrangeas she loved best? Or yellow like daffodils in snow? Perhaps every color at once, like the rainbows that broke through storm skies above Ceunon.

She was still thinking of colors when the cabin came into sight. She hadn't memorized what the ride had felt like. She'd meant to—but the moment had gotten away. She pressed her hand against the horse's flank as they slowed, trying to hold on to the sensation. Silken warmth. Breath and muscle beneath her palm.

She thought over the colors again, unable to choose a favorite. There were too many that were lovely, too many she'd painted with joy. She wondered if a person could glow with all of them, like the rainbows she'd seen only twice—both times on trips with Papa to the Ceunon lakes. Once, he'd called an early camp just to teach her to swim while the sky poured rain. The other, a rainbow unfurled during their midday meal. Both had taken her breath away.

The cabin came into view far too soon. Meri hadn't memorized the feel of riding a starlight horse—not the way she wanted to. She turned that thought over, tried to fix it in her chest like a memory, just as the elf-lady called her mount to a halt.

Meri slid from the horse after the elf and ran her hand over its soft coat. It was more wondrous than she remembered—softer than anything she'd ever felt. She didn't name it aloud, but in her heart she thought: Silverstep.

"Arya! You're back!" Eragon shouted, interrupting her thoughts. He stood under the barn's entrance, where he and Elida had been playing. Elida peered around him and, spotting Meri, skipped forward, grabbing her brother's hand and pulling him into a jog. They came to a halt before the elves.

"Are you staying longer this time?" Eragon asked, already bouncing on his feet.

The lady-elf smiled. "We may be here a little longer," she said. "I need to speak with your father first."

Eragon yanked his hand away. Elida caught it again with both of hers. When he tucked them under his arms, she stomped on his foot.

"Ow! Ida, stop it!" he complained. Then to the elves: "Why do you have to talk to Papa? He's not special."

"Yeah, why?" Elida echoed.

Arya raised a single brow, her expression unreadable. For a breath, she studied the children not with disdain, but with a distant kind of tenderness—like one might regard saplings too young to know their roots. "Your father," she said softly, "is more special than you yet understand."

Meri stepped back toward the cabin, not wanting to be drawn into Eragon's questioning. "I'll tell Mam and Papa you're here," she called, then took off running.

She skidded inside and blinked at the dim light.

Mam stood over the table, kneading dough. "You look like something the yellhounds chased but forgot to catch," she said, glancing up. The baby stirred in the wrap on her back but settled quickly.

"What's the matter, my sweet?"

"Where's Papa?" Meri asked. "The elves are looking for him."

"They're here?"

"Mmm-hmm," she hummed, rocking on her toes. "Eragon's asking them questions. He didn't greet them like we're supposed to. I tried, but I forgot most of it."

Mam wiped her hands with a rag and abandoned the dough. She came around the table and gave Meri a light squeeze. "Let's rescue our guests from your brother's interrogation," she said. "And while we do, I'll show you how to greet them properly."

Hand in hand, they stepped outside. Meri watched closely, trying to memorize every movement and word as Mam greeted the elves. She tried to echo the posture, the tone. But later that night, when she attempted to recall the words, they slipped through her mind like water. She decided she'd need to write them down.

With the greetings finished (and freshly forgotten), the elves settled their horses, and everyone crowded inside the small cabin. Space quickly grew tight. One of the man-elves conjured a ball of crimson light for the children to chase through the dusk.

Meri joined them for a time, laughing, before slipping into her garden on a whim. Sheltered by leaves and new blossoms, she lingered until Mam's voice called her for supper.

The game had ended, and her siblings were back in the barn. She spotted them in the shadows near the cow and calf.

"Come in! Mam says supper's ready," she called.

Eragon peeked out. "Tell Mam we're busy. And that we're not hungry. And that we won't come in."

"You're never not hungry," she said, stepping toward him. "What are you two doing?"

"Nothing! Go away!" He said it too fast, standing in the entryway to block her view.

Meri rose on her toes to see past him. Her paints. Her things. Anger flared.

She wanted to punch him, but he was too far, and she didn't want to get in trouble. So she chose the next best thing.

"I'm going to tell Mam!" she announced, spinning on her heel.

She heard the scramble behind her. "Mimi, no! Don't! It's not like that!" Eragon shouted.

She glanced back—Elida was trailing behind, guilt written in her steps. Eragon, fast as he was, nearly caught her.

"Those are my paints, you fat ugly toads!" she shouted. "Mine! And if I ever see you in my things again—"

Mam appeared in the doorway, voice sharp: "What is going on?"

Meri froze. Eragon darted past and hid behind Mam's skirt, sticking out his tongue before slipping inside.

Mam repeated the question. Elida barreled into her legs, eyes shining.

"They were in my things," Meri said, pointing at the barn. "They took my paints. I didn't hurt them. She's not crying because of anything I did!"

Mam took a long breath. "We'll talk about this later—after supper. Right now, both of you, go wash up."

"What about my paints?"

"After supper, Meri," Mam said, patting Elida's head, voice tight with fatigue but not unkind.

Meri didn't care what Papa had said—justice would've been better served by her own hand. Still, she trudged inside, cleaned up, and joined the table.

The elves were already seated. The lady-elf held the baby, cradling her with quiet fondness.

Earlier, Meri had woven her a flower crown from ivy and garden blooms. She'd meant it as a gift—for healing her foot, for the horse ride. But the right moment never came. Papa returned midway through supper, speaking at length with the elves in the Language of the Forest. Meri listened, catching only pieces, enough to understand: he would leave again.

That night, before they were sent to bed, Papa confirmed it. He would leave with the elves in the morning. It was urgent. He didn't say where or for how long.

The younger children didn't understand. But Meri did. She remembered the last time he'd gone. How long it had been. How Mam had cried sometimes when she thought no one could hear. How the hunger had lingered like frost inside her bones.

Resentment coiled in her belly, slow and tight—a snake with gleaming eyes, watching. Not because the elves were cruel. But because they came like magic and left with what mattered.

Beneath the table, the crown slipped from her fingers. Its petals bruised quietly underfoot.

…

…

With Papa gone, Mam took over her lessons with the weapons—and taught her how to properly ride a horse. The lessons were shorter now, held in the open field just beyond the cabin rather than the shaded depths of the forest, shaped around the baby's needs and the endless tasks of the day. Even so, Meri learned to fight with her hands, wield dual blades, throw knives and strike with them. Eragon and Elida watched sometimes, quiet for once, listening to the rhythms of instruction they were not yet allowed to share.

When they begged to join, Mam turned them away. "You're too young," she said, wiping her brow with her sleeve. Sometimes she added, more softly, "I think even Meri's too young."

Her voice always held something else in those moments—a tightness, as if the words cost her more than she let show. Once, Meri had asked why she was being trained at all. Mam's hands had stilled mid-motion, a knife paused against a whetstone or a bundle of herbs gone still. Her eyes lingered on Meri, unreadable, shadows of old choices flickering behind them. "We'll talk about it when your papa returns," she said at last, then turned away before Meri could ask more.

But no one knew when that would be. So Meri said nothing more and turned back to her chores—rocking the baby, soaking lentils, kneeling in the garden until her knees stained green.

In the summer, she took over both gardens—flowers and food alike—while Elida shouldered some of her household tasks. One afternoon, as Meri stooped among the squash vines, Mam passed by with a bundle of wood on her back. She paused only a moment, brushed Meri's shoulder with a faint touch, and said, "You've made them bloom better than I ever did." Then she kept walking—but Meri stood a little taller after that, hands still in the dirt, heart warmed. Little Tessie, never far behind, trotted after Meri like a shadow with curls, repeating the names of plants in a lisping voice that made Meri smile even on hard days. In truth, she'd stepped quietly into the rhythm Mam once held, while Mam moved into the role Papa had left behind. Eragon, too, seemed to sense the shift—he fetched wood without asking now, copied Meri's motions in the garden, and once stood awkwardly beside her as she stirred the stew, offering to slice roots with the dull knife until Mam gently corrected his grip. He didn't say much, but he lingered nearby more often than not, watching and learning in the way of boys who didn't yet know how to ask.

On warm nights, aching for her father, Meri gathered the children beneath the stars and taught them their names—Aiedail, Belatona, the River Chain. That summer stretched long, unbroken by trips to town, as though the outside world had forgotten them—or they it.

Papa returned just as the season turned, but stayed only three days. He didn't know when he'd be back. Meri forgot to ask him why she was learning to fight.

The morning he left, she walked with him down the trail until he turned and told her not to follow further. She stopped, heart pressing heavy against her ribs, and watched until the forest swallowed him whole. Behind her, she thought she heard Eragon's quiet footsteps falter at the edge of the path—then nothing. He didn't call out, didn't run ahead. Just stood with arms crossed tight, watching their father's back disappear. He said nothing when they walked back together, but his silence clung like mist to Meri's sleeve, and she didn't brush it off.

Winter crept in, slow and deep. Mam rose before dawn and vanished into the forest, leaving Meri in charge. Sometimes she came home dragging a deer behind her. Other days, only a pouch of bitter roots.

Mam taught her to skin and salt the meat, to prepare it for the weeks when snow would bury their steps. Meri hated the blood, the slippery feel of raw flesh. But she did it. Because Mam needed help.

When she complained, Mam only said, "One day you might have to do this alone. Maybe for a family of your own. Maybe just for yourself. You can't always wait on someone else."

The next day, Meri learned to set snares and tracked a squirrel. She loosed her arrow—and wept when it fell. Mam said nothing, only held her hand and walked with her to the body. That night, they cooked it together. It was the first meal Meri made from start to end. She felt sorrow. But also pride.

Later, while the pot simmered and the others slept, Mam brushed Meri's hair back from her face and said quietly, "You didn't flinch when it mattered. That counts."

Winter lingered unnaturally long that year, settling into their bones. Meri watched the door daily, hoping to see her father's shadow. But it never came. Only wind, snow, the creak of rafters.

She spent long hours with Tessie, reading stories or inventing new ones. But as the snow grew thick and her voice tired, she turned to sewing. With paints and ink scarce, Mam began teaching her embroidery. They worked on a quilt together.

Mam had never liked sewing—Meri knew that—but somehow she made the evenings gentle. Now and then, as Meri's stitches grew neater or her threadwork more precise, Mam would glance over and hum softly, once even reaching to smooth a thumb across Meri's seam with the faintest of nods. It wasn't praise—not outright—but Meri felt the warmth of it all the same. After the little ones slept, they sat by the fire, needles in hand, telling quiet stories. Mam knew more of the world than Meri had guessed. She wasn't Papa, not with his flare for tales, but her stories held weight.

She also kept teaching the Language of the Forest, and by spring Meri could speak it well enough to hold a proper conversation.

As the frost began to retreat, Meri noticed the curve of Mam's belly. A new child was growing.

She hesitated, fingers still moving over her embroidery hoop before pausing, the thread held taut between needle and cloth. Her voice came low, almost curious, almost afraid. "How will the baby come out?"

Mam set down her stitching and looked toward the fire. "Your papa usually helps with that," she said softly. "There's a way the elves deliver children—gentler, safer—but without him, it'll be harder. We can't go to town. And if the snow hasn't gone by the time I need help… I might have to ask you to do things beyond your age."

"Alright," Meri said, leaning forward. "But you didn't answer me. Eri thinks you have to throw it up to get it out. Is he right?"

Mam laughed, shaking her head. "No, my sweet. I'll tell you more when the time is closer. If your papa's back. If not… then yes, I'll tell you."

"I hope he's back in time. I miss him."

"Me too, Meri," Mam whispered. "Me too."

…

…

Papa hadn't returned by the time the babe was ready to come into the world.

When Mam told Meri what she needed to know, as well as what she was going to have to do, the girl stared at the wall for a long moment before remembering that she ought to be doing. She'd rather that the babe would have to be thrown up. Her stomach twisted at the thought, and she wiped her palms on her apron, the scent of boiling water and herbs sharp in the warm, close air.

That day she kept the younger children busy and fed them until her mam called for her. If one didn't think too hard about it, it wasn't too different than helping their cow deliver a calf. She thought, the biggest difference was that while the cow had only moaned and licked her calf, her mam tiredly gave her an endless stream of instructions that she struggled to remember, and afterwards, when everything was done, her mam and the babe cried.

After the babe was born, Meri took over most of her mam's duties until she could stay out of bed long enough to do them herself. The birth had left Mam pale and worn thin—her steps unsteady, her hands trembling when she tried to lift the babe. She often slept for hours, sometimes waking with a dazed look or blinking hard as if the world was too loud. Meri watched how her mam pressed a hand to her lower back when she stood too long, and how she winced when sitting. Blood still stained the rags by the hearth for days, and Mam moved carefully, as though the seams of her body had only barely stitched closed. Meri tiptoed through her days, keeping the younger children quiet, preparing meals, and smoothing the hearth as best she could. The work settled into her bones—bone-deep, a kind of weariness that made her sharp at the edges. Some mornings she woke already snappish, guilt blooming the moment her voice rose too loud. But Mam, when awake, would sometimes glance her way with a faint smile, as though seeing not just the burden but the strength behind it, and that small recognition held Meri together longer than she expected.

Eragon, picking up on the shift in her mood, would quietly take the younger girls outside to play in the last of the winter's snow or help tend the animals without being asked. He didn't say much, but once, as he pulled Elida's cloak tighter around her shoulders, he muttered, "She needs quiet," as if the words weighed more than they should. The world outside was wet, and often raining, and despite the cold they stayed out until their fingers were stiff. When they came inside—shivering, rosy, and dripping—they tracked in mud and puddles, but Meri bit back her irritation. Sometimes, it was easier than their noise. She noticed too, without fanfare, that Eragon had begun feeding the hens and checking the goat's tether—small chores he once avoided.

A full two weeks passed before Mam could stay out of bed for more than an hour, and by that time, Meri was constantly on the verge of tears. She felt as she were being pulled into depths of water that was too vast for her and was being forced to tread through high waves.

One day, Mam glanced at her from the corner of the hearth, eyes sharper than they'd been in days, and beckoned her with a hand still pale from rest. Wordlessly, Meri dropped the dough she had been kneading and folded herself into her mother's arms. Her mam's hands were thinner than she remembered, but still warm, and she tucked Meri close into the hollow of her shoulder—where she used to rest as a child. Her mam held her for a very long time, and before releasing her, brushed Meri's hair behind her ear with a worn, trembling hand—an old gesture, quiet and full of memory.

"I know that this is hard," Mam whispered into her hair, "and I've asked you to do more than a girl your age should ever do. I sorely wish that I didn't need to ask for your help. Regardless, you've done beautifully, Meri, far better than I could have imagined. Why don't you go outside and enjoy the sunshine while I finish that bread."

As Meri stepped back, Mam gave a faint nod toward the dough, her mouth tugging into a soft smile—not just gratitude, but pride, spoken in the language of mothers who rarely used such words.

Meri nodded into her mam's shoulder and slipped on her boots. For the rest of that day, she walked the paths in the forest and noted how spring was beginning to take hold of the forest. Tiny blossoms budded on the trees, and she thought with a thrill that the elves would soon return—and with them, perhaps her papa. She told herself not to count on it, not truly. But still, the ache in her chest dared to believe.

…

…

When the elves returned that year, they did not return with Papa, and this time Meri did not meet them in the forest. That day, however, Eragon and Elida had traveled further into the depths of the trees than they were allowed to keep an eye out for the elves, and rode back with them. Meri was in her garden at the time with Tessie, showing her the blooming flowers as she cut their stems with a small knife. She thought that it was nice, since neither Eragon or Elida cared, to have someone to share her garden with.

When she heard the hoofbeats from the horses, her first thoughts were that her papa had returned but when she peered through the leaves and only saw the elves, she returned to her activity. Even the lure of the starlight horses was not enough to whisk her from the embittered feelings that rose within her. Tessie did not know enough to know that it was rude to hide from their guests, and so she was able to get away with secreting herself in her garden until Eragon hunted her down and told her that Mam wanted her.

"The elves are back," Eragon told her after delivering his message.

Meri already knew this, but even if she hadn't, she would have felt it—the way the forest had grown hushed, the way the breeze had shifted. She wished Eragon hadn't said it aloud. Naming it made it real. She wished they hadn't returned at all, and a small, sharp part of her wondered—would they take her mam next? And if they did, would all the work fall onto her?

"Alright," she said, gathering the flowers as slowly as possible. She planned on making an arrangement for the table since it looked nice and Mam loved having flowers in the cabin. It felt like the only offering she could make to keep something soft—something still hers. "Did Mam say what she wanted?"

"No," Eragon drawled the word out slowly. He gave her a suspicious look, one eyebrow raised. "Mimi, did you already know that the elves were here?"

Meri wasn't a liar, if only because she was caught every time she tried to lie, so instead of answering she did what her mam did whenever she didn't want to answer something. She changed the subject. "How far into the forest did you take Lark? I bet Mam wouldn't be happy if she knew that you two went past the boundaries."

"Who cares? You go into the forest all the time and nothing ever happens to you," he shot back. "I don't see why I can't! I'm as old as you were when Papa and Mam let you walk the trails!"

"I have a sword and a bow."

"Only because Papa isn't back with mine!" Eragon crossed his arms over his chest, cheeks puffed out like a sulky squirrel. "And you never let me borrow yours!"

She got to her feet. "That's because it's mine! Not that it stops you from taking it," she said, hugging the flowers to her chest.

"I haven't taken your stuff in a long time," he grumbled, then glanced at the cabin and deflated a little. "Mam's not gonna be happy that we're arguing."

Meri gave him a hard look. "You keep your mouth shut and I'll keep mine shut."

"Agreed," said Eragon, turning on the little girl between them. "You too, Tessie. You gotta keep your mouth shut too."

"Okay!" Tessie agreed happily without truly knowing what she was agreeing to. She walked over to Eragon and held up her hands. "I want up!"

After he picked her up the three children headed into the cabin. The lady elf was at the table, holding the babe in her arms. Meri thought that Mam must have just handed him to her because she was standing near the elf.

"He's beautiful," Arya murmured, her voice hushed with wonder. The way she cradled the child—fingers splayed gently along his back—spoke to a deep and unexpected tenderness. "I thought that Brom would be here to greet this little one. Does he know of him?"

Mam shook her head. "I haven't been able to get in contact with him since he left," she said. "I hoped that you might have heard from him."

"I have not." The elf's eyebrows drew together. "I was not told his plans or any news. There are a few people I could reach out to and ask, but there's a chance they will know as little as I."

"Even if they know nothing, I'd appreciate it greatly." Mam busied herself with cutting up pickled vegetables for soup before turning her attention to the children. "Meri, why don't you come help me with supper. I'll have Elida fetch water for those flowers."

Arya didn't look away from the baby, but she did speak again—this time more softly, to herself than anyone else. "Strange... that Brom would not be here. I thought he would at least send word."

Meri saw that Arya was preoccupied with the baby, and the man elves were elsewhere, and seeing it as an excuse not to have to greet them, busied herself with work. She greeted them all properly later before supper, having memorized how to do so fully now, but otherwise did not interact with them at all. Despite her resentment she woke early that next morning, well before dawn, and watched the elves disappear into the forest.

As they had the year before, they promised to return the following year. One of the male elves had knelt briefly to ruffle Eragon's hair, and another pressed a gentle kiss to Tessie's crown. Meri, standing at a distance, had said nothing. She only watched. She wondered, not for the first time, why the elves visited at all. Without Papa, there was no reason to come. Or so she told herself.

…
…

The summer Meri turned eleven, Papa returned late in the night. She and Mam were awake working on their sewing by the red glow of magicked light. Her mam had been planning a trip into town and was talking it over with Meri. She didn't want to linger there but could see no other way that it would happen unless she took all the children with her. They needed supplies; fabric, jars, ink, and other things. Not to mention boots, both Meri and Eragon had outgrown theirs over the winter.

"I think that I'll take the boys to the market and get what we need," Mam was saying. "When I come back, we'll all go to the cobbler. Do you remember where he's at?"

Meri nodded. She had gone to town three times a year with Papa (until he left) and knew the town well. Mam had never gone, having to stay behind with the children. "Near the southern gate near the smithy," she told her. "Papa goes there first because he's old and takes a while to complete the order. Normally, we come back for the boots in the autumn."

"I wish that you and Eragon were old enough to make the trip together." Mam set aside her sewing and looked toward the door. She was silent for a long moment.

Meri had been busy daydreaming of the thought of leaving the cabin with only her brother. Of the routes they would take, the sights they might see, and the arguing there was sure to be. Was there such a thing as dayterrors? "Can't I go alone?" she asked. "He's annoying."

Mam gave her knowing smile. "All brothers are that way but when the two of stop arguing long enough to work with each other you work well together. The two of you balance each other out," she said and then paused and let out a sigh. "But, no, it wouldn't be wise for you to go alone. The world isn't kind to a woman who travels with only herself."

She didn't see how. Not when she could defend herself, and was about to say as much when Mam stiffened and quickly got to her feet, telling her to stay where she was. Mam pulled out a sharp looking blade from somewhere within her skirts as she walked to the door and slipped into the darkness.

Meri did as she told until the door shut and Mam vanished into the night, and then she looked around for weapon and, finding the knife she used for skinning animals, she grabbed it before peering out of the window. In the distance she saw two silhouettes of people. One she knew to be her mam and another a man, and after a long moment, she realized just who it was. She didn't know that she dropped the knife to ground, or when she was running out the door toward him only that when she barrowed into him, his arms enveloped her.

Her mam must have told him about how much she had been learning over the last months because whatever conversation that had been having stopped instead of switching into the Ancient Language. The buzz of their words still hung in the air like tiny buzzing insects, and she remembered then that she was supposed to still be inside the cabin.

Papa was the first to speak. His voice sounded faded as if it came from somewhere far away. "What are you doing awake, little flower?"

Meri took in a breath, smelling the dirt and sweat and travel that langered around them. His arms were thinner than she remembered them being. Thinner but stronger. "I've been helping sew," she told him before stepping away. "How long will you be here?"

Papa ran his hands over his face. He had a short beard now, and his hair was longer than it had been before. "Not long enough," he said and pausing he glanced at her mam, "but longer than I should. Let's go inside where there's light so that I can see the both of you properly. Is there any supper left over? I haven't had a chance to eat yet."

"Would you go inside and warm up supper for your father?" Mam asked her. It was less of a question and more of a request, and not one she would be refusing. Not when her mam was using her 'I want no nonsense from you so you best do as you're told' tone. "Your father and I need to finish speaking. We'll be along shortly."

Meri nodded and returned to the cabin, shutting the door firmly behind her. She didn't hear her parents speaking when she placed her ear to the wood of it but knew that they were. Instead of standing around waiting to get caught attempting to eavesdrop, she did as she was told.

Both she and her mam knew that there wasn't much left over from supper, certainly not enough for Papa to have for a meal, so she went through their storage and made him something simple. By the time the kasha was done and bread toasted, her parents had finished their conversation and walked into the cabin.

They went straight to the sleeping room and were there for a very long time, only coming to the table when Meri peaked on them and saw that they were watching the baby sleep. Papa was first to move. He ran a shaking hand over his hair and stepping to the living area, muttered lowly under his breath.

In the light of the fire, she saw that he had lost weight. That his clothes hung loosely around his frame, and were torn in many places. Not for the first time, she wondered what it was that he had been doing all this time. She watched the way he ate, as well, and that he ate as if it were luxuriously, as if he hadn't eaten a real meal for a long while. His hands were chafed and his nails broken and full of dirt.

Her lips pressed together, and she lay her head on her arms atop the table as she watched him. "Papa," she voiced after he had finished his meal. "I have a question for you."

"Hmm?" he hummed, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed like a spoiled cat lavishing in the sun.

Meri tucked her legs beneath her and sat up. "Why did you teach me to fight but no one else?" Papa opened a single eye and studied her but said nothing. She took it as a silent invitation to continue, "I've had a sword since before I was Eri's age but he still has a wooden practice sword. He has a sling and I have a bow. Mam says that she won't teach him all that she teaches me even though he's a boy and I am not. The women in town and in all the stories don't carry weapons but Mam does, and I've been learning to fight for years. I don't think that it's normal, is it? For women to know how to fight and such, I mean."

Her papa continued his silence, and Mam looked as if she had something she wanted to say but would not. Not for the first time in her life, Meri wondered if there was a way for a silent conversation to be held because if there was one was certainly being had between her parents now. She wondered too about their secrets. Her parents seemed to have many of them, things that only they seemed to know.

Finally, when Papa spoke his voice was soft. "Tonight isn't the right time to speak about this but you're right. Not tomorrow but the next day, the three of us will talk. There's something else we need to talk about anyhow. What we all need right now is sleep. I'm so tired, my flower, that I can feel it in my bones."

Meri nodded and fought back a yawn. She didn't want to go to bed and wake up to realize that this moment had all been a dream since she wasn't completely sure that her papa had truly returned and she hadn't imagined it all. But when Mam urged her to go, she went without a fight thinking that even the best moments, dreams or not, had to come to an end.

…

Her papa was still there come morning but with the other children now awake and demanding his attention, she got little time with him and went about her chores in a stupor. There were no lessons that day, instead she sat at the table and listened to whatever tales Papa told the children of his travel. Meri thought that his words weren't the truth, or at least the whole truth, but were instead crafted to fill their curiosity.

She thought that whatever the truth was, that it was greater than even his greatest tales, and that it better be for him to be away for so long without sending word. Someday she would get the truth from him, she decided, and then she would know his tale in full.

But a part of her already feared she knew. She feared it in the way she sometimes feared mirrors at night—that they might show something back she hadn't meant to see. Her papa had that look again, the one he wore when someone asked a question he had no wish to answer. And Meri had too many questions to count.

She didn't ask them. Not yet. But she watched him more closely, and in her chest, something old and quiet began to stir—like a story she used to tell herself, slowly turning into something else. A story where her father was an adventurer. A protector. A man shaped like the memory she needed him to be.

Now the edges of that story began to curl and blacken like old paper held too close to flame.

That next day her mam took her into the forest while Papa stayed with the littles. They sat in a small glade of wild grass and lavender, and ate a small lunch. She and her mam talked and foraged, and on their way home they splashed in the shallows of a small river.

The day was just for them, her mam had told her, and that the day was meant to be cherished. And indeed, it was. It was a day Meri would remember much later in her life with a mix of fondness and sorrow. Longing for the time that had passed—before the truth was spoken, when the ache in her chest still had a shape she could pretend to name.

When they got back to the cabin, her papa was waiting for them outside. The younger children were already in bed, and they had something very important to share.

Papa had set out a quilt on the ground and as they watched the stars bloom into the twilight sky, her parents shared with her the truth of her true father. He was no adventurer as she thought him to be, nor had he died protecting her mam. He wasn't even a good man but one who had done horrible things to those around him. They told her how he was a dark knight of the king's, who yielded a terrible beast of fire and death. That he had hurt and betrayed those he should have cared for.

She was told that when her mam was not much older than Meri was now, he had tricked her into going with him and pretended to love her. Her parents told her how later after Meri was born, the two of them (Mam and Papa) had met in the gardens of his estate, and how years after meeting that they had planned their escape. How they had fled the dark gates of the knight's castle into the wilds far beyond.

Meri was silent as she took in this information. A strange stillness pressed through her, like the hush before a storm. The stars above, so bright a moment ago, now seemed far and cold. "Is that who we're hiding from? Morzan and his dragon?" she asked them after a long time. "I know that we're hiding from something, and that's why we moved so much and why we're in this forest with the elves instead of being closer to town. It's all because of him, isn't it?"

Mam closed her eyes and, ever so slowly, she nodded. "Yes, Meri, it's because of him."

Meri was trembling again but not from fear but anger. Not a loud anger—something colder, deeper, like frost in her ribs. Tears shined in her eyes as her anger grew. "He's why I'm learning so much about swordcraft," she said. It wasn't a question. "It's to what? Fight him? You cannot really think that I'd be able to defeat a Dragon Rider. I'm not that stupid! They're too powerful!"

"Morzan is very powerful, Meri, there's no denying that but we do not expect you to defeat him," her papa told her gently. "Ridding the world of him and protecting you is mine and your mother's job. Yours is to know enough to be able to run if you see him and to be able to defend yourself from his or our enemies if they ever learn of your existence."

She thought over her life, how protective her parents were of her whenever they went into town. How careful they seemed compared to other people. And the many lies they told the locals. Of the many, many things that they had done throughout her life that did not seem normal to her. Each one now seemed to echo with his name.

She remembered her seventh namesday, how Mam had pulled her aside to say she was growing fast—too fast—and pressed a flower-petal crown into her hair with a softness that now felt false. She remembered Papa tightening the straps of her training gear in silence, the way his eyes sometimes didn't quite meet hers. So many signs—so many memories—tilting now into new meaning.

She was breathing too fast. Her hands were shaking.

Because the truth wasn't just about Morzan.

The truth was that something had always been off inside her. That she'd always felt different. Like her name didn't sit right in her mouth unless Papa said it. Like her hands knew how to fight before they understood why. Like the words in the Ancient Language came easier than they should. Like she was always waiting for someone to discover the wrongness inside her and give it a name.

And now they had.

"Is my name even 'Meri' or was it made up?" she asked. "An alias, I think it's called. Like when we go into town and use different names."

"'Meri' is a shortened version of your name," said Papa. "Your proper name is Muirgheal."

She jumped to her feet, her hands clenched into fists. Her eyes welled up with burning tears as she looked between them. What other great and dangerous secret remained unsaid? All this time, I didn't even know my name. How could you keep something so important from me? Who am I, really? Meri or Muirgheal whoever she might be? she thought but she said, "You've lied to me!"

"No, we haven't," her papa told her gently. "There's been much that we haven't been able to tell you, Meri, but we've never outright lied. It was not safe for you know, and now it's no longer safe for you not to know. Morzan's search grows ever nearer and you need to aware what to look out for." Papa leaned forward, and his eyes caught hers. His face was serious but caring and gentle. But even in the calm of his gaze, she felt something inside her fracture—not sharply, but with the slow, splintering ache of a tree bowing beneath snow. Her hands fell to her sides like they no longer belonged to her. When he patted the ground beside him, she sat, stiff and wary. His touch was soft as he took her hands and smoothed her fingers open in his palm, but she no longer trusted softness. Not tonight. "If he finds you, he will take you to his home, and we won't be able to reach you. He's the one who gave you that scar on your back when you were still a babe. Younger than Tessie is now. Morzan is dangerous and won't treat you with kindness because you are his daughter but quite the opposite. If anything, he would expect more than you could ever give."

"We wanted you have a happy childhood without the shadow of Morzan looming over you," Mam added after a moment. "Yet, now the threat of him seems to coming closer and closer, and you're old enough to know the truth. We're not trying to scare you but rather we're wanting to prepare you."

The woman was a mere shadow in the dark. Meri looked at her mam as a chill washed over her. "Would you come after me if he took me?"

Mam looked down and did not answer. It was Papa who answered. "We would do everything we could to get to you, little flower," he said gently, tightening his grip. "But you have to understand that Morzan has wards on his fortress that even I cannot get through. Not yet. Morzan is a powerful man and quite skilled in his spellwork. Until he is defeated, none of us are safe."

It wasn't the answer that she had been looking for, and despite the warm night she shivered, but asked no more questions. If she didn't ask, she wouldn't have to know what other terrors her parents had to tell her. Silence, she decided, could be a good thing.

…

Papa stayed a full two weeks, longer than usual, and before he left, he asked something of her—not in jest or affection, but with the solemnity of a vow. In the Ancient Language, he bid her promise not to speak a word of what she'd learned—not to Eragon, not to Elida, not until the day it became necessary. The words sealed themselves into her bones the moment she spoke them, quiet and weighty as snow settling on boughs. But Meri didn't mind. She hadn't wanted to speak of it anyway. If it had been her choice alone, the truth would have folded itself into some dark drawer, locked and forgotten.

And for a time, it did. With Papa gone again and the rhythms of the household pressing forward, it was easy to pretend. She buried the knowledge beneath chores and laughter, beneath the soft ache of new stitching and the warmth of bread rising. But she felt it return in flickers—each time Mam drew a blade from its sheath, each time Meri gripped the hilt of her own and remembered why. The weight of her training shifted. Once she'd fought with joy, with firelight in her lungs. Now she fought with silence in her chest, each movement a form of remembering.

When her legs ached from drills, she ran. Into the woods, past the limits Mam had once set, down paths Papa had carved for her. Not the same, but close enough. She told herself it was training. She told herself she was preparing. That if Morzan ever came, she'd outrun him. That if he reached for her, he'd find nothing soft left to claim.

She ran until her lungs burned and the trees blurred at the edges. She ran until she could almost hear her father's whistle, almost believe he'd let her follow next time. She'd join him, she swore it beneath the canopy. Not someday. Soon. There had to be a way. She just needed to be faster. Smarter. Stronger.

Someday, she promised, she would be the shadow behind the dark knight—not cowering, not fleeing—but watching, waiting. Ready.

…
…

The nightmares began as winter swept down from the high reaches of the valley, its breath a slow hush of white across the world. Giant flakes drifted from the sky in a dreamy spill, cloaking the frozen earth like sleep falling over a child. Meri stood beneath the byre's low arch, bucket in hand, and watched the snowfall blur the horizon. It was the kind of snow that hushed the world—too soft to fear, too quiet to trust.

She had been milking the goat. The cow had died during the dry summer, and the calf—bull-born and restless—had been sold soon after. Elida, in some fit of mischief, had named the goat Happy, which needled Meri in a way she could never explain. The creature was ornery, sour-eyed, and seemed to look through her rather than at her, its gaze pale as spoiled milk. Happy had nothing to do with the dreams, but the two arrived together, as if summoned by the same unseen thread. And when Elida fell ill, caring for the goat fell to Meri, though she did so with the same grim resolve she gave to weeding thistles.

She didn't mind tending Mam's horse—she loved the steadiness of it, the scent of warm hide and oiled leather, the breath that misted her shoulder when they stood together beneath the sky. But Happy? Happy was a curse in wool.

The illness came without warning. Eragon fell first, his skin flushed and damp as riverstone in spring. He had been the one closest to Ceunon during Mam's last trip, and Mam, worry-creased and tired, told Meri to stay away—to keep to the garden, the trails, the outer woods. She even let Meri ride the horse beyond their usual paths, whispering spells over her shoulders and tucking food into her satchel with hands that lingered too long.

And so Meri obeyed, and kept her distance.

The days filled with labor. The cold bit deep, but the air was sharp and real, and for the first time the weight of winter's work fell fully to her. She chopped and gathered, salted and carried, eyes always scanning for the storm that might come next. Eragon helped when he could, and by the time the first snows came, they had managed what they needed. But the dreams had already begun.

She didn't speak of them at first—not even to herself. They came in flashes: red fire curling through darkness, a shape too large to name looming behind her, a pressure at her spine that woke her gasping. Sometimes she remembered claws, or the sound of breath that wasn't hers. Always, the sense of being hunted. As if something remembered her from a place she had never been.

She told herself it was just the fever in the house. That her thoughts were too full of worry. That Papa's stories had left traces. But the dreams returned, and with them, a trembling she couldn't control.

Even when the family began to recover—and she too caught the sickness late, curling in sweat and shivers—sleep offered no peace. The dreams deepened. She woke drenched, breath sharp, chest aching from the panic she couldn't name. Her mam noticed the shadows under her eyes and pressed warm tea into her hands—honeyed, soothing, meant for children with tired hearts.

But it only thickened the dreams. That night, the nightmare trapped her beneath black water, a crimson light burning behind her eyelids. She woke thrashing, the blanket tangled like vines around her limbs, and knew she would never drink the tea again. After a while, Mam stopped leaving it out.

It wasn't magic that saved her. It wasn't even Mam.

It was Eragon.

He came to her one morning, still pale from his illness, his hands full of wood and warmth and purpose. He had brought both swords—the one Papa carved for him, and the one Meri no longer had the heart to name—and asked her to train him. He asked without teasing, without pretending it was a game. And though she said nothing at first, she followed him into the barn.

They tied the animals aside, swept the floor, and began.

They fought until they could no longer hold their arms steady. Until sweat clung to their brows and their legs gave out from under them. That night, Meri slept.

And the next day, they sparred again. And again.

Her dreams didn't vanish—but they changed. Some nights, sleep still came slow, but when it came, it came heavier. The blades carved a path back into her body. Into rhythm. Into self.

With each passing day, Eragon's movements grew more fluid, more sure. He still lacked her instinct, her timing, but he met her strikes with less flinch, more fire. Once, she bruised his collarbone so badly it flowered purple, and Mam narrowed her eyes but said nothing. Meri began to feel the weight of purpose again—less as a burden, more as a tether.

Eventually, Elida joined them, dragging the old stick behind her like a banner. Meri handed Eragon the dulled sword and passed the wooden one to Elida. The younger girl mimicked them with joy rather than precision, but her enthusiasm lent the sessions something new—laughter.

They weren't supposed to swing from the old barn rope.

But they did.

They tied a sack to the end, sat Elida atop it, and pulled her back as far as they dared. When they let go, she shrieked—half warrior, half bird—and flew straight into the water trough. She emerged like a drowned kitten, sputtering and grinning. Meri laughed until her stomach hurt. When Elida disappeared to dry off, she and Eragon took down the sack and swore an oath of silence.

Elida didn't tell.

But the next day, she returned with a price: Meri's sword, for one week. In exchange, silence.

So it was agreed.

Eragon named the blades soon after. "Even wood deserves honor," he said with a sage nod. The blunted one he called Splinters. The old practice sword, scarred by time and memory, became Sympathy. He claimed the names held balance: one to echo pain, one to hold it.

From then on, the swords passed between them like stories retold—but Meri always left the barn with Sympathy at her back.

…
…

The rain came like a spell gone sour. Winter melted not into warmth but into mud and flood, as if the forest itself had forgotten how to breathe. Rivers overran their banks and spilled into the roots of trees; trails disappeared beneath puddled mire. The cabin groaned beneath the weight of it, wood swelling in the doorframes, smoke curling slow and stubborn from the chimney.

Snow had been easier. With snow came quiet, stillness, the press of cold that could be named and endured. But rain was restless. Rain soaked through walls and tempers. Rain kept them inside.

Trips to the barn were timed like raids—swift, strategic, often ending in soaked hems and laughter that didn't quite reach the eyes.

Tessie had begun joining their swordplay by then. At first, it was only to hold a blade and mimic their stances—too small to strike, but eager to be named. Elida let her win with theatrical groans, and Meri pretended not to notice when the girl twisted her wrist the wrong way. But when Tessie finally disarmed her sister with a genuine clatter, Meri knelt and told her, "You'll be a warrior yet. Like Papa." Tessie had turned scarlet beneath her blonde curls. Eragon nearly dropped Sympathy.

"Do you know when he's coming home?" he asked, testing the weight of the blade in his hand. "It's almost time for the elves, but we haven't heard anything."

"No and no," Meri replied from atop a bale of roughage, her boots tapping the wood. "Mam hasn't said a word. Could be summer. Could be never."

"Tell us if you hear something? You always know first." He sliced the air behind Tessie, playful but uncertain. "And Mam lets you stay up."

"If you really want to stay up late," Meri grinned, "you could embroider. I'm sure Mam would be thrilled. You've got such long, dainty fingers—you'd be a dream with a needle."

Eragon pulled a face. "How about I don't and you do all that stuff instead?"

"And if I refuse to mend your trousers?" she challenged.

"You won't."

"I might."

"I don't want to stab myself with needles," Elida cut in, brushing Happy's coarse fur. "Besides, Tessie wants to learn. Right?"

Tessie nodded, breathless with hope. "Will you teach me, Mimi?"

Meri hesitated. Not out of cruelty, but something smaller, quieter. Her evenings sewing were the one space that belonged only to her and Mam—thread between fingers, stories whispered low. She couldn't give that up. Not even for Tessie.

"No. It's boring. And you're too young." But when the child's face faltered, she softened. "I'll teach you to read instead. That way, you can read stories anytime you want."

"Okay!" Tessie beamed. "Can we go now?"

The rain was still thick as wool, and Meri shook her head. The three of them fell quiet again, lulled by the drumming of water overhead, each listening as if the storm might say something new.

"Your trousers," Elida said to Eragon, "are doomed."

"Then I'll wear them to the grave," he declared, and fled toward the cabin like it was a fortress.

…

The hard rain continued all that spring, soaking the woods until the very soil seemed to sigh beneath the weight of it. Trees stood ankle-deep in waterlogged roots, their bark slick with moss and lichen, and the trails turned to narrow veins of mud that swallowed footprints whole. When the time came and passed for the elves to show, Eragon convinced Meri to brave the rain-cloaked forest and search the pathways anyway. There was no trace—no hoofprints in the soft ground, no shimmer of silver tack, no scent of cedar and moonlight. The trees held only rain and silence.

Soon the search lost its shape and became something else—wandering for the sake of it, restless with a kind of spring-long cabin-fever. Elida came sometimes, grumbling at the wet hems of her cloak, and Tessie too, though she tired quickly and begged to be carried when her small legs gave out. Neither older sibling wanted to haul her, so most days it was just Meri and Eragon, slipping along half-forgotten paths with the rain in their ears and the mist clutching low to the ground like the hem of a drowned dress.

One day, with Eragon curled in the corner with a book, Meri took Tessie instead. She didn't want to be alone with the silence inside the cabin—so thick lately it felt like it pressed on her chest. Tessie, with her sticky fingers and uneven braids, at least made noise. They took a path not often used, winding through a thicket of hawthorn and trailing moss. The trees opened near a small crag that overlooked the river. Meri had no plan to let either of them get too close—she only wanted to see how much the water had risen.

But already the air felt different here. Still and breathless. The forest's usual hush had thinned into something more uneasy, like a lullaby sung off-key. A place waiting to be remembered, or mourned.

They heard the river before they saw it. It spoke first in hisses and snarls, a guttural language of foam and stone, louder than it had ever been—no longer a ribbon of life winding through the valley but a beast let loose, clawing through the underbrush and swallowing paths whole. Its heart was a white rush, churning around tree trunks like broken limbs, heaving itself over the banks in violent, frothing hunger. Before Tessie could edge any closer, Meri gripped her arm with a snap-sharp motion, the kind that left red fingerprints.

They stood, breathless, watching it writhe. The air felt strange here—taut and off-kilter, as if the forest had stopped breathing. The birds had fled. Even the wind held still, afraid.

In the warmth of summer, this path had no such teeth. It wasn't a trail so much as a suggestion—worn in by bare feet and deer hooves, leading up through thorn and nettle to a crag where the cliff's edge met sky. Too steep to climb all the way, but halfway up, there was a ledge carved by time and the patience of water. From there, Papa had taught them how to dive—first Eragon, then Meri—his hands strong at their backs, his voice echoing with laughter. The water then had been slow and shining, thick with sunlight and dragonflies. They'd plunged in, over and over, until their fingers shriveled and their teeth chattered from joy.

It had been a good place. A bright place. But even bright places cast shadows when the light shifts.

Now it watched them like something wronged, and Meri did not let Tessie linger.

The path to the crag could also be used to cut across the woodland, bypassing the river altogether to a different trail that would lead home. This was her plan—to return that way and tell Mam about how swollen and snarling the river had become. But plans were small things in the face of wild land, and Meri had not accounted for how soft the earth had turned beneath days of rain. It gave without warning, crumbling underfoot with a sickening groan, and the world tipped.

She and Tessie dropped like pebbles through a sleeve of wet air. The river didn't catch them so much as consume them—its white jaws opening wide to swallow them whole. The foam curled above like breath, like smoke, like a hand drawing shut the cover of a book.

The cold was not a feeling. It was a thing. A sharp-toothed shadow that reached beneath her skin and pulled. It drove into her joints and pressed behind her eyes, numbing thought into instinct. The current hurled her like a rag-doll against itself, and when her head broke the surface, her gasp was a wound opening.

Somewhere—high or low, inside or out—there was a scream.

"Tessie!" she shouted, but it felt like shouting into wind. The roar swallowed her voice and returned nothing.

Then—hair. A small pale knot of it, floating ahead like a ghostlight in the dark. Meri swam. Or tried to. The river did not want her to. It pulled at her legs, sucked at her back, slithered beneath her belly like it meant to strip her down to bone.

She reached Tessie just as the girl's panic surged—scrabbling up onto Meri's shoulders, driving them both under. For one breathless instant, there was only green-black water and limbs. Meri kicked free, broke through with a gasp, and caught hold of her sister's arm.

She searched—half-blind, coughing—for anything that did not move. A branch. A rock. The tooth of some creature that had not yet noticed her. Her hand closed on something she could not name.

Later, she would not remember how they reached the shore. Only the burning in her lungs, the slime that slicked her fingers, and the way something sharp had sliced her palm.

She was cold. Not shivering, but hollowed out. Like frost had rooted in her ribs and bloomed outward. Her limbs jittered without rhythm, and when she tried to stand, her knees buckled as if they belonged to someone else.

Beside her, Tessie lay coughing and, not knowing what else to do, Meri forced herself to sit up and slapped her back like she would do a babe's to get them to burp. Water tumbled from between her lips and the girl began to cry, her breath coming in with uneven spasms.

A clap of thunder shook the sky above them, heralding rain that refused to come. Tessie let out a whimper and curled into Meri, her whole body shaking. Whether the girl was shaking from the cold or from fear, she didn't know. All Meri knew was that if she didn't move them now, she'd fall asleep in the mud and the cold would take them both.

She forced herself to stand, her legs quivering beneath her like saplings in wind, and pulled Tessie onto her back. The weight was slight but unwieldy, and the girl's damp limbs hung like seaweed. Around them, the forest loomed strange and hushed—as if the trees had drawn closer to watch. The sky hung low, bruised and still. Meri realized she had strayed into a part of the wood that bore no name in her mind, where even the birds did not call.

There was nothing to do but follow the river upstream, hoping it would lead them back to something familiar. Her feet sank into moss and muck; roots curled like fingers over the trail, and more than once she stumbled, catching herself just before they went down again. Her breath rasped. Tessie's shallow wheeze sounded against her neck like the tick of some distant clock.

But they had not gone as far as she feared. After a time, the shape of the land softened into knowing. A crooked stump she'd once mistaken for a wolf. The splintered tree struck by lightning the year Papa had stayed for spring. She turned toward home, legs leaden, the scent of smoke just beginning to thread through the damp.

Tessie's sobs crumbled into coughs that clawed her throat raw, and still Meri carried her, one step at a time. As they reached the edge of the meadow, the clouds at last gave up their burden. Rain fell—not in sheets, but in a slow, aching drizzle that soaked them through. The house rose like a mirage at the clearing's edge.

And when Meri opened the door, the warmth inside struck her like a slap. Mam sat with the babe tucked in her lap, her face serene and unaware. And Meri, emptied and unraveling, let her knees give way. Tessie slipped from her back like a dropped shawl, and Meri broke open—her sobs raw as river rock, everything she had held at bay pouring out in shuddering waves.

…

In the days following the fall into the river, Tessie became increasingly ill. There was no fever, no rash, no mark of poison or wound—but something unseen had settled in her lungs. She no longer spoke, only made sounds that resembled the cooing of a babe, wet and breathless. Her breathing grew shallow, and she coughed even in sleep, her chest rising and falling in frantic, fluttering stutters. Sometimes her body would seize in a fit of hacking that left her small frame trembling and her mouth tinged faintly with pink. When she was awake, her eyes didn't always follow movement, as if she were underwater still, seeing everything through the warp of some veil. She clutched her chest with both hands, as though something deep within it burned or bloated or broke.

Meri suffered nothing of what her sister did. The worst she felt was a pain in her head, a pressure behind her eyes that pulsed with the rain and would not lift. It only eased after she confessed it to her mam, who pressed her palms to Meri's temples and whispered old words in the Ancient Language—the same spell she used to coax werelights into being, or to light a fire when the flint grew stubborn.

After that, Meri rarely left Tessie's side. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her skirt hem soaked from kneeling too long, and whispered the old stories they both loved. Tales about foxes in the hills, brave milkmaids who outwitted trolls, and wildflowers that grew from the footprints of wandering stars. She reminded Tessie of summer games, of swimming with Papa, of the story they'd once tried to write together. She told her Papa would be home soon, that Mam was working hard, that everything would be alright—though the words felt brittle in her mouth.

Eragon and Elida visited too, quiet and unsure, but they didn't stay long. After a few minutes with no change, they always drifted back to other corners of the house.

When Mam came—often hollow-eyed from tending the baby—she'd press Meri to step outside, to eat, to rest her voice. Then she would lie beside Tessie on the pallet, her fingers combing gently through damp curls. Meri had thought, for a long time, that Mam could do anything. But now, watching her, it seemed even she did not know how to fight something she could not name. No matter how many words she poured into her daughter's skin, how many times her hands lit briefly with magic, nothing changed.

Four days after they fell into the river Tessie stopped breathing sometime in the night.

…
…

They laid the girl to rest in the shadowed woodland behind the cabin, where the moss grew thick and the roots curled like fingers into the dark earth.

Eragon picked out the spot and dug the hole while Mam wrapped her body in cloth. She wouldn't let anyone else near, and as she buried the body she moved as if in a trance. The children were ordered back into the cabin as she shoveled the dirt, but Eragon stayed behind with her, refusing to move even when she screamed at him to go inside. He watched over their mam, Meri's borrowed short sword held protectively in his hands, until at last she came inside long after the younger children had gone to bed.

In the days that followed, Mam seemed to float through the cabin like a ghost of herself. She would forget things mid-task—leave water to boil dry, or stare at the same spoon for minutes at a time, unmoving. Some days she never dressed. Other days she scrubbed the floors until her knuckles bled. She did not weep. Not where the children could see. But at night, Meri sometimes heard her breathing catch like something breaking behind the wall, too small for words. She slept with the babe curled tight against her chest and did not stir until he cried. Her voice, once a thread of strength in the home, fell to silence. When she spoke at all, it was only to give instruction, never comfort.

Meri and Eragon shouldered most of the work, their small hands learning the rhythm of chores too heavy for them. They dropped wood, forgot to strain the curds, tripped over the broom. Their mistakes piled quietly, like bruises beneath a tunic—unseen but aching. But they kept at it. They didn't speak of grief outright, but it lived in them like a second breath. Sometimes Meri would pause mid-task and stare at Tessie's chair, then shake herself and scrub harder. Sometimes Eragon would disappear behind the byre and return with red eyes and a basket of wet kindling.

When no one else was looking, they would meet outside the cabin in the hush before dawn or just after dusk, their voices low as moth wings. They whispered about Papa—if the elves had taken him too far to hear, if he even knew Tessie was gone. Meri wondered aloud once if maybe he'd dreamed of it. That maybe he'd wake up one morning with the ache of her name in his chest and not know why.

Eragon tried to draw maps from memory—lines in the dirt leading toward imagined outposts and places he'd never seen. Meri tried to write a message once, but tore it up before she finished the second line. Both of them were frightened—not of the quiet exactly, but of how easily Mam had settled into it, as if silence had grown roots inside her. Her eyes no longer watched the door. They only stared at the hearth, as if waiting for the last coal to turn black.

She came back to life—slowly, as if surfacing from beneath water—when the elves returned to their valley, sometime after the rain had ceased for good. This time, Papa rode with them atop a starlight horse, his silhouette stark against the pale sky, and carried only a small pack, worn and faded, not the one he'd left with. As he stepped through the door, the room fell silent. Mam looked up from where she sat near the hearth, her eyes hollow with waiting. Papa scanned the faces of his children, counting—one, two, three—then stopped.

He didn't ask.

He knew.

Something inside him folded. The children had never seen him weep before—not when the cow died, not even when Meri had once vanished in a storm—but now, as he crossed the room and gathered Mam into his arms, his shoulders shook. The sob that escaped him was low and hoarse, like a wounded animal, and as he held her, his tears soaked the shoulder of her tunic. It was the sound that undid them—the sound of someone strong breaking.

Meri stepped back first, her arms tightening around Conan. She murmured something to Elida, nudged Eragon, and with soft urgency shepherded the younger children into the barn before the grief in that room swallowed them too.

Meri pulled the younger children outside into the barn as the tears began to fall. Her hands shook around Conan, but she kept moving. When they reached the doorway, she saw that the elves had followed silently, their presence like mist curling at the edge of things. Fäolin stood among them—still and quiet, his gaze sweeping the barn not as a warrior but as someone used to shielding the edge of grief. He did not speak, but when Meri's gaze met his, he inclined his head, a gesture of simple respect. She wanted to yell—to tell them to leave, to go back to their shining horses and magic—but the weight in her throat made even breath difficult. Her actions could not undo what had already happened. Instead, she sank down in the straw, drew Conan close, and pressed her forehead to the crown of his head. The steadiness of his breath tethered her to the moment.

The lady elf, Arya, stayed when the men slipped away. She settled in the hay with quiet grace, folding herself between Eragon and Elida, who sat cross-legged and small, staring at their fingers as if the shape of their grief might be written there. The elf's presence was not intrusive. It was gentle, like warmth from a hearth one hadn't noticed until the cold receded.

Elida leaned lightly into Arya's side after a while, not looking up. Eragon, beside her, gripped his knees with white-knuckled fists. Neither had spoken much since the burial. They didn't quarrel. They didn't run. They were too quiet, and too still, and Meri felt something ache sharply at the sight of them—her brave sister and clever brother dulled at the edges like blades left in rain.

All she knew was that she missed Tessie—her bright smile, her silly little songs about frogs and sky-beans. She wanted to cry but didn't know how. Grief felt too big to fit in her chest, too wild to name. So she focused instead on Conan's rise and fall, on the way his lashes fluttered faintly against her skin, and let that be her anchor.

After what felt like a full season folded into a single afternoon, Arya began to sing. Her voice was low at first, like a stream just beginning to thaw. Then the words took shape—gentle, unfamiliar syllables that brushed the air like wind through pine. Elida joined, her voice thin and wavering, but she didn't stop. Even Eragon hummed beneath his breath. Something eased in Meri's shoulders at the sound. The grief didn't vanish, but it softened—briefly—as if held by the song, not crushed beneath it. For the first time in days, their breaths fell in rhythm—not alone in their sorrow, but part of something older and wide as the forest.

The elves loved children. Meri could feel it in the way Arya looked at them—not with pity, but with reverence. As if they were rare and growing things, still unfurling. As if the smallest of them mattered most of all. Glenwing lingered in the shadows too, his posture watchful but gentle, as though guarding seedlings in early frost. Fäolin remained nearby, wordless but present, standing just beyond the circle of straw with hands clasped loosely before him. His gaze never strayed from Arya, but when Elida's head fell against Arya's shoulder, something in his expression softened, a near-imperceptible shift—as if he, too, was honoring the children by simply staying.

"What do your people do when someone dies?" Eragon asked after the song had ended, his voice a whisper, as if afraid it might break the spell.

Arya glanced down at him, the corners of her mouth soft with sorrow. "Elves don't often die," she said. "We do not age as you humans do, but illness or blades can take us to the void. When one of us dies, we plant a tree and sing it into strength to honor the life once lived."

Eragon frowned, brows pinched. "Why a tree?"

"Why do you think our people chose trees?" Glenwing asked quietly as he stepped forward from the shadows.

"Trees are big," Elida supplied after a moment, raising her hands above her head, "and they're fat."

Eragon, after a long pause, added, "Not all trees. Some are skinny and weak... but most are strong. Like people. Like Mam."

Meri thought of the trees in the forest. They had always seemed wiser than the rest of the world—old and wordless, but watching. Their crowns had held back storms and sun alike, cupping her family in a kind of green hush that felt like shelter. They grew things without being told: birds in their branches, mushrooms at their feet, roots that broke stone and still held fast.

Papa once said their roots went deeper than memory. Maybe that's why Meri thought of them now—because her own memory had begun to fray, stretched thin by grief and silence. She imagined trees that bore fruit without asking if the season was right, trees that bloomed even after lightning split them. She imagined one growing where Tessie lay, stubborn and strange, twisting upward through shadow toward light.

Some trees, she thought, didn't grow straight or beautiful. Some split in two and kept growing anyway. Maybe those were the ones the elves meant.

Meri thought these things but said nothing. Instead, she edged herself and Conan back into the shadows, settling behind a hay bale as if it might make her vanish. She didn't think the elves planted trees for any of the reasons she'd imagined. Those were just thoughts she clung to so the grief wouldn't swallow her whole.

But Glenwing's gaze found her anyway—gentle, expectant. She knew she couldn't stay silent.

"Leaves fall," she said, her voice rough around the edges, "and come back again. Not always the same, but they do." She paused, fingers curling into the straw. "There's a poem in one of Papa's books. Says the seasons don't end—they just fold into each other. Maybe trees remember. Or maybe it's just something people say so they don't fall apart."

She hated how small her voice sounded. Like a child pretending to be wise.

Glenwing didn't correct her. He only nodded, as if what she said was more than enough.

"None of you are wrong," he said, settling near Elida with the quiet grace of someone who had walked through many winters. The girl blinked up at him, dazed but listening. "Our people live by the forest's breath. When one of us dies, we offer something back. A tree, sung into strength, so the forest remembers us—not with grief, but with growth."

There was a long silence, and then Eragon stirred, his voice quiet and unsteady. "Could we... do something like that for Tessie?" he asked the elves, though his eyes searched Meri's face.

Meri blinked slowly. Her mouth opened, then closed. She didn't trust herself to speak, not with the heat rising behind her eyes again. Eragon looked away first. "Even if it's not a tree," he mumbled, fidgeting with a bit of straw. "Maybe... a rosebush? Like the one in Mimi's garden. Would that still count, even if we're not elves?"

Arya's voice was soft, but sure. "It would be more than enough. To honor her with something living—something rooted—that is what matters. Ask your parents, and if they agree, we will help you sing it into strength. It would be our honor."

Eragon hesitated, then threw his arms around Arya in a grateful hug. "Thank you," he whispered, his voice brittle, as though it might break if he spoke again. Then he bolted toward the cabin like the words had given his legs wings—running not just with gratitude, but from the weight of everything too heavy to carry.

Meri watched him go, something aching behind her ribs. She rose more slowly, her limbs heavy, and offered Conan to Arya without a word. The elf took the child gently, as if she understood that this, too, was a kind of trust. Meri lingered a moment longer, her hand brushing Conan's hair once before letting go. That afternoon, she spent her time walking between the trees wondering if they lived in a forest or a burial ground.

…

Papa and Mam had agreed to Eragon's request, and two days after the elves arrived, they all gathered around the quiet rise where Tessie had been buried. At dawn, two elves slipped into the forest and returned by mid-afternoon carrying a sapling, cradled like something sacred. They said it would grow into a tree of rare beauty, though they would not name it, smiling gently as they said the kind was meant to be a surprise—a gift from the forest that chose for itself.

Mam and Papa had taken the baby and wandered far up the ridge, saying little, as if the silence between them might absorb the grief. Elida, too young to sit still with sorrow, had spent the morning parading Happy the goat across the valley, pretending they were visiting all the kingdoms of men. Meri didn't know what Eragon had done. Arya had asked to see her garden, and so Meri had stayed near the blooms she understood, speaking softly about each one's growth while the elf listened with the same quiet attentiveness she gave the trees.

When the elves returned, they gathered at Tessie's resting place. Meri caught a glimpse of Eragon lingering at the edge, fists clenched and eyes rimmed red, before he slipped away again like a breath held too long. Papa helped dig the hole for the sapling—his motions steady but stiff, like he was holding something back with every shove of the spade. When the planting began and the elves began their song, he stepped aside to stand beside Mam. Her face was obscured by loose strands of hair that had escaped her braid, but the way she held herself—spine straight, shoulders rigid—made Meri feel as if her mother, not the sapling, was being sung into stillness, into bark and bloom.

The elves sang the Song of the Forest, and for the first time, Meri understood why the wind sometimes sounded like voices. The melody shimmered like morning mist, winding through the clearing in threads of silver and green. The air itself seemed to hush and lean in. As they sang, the sapling trembled—not in wind, but as if waking. Its bark glistened, soft as breath, and its limbs stretched with aching grace toward the sunless sky. Leaves unfurled in slow spirals, and from their tender tips bloomed tiny pink blossoms that pulsed with a light not entirely of this world.

Magic swelled in her chest—cool, old, and fragrant with moss and memory. She felt it brush her skin like rain not yet fallen, and just then, something touched her arm. She blinked, the spell breaking, and turned to find her brother staring at her with wide, urgent eyes.

She tore her gaze away and saw her brother crouched beside her, tugging her arm like a younger version of himself—wide-eyed, frantic, the kind of look that meant something had gone terribly wrong and only she could make it right.

The song still shimmered in the air like a held breath, the tree unfurling behind them, but Meri followed him, her chest tight with unease. Whatever had driven him to pull her from such a sacred moment had to be real trouble.

"What did you do?" she hissed once they were beyond earshot. "If this isn't important, I swear—"

"Shut your mouth, Meri!" Eragon whispered, his voice pitched high with panic. "You have to see. Papa's going to skin me alive. But—it's… it's incredible. You won't believe it."

Her heart dipped low in her chest. "What did you do?"

"Just come on!" Eragon bounced on his toes, then flung the door open and darted inside.

At the threshold, something shifted. A small creature sat on the floor, crooning softly as it flapped damp wings. Its scales gleamed like crushed sapphire. Eragon knelt beside it, wide-eyed. "I found the egg this morning—it must've slipped out of one of the elves' packs. I touched it, and it cracked, and then… this came out."

Meri stared. Her vision blurred. That thing on the floor might have been no bigger than a cat, but it carried the shape from her dreams—the ones where blood steamed on stone and wings beat like thunder over flame. A nightmare stepped into the world, small and glittering and real.

She lunged.

Grabbing Eragon by the collar, she yanked him backward with a strength born of fear. "No!" she shrieked. "You can't have him! Get away, you beast!"

The dragon hissed, baring its teeth but retreating. Something tugged at her sleeve. She struck blindly—her elbow thudded into Eragon's brow, and he yelped, stumbling back.

"Stay away from him!" she shouted again. Her eyes locked on the creature, but her mind saw another—larger, crueler, red as firelight and slick with blood.

"It's not safe! Get away, Eri!" she cried as the dragon turned toward him again. She placed herself between them, fists clenched, wild with panic. "I said, get away!"

The dragon growled—a thin, warning sound, teeth bared but cautious. Something tugged at Meri's sleeve and she spun, elbowing hard. Eragon cried out, crumpling to the floor with his hands over his brow.

"What's wrong with—" he started to say, but Meri wasn't listening. Her breath came fast, vision tunneling. The hatchling shifted toward her brother, and the scream ripped from her throat before she knew she was making it.

"It's not safe! Get away, Eri!" Her voice cracked from the force. The dragon scuttled toward him, drawn by some invisible thread, and Meri surged forward. "I said—get away from him!"

The door slammed open behind her, and arms locked around her waist as she flew. She thrashed, nails and knuckles flailing. Papa grunted, staggering under her struggle.

"Selena, get her out of here!" he barked.

Mam's arms replaced his—unyielding, unshaken. Meri thrashed like a netted animal, kicking as she'd been taught, but Mam bore it without flinching, dragging her out as if she'd weighed nothing at all. The air tore from Meri's lungs in screams laced with venom, her voice hoarse from threats and curses dredged from every nightmare she'd ever swallowed. The words didn't feel like hers—just teeth and fire and fury.

Even when the door slammed shut behind them, she kept screaming. Her voice broke into sobs, then howls, the sound of something unraveling. Her limbs trembled without rhythm, her skin burning with fear that had unmoored itself from reason. She wasn't in the cabin anymore—she was somewhere else, where wings beat down like storms and heat seared through bone.

Outside, Mam didn't speak at first. Her breath came shallow, drawn like thread through a needle, and her grip around Meri tightened—not harshly, but with the trembling tension of someone trying not to break. She carried her swiftly to the byre, arms curled protectively, as if shielding her from something still lurking at the edge of sight, something not yet done. Inside, in the furthest corner, she set her down gently. The fight had drained from Meri, leaving only tremors. Her breath sawed in and out of her chest; her hands wouldn't stop clenching. Blood darkened the crescents beneath her nails. She stared at it, blankly, as if it had happened to someone else.

"You're safe, Meri," Mama was saying. Her hands were running through her hair. "Hush now, you're safe. Eragon is safe. Nothing is going to hurt him. The hatchling won't hurt him."

She took in a shattered breath. Tears streamed down her face. Her legs buckled and she collapsed into her mother, who caught her without a word. Mam's arms wrapped around her, steady and warm, but her breath came in shallow drags—one hand pressed flat against Meri's back, the other curled in her hair as if anchoring them both. They stayed there a long while, the world narrowing to heartbeat and breath.

When the storm inside her had quieted, Mam eased her upright with careful hands. "Look at me," she said gently, though her voice frayed at the edges. Meri did, blinking as if surfacing from deep water. She felt spent—like the world had been wrung out of her. Mam brushed her hair back with fingers that trembled slightly, then cupped her cheek. Her touch was warm, but her eyes held a deep ache, something knotted behind her gaze.

"That hatchling isn't going to hurt you or your brother," she murmured, her voice tight with the weight of too many fears carried too long. "But you cannot lash out at every dragon you see, my wild girl. Not all will be small… and not all will step back."

Meri nodded. She didn't know what had happened, only that she needed to protect her brother from the dragon. Shame washed over her like cold water. "I'm sorry, Mamma," she whispered. Her voice cracked around the words, like they'd caught on something sharp inside her. "I don't know what happened." But she did—at least the shape of it. One moment she had seen her brother, and the next, the world had twisted sideways. In the glint of the dragon's eye, she'd seen fire, and stone, and the echo of screams. She remembered blood—remembered a heat that wasn't real. Her body had reacted before her mind could catch up, and now shame spread cold over her ribs like frost after lightning. "I thought I was protecting him… but it wasn't like that at all."

Mam rubbed her cheek with her thumb and stood, helping her to her feet. "What matters is that no one is truly hurt," she said, taking her hand. They slowly made their way outside. "Let's go inside. You'll want to apologize to your father and Eragon… and the dragon."

Meri gave her mother a hard look, the kind born of fear wrapped in stubbornness, and more tears sprang into her eyes before she could blink them away. She tugged her to a halt and lowered her gaze to the dirt, her voice small and cracked. "Mam, wait," she breathed. "I don't think I can go inside. The dragons in my dreams… they're not like the others. They feel real. I don't wake up afraid—I wake up remembering. And those dreams… they don't fade."

She drew a shuddering breath. "I keep having them. Over and over. When I saw the baby dragon, it was like I was in the nightmare again, only this time I couldn't wake. It wasn't a memory. It was now. What if it happens again?"

Mam drew a tight breath and ran a hand over her face, glancing up at the stars as if they might offer her steadiness. Her other hand curled into the fabric of her skirt, knuckles white. Then, slowly, she knelt before Meri, her jaw working before the words came. Her voice was softer now, lined with weariness and a hint of fear she rarely let show. "Oh, Meri… why didn't you say something?" Her eyes searched Meri's face with a careful, aching tenderness. "I didn't know you remembered Morzan's dragon clearly enough to dream of it." She paused, then added, even more quietly, "How long has this been happening?"

Meri shrugged. "I don't know," she said, kicking at the dirt. "A while."

"That's why you haven't been sleeping well," Mam said, her voice low, almost regretful. "I knew something was wrong—I saw it in your eyes, the way you looked through things instead of at them. But when you started to seem better, I let it be. I thought maybe you'd found your footing again."

She drew in a slow breath, as if steadying herself against the ache. One hand lifted as if to brush Meri's cheek, then faltered in the space between them. "There's no easy cure for dreams like that. But we can't let them rule us. Come inside, Meri. Please."

When Meri didn't move, she added gently, "The hatchling won't hurt you, love. I promise."

"I'm not worried about the baby dragon!" Meri snapped, folding her arms tightly across her chest as if bracing against a storm. "You're not listening to me—really listening."

Mam's voice softened, but a crease deepened between her brows. "Then tell me, love. What is it I'm not hearing?"

Meri faltered. It wasn't that she had no words for what she was trying to say, she just couldn't. "Can't I just sleep in the barn tonight?"

Mam blinked, her sternness edged with something frayed. "No, Meri," she said, her voice firm but not unkind. "You are not an animal, and you don't belong out here in the cold. You have a bed, and you need rest. You don't have to go near the hatchling—but you do need to come inside."

Detecting that there was no fight to be won, Meri let her mam guide her back to the cabin. Her steps dragged, her fingers curling at her sides. She avoided the elves' gazes, muttered her apologies with lowered eyes, and picked at the supper as though chewing through straw. She didn't so much as glance at the hatchling perched on her brother's shoulder. The sight alone might have cracked something open inside her.

That night, sleep skittered from her like a startled fawn. Instead, she lay curled beneath her blanket, listening as her parents and the elves spoke in low, musical tones—the Ancient Language winding through the timbers like wind through branches. She caught pieces. The elves would not stay long. Eragon and the hatchling would leave soon, slipping deeper into the forest. The words felt like a stone dropped in her chest.

Then came the argument. First sharp words, then silence, then the clap of the door as Mam left. Papa followed not long after, his footfalls heavy. Their voices rose in the dark outside—too distant to make out, but the tones were raw, jagged. Then came a hush. Not a resolution, but a shutting out—as if the night had pulled a veil over them.

Long before they returned, Meri drifted into uneasy sleep. Her dreams were knotted and strange. There were no red dragons this time—only blue ones, flickering like flame behind her eyes. They were smaller, yes, but not gentler. Not even close.

…
…

It was days before Meri finally learned what was about to happen for certain. She didn't want to admit that she had been eavesdropping the night the dragon had hatched. And she didn't want her parents to know that she knew her brother would be leaving, so she thought hard about the best way to learn the truth.

In that time, the hatchling had followed Eragon around like a lost pup—its claws skittering on the wood as it hurried after him. He fed it raw strips of meat, and both he and the elves cooed over the creature. Whenever Meri entered, the hatchling's gaze found her instantly—its eyes vast and ancient, like deep wells that had seen too much, too soon. It tracked her with quiet wariness, not out of fear, but as if bracing for some blow it couldn't name, some echo of violence it didn't understand but somehow remembered. She didn't, of course. She only turned away and acted as though it wasn't there at all.

Meri spent most of her hours alone in the garden. Without Tessie to trail after her among the blossoms, the space had grown hollow—but the scent of crushed marigold, the feel of petals between her fingers, stirred memories she clung to like rope. Still, that wasn't why she lingered. She stayed because from there, she could watch Papa and Mam. Waiting for the right moment to ask what she needed to know.

That moment came after three days of silent study—patient as moss in a clearing, alert as a doe in stillness. It reminded her of trailing deer with Mam, all breath held and heart quiet. That morning, Mam had gone walking with Eragon and the hatchling, their shapes slipping into the hush of the trees. As soon as they vanished, Meri slipped from the garden like a shadow and made for Papa's side.

He didn't look startled. He simply raised one brow and went on brushing the elf-horse he'd ridden home on—a creature with silver dapples and knowing eyes. "What are you itching to ask, my flower?" he said. "I've seen you watching me from the garden for days. Don't think you've been sneaky enough to slip past me."

She frowned, frustrated. She had tried to be sneaky. It was something she'd have to work on. "Will Eri be leaving with the elves?" she asked, blunt and brave as a child can be. "Because if so, they can't have him! Eri belongs here with us, so he can't go!"

Papa sighed through his nose and set the brush aside. "Meri—"

She pushed on. "Papa, please. Don't let them take him too! He'll be alone, and anything could happen and—"

He crouched to her level, hands resting lightly on his knees. "He won't be alone. Your mother and I have decided—I'll be going with him."

Her breath caught. It wasn't better. Not really. "Then I want to come too," she said quickly. Then softer, looking down, "I don't like being left behind all the time."

His face shifted—something flickered behind his eyes, a memory maybe, or sorrow. He shook his head. "Not this time, Meri. Maybe later, when you're older. Right now, your brother needs me until he can protect himself and the dragon. And your mother… she'll need you here, to help guard what is ours. Can you do that?"

Her arms wrapped tighter around herself. She nodded, slow and small. "I can try."

He cupped her cheek, thumb brushing her skin. She leaned into the touch, blinking hard.

"You'll do more than try," he said. "You're so much like your mother, little flower. So strong, and lovely, and brave. I know you'll succeed."

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

In the last breath of sleep, the hearth’s warmth fled. In its place came the scent of stone—dry, distant, unfamiliar. The blanket beneath her felt thicker, the air stale. She stirred, frowning, but did not wake until the voice came.

Meri opened her eyes to stone. Not the warm grain of cabin wood, not the dappled leaflight of her garden’s edge. Just walls—silent and high—and a sunbeam like a blade falling from a slit too narrow to reach.

She pushed away the blanket and sat up. Her first thought was she should climb the walls and crawl out the windows. But the stone had been carved so finely that they were smooth, and she could see no purchase from which she might be able to climb. Just to be sure, she ran her hand over the wall and found her fears confirmed.

It was only then she noticed her clothes.

The shift she’d worn—the last thing touched by her own hands—was gone. In its place, a sleeping gown of soft-woven linen, dyed pale as milk and stitched with a careful, quiet hand. Modest, finely made, with gathered sleeves and a braided cord at the neck. The sort of thing chosen not for comfort, but for image. A garment someone else had selected—stitched not for sleep, but to turn her into a painting hung in a stranger’s hall. Someone had decided how she should look, even in dreams.

The fabric didn’t itch, but it settled wrong on her skin. As though her body no longer quite belonged to itself.

She looked around the room at the disheveled coverlet on the massive bed, the wardrobe, and then the door near the dark fireplace. The wooden door seemed to be the only way out.

Wherever that might be. Somewhere. Somewhere far from home, this much she was certain of.

Meri felt tears spilling from her eyes before she could stop them. Every part of her being wanted to wake up and find she was still within the forest—among the leaves and blossoms and songs she knew so well. In a place where her mam’s arms were never far, offering comfort and safety and warmth.

She wanted to sit between the leaves of her garden now, in full blossom, and listen to the horses knicker from their pen beside the byre. Even see that stupid goat chomping grass as it followed her sister about her chores. And beyond them—the pale flowers of Tessie’s tree, peeking above the rise behind the cabin like a promise still waiting to be kept.

Who’s going to protect Tessie’s tree if I’m not there? she thought but as the thought crossed her mind, she knew that the memory of the girl wouldn’t need protecting. Whatever memories were left of her sister were guarded by the forest, veiled beneath their great crowns. That every year in the spring, her tree would be sung to life by the songs of the forest for the rest of eternally, whether she was there for it or not.

But Meri didn’t want to not be there! And she didn’t know where she was or how to return home. All she had were faint memories of what had happened in the meadow, they seemed far off as if from her a dream, but nothing of what happened after.

She had never had she had magic used to make her body do something against her will, to make her sleep, and she didn’t know that it could be used so crudely. It was rare that her parents had used magic on her, using it only when needed to heal a hurt if the situation called for it. The pull of sleep -that spell Morzan, for she was certain that the man had been him, used had been instantaneous. There had been no chance to fight it. No weapon that she could have held, or years of training that would have made a difference.

And this is what scared her the most: if someone could spell her to sleep and keep her that way, they could take her anywhere. Past any distance of land and she would never be the wiser. If this was possible then what else was?

Meri shivered at the idea but she didn’t know enough about magic. It was something she had never asked about because of how it disturbed Mam and, by the time she knew to ask, Papa wasn’t around consistently enough for her to remember to talk with him. If he were here now, she wondered what he would have to say.

The door opened. Light tumbled in, gold-edged and soft—but Meri rose, breath tight, fingers curling. Her body remembered how to brace before her mind caught up.

It was only a woman.

She wore a fine, long gown and bore a face carved in cold angles—practical, indifferent. Her gaze swept Meri, measuring and disapproving, and she tsked as though Meri were a scuffed floorboard. Then, without speaking, she turned and left, closing the door behind her with a hush that rang like judgment.

Meri stood motionless for a long moment, heart thudding. Silence pressed in again. Familiar now, but no kinder.

She crept to the door, half-expecting to find it sealed against her—as everything else had been.

It wasn’t.

The latch gave. The world beyond opened like mist parting in the trees—slow, hushed, and waiting to close behind her.

She stepped into a sitting room warmed by the faint scent of wax and hearth smoke. The walls were bare stone, smooth as bone, except for a single faded tapestry above a narrow desk. A short divan rested by the unlit fireplace, its curves elegant but impersonal. A high-backed chair stood like a sentry nearby. The rug beneath them looked soft, the color of old moss, but she didn’t trust it.

None of it looked lived in. None of it looked hers.

She had barely begun to take it in when another door opened—the one she hadn’t come through.

Morzan entered.

The woman followed at his shoulder, silent as a blade.

His eyes found her. And something in her went still—not from fear, not entirely, but from the cold pressure of recognition. A predator acknowledging its prey.

“It’s good to see you awake.” His tone was light—almost indulgent. “I trust you slept well.”

As if she hadn’t been thrown into darkness. As if sleep hadn’t been used like a knife to carve her away from everything that had once kept her whole.

“I didn’t ask for that sleep,” she said, voice flat as slate. “And I didn’t ask to be brought here. I want to go home.”

“This is your home now, Muirgheal. There’s no other place you belong.”

The name struck her like a misfired spell. It didn’t belong to her—not anymore. But she gave him nothing. Not even her correction. Let him speak to a name that didn’t answer.

“You’ve been gone a long while,” he went on, as if noting the weather. “But that doesn’t matter. You’ll find your footing soon enough. Pechel”—he nodded to the woman—“will help you dress, and see you to the hall.”

“This isn’t my home.” Her voice cracked like a branch underfoot. “And my name isn’t Muirgheal. You took me. You know you did.”

“Muirgheal,” he said again, softer this time. As if cooing to a frightened animal. As if coaxing a frightened animal he already planned to cage. “You were born here. You would’ve been raised here—if not for the cruelty of others.”

He stepped forward, crouched, leveling his gaze with hers.

“This place is yours by blood. Not that... cottage they kept you in.”

She flinched.

“No!” And the word rose sharp from somewhere deeper than breath—as if it had been waiting, coiled, since the moment she woke.

She shoved him with all the force she had.

He caught her wrists, the motion effortless, unhurried. His grip was iron—final.

“Let me go!”

He didn’t. He only turned her hands in his, examining them as if they were puzzle pieces he was fitting back into place. His eyes found the scar between her fingers—an old wound from the river, long since healed but never forgotten.

“You’re still a child,” he murmured, almost kindly. “Be quiet. Do as you’re told.”

Something flickered in her—her papa’s voice, quiet and unshaken from years ago, telling her that not every battle was meant to be fought with fire. Don’t waste yourself where they’ve already chosen not to listen, he’d told her once.

Her breath caught in her throat. She forced her body still. He let her go.

She stepped back, spine tight, as if the walls had inched closer.

The door behind her opened. Pechel entered again, wordless. Her hands went straight to the wardrobe, sorting through silks and folds as if Meri were a doll to be costumed.

Meri sat on the edge of the bed. Cold. Watchful.

When the woman approached, she went limp—like thread gone slack. Not submission. Not exactly. Just another kind of resistance.

But her thoughts were elsewhere.

She thought of winter evenings, of a board carved with careful lines and weighted pieces. Of the Butchering Block and the way Mam had taught her to read a battle before lifting a hand.

Risk and return. Choose carefully what you lose.

And Papa. Who had told her that silence could speak louder than pleading.

So she said nothing.

And began to plan.

……

Meri took a personal vow of silence that night, and she did herself proud by keeping it.

She ignored Morzan’s questions when he came around to speak with her—refused his baiting tone, his subtle efforts to draw her in. If he wanted her silent, then she would give it to him wholly. Obedience to the point of absurdity.

There were times she thought it nettled him—his sighs, the way he turned with his hands clasped behind his back like he was walking away from something breakable. Yet other moments left her uncertain. There was a glint behind his eyes that spoke of something amused. As though he found the performance endearing, or perhaps expected. Whatever he truly thought, he did not say, and she could only guess at so much before the guessing turned into something that drained her.

To his credit—and the thought turned bitter in her mouth—Morzan was pleasant enough. He did not shout, did not strike. He allowed her space, gave her the freedom to wander the fortress like a guest rather than a prisoner. It felt like a trick at first, but the leash never pulled tight. So, she explored.

She wasn’t looking for a library.

She had only meant to disappear—slip past Pechel’s disapproving stare, away from the scent of citrus soap and stone floors polished too bright. Somewhere with shadow. Somewhere unpatrolled. The corridor had narrowed behind a hung tapestry, and the light dimmed. That was all she had needed.

But the library found her.

The door wasn’t marked. It barely creaked when she pushed it open, and for a breath she thought it was a storage hall—a servant’s passage, maybe, or one of the hollow wings she’d already wandered.

Then the dust struck her.

And the smell—aged paper, leather, candle-wax cooled to staleness. She froze in the threshold. The quiet was not empty. It breathed.

She stepped inside.

Rows of shelving rose like trees, some bowed with age, others newer, their edges still sharp. The ceiling arched high, but unevenly—as if the room had once been part of something older, then remade. Light filtered in through high windows, fractured by dust, soft as milk.

She moved slowly, not wanting to wake the hush. Her shoulder still ached, but it no longer throbbed. Something in her breath slowed as she walked. The hush here was not like the silence of her room—it didn’t press. It waited.

The first book she touched had no title, only a faded red spine rubbed thin by other hands. She drew it free and opened it at random—an old treatise on waterwheels and irrigation ditches. Useless to her. Comforting, somehow.

She placed it back and wandered deeper. A desk stood near the window, long-abandoned, its ink dried and spidered. A chair with a broken leg leaned against it. On the far wall, a ladder tilted against the shelves like a fallen branch.

She kept going.

In the back corner, tucked behind a shelf half-empty with scrolls, she found a book bound in bark-colored leather. The edges were flaking. Inside, the script was hand-written, the lines uneven. Not a copy. Not a scholar’s voice. A woman’s, maybe. It told of traveling through valleys she didn’t know—mentioning herbs by scent, not name.

She sat cross-legged on the cold floor beside the shelf and read.

She read until the light dimmed and her legs tingled numb. When she finally stood, she hid the book between two forgotten tomes on a low shelf. No one would find it. She would return.

That night, when Morzan came to speak to her again, she said nothing.

But she could still smell dust on her fingers.

And it smelled like freedom.

She wandered the halls like a shadow, quiet and observant. There were corners in Greynsi no one seemed to bother with, and she found them. A half-buried stair behind a wall tapestry. A disused room that caught morning light. A hidden hinge in the stable loft.

Her rooms were where she retreated when she sensed Morzan approaching. She didn’t hide out of panic, but out of preservation. There was nothing she owed him—least of all her presence.

In the back corner, tucked behind a shelf half-empty with scrolls, she found a book bound in bark-colored leather. The edges were flaking. Inside, the script was hand-written, the lines uneven. Not a copy. Not a scholar’s voice. A woman’s, maybe. It told of traveling through valleys she didn’t know—mentioning herbs by smell, not name.

She sat down cross-legged beside the shelf and read. She read until the light dimmed again and her legs tingled numb. When she stood, she hid the book between two forgotten tomes on a low shelf. No one would find it. She would return.

That night, when Morzan came to speak to her again, she said nothing. But she could still smell dust on her fingers. And it smelled like freedom.

She wandered the halls like a shadow, quiet and observant. There were corners in Greynsi no one seemed to bother with, and she found them. A half-buried stair behind a wall tapestry. A disused room that caught morning light. A hidden hinge in the stable loft.

Her rooms were where she retreated whenever she saw Morzan coming. She hid not out of panic, but out of preservation. There was nothing she owed him—least of all her presence.

Once, someone had left a heel of bread on her windowsill. Still warm. Still soft. It was gone by morning. In its place lay a silver-handled brush—polished, ornate, the bristles too stiff. It smelled faintly of beeswax and lavender, a scent that clung long after it was set aside. The kind of object that belonged to someone who was never meant to touch soil.

She stared at it but didn’t lift it.

Later, the mirror had been cleaned until it gleamed. Her chair moved slightly—angled now to catch the firelight and soften her reflection. A new candle had been set nearby. Someone had chosen where she should see herself.

The wardrobe changed next. The greys and browns she’d first been given grew fewer. In their place came deeper reds, pale creams, silk-lined cuffs. One dress bore embroidery at the throat—vines curling into shapes that might have been flowers or thorns. She didn’t remember seeing it before.

She hadn’t chosen any of it. But she wore them.

One evening, her supper tray arrived with everything arranged just so. The bowl’s edge faced north. The spoon lay parallel to the napkin. The bread had been sliced in perfect halves. The servant who brought it did not meet her eyes.

She ate anyway. Slowly. Carefully.

That night, her shoes were different. Still simple. Still soft. But narrower, better made. They pinched slightly at the toes.

She kept them on.

It was easier, in a way, to become what the room expected. To sit where the light was kindest. To wear what had been laid out. To brush her hair with the thing someone else had chosen. None of it was punishment. That was what made it harder to name as wrong.

The mirror grew easier to face each day. Not because she recognized the girl in it—but because she’d stopped trying to.

...

She did not always sleep through the night. Sometimes, in that hour before dawn, she would wake and lie still—listening for footsteps, for breath outside the door. And when none came, her mind would betray her. She would hear his voice again, calm and low.

He never raised his voice. That was the trouble. He didn’t have to.

She would rise then, and begin her sword-forms in silence. Movements sharp, deliberate. As if every step carved something free inside her.

Still, Greynsi was not without its strange mercies. She discovered a garden—walled high and mostly forgotten—where she could lie on a stone bench and stare up at the sky without being seen. The guards on the walls looked small from there. And when the Beast came, it rested in the sun like an oversized hound pretending gentleness. When it arrived, she always left. No matter where she stood in the garden, she would find another place. Its presence clawed at her chest, and the nightmares it left behind made her wary of what it might do should she remain.

The stables were another quiet refuge. She’d slip in among the rolls of hay and whisper to the horses, her words brushing the air like moths. They didn’t answer, but they blinked slow and listened in their way. She didn’t know their names. So she gave them her own—pulled from old tales and half-remembered dreams.

The people in the castle didn’t speak to her, though she passed many in the halls. Some bowed slightly. Others never looked up. She began to wonder if they had been told not to speak. Or if, like her, they had simply chosen silence as a form of self-protection.

One day, wandering farther than she meant to, she found herself in a narrowing corridor past an old storage wing. The sconces burned low, watery and blue. Damp curled at the edges of the stone. Her slippers caught now and then on warped floor patches she couldn’t see until too late.

She walked slowly—not out of caution, but because the dress she wore didn’t allow much else. The bodice was too tight at the ribs, and pinched when she breathed too deep. The skirts dragged like wet leaves, whispering with each step.

She didn’t know where she was going. Only that she couldn’t return to the garden. The stables stank of vinegar and wet leather. The library, though quiet, felt too near the main halls. She wasn’t ready to be seen—not by him.

She turned a corner—

—and nearly collided with a servant.

The girl was young, no older than Elida, arms full of folded linens. She skidded to a halt so fast the top sheet slipped to the floor. Her breath caught and stopped.

Their eyes met.

And in that brief, silent lock, Meri saw it: fear.

Not confusion. Not obedience. Not even curiosity.

Fear—as though she’d been caught alone with a beast whose chain was too long.

The girl’s gaze flicked over her—the too-fine dress, too-quiet demeanor, too-still face. The silence she wore like a second skin. The shadows that had rooted behind her eyes.

She bowed quickly, too low, and clutched the linen to her chest like a shield.

“My lady,” she whispered, then turned and fled. Her footsteps faded into the stone as if the corridor had swallowed her.

Meri stood very still. She became suddenly aware of the bodice’s grip again, the drag of silk at her wrists. The dress had no real weight. But it bound her all the same. She didn’t know what the girl had seen—but she knew what had been reflected. Not a prisoner. Not a threat. A shape that belonged to someone else’s story.

She looked at her hands. They were clean. Still. Not trembling.

And yet—something in her was.

She turned and walked back the way she’d come, skirts brushing over cold stone.

Morzan hadn’t caged her.

He had placed her—deliberately, publicly—into a role others had been taught to fear.

.

That late summer—because she still measured time by scent and shadow, by the golden weight of evening light on stone—she watched the guards. Not for curiosity, but for their patterns. Their blind spots.

She discovered a gap in the patrols—just long enough for someone to slip from the side gate near the stables. It would be enough. It had to be.

She had learned where she was now. Greynsi Castle, on the northern edge of Leona Lake—far, far south from home in one of most desolate corners of the Empire, Most of his wealth came from mountain mines worked by hidden hands, not honest trade. There would be no help nearby. No roads. No witnesses.

The journey back would take an age. But she believed she could make it. She had to. She needed to.

So she began to prepare.

She took a map from the library, hidden in an old traveler’s folio, and folded it into a discarded sack in the stable. She gathered things when no one looked—an old pair of trousers, a tunic too big for her frame, coins abandoned in a broken drawer. She began hiding food in her skirts during meals, pressing it flat beneath the fabric so it wouldn’t show.

It took weeks. Long, aching weeks. But it felt like a lifetime.

…

When it came time to leave, two moon-cycles had passed since she woke inside the castle walls.

The air outside was thick and strange. Muggy, wet. She stepped into it as if into a blanket left to steep too long in sun and breath. The cool stone halls must’ve been enchanted—she hadn't realized until now how still and contained the air within had been, how tamed.

Her lungs dragged at the heaviness, and the stays of the girdle bit into her ribs. The run through the castle had already winded her, but even without it, she would’ve been breathless. Her skirts clung damp to her legs, the fabric sodden and loud against her skin. Every inch of her attire felt weighted, meant to anchor her.

She lifted her skirts and hurried over the scorched path winding through what remained of the garden. The rose bushes had burned to bare arms, black limbs crooked like beckoning fingers. Papa had planted them here once—tended them, even in a place like this. Meri tried to picture their bloom, to imagine the color they once held. Now, they stood like mourners. Ashen, silent, sharp.

If she didn’t leave, she knew she’d become one of them. A ghost caught in the bramble. A flower that never opened.

Her footsteps quickened—bare feet slapping against stone, her breath shallow with effort. She tried to tread lightly, but the sound of herself carried louder than it should. When the wind shifted, rustling the scorched branches, she froze and turned—heart hammering, certain she’d been seen.

But there was no one. Just her and the garden of dead things.

She exhaled slowly, trying to hush the drumbeat in her chest. Forward again—into the archway hidden in the inner wall. The little side door was there, somewhere. Easy to find in daylight, near impossible in the dark.

She passed the old fountain—dry now, the stone rim choked with ash—and the bench where she’d once dared lie in the sun. Even the Beast, who used to rest here, was absent tonight. A strange mercy.

She ran her fingers along the seam of the wall—stone, damp, splintered wood—until the latch gave.

A breeze met her. Cool. Eastborn. It tasted of wild alfalfa and lavender, of water too clean to belong to this place. It startled something awake inside her. A memory, maybe. Or just the ache of something not poisoned.

She stepped fully into it. The wind lifted her sweat-damp hair and chilled the fabric clinging to her skin. She adjusted the strap of her sack, touched the coin pouch hidden in her underlayer, and closed the door behind her with quiet care.

Then she ran.

Downhill first, toward the field flattened by past storms. The land here was gentler than the forested hills back home. Her legs, trained in shadow, flew.

No cry went up. No alarm split the air. She reached the tall grass and dove into it, kneeling to catch her breath. Her chest heaved, but she made no sound. Behind her, faint lights began to flicker atop the castle walls—too late. They’d missed her. For now.

She didn’t weep. There was no triumph. Just breath.

She pressed forward into the dark, the pinch of her too-narrow shoes digging into blistered heels. She didn’t take them off. She kept moving.

Toward the woods.

Toward the lake.

Toward the long, quiet road that might, if she was lucky, still lead her home.

.

The clouds thickened, swallowing the stars. She couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead, so she trusted her feet—feeling the slope of the land, the rhythm of the earth. The wind blew north-east. Toward Leona Lake. She followed it.

By dawn, she could go no further. Her knees folded beneath her, trembling. She sank down in the grass, head in her hands, and stayed there, breathing.

The lake’s surface glittered beyond her, silver as poured glass. She winced at the brightness. Her whole body hurt. But she was out. She was out.

She pulled the dress over her head, tossing it into the grass, then unlaced the girdle and let it fall like a carcass. The tunic and trousers she’d taken were scratchy, but she breathed easier without the weight of silk and bone. Her feet were already blistered, but there’d been no time to find boots that fit. Barefoot would have to do.

She braided her hair quickly and tied it with a strip torn from her skirts. Then she took out her small knife, the kitchen blade she’d tucked away, and gripped it tightly—just to remind herself she still had teeth. It was no weapon, but it was something.

She looked back once. The castle was gone behind the mist. But it was there. She could feel it watching.

Morzan would wake soon. He would find her gone. He and the Beast would come.

She sipped water from her pack. Cool, metallic. It shocked her senses, cleared the film from her mind. Her feet were raw. Her eyes burned. But she stood.

She had to keep walking.

She reached for a root. Dug her fingers into moss. Her arms trembled, but she pulled. Staggered upright. Every breath scraped—but she was still breathing.

That day, she walked like someone learning how—legs stiff, ribs aching from the night’s cold. Her breath stayed shallow, careful, as if even that might run out. She counted steps in dozens, then in fives. Then one at a time.

She moved slow—each step a threadbare prayer. She didn’t stop until twilight.

She sat by the shallow, peeled a meat pie from its wax wrap. The crust had gone soft, then hard again—chewed edges. It stuck to her teeth. She choked once, coughed it down, and washed it with lake water too cold to taste. Then curled on her side, cheek pressed to her arm, and slept without dreams.

.

She walked for four more days, north along the shoreline. Time lost shape. The days blurred into grey skies and aching joints. Her tongue cracked. Her shoulders bled where the pack’s strap rubbed raw through fabric. She began to count sunrises instead of days. Four, maybe five.

Rain came once, brief and wind-lashed, soaking her sleeves before she found a crooked tree to crouch beneath. Another night, the mist rose early and she saw shapes in it—branches that looked like men, stumps like crouched animals. She spoke to none of them.

Once, she found herself turned back south without knowing when she'd turned. Panic flared. She bit her tongue hard enough to taste iron, then forced herself forward again

The food dwindled. Her pace slowed. There were no berries, no wild greens she recognized. She rationed the bread to crumbs. The gold might last if she ever reached a village. But if not— She didn’t think too long there…

Each night, she soaked her feet in the lake, the cold water numbing the sting. Her soles were cut and blistered. She cursed herself for tossing the dress—she could have bound her feet. But it was too late now.

Her neck throbbed from turning constantly to check the sky.

But there were only birds. Wind. Silence.

.

On the tenth day, she saw it: the bend of the Toark River, glinting far off. And beyond it—a wisp of smoke curling from a chimney.

A farm. Or maybe a village.

She didn’t care. It meant people. It meant food. It meant maybe, just maybe, another day.

She hadn’t eaten that morning. Couldn’t afford to.

Tomorrow she might have nothing.

But for now, she walked toward the smoke. Toward the scent of ash and maybe bread. Toward the living. Her eyes fixed on the road ahead—on the bridge, the smoke, the shapes of people moving with purpose. Real people. She could almost taste the relief. Coins pressed to a stranger’s palm. A new tunic. A mule, maybe. A question asked and answered kindly. She almost believed it.

The hard roll in her hand tasted like ash, but she chewed and swallowed anyway. She had nearly reached the road when people began lifting their heads to the sky.

Then scattering.

Meri followed their gaze, and her breath caught.

The Beast.

A shadow circling above her like a great black vulture. Then the world rushed forward. She turned to run—but her legs betrayed her.

They locked together, seized by a word she hadn’t heard, and she was flung into the dirt. Pain bloomed as a stone sliced through her tunic and tore her shoulder. She rolled—grass, grit, sky, breath knocked from her lungs—then lay still.

When her vision steadied, she saw him.

The dragon landed with the weight of a falling world. Its wings churned the air, refusing to rest. Fire glowed in its throat, casting flickers on the scorched grass.

And Morzan descended.

He moved like a man coming to retrieve a misplaced cloak.

“Don’t look so shocked,” he said, almost lightly. “You didn’t really think I didn’t know where you were, did you? That I was letting you play fugitive without watching?”

His voice curled in her ears like smoke.

“Did it never cross your mind that I could track you? Arrogant girl. Idiocy doesn’t suit you.”

Meri said nothing. Her vow wrapped around her tongue like a second spine. She clenched her jaw and fought the pressure coiling around her legs. The spell didn’t break. It was too strong—ropes made from words she didn’t know how to untie.

So she did the only thing left.

She rolled, inch by inch, into the grass.

“How far do you think you’ll get like that?” Morzan stepped forward, his boot halting her like a thrown bridle. “You can’t outrun me. There is nowhere you can go I won’t find you.”

She blinked up at him, grit in her teeth, blood warming her sleeve. And then she kicked.

Her heels slammed into his knee. He buckled forward, just barely catching himself. When he rose, his eyes were cold—not angry, just... disappointed.

He bent, seized her by the tops of her arms as if she were some wayward child, and hauled her upright. “I’ve indulged you long enough. No more. You are my daughter—and you will start acting as such. Let’s go home, Muirgheal.”

The name struck like a nail driven into wet wood.

He took her wrists next, sliding his fingers down with slow precision, and began dragging her toward the Beast. The spell on her legs began to melt—but not in time. She stumbled, nearly falling, and he yanked her upright again without pause.

The dragon watched, unmoving. Its scales caught the light like coals.

When they reached the saddle, Morzan lifted her like a sack and threw her onto the beast’s back. Her wrists were pulled forward, bound into the saddle’s front harness so tightly her fingers prickled with numbness. The leather cut deep. She couldn’t reach the buckles.

She couldn’t do anything.

Morzan mounted behind her.

The Beast rose.

As the wind screamed past, Meri watched the world fall away. The town. The bridge. The hope she’d dared to let root. Gone. She stared, unblinking, as tears blurred the distance. She didn’t try to wipe them away.

“Don’t start crying on me now,” Morzan hissed into her ear, voice pitched to meet the wind. “You brought this on yourself.”

His breath scraped against her skin, raw as iron dragged over stone. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t answer. Her silence was all she had left—tattered, but still hers. She held it in her teeth like a splintered bit of wood.

The flight took less than an hour.

She had walked ten days to earn that distance. Ten days of blistered skin and threadbare hunger. And now, all of it undone—unwound in the span of a single heartbeat skyward. It mocked her. What had felt vast and hard-won from the ground now shrank beneath the Beast’s wings, folded into nothing. As if her running had never mattered.

The dragon landed like a falling tower in the courtyard—heavy, final.

She didn’t brace for it. There was no point. The impact jarred her bones, and her knees slipped on the saddle’s edge as Morzan dismounted.

Without a word, he reached up and loosed the bindings. Not all at once. Not with care. Just enough to free her arms. Then his hand clamped down on her shoulder—right where the cut bled fresh beneath the fabric. His fingers pressed in deliberately, a sculptor returning to unfinished work.

She gasped but didn’t resist. Resistance was a language he liked too much.

He pulled her down, not cruelly, but with that cold efficiency she remembered—how he handled weapons, how he gripped the reins. As if she were another object made to be wielded.

Then he turned and walked.

She followed because she had no choice, his hand still fixed to her like an anchor. Not dragging her, not shoving—just guiding, precise and punishing. Shaping her steps like a chisel shapes flawed stone.

They entered through a side gate she hadn’t known existed, low and narrow beside the remnants of the outer garden. It yawned open with a groan of iron. The guards barely moved. One averted his eyes.

No one spoke.

The castle closed around them like a throat swallowing.

The air changed. Cooler, but not fresh. It was too clean here. Scrubbed. Enchanted, maybe. The scent of oil and stone and cold fire. Torches lined the halls in silent rhythm, flames set too high to warm anything below. Their flickering only deepened the shadows.

She hadn’t known she remembered these walls so well.

The footsteps echoed—his with that clipped, measured precision, hers uneven. The floor, polished to a bone-like sheen, gave her no sound to hide in. She could hear the scuff of her too-worn sandals, the hiss of her breath.

They passed an arched gallery. Once, she had lingered here watching the light strike the glass paned in lead. Another hall where the tapestry of the starlit stag still hung, just as it always had. She had once counted the threads in its mane to ground herself through sleepless nights. She stared at it now, half-expecting the threads to unravel as she passed.

But nothing had changed. Everything here had remained untouched, as though time only moved when he allowed it.

They reached the stair.

Wider than she remembered. Higher, too. Or maybe it was her legs—tired, trembling, sore from travel. Her vision blurred. Her hand brushed the wall once for balance, but he caught her wrist and righted her without pause. She didn’t stumble again.

Each step was a weight. Not physical—something older, slower. As if the stone remembered her. As if the air had been waiting to pull her back.

They crested the top floor. The hallway narrowed. She could feel the walls drawing in—not tight, not oppressive, but inevitable. As if the path was made for her return.

At the threshold to her rooms, he stopped.

“I have business to attend to,” he said, as if she were a servant left to sweep ash. “While I’m gone, you will remain here. Do you understand, Muirgheal?”

She nodded but said nothing.

His fingers dug into her shoulder—into the raw cut beneath the fabric. She gasped.

His voice dropped. “Speak properly. You are not a churl who’s forgotten how.”

Her gaze fell. “Yes,” she whispered again, smaller.

He twisted the wound.

Pain bloomed behind her eyes. Her legs gave out. She dropped to one knee.

“I understand!” she cried, breath torn from her. “I understand you!”

He let go.

The door opened behind her with a soft creak.

He pushed her forward—not hard. But she stumbled through.

She caught herself on the stone, hands splayed against the cold floor. Her knees stung. The door closed behind her with a click that echoed like the snap of a snare.

She rose slowly. Tried the handle.

It didn’t move.

The lock stayed quiet, but final.

And behind her, the chamber waited.

The air did not stir.

She pressed her hand to the door. Not to open it—but to feel the weight of what had always been there. He hadn’t just caged her. He’d studied her leash, then loosened it—just enough to make her believe she chose to return.

Only then did she understand. Not just that he had caught her—but that he’d let her go. That every hour she’d spent alone in the wild had been permitted.

That he’d wanted to know how far she would run—and how far she would break to do it.

……

It was still dark when Meri woke.

Not the darkness of sleep, but the kind that comes just before dawn—thin, gray, expectant. The air in the room was cold, but not cruel. Her limbs ached from the bindings, the flight, the dragging weight of failure. Her shoulder pulsed with dull heat beneath the bandage, the pain no longer sharp, only deepening like bruises blooming under the skin.

She didn’t rise at first. She listened.

The stone was quiet. No footsteps in the halls. No breath beyond the door. Even the Beast must have slept.

Slowly, she slipped from the bed and stood barefoot on the chilled floor. Her tunic hung unevenly from one shoulder, stiff with dried sweat. When she moved her arm, the ache flared again—hot, then hollow. Still, she crossed to the center of the room, where the hearth cast no warmth and the shadows bent low.

There, in the stillness, she began to move.

The first swordform came unbidden, flowing from her shoulders before her mind caught up. Arms raised, turned, settled. Her feet shifted—one, two, heel, toe. Her weight settled into the old rhythm like a river finding its course.

She had no sword. Only breath. Only motion.

River Undercut Stone.

Falcon’s Descent.

Twisting Bark.

She moved through them like prayer, quiet and exact. Her body knew what the silence was trying to make her forget. Papa had taught her first, then Mam. But the memory was oldest in her bones. It lived in the stretch of her back, the bend of her knees. Even here, she could still find it.

Her breath misted faintly in the air.

When she finished the final stance—Still Root, Unseen Blade—she stood in place for a long time, arms lowered. Her fingers did not tremble, though her legs ached beneath her.

The light had begun to creep through the narrow window above, weak and colorless. She did not move to greet it.

There would be no one to praise her form. No nod of approval. No watching eyes but the stone. But she had done it.

The swordforms had not been taken from her.

Not yet.

The door remained locked.
……

Morzan remained away for over a full moon cycle.

During that time, the door stayed locked. No one entered. No one spoke her name.

Meri remained sealed in her rooms like something preserved in amber—untouched, unchanging, slowly suffocating in the stillness. The furniture remained, but the comfort had been hollowed out of it. No blankets beyond the single one on her bed, no fresh clothes, no basin water unless it was cloudy and cold. The books she had once gathered, her quiet treasures—the parchment she had tucked into drawers, the stories she wrote in the early days of pretending not to care—they were gone.

She tore the rooms apart looking for them. Opened every drawer, overturned every cushion, pulled back rugs as if something might be hidden beneath.

But there was nothing.

Even the ink was missing. Not a single pen. Not even a splinter of charcoal. As if her voice had been scrubbed from the walls.

And there was no one to ask.

No knock at the door. No tray placed before her in daylight. Whoever brought the food—and emptied the chamber pot—came only at night, when she slept. Or after she’d passed out waiting. She had tried, once, to stay awake. Twice. For days. But they always slipped past her.

They became the ghosts.

And she, the haunted.

In the beginning, she filled the silence with memory. She recited old lines from books, mimicking Mam’s voice or Papa’s—stories told around the hearth, or songs whispered under quilts in winter. She told herself tales she’d made up as a child and forgotten until now.

But the words began to blur. Lines turned wrong. Rhythms slipped. She began repeating fragments without knowing why.

By the second week, she stopped pretending it helped.

Instead, she sat on the stone floor, watching how the light slanted through the upper windows, how it moved across the walls, slower than breath. She studied the pattern of mortar lines until they felt etched in her bones. She watched the fireless hearth, the unlit lamps, the door.

The door that never opened.

It was sometime around the tenth day—she could no longer be sure—that her thoughts began to fog. Not in fear, but in soft collapse. She lay in bed all day, unable to hold a thought long enough to rise. Her limbs felt made of cloth. The hunger no longer gnawed—it just hummed, distant.

Some days she cried, but quietly. Others she couldn’t. There were moments, rare as frost in spring, where she woke with a flicker of something like cheer. A breath that felt a little more her own. She would try, then—to braid her hair, or tidy her bedclothes.

But those moments never lasted long.

After a full month passed—though she had no way to mark it anymore—she stopped checking the door. Stopped waiting for the click of the lock. Stopped counting days, or nights, or anything at all.

She let the pattern take her.

Wake. Eat. Stare. Sleep.

It was easier not to want anything.

Easier to forget there was a world outside the stone.

……
……

Silence became a sea without edges. Vast and black and fathomless. It pressed against her on all sides, wrapping her in layers of thickened hush, muffling the scrape of her thoughts. She no longer knew how deep she had fallen—only that she couldn’t hear the surface anymore.

She imagined, then, that she walked a wasteland. A hollow kingdom spread out from horizon to horizon, filled with dying winds and tangled thorn-branches like ribs. The lakes had long since dried. The rivers cracked apart. Birdsong was only a memory, and even the bones of the past had turned to dust.

This was Silence’s realm.

And she was its captive.

Its queen.

Its orphan.

Here, there was no clock, no door, no sound but the faint whisper of breath and the dull beat of her heart—when she remembered to notice it.

Silence ruled not with violence, but with erasure.

It didn’t wound. It dissolved.

Piece by piece, it sifted her into dust—until even the shape of her longing became uncertain. Until even her memories frayed at the edges.

And it would keep going.

It would take what was left of her and grind it finer still—until all she had been could be scattered over the dry soil like ash.

Silence’s hold on her was firm.

Like a wild creature caught in a snare, Meri thrashed against its grip, not with claws or teeth, but with listening—fierce, desperate listening. She clung to the smallest sounds: the pulse of her own breath, the whispering draft through a high stone crack, the hollow beat of her heart echoing in her ribs like a drum struck from far away. These became her weapons. Her battleground.

But Silence was a tyrant, vast and formless. It swallowed her resistance without effort, casting a void so complete it felt like pain. When it struck, it did so like a tide—pulling her under until she had no choice but to retreat. Her weapons dulled. Her breath stilled. Her voice curled into silence again.

She lost more battles than she won.

But in the aftermath of each, she vowed again to gather her allies—those flickers of sound, those drifting fragments of memory—and mount another rebellion.

Not yet. But soon.

For now, she sat in the wreckage of her latest defeat, crouched beneath a fading sunbeam like a soldier in hiding. Even her thoughts felt too loud, and so she kept them leashed, whisper-thin, trailing like smoke across the floor of her mind. Silence must not catch wind of her hope. Not here. Not so close to its dominion.

She gazed toward the Door of the Beyond, barely visible in the half-light, and let her mind drift like a ghost. The beam of sun bent across the floor, striking up sharp-edged shadows—jagged and strange—and she imagined them creatures, both friend and foe, dwelling at the borderlands between thought and dream.

Darkness was one of Silence’s allies, but an unreliable one. Their alliance frayed often, held together by something ancient and thinning. One day, it would break. Or strengthen. She didn’t know which to wish for.

She whispered to Darkness then. Old stories. Fragments of tale and myth—dragons and thieves, brave sisters and lost names. She coaxed it gently, hoping it might listen. Hoping it might turn traitor.

But perhaps she whispered too loudly. Or perhaps Darkness, that cunning shadow-thief, betrayed her.

Because Silence found her.

The light was extinguished. The beam gone. Darkness surged in its place and Silence came like a cloak flung over her, smothering thought, presence, self.

The oaken door faded into shadow, and with it, her dreams of escape.

She stared into the black.

The door looked too small to lead anywhere at all. Certainly not to freedom. Not to forests or valleys or laughter. Once, when she was small, her papa read her the account of a man imprisoned for decades—a true tale. And she had trembled then, not at the cruelty, but the stillness of it. Of being walled in with only breath and stone.

She had never imagined it would happen to her.

Now, she breathed that same stale, musty air. The stench of waste clung like rot in a cellar. She knew someone would come in the night, empty the pot, as they always did. But not while she watched. Never while she was.

The hearth stood cold, empty of wood. Her thin dress and single blanket couldn’t keep out the damp that had soaked into her bones. Not quite freezing—but enough to hollow her out from within. Her breath fogged, barely.

She did not feel grateful.

If Death came, at least he’d speak.

She curled under the blanket like a field mouse in winter, pressing her spine against the headboard, eyes open to the dark. She wondered if Silence would loosen soon. But it didn’t seem likely.

Silence had won three meals ago. Or was it four? She couldn’t remember.

Hunger was constant now—its edge dulled but insistent, a coiled thing in her belly. Her limbs were heavy, her thoughts syrup-slow, and even her dreams were soundless.

She let out a sigh and surrendered to sleep, not for rest, but as escape.

But even sleep was not safe.

Silence seeped into her dreams, shapeless and slow.

Only one thing pierced its veil: the Door to the Beyond.

She blinked awake at the sound—the faint snick of a latch turning.

A figure—blurred and pale—slipped into the room, ghostlike, wordless. It moved quickly, unseen by intention, and was gone before she could raise her voice.

The door clicked shut.

Meri sat up, heart in her throat.

The sky through the window had turned pink. Rosy light filtered down like balm. For a moment, just a moment, she felt real again. Solid. She pushed herself upright, joints groaning, and crawled to the door.

“Hello?” she whispered, fingers pressed to the stone.

Nothing.

“Hello? I know you’re out there!”

Her voice bounced back at her, loud and sharp.

No reply.

“Please!”

Her voice cracked.

Still nothing.

She sagged against the wall, resting her head on her folded arms.

The click came later. The door creaked open, barely. A cloth sack slid through.

It shut again. The lock turned.

Meri blinked at the gift. Slowly, reverently, she crawled forward and opened it.

Candied walnuts.

She held them in shaking hands and brought them to her bed like sacred offerings. Each one she ate with care. Slowly. As if tasting memory.

When they were gone, she tucked the sack beneath her mattress. A token. A victory.

Light returned. And with it, Silence. But now she whispered songs under her breath—old lullabies, wandering notes. The sunlight shifted across the stone. She watched it like it might speak.

Her hunger coiled and snapped. The food she’d been given was never enough. She felt dizzy more often than not. Sometimes sick. Sometimes just hollow.

She thought of her mother’s cooking—soft stews, sweet fruit glazes, little fried cakes browned with honey. Her chest ached. She didn’t know many of Mam’s recipes, but she remembered how they made her feel.

That was how she finally fell asleep—chewing memory like bread.

……
……

It was the door that woke her.

She curled tighter against the cold, but the figure kept coming.

The blanket was torn from her. She blinked groggily at the blur above her.

Silence’s sorcerer had returned. His cloak was malice, and his hands were magic. The tyrant of the Kingdom. The one who had bent Silence to his will.

The villain narrowed his eyes and snarled, “Get up, Muirgheal!”

She turned her face into the pillow, muttering nonsense. Her allies had abandoned her. The kingdom had fallen. She had no army. No sword.

“I don’t have the patience for this,” he snapped. “Get up, or I’ll leave you here to rot until I decide otherwise!”

And like that—the Kingdom of Silence shattered.

Not from hope. Not from will. But from fear.

She scrambled up, trembling, her limbs barely obeying her. “No—don’t go,” she gasped, voice raw and forgotten. “I’m up!”

He eyed her like a butcher sizing meat.

“Make yourself presentable,” he said, flatly. “I’ll be waiting.”

The door shut behind him.

She staggered to it. The latch was loose.

It wasn’t locked.

She leaned against the wall, dizzy with relief.

It wasn’t victory. But it was breath. It was breath.

Meri took a deep breath, shallow and fluttering, her chest tight with unused air. Her ribs ached faintly from disuse—as though even breathing had become unfamiliar, like a skill half-forgotten. The stillness had nested in her body as thoroughly as in the room. Now, each movement dislodged it in slow fragments.

She glanced around the bedchamber, half-expecting the door to vanish again, or the silence to creep back in like mist through the cracks. But the light held. Real light. The kind that cast shadows.

At the wardrobe, her fingers trembled as she pulled open the doors. The linen sleeve she touched felt foreign, even luxurious, after weeks of coarse fabric. She dressed slowly, cautiously—her limbs stiff and untrusting, like a deer rising after being caught in a snare. Each movement was heavier than it should have been. Her knees ached. Her back twinged. The dress hung oddly against her frame—had she grown thinner? She couldn’t tell. The body in the mirror, when she glanced at it briefly, didn’t quite look like hers.

She found the comb tucked into the corner of the drawer and dragged it through her hair with silent determination. Though she’d kept it braided, the ends had frayed, and knots had crept in like creeping vines. The comb caught again and again. Her scalp stung. She gritted her teeth and kept going until the strands fell loose in a dull, tangled sheet down her back.

When she stepped into the small parlor, the change in light startled her. The lamps had been lit. Golden, flickering, real. She blinked, eyes aching. Her pupils narrowed too slowly; the glow stung at first. She hadn’t realized how much she’d adapted to the twilight of her prison—how much the eye forgets what to expect.

She hesitated just inside the room.

Morzan sat in the chair nearest the hearth, cross-legged, a book in hand. He didn’t glance up, only raised one finger without looking—wait. As though she were a page to be turned.

Her steps faltered. The quiet pressed behind her like a windless tide.

Finally, he closed the book with a soft thump and set it aside. His gaze swept over her—measuring, not cruel, but distant, like one inspecting a thing long lost and newly found. There was no warmth in his eyes, but something else flickered there—recognition, or perhaps expectation.

“I suppose you’ll do for now,” he said, the words faintly tired, as though he’d hoped for something more but wasn’t surprised. His tone was mild, too casual, the way one might speak to a wayward pupil. “Come. I have work to attend to, and I don’t intend to leave you behind. You’ll walk with me. I imagine even you are weary of these walls.”

He was right. She didn’t.

The thought of returning to the silence, to the stillness that had taken root in her marrow, made her chest seize. Even the presence of Morzan—the man who had locked her away, who had stripped her of words, warmth, and will—was preferable to being alone with what remained of herself. She could keep herself intact, just a little longer, if there were something to focus on besides the shadows in her own mind.

She stepped toward the door.

His hand found her shoulder, firm and possessive. She flinched—but did not pull away. The contact, hateful as it was, grounded her. Her legs threatened to shake with each step, and his hand, resting there like a brand, steadied her. Unwelcome comfort. Her body leaned slightly into it before her mind could stop it.

Shame bloomed hot beneath her skin, but she did not speak.

He said nothing more, only guided her with subtle pressure through the long corridor of the Keep. The stone walls passed like ghosts, sconces flickering as they moved. She was aware of everything: the sound of her bare steps against stone, the faint brush of fabric at her ankles, the tightness in her calves from lack of movement. Even the air tasted strange—cleaner, colder than the stale breath of her cell.

Her fingers curled against the sides of her tunic, nails pressing lightly into her palms. She focused on the ache in her feet, the raw edge of hunger that never quite dulled, the flutter in her chest that might’ve been panic—or hope, though she dared not name it.

They stopped before a large iron-bound door.

Morzan’s hand lifted, and she felt the air shift. Something waited beyond the threshold.

She said nothing.
She followed.

The motion of walking came slowly to her limbs, as though her joints were remembered rather than used. The long confinement had leeched the strength from her legs; every step sent a pulse of ache through her hips and ankles, but she did not show it. She moved carefully, evenly, chin lifted as if to reclaim the illusion of control.

Down they went—hallways veined with shadow, stairwells steep and echoing. Her breath grew shallower the deeper they descended, not from fear but effort. Her muscles trembled with the weight of motion long denied.

Then Morzan stopped before a thick-set door. His hand moved across the center—not to a keyhole, but to a broad plate of gold, etched in relief. The metal shone even in the low light: a shield wreathed with leaves, flanked by twin dragons whose open jaws spilled flame. The artistry was old and fine, the kind passed down through bloodlines. Meri stared at it without comprehension. Whatever it meant, it wasn’t hers to know.

A light spell bloomed at his fingertips—crimson as a blood moon—and the door clicked softly.

He stepped back and gestured for her to enter.

She did. And behind her, the door slid shut with a hollow thud. She turned at once, a sharp breath caught in her throat.

A lock slid home.

Panic flared in her chest—but before it could root, Morzan raised a brow. His voice was dry, not unkind. “Enough of the theatrics, Muirgheal. I’m not locking you in.”

He brushed past her up the narrow stair, and after a pause, she followed.

“This is my private tower,” he said as they climbed. “No one enters unless I permit it. That is why I lock the door.”

He glanced down at her once over his shoulder, his voice lower now. “I am not the villain you make me out to be.”

She didn’t answer. Her silence held no accusation—only a kind of quiet retreat.

Even so, doubt traced its way across her ribs like chill fingers. What did it mean, to not be a villain, when you held someone against their will? When your kindness came after spells and chains?

Still she followed, because there was no other path to take. The stair wound endlessly upward, the air tightening with dust and age the higher they rose. Her calves burned. Her chest strained. But she kept pace.

At last, Morzan halted beside a door worn pale at the edges, and opened it.

She stepped into a room unlike any she had seen in the fortress.

Books lined the walls—untitled, unmarked, their spines weathered smooth with use. Scrolls rested on open shelves, some curling at the edges, others tied neatly with ribbon. A gold-plated door mirrored the one below, repeating the crest she did not know. A desk waited nearby, cluttered but meticulous, the parchment stacked and bound, the drawings delicate. Some bore small notations—numbers, symbols—almost elvish, but not quite.

A single chair sat before the desk, wide-armed and worn where hands had gripped the ends. A book lay open on its seat, pages feathering in the draft from the windows above.

To the far side of the room, a series of cages sat in slanted light.

Meri crossed to them without thinking.

She bent down, slow with stiffness, breath catching at the sight within. Small, strange creatures stirred in the glass-and-wood enclosures.

A serpent the color of bruised twilight coiled beneath a stone as orange as firelit honey. A cluster of narrow-bodied insects waved delicate antennae and twitched their barbed tails with eerie precision. And in the smallest cage, almost hidden among dry moss, crouched a spider with joints that shimmered faintly green, as if dusted in crushed peridot.

She did not recoil. Her gaze softened, head tilting slightly. These were not pets. They were living puzzles, trapped for study.

Morzan watched her in silence for a moment before stepping closer.

“They’re fragile,” he said. His voice held no edge now—only thoughtfulness. “Some of them can live for years in captivity. But others die if you move their stones even a finger’s width.”

Meri did not answer. But her hand rose slightly, hovering near the glass.
He did not stop her.

Instead, Morzan stepped closer without sound. She hadn’t heard him approach—hadn’t even felt the shift of air before his hand settled lightly on her shoulder.

She startled hard. Her knees nearly buckled from the suddenness of it, brittle with hunger and the residual fog of stillness.

“Your mother was rather fond of these creatures,” he said quietly, almost conversational. His hand was steady, resting with a familiarity that hadn’t been earned. He leaned forward and unlatched one of the glass lids with practiced care.

Beneath it, the curled-tailed creature stirred as if summoned. Its body shimmered faintly with a dappled carapace, segments flexing over spiny legs as it crawled into his open palm. It did not hesitate, did not fear him.

Meri’s breath caught in her throat as he turned to her.

With one smooth movement, he reached for her wrist.

Her arm flinched backward, sharp and instinctive—but his fingers caught her. Not bruising, but firm. She tried to pull away.

Something about the creature’s motion made her stomach twist.

Its tail lifted.

“Don’t move, Muirgheal,” he said, voice a low chime of warning. “Unless you want it to sting you.”

The softness in his tone had vanished. In its place came a weight, something beneath his words that made her chest tighten.

She froze.

The scorpion paused, its stinger held like a drawn blade—and then, slowly, it lowered its tail and crept along the back of her hand. Its legs were dry and sharp, scratching gently as it climbed her wrist. The sensation was unbearable and yet not painful. Her body went rigid.

“What is it?” she managed. Her voice was thin, trembling.

Morzan didn’t look at her. He was watching the creature. “It’s good to see you’re finally breaking your silence. I wasn’t sure how long that little rebellion would last.”

A smirk ghosted across his face—gone before it fully settled.

“To answer your question: it’s a scorpion. This species comes from the Hadarac. Tribes consider them pests. The sting is not often lethal,” he said as he turned from her, walking with easy grace to the desk. She heard the chair creak beneath his weight. “But the pain… ah. Well. Let’s just say it leaves a strong impression.”

Meri didn’t move.

She couldn’t. Her knees ached. Her shoulders shook. Her body screamed for rest—but she wouldn’t risk testing his truth.

The scorpion, content for the moment, wandered up the length of her sleeve. She dared not breathe too sharply. When she tried to whisper, the creature’s tail twitched. She stopped speaking altogether.

From the desk came the scrape of parchment, the mutter of half-formed words, the rustle of pages. Morzan fell into work as if she weren’t there—like she was one of his specimens, caged and docile.

Time stretched thin. Her arms grew heavy. The ache became a constant pulse in her thighs and spine. Hunger gnawed at her belly like a dull blade. She focused on the weight of her breath, the chill of the stone beneath her feet, the distant scratch of his quill—anything but the slow burn of her muscles giving out.

The light shifted. Shadows deepened. At some point, he spoke again.

“When your mother stayed here, she found venom useful. She studied it. Wrote volumes, in fact. That scorpion’s ancestor was her favorite. She called it her ‘little revealer.’” His tone darkened just slightly. “Very effective at loosening tongues.”

The floor dipped beneath her. Not literally—but in her mind, it slanted.

Behind her, he stood.

She didn’t turn.

“I’ve no doubt she kept her past from you,” he said, voice low and musing. “You know so little of the woman she really is. But perhaps I’ll share her work with you. Her notes are still here, after all—though she has abandoned both her home and her husband.”

She felt his hand again. This time it touched her hair.

A slow stroke, light but possessive.

Her scalp crawled.

“By right,” he continued, “I could bring her back. Have her tried. Executed, if I chose. No one would stop me. I am well within my claim. But I won’t.”

His fingers fell away.

“I’ve chosen grace. Mercy, even. I won’t take your mother from you—or from your siblings. They need her, don’t they? Especially the little ones.”

The scorpion on her shoulder lifted its tail.

The sting hovered behind her ear, silent but screaming.

He was giving her a choice. No—he was giving her the illusion of one.

“But,” Morzan said softly, stepping beside her now, “should you need her here—should I decide your training requires it—I’ll call her home. That is my right.”

The silence thickened. Her throat worked, but no sound came at first.

The scorpion’s tail lifted again, deliberate.

Meri’s knees trembled. Her mouth parted. A breath, not a word.

Then, barely audible—
“…if you must.”

He moved to face her. His expression unreadable. Not angry. Not cruel. Just watching.

“You will not run from me again,” he said. “You will behave as a proper daughter should. Do we understand each other?”

There was no choice in it. No room to argue. The creature twitched.

This time, her answer came on an exhale, thin and automatic:
“…I understand.”

The scorpion relaxed. Its tail curled again, slow as a closing hand.

Morzan extended his palm.

The creature returned to him.

He placed it gently back into its cage and closed the lid with care.

Then he returned, brushing her shoulder with his hand—the same place where the stinger had lain. The weightless touch made her flinch, though she kept still.

“I’m glad we’ve come to an agreement,” he said lightly, as if they’d settled some trivial domestic matter. “Now come, Muirgheal. I’m finished with work. Let’s go enjoy our supper.”

Meri let him guide her. Her legs moved, but they no longer felt like her own—too loose in the knees, her heels striking the stone floor wrong. Her skin still crawled where the scorpion had walked. The shape of it lingered, phantom legs skittering up her arm. Her breath caught whenever its memory twitched.

She didn’t remember the walk to the dining room. One moment she was standing in that awful study, and the next she was sitting—lowered into her chair, though she couldn't recall bending her knees. The wood felt sharp beneath her. She sat heavily, spine bowed, her body a trembling husk. Even the cutlery felt foreign in her hands—too bright, too clean, too real. Her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.

Across from her, Morzan drank. Not quickly. Not carelessly. But steadily. The crystal glinted with each pour, the liquid catching fire in the lamplight. He didn’t eat much. Just sipped and refilled, sipped and refilled, and each time his gaze drifted further inward—some dark corridor only he could see.

She glanced at him, then back to her plate. The food was warm and well-made, but she could not taste it. Her mind was a silent river, dragging her downstream. Somewhere below the surface, her thoughts churned—slow and deliberate, like teeth grinding in the dark.

He was clever, she’d give him that. Too clever. And she—she was still learning the rules. This place, this role, this game that wasn’t a game. She hadn't grown up in a world where the truth hid behind courtesies, or where silence could be mistaken for agreement. But her papa always said she was sharper than she looked.

So she would learn. Quietly. Carefully. Like a hunter tracking something too dangerous to corner. She would play the part he wanted—daughter, doll, reflection, whatever mask he preferred. She’d smile when it suited her. Lower her eyes. Speak only when she chose to.

She’d done it before, in stories. Pretending. Playing roles. It was a kind of armor—threadbare, yes, but better than none. Let him believe he’d broken her. Let him believe she’d bent. All the better.

Like tracking a wary animal, she would study this terrain: the creak of floorboards, the rhythm of footsteps, the doors that stuck in damp weather. She would map the castle, chart his moods, catalog every escape route. She wouldn't try to kill him—no, she knew better than that. Even Papa hadn’t managed it.

But she would run. When the time was right, when the wind shifted, when the trap weakened—she would run.

She chewed a piece of meat slowly, without tasting it, and imagined the cabin again. The moss between the stones. The pale shoots pushing through thawed soil. The magnolia tree. If she could get back to that place, maybe the elves would come again. Maybe they’d carry her to safety. Or to Papa. Or anywhere at all that wasn't here.

But she remembered the last time she tried. The cold grip on her arm. The sky spinning overhead as she was dragged back through the doors of Greynsi. Morzan’s voice like a blade against her spine.

She swallowed.

There had to be another way. A quieter one. One that wouldn’t lead him to the others. As long as she was still his, he wouldn’t hunt them. They were safe. She just had to stay useful. Stay still. Stay smart.

By the time the plates were cleared, her decision was made. She would return to the little cabin someday. She would see the garden again. But not yet.

First, she would endure.

Then—she would vanish.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

They arrived at Carvahall in the hush of a silver afternoon, the A cart creaked by, its wheels half-muffled in earth and straw. A dog barked once from behind a garden wall, then quieted. Somewhere, a woman called to her child—sharp at first, then softened into reassurance. Laughter floated from the smithy where two men shared a flask and argued over the weight of a plow blade. Chickens scattered near the well as a girl dumped a bucket of peelings into the dirt. A boy pushed a wheelbarrow loaded with split wood across a rutted path, whistling softly. Farther down the lane, someone beat a rug with slow, methodical thumps that sent dust into the sun.

They arrived at Carvahall in the hush of a silver afternoon, the kind where clouds passed slow as cattle and the wind smelled faintly of damp wool and old woodsmoke. The town hunched low in the valley’s fold like a memory too stubborn to forget—weathered, dim, and quietly enduring—its rooftops dark with age, windows softened by dust, and walls patched in places with whatever hands had found. Smoke coiled upward from stone chimneys in idle threads, and chickens wandered narrow lanes as if time had never sharpened its edge here.

Despite its tucked-away remoteness, Carvahall was not untouched by travelers. Traders came sometimes, and hunters, windburned and lean, their presence adding a shimmer of impermanence to the stillness.

Morzan paid for a room at the inn without much speech. He handled the transaction with the ease of someone who never expected questions, only obedience. The inn itself was low-roofed and dim, its common room warmed by a hearth that smelled faintly of peat and old broth. Wooden benches sagged from years of elbows and stories; a shelf above the bar held a scattering of clay mugs, no two alike. Dried bundles of thyme and chamomile hung from the rafters, though more for habit than fragrance now. The floor creaked with every step, and the innkeeper’s apron was patched at the edges with threadbare care. Meri stood behind Morzan, silent, eyes scanning the dust-lined beams above the innkeeper’s head, noting the cobwebs caught in the corners like forgotten lace.

They crossed through the narrow common room, where the fire had burned down to a bed of coals and the scent of turnip stew lingered in the air. Past a low-beamed archway, a crooked stair curved upward, the railing worn smooth by countless hands. Meri followed Morzan in silence, the floor groaning beneath their steps. At the top, the hallway was close and uneven, lit by the dim spill of a lantern near the innkeeper’s door.

The room was cramped: two wood-framed beds bowed from long use and bristling straw, a warped shutter that let in more wind than light, and a hearth gone cold long before their arrival. Even so, Meri welcomed it—for what it wasn’t. No stone walls. No high ceilings. A door between her and the road behind.

That day, Morzan granted her permission to walk the village alone. He spoke the terms plainly, each one weighed and precise, as if listing the rules of some old game. She was not to stray beyond the town’s edge, not to speak to anyone, not to mark herself. The oath was sealed in the Ancient Language. She repeated the words without tremor, though they tasted bitter on her tongue.

When it was done, he nodded once and turned away, as if the binding itself had closed a door between them. She felt it—the invisible tether drawn tight across her ribs. Not pain but pressure, like a held breath that would not ease.

He did not say he trusted her. He didn’t need to. The shape of his silence said it for him.

She stood in the stillness a moment longer, watching his back retreat toward the inn room's window. The way he moved—deliberate, assured—left no room for doubt. But she would make room. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere he would not think to look.

She remained there even after he had gone still, letting the silence settle into the floorboards, into the grain of the walls. The room was dim, the kind of dim that didn’t invite rest, only endurance. She felt the weight of her vow in her chest—newly spoken, already coiled tight.

When she stepped outside, the inn door clicked shut behind her with a sound too loud for the hush. The shutters closed like eyes, and the wind lifted the edges of her cloak like fingers brushing past, reminding her she was alone. The air held a chill that wasn’t sharp, just old—like breath drawn through a cellar. She hesitated a moment longer, the door still at her back, and then stepped forward.

She shaped a vow then—silent, inward, more instinct than thought: If she was being watched, let the watcher see what she chose to give. Neither fear nor submission. Not quite.

The town opened around her slowly, like a palm half-curled in sleep. She wandered the worn paths between homes with their low stoops and crooked fences, hands tucked into her sleeves. The villagers took little notice—a few glances, brief and unbothered. Faces carved by sun and weather. A woman swept her porch and hummed, low and tuneless. A boy sat cross-legged in the dust, patching the edge of a fishing net with quick fingers. A door creaked open nearby and closed again without urgency. Somewhere, a hen clucked low to herself, unseen.

She walked like someone who belonged nowhere, but had been taught how to disappear in plain sight. Her papa had shown her that once, in a village much like this—how to soften her step, where to rest her gaze, how not to linger too long on anything she might love. Blend with the rhythm, he’d said, but don’t lose your own. That knowledge didn’t grant safety—but it granted shape. And shape, when chosen, was a kind of shield. Enough to move unnoticed. Enough, sometimes, to remain whole.

It was not the first village Meri had walked in silence. But something about this one—the way it sagged gently into the bones of the valley, the way the earth here seemed to remember everything—made her ache with a kind of tired recognition. She did not speak, but she listened—the way her papa had once told her to, not just with ears but with her whole body. Listen with your shoulders, he’d said, with the soles of your feet. Feel the weight of a place before you leave a mark on it. So she did. And she moved like someone staking a quiet claim, not in banners or noise, but in the thread of her breath and the press of each step. She walked the village stitch by careful stitch, sewing herself into its memory without asking to be seen.

To keep herself from being locked in, she obeyed—but barely. Her body moved within the lines, but her mind wandered. Not aimlessly, not quite. It drifted in slow spirals, tracing where the limits thinned and where the cracks might live. She lingered just inside the border where wild grasses began, brushing her fingers along stalks of sorrel and yarrow, grounding herself in texture, in names. She tied a knot in her sleeve thread and untied it again—not once, but three times. A small ritual. Her choice. A signal to herself. A measure of time.

In the market square, she touched the corner of a rain barrel—just once—then walked a full loop of the square clockwise, then again counterclockwise. Not because it meant anything, but because it let her feel the edge of things. And she chose it. That mattered. Her choices had been few lately, small as pebbles. She gathered them anyway.

She paused beside a weaver’s stall, not long enough to draw notice, but enough to study the knots in the hanging cords—her mind tracing patterns, practicing the ones she used to thread by in the forest, when her strings had meaning. She imagined following one of those patterns out, away, past the edge of the square and into the dark. But she didn’t move. Not yet. They couldn’t follow her into that quiet math. That rhythm was still hers. She looped the thread twice, the way Mam once showed her with broken herb-stalks—tight, but never to strangle. A reminder, not a snare. Not yet.

She counted doors. Named colors. Invented stories behind shuttered windows. Gave herself tiny names for things: pebble-bridge, broken-fence, moss-cat. Each name was a small defiance, a quiet mark made in a world where she was meant to leave none. Every act a way of saying I see. I think. I remember. Resistance didn’t always look like fire. Sometimes it looked like quiet names for things no one else would ever say aloud. Sometimes it looked like knowing which window would creak and which one might not.

She longed to ask the villagers questions. About the land. About the past. About her mam. But the oath held firm in her chest like a stone. No words would come, even if she dared. Still, she watched for echoes. Listened for them in the way a child listens to the wind in the chimney, hoping it will say something kind. She imagined what she would ask, if the bindings loosened. Where the paths led. How far the forest stretched. Whether the guards still rode the western ridge. Whether anyone remembered her mother's name.

She noticed small things: the bend in the fence behind the tanner’s shed, the gap in the garden wall near the smithy, the way the shadows pooled behind the water barrels after dusk. She didn’t need them. But she noted them. Like thread laid out in advance. Just in case.

By the time the light turned amber and the chimneys began to thicken with evening cook-smoke, she was waiting outside the inn. Not because she had to be—but because it gave the illusion of choice. Because it was good to know who came and went. Because the weight of dusk felt different when standing still. Morzan returned later than he'd said, without explanation. They went upstairs in silence. He left briefly to arrange for supper, and when he returned, he spoke with a tone almost casual, as though they had spent the day browsing for winter apples or watching smoke drift over the ridge.

“We won’t stay much longer,” he said, settling the door behind him with a quiet click. “There’s something I wish to show you—but not yet.”

Meri gave no reply. She was still seated, hands folded in her lap, the thread from her sleeve wound once around her finger. She didn't meet his eyes, but she didn’t flinch either.

He crossed the room to pour water from the clay jug into two cups, placing one near her without ceremony. “You walked the town well enough,” he added, not quite praise. “I take it you found nothing worth chasing.”

She blinked once, slowly. The thread dug tighter.

“Good,” he said. Then, after a pause: “There’s no need to run, Muirgheal. All that you are meant for is already ahead.”

Meri’s jaw twitched. She didn’t respond, but her thumb pressed harder against the thread wrapped round her finger, until the blood beneath her nail pulsed in protest. The name—his name for her—settled like ash in her throat. Not quite choking, but enough to make her breath sit shallow.

She stared at the floor, at the grain of the wood and the thin crack near the hearthstone. If she followed it, it led to nothing. Just a splintered edge. Just a line no one cared to seal. Like the ones in her.

She nodded—barely. Not in agreement. In understanding. She knew what he was doing. What he thought he’d already done.

The inn had long gone still.

Below, the hearth crackled down to ash. Footsteps had ceased. Even the dog chained near the stable had given up barking at ghosts. The village had gone to sleep, but Meri had not. She sat upright on the straw-matted bed, eyes fixed on the warped line of the shutter where the moon cast a sliver of silver across the floor. Her hand rested lightly on her lap, but the fingers twitched—counting something, maybe time. Maybe reasons.

The thread still pressed against her skin.

She had rehearsed this stillness. This waiting. Not for rescue. Not for peace. Just for the moment the world exhaled fully—when the building creaked softer, when the quiet deepened into something whole.

She waited until the innkeeper’s lamp went dark—until even the sighs of the building had settled into the bones of night.

Then she moved.

Not quickly. Not with drama. Just the careful silence of someone who had studied this moment down to the breath.

She had watched him for hours without seeming to. The way he moved around the room after returning from supper—removing his gloves one finger at a time, folding them with slow precision. He set them on the table, then adjusted the wick of the lamp with the quiet confidence of someone who expected his world to stay lit. He had not looked at her again after their exchange. Not really. Just once, when she hadn’t blinked quickly enough, his eyes caught hers—and she saw it: the calm, watchful certainty of a man who believed the cage had already closed.

She had turned her face toward the shutter then, but her thoughts stayed with him. She studied the weight of his boots on the floorboards, the way his shoulders relaxed but never fully unstrung. He moved like someone who listened to more than sound. Someone who’d been both the trap and the thing inside it.

So she waited until his breath deepened into rhythm. Until the chair creaked only under his own shift. Until he leaned back and let the quiet swallow them both.

Only then did she move.

She tied a thread—fine, from her sleeve’s edge—around her left wrist, and another around her ankle. Not for escape. For memory. For tethering. In Greynsi, she had learned how to vanish on the inside. But here, she tried the outer kind. Real movement. Her own direction.

One of the threads had frayed at the knot. She paused, fingers steady despite the thrum in her wrists, and rewove it—slower this time, more deliberate. She pulled a second strand from her cloak’s hem, the fibers catching slightly as if reluctant to let go. The new knot was imperfect, uneven—but stronger. She looped it twice around her wrist, letting the pressure bite. A sign to herself—this choice was stitched, not given. Not taken. Hers.

She eased her cloak over her shoulders, careful not to disturb the air too quickly. Slipped a hairpin into the inner fold—one she’d palmed from the washbasin days ago. No weapon, not truly. Just something sharp. Something hers.

She waited. Listened.

Morzan’s breath, faint and regular, drifted from the far corner. He’d shifted once in the chair, letting it creak under his weight, then stilled. The scrape of his boot sole had gone quiet. No muttered spells. No sudden alertness. Just that familiar rhythm—like a wolf pretending to sleep with one eye shut. She didn’t trust it, but she marked it.

The walls ticked with the cooling of stone. A board popped once near the hearth. Beyond the window, the dog gave one short huff, then went silent again. Every sound was catalogued. Every silence held.

She rose with care. Placed her foot precisely where the boards ran strongest, avoiding the ones she’d tested earlier that moaned like old hinges. The door creaked once as she opened it—just once—and she paused, breath caught like a knot in her throat.

But no footsteps followed.

The hallway yawned narrow and slanted. She stepped out, counting each floorboard beneath her heel: seven between her room and the stair. Ten down. She knew them all.

Outside, the night was damp with thaw. Mist curled in the gully behind the inn, where weeds grew over an old fence. She did not go toward the gate. That would be watched.

Instead, she turned sideways into shadow, following the narrow path that ran beside the tanner’s shed—a route she had marked earlier beneath the pretense of idle wandering. Her steps were small, deliberate, shaped more by memory than sight. The leather scraps piled by the wall still reeked faintly, even in the chill, but she slipped past without flinching. One breath. Then another.

Halfway along the barn wall, she froze. A scuff—barely more than a whisper—sounded behind her. A nightbird? A shift in the rafters? Her breath halted, and she pressed back into the stone, letting her shadow fold over itself. Heart thudding slow and deep, not with panic, but calculation. She waited.

Nothing followed. No motion. No footsteps. Just mist and the steady exhale of the dark.

She moved again, slower now. Along the back wall of the grain barn, where wild carrot and nettle tangled in a mess of roots and thorns. The moon followed her like a pale eye above the eaves, its light brushing her shoulder. Her shadow stretched long behind her, thin as thread.

A fox cried once in the distance—sharp, high, and too near. She stopped. One foot already in the grass.

That sound. It wasn’t just animal. Not to her. It pierced like Glenwing’s whistle once had, when he’d warned her from the trees. Three quick notes: not threat, but alert. A memory folded in wind.

She held still, listening—not just for pursuit, but for the absence of it. Her heartbeat was a slow drum in her ears. The wind pressed at her back as if urging her forward, and still she hesitated. Something was off. Not wrong. Just... stilled. The kind of stillness that follows breath held too long.

She looked once over her shoulder, then back toward the trees. Her fingers brushed the knot at her wrist. Beyond the thicket, a ridge. Beyond that, forest.

If she made it there—if she could just fade—

She stepped forward.

And he was there.

Not crashing through the brush. Not mounted. Just standing.

Morzan.

His arms were folded. His boots were dry.

Meri’s breath halted—not from fear, but from something colder. A stillness that drained the marrow from her limbs, that took her pulse and flattened it, left her bones humming with the echo of being seen. Truly seen. The kind of gaze that stripped pretense, that named what she tried to hide.

Her heel remained suspended mid-step, weightless. One breath. Then another. The grass tickled her ankle. A nightbird called—brief, sharp, and swallowed too quickly. She didn’t move.

He hadn’t chased. Hadn’t shouted. He hadn’t needed to. He stood like a fixed point in the night, as if he had been carved from the dark itself and waited there for her to arrive.

She felt the air shift—the way it does when a hawk settles on a branch above. Quiet, but watching. A silence that remembered every movement.

And with it came that old undercurrent—familiar as a bruise touched too soon. Not panic. Not even dread. But the aching knowledge that she had miscalculated by a single thread. He had always been near. Her escape had never been unseen.

He stood as if he had been there all along.

“You almost made it,” he said softly.

She didn’t speak. Her heart didn’t race. It sank.

He took a step closer. The distance between them folded like cloth. “Why now?” he asked.

She looked past him, to the thicket. The place she had almost reached. Her voice came quiet, measured, scraped from somewhere deep. “Because I thought I could.”

“Because you believed the illusion I allowed.” His tone didn’t rise. “That was the test, Muirgheal.”

She flinched.

He saw it.

The name struck like a tether pulled tight. It curled around her spine like smoke, familiar and suffocating. Her breath faltered—not because of the word itself, but because of what it signaled: the reassertion of his claim, his certainty that she belonged only to the frame he had cast around her.

Her fingers curled around the thread at her wrist, tighter now. It wasn’t a choice—not anymore—but her body hadn’t caught up. Her knees still locked for flight. Her weight tilted forward, heart caught in the moment-before. But she didn’t run. She knew the futility of it. She knew he knew it, too.

He stepped aside—not to let her pass, but with the ease of someone closing a door. Herding her back with the simple shape of his presence.

“We’ll walk,” he said.

His hand brushed the space behind her shoulder—not forceful, but practiced. Like a man who had done this before, many times, with many silences. The pressure was soft, almost habitual, like guiding a child toward sleep. But it chilled her deeper than cold air. She didn’t flinch. She wouldn’t give him that.

They walked back through the misted alley. Past the barn. Past the tangled nettles and wild carrot. Past the place where freedom had felt near enough to name.

The silence around them was total, broken only by the press of their footsteps in loam. Her boots left no print she could see. But she felt the tether drawing close, pulling tight with every step.

Behind her, he said nothing. And that nothing was weighted, heavy with belief. Not that she feared. But that she’d yielded. That she had learned.

And that certainty—so complete, so silent—burned hotter than any lash.

.

They returned to the inn in silence. Morzan walked ahead, as if leading rather than escorting, and opened the door without flourish. The innkeeper was nowhere to be seen, but the hearth still held the ghost of warmth. Shadows had deepened across the floor. When he gestured her inside, it wasn’t with cruelty—but it wasn't kindness either. It was a performance of choice, a fiction in the shape of freedom.

She stepped through, her boots silent on the planks. She knew better than to hesitate. Hesitation left traces. He followed, closed the door gently, and crossed the room to place his gloves on the table. Not a word. Not a reprimand. Just that unbearable silence—the kind that made her feel the weight of her own heartbeat.

They climbed the stairs again. She moved first, this time, and the sound of her steps felt louder than it should’ve. At the top, he paused beside her door but did not enter. "We’ll talk in the morning," was all he said. No threat. No question. Just the truth, spoken like a stone dropping in a well.

She slipped into the room alone. The bolt slid into place—not to keep him out, but to mark that she had chosen to be on the inside. Then she sank to the floor and didn’t rise for a long time. Her hands were scratched, her ribs ached, and somewhere on her arm, a bruise was blooming like ink beneath skin. She didn’t cry. Not from pride. But because the moment for crying had passed. What remained was stillness.

The morning light brought no reprieve.

Golden light filtered through the warped shutters in tired threads, falling across the uneven floorboards and the dust caught in their seams. Meri sat where she had been for hours—at the narrow table by the hearth, knees pulled close, a cup of untouched broth cooling in her hands. She hadn’t drunk. Her lips were chapped, and the rim of the cup had dried to salt.

She’d removed her boots but not her cloak. Mud crusted the hem. A bramble tear marked her sleeve where she’d caught it on the thorns last night—running. Failing. Remembering how soft the leaves had been beneath her palms, how close the dark had pressed. The ache in her ribs where she’d twisted wrong still pulsed dull and regular. But the real bruise was somewhere deeper. Somewhere silence couldn’t reach.

She hadn’t spoken. Not since he found her.

In the dark hours before dawn, she hadn’t slept—not fully. The night had moved in breaths and creaks, in the small betrayals of silence that made her ears ache from listening. Once, she’d heard footsteps in the hall. Not rushed. Not loud. Just deliberate—heel, toe, pause. She had frozen then, hand already on the thread she’d knotted at the bedpost.

The steps did not stop outside her door. They moved on. But not far.

Much later, the latch creaked once. Not opened—just tested. A breath of air moved through the gap, and she caught the faintest scent of peat smoke and leather—his scent. Then nothing. Not even retreating footsteps. He didn’t need to move to be known.

The silence thickened. For a time, she wasn’t sure if he’d truly gone or simply stood beyond the threshold, listening. She strained to catch the creak of a board, the catch of breath, the weight of a shadow. But there was only the sound of her own pulse, too loud in the stillness.

She hadn’t lit a candle. She had watched the ceiling until light found the shutter-cracks and spilled across the floor in faint, uneven lines.

Once, near dawn, the floorboard outside her room shifted again—not weighty, just a brush of pressure, the kind made by someone leaning close to listen. She had curled smaller in her blanket, breath shallow, clutching the thread at her wrist like it was a blade.

Now, the windows were bolted.

It hadn’t been that way before. Not when she first returned. The shutters had hung loose on tired hinges, their latch barely catching. But sometime in the quiet hours—while she’d lain still, eyes open to the dark, heart folded inward—the sound had come. A rusted groan. A pause. Then the bite of iron into wood, slow and sure. She hadn’t dared rise. Hadn’t needed to. She knew the sound of a bolt being drawn. Not from fear, but ritual.

He’d waited, then. Not outside the door—at the door. Not testing her. Not threatening. Just standing. Long enough that her limbs stiffened beneath the blanket and the thread at her wrist turned damp with sweat.

Only when the inn’s rooster called once into the stillness did his footsteps shift—measured, unhurried. She heard the creak of a board, the rasp of glove against fabric, and then nothing more.

She hadn’t moved until the light broke. And when it did, she’d crossed the room without breath and touched the latch with two fingers. The bolt was real. Set firm. Not forced. Chosen. Just like everything he did.

She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t screamed. But the silence she held wasn’t emptiness—it was a shield drawn tight across the skin. Her throat ached from the restraint of it, her chest hollow with what she dared not name. Every blink stung with dryness, and yet her eyes searched the floorboards as if some answer had been burned into the grain overnight.

She’d simply turned her back to it all and let the morning fall across her like a shroud—cold, impersonal, and thin as regret.

Downstairs, life stirred. The clatter of spoons in a basin. Someone humming. A low laugh. The sound of a door swinging open and shut in the kitchen breeze. All so normal. So free.

She sat still.

When Morzan entered, it was without fanfare. The door opened. He stepped in. Removed his gloves. Hung his cloak. The motions of a man returning from a walk in the hills, not a captor returning from watch.

“You’ll remain indoors today,” he said, not unkindly. “I trust that won’t need to be repeated.”

Meri didn’t look at him. Her thumb circled the rim of the cup.

He crossed the room and stood at the fireless hearth. For a moment, he seemed to consider the cold stones, the silence between them.

“You were always meant for more than fear,” he said. “But you let it guide you.”

Still, she said nothing.

“It doesn’t disappoint me,” he added, almost gently. “It informs me.”

She turned her face slightly then—not toward him, but toward the shuttered window, as if the angled light might peel open some answer the room refused to give. Light slid over her skin like breath over a blade, too gentle to be pain but sharp enough to notice. If he’d looked closer, he might have seen it: not defiance, but memory layered over fear, too quiet to name. She wasn’t staring at the wall. She was listening—listening—for the sound of the woods beyond these walls. For a voice, maybe. A crackle of underbrush. A fox cry. Even the echo of her own name, said by someone else. Anything to tell her that the world outside still remembered her shape. Still called her real.

But there was none.

Only the scrape of a chair, the soft clink of ceramic as he poured his own drink.

He didn’t linger.

He drank half the cup—tea or broth, she couldn’t tell—and set it down without a sound. Then he gathered his gloves again, slipping them on with practiced ease, like sealing himself back into the shape of what the world expected of him.

At the door, he paused. Not to look at her. But to speak, low and measured:

“You’re not imprisoned, Muirgheal. You’re protected. Learn the difference.”

Then he left.

The door clicked shut. Not slammed. Not locked.

But she didn’t move.

The light shifted as the morning advanced, glancing off the iron latch and tracing slow gold along the wall. Somewhere in the courtyard, the innkeeper shouted at a boy for dropping the grain sack. A cart rumbled past, its wheels clattering over stones still wet from last night’s dew. A chicken squawked once, the flutter of wings chasing a child’s laugh into silence. Somewhere, a woman swept her stoop, each bristle stroke steady, unknowing.

The world did not notice she had broken.

She longed for the ordinary ache of those rhythms—grit in her palms from gathering kindling, the wet chill of a bucket drawn from the well, even the scold of a mother calling children in from the lane. Her body remembered these things. Her skin missed them like touch.

Her breath came shallow now. Not from fear—but the way frost clings to the inside of a window, unsure if it wanted to melt.

She set the cold cup down carefully. Palmed the fragment of broken thread still wound around her wrist. And unwound it. Slowly. Carefully. As if it mattered. As if it was a stitch that held her body closed.

Then, from the hem of her cloak, she drew out another length—longer, paler, almost frayed. A piece she had saved. The one around her wrist had broken—snapped when she’d fumbled the latch. She held it for a time, felt its limpness, then let it fall. It had served its purpose: it had marked the moment her body chose to run, even when her voice could not.

She knotted it three times.

Looped it once around the base of the bedpost.

And tucked the rest into her sleeve.

Not to trap herself.

Not to be seen.

But so that later, if the thread was broken, she would know: something had shifted. Someone had touched the last quiet claim she still made of the space she occupied. Not a scream or a sign—but a thread. A whisper in fabric. A warning woven in the quiet.

This was not safety. It was not a home. But it was hers, for now—because she marked it. Because she could.

Outside, the village bell rang noon. The iron note cracked through air steeped in baking bread and horse sweat, threading between sun-warmed cobbles and the rhythmic strike of a broom against stone. A child’s call echoed briefly, then faded into the thrum of wheel ruts and passing hooves. Voices tangled like wind in laundry lines—unguarded, belonging to themselves.

Inside, she sat in stillness, her fingers clasped over her knees as if to keep herself from unraveling. The hush pressed in like wool soaked in riverwater—dense, unyielding, sour with memory. The hearth had long since cooled. The shadows beneath the table were no longer comforting.

She longed for the world outside not with desperation but ache—ache like lungs unused to breath. Her body remembered what her mind tried to forget: the tug of linen across shoulders, the weight of a pail in her hands, the sting of wind that carried no threat. She missed the clutter of chores, the small sounds of life not shaped by permission.

And behind her silence, something older stirred—not rage, not grief, not yet—but something that remembered being held, being trusted, being real. A pulse of selfhood that hadn’t died, only quieted. Waiting. Listening. Choosing.

.

On the second morning, when the inn was quiet and the hearth smelled of boiled roots and ash, he gestured for her to follow. Not with a command, but with that same unspoken certainty that made refusal unthinkable.

She obeyed.

They sat in the common room near the window, where a strip of pale light cut across the table like a mark left by time. Meri ate a single bowl of stew—plain, thin, and steaming faintly. She barely tasted it. Around her, the world moved in the ways she remembered: the clink of mugs, the low murmur of conversation, the innkeeper’s wife humming as she hung fresh bundles of thyme and marjoram above the fire.

Somewhere outside, the smith laughed too loudly at something unseen, and a cart rattled past on the rutted lane. For a moment, Meri let her eyes close. The sounds were not remarkable—but they pierced. Ordinary things, once hers. Now unreachable.

It wasn’t much.

But it was enough to split her open.

The innkeeper passed by, a tray balanced in his arms. He gave a small grunt as he paused at their table. “Quiet girl you have there,” he said, setting the tray down with care. “Me wife’s seen her drifting through the square the other morning. Swears she hasn’t said a word.”

Morzan didn’t glance at her. “Fiora means no insult by her silence. She’s never spoken a word—not one, since birth. But she sees well enough, and that’s what matters.”

The lie slid smooth as oil, sealing the truth beneath it. His voice folded around her like a winter cloak—too tight, too familiar. It wasn’t warmth. It was weight.

Meri’s gaze cut to him, sharp and silent. A lie made to make her vanish. A sentence passed with a smile. Her tongue was hers—and yet no longer.

She didn’t speak. Not because she agreed. But because she couldn’t. The binding sat in her ribs like a stone.

The innkeeper gave a polite nod and turned away.

And that was all.

When they returned upstairs, the door clicked behind them with the finality of something that had never truly been open. He did not need to lock it. The taste of shared space—of voices not shaped like threats—would haunt her more than hunger ever could.

That night, she did not sleep.

She lay with her back to the wall, eyes on the shutter slats, and listened to the stew cooling in her stomach—each swallow an unspoken surrender. Not because she believed.

But because she was still here.

When Morzan left he didn’t lock the door. He didn’t need to.

She had broken a boundary—and he had responded not with chains, but with a gesture of freedom so measured it turned the breath in her lungs cold. Leaving the door unbolted was deliberate. A message. You may go, if you dare. If you think the price is worth paying. It was not trust. It was a dare made of silence. A leash made from memory. He didn’t expect her to run again.

Because he thought she had learned.

When he left, he didn’t say where he was going. Meri didn’t ask. She sat on the edge of the bed, the blanket still rumpled from a night not slept, watching the light shift along the warped shutters. When his footsteps faded from the stairs below, the silence thickened around her—less like peace, more like fog. Slow and suffocating.

She tried the latch once.

It wasn’t bolted.

And that terrified her more than if it had been.

Still, she didn’t cross the threshold.

The windows stayed shuttered. Not nailed, not sealed—but narrow enough to remind her of stone walls and high ceilings. When the wind caught them, they creaked, soft and uneven. Like breath caught behind teeth.

She leaned close to the slats once, just once, and caught a thread of life drifting in from the street: a clatter of hooves, a snatch of song, the rough rattle of a wheelbarrow striking cobbles. It struck her like a memory with no origin—some echo of a day when she had been small and barefoot and part of the world.

She stepped back before she heard too much.

The ache came quietly after that. Slow. Dull. Like cold water soaking into bone.

She folded laundry that wasn’t hers. She braided her own hair twice, then undid it, fingers trembling for something to do. She counted the knots in the floorboard near the hearth. Picked a splinter from the window frame and tucked it into her sleeve like it might become useful. She touched the doorframe three times before she sat again, just to know she still could.

The room was not a cell. But it had no edges that welcomed her.

That evening, Morzan returned with little sound. He set two apples and a heel of bread on the table, then sat across the room without a word. For a while, the only noise was the shift of wood and the low murmur of distant voices outside the inn.

“You’re not imprisoned,” he said, finally. His voice was light. Almost warm. “You’re here because I trust you not to make the same mistake twice.”

Meri didn’t look up. She studied the edge of her sleeve where a thread had loosened. She wound it once, then twice, around her finger. Like a question she wasn’t ready to answer.

.

The next day dawned with rain.

It clung to the shutters in pale veils, beading in the warped corners of the glass like uncried tears. The gutters dripped in slow rhythm, a lullaby for those who still slept. But Meri had not slept. Not fully. Not in days.

Below, muffled by mist and warped wood, she caught sight of a girl in a slate cloak splashing through a puddle—hair undone, laughter unrestrained. The kind of laughter that didn’t ask permission to be loud. The kind that left nothing behind but joy.

The sound rose, unguarded.

And then vanished.

Meri pressed her hand to the shutterpane. It was cool beneath her fingers. Cool and thin as breath. And it did not give. The world on the other side was moving, easy and unseen. It didn’t wait for her. Didn’t know she was watching.

She turned away before it could undo her.

The room behind her smelled of damp wool, of stale ash and her own restlessness. She paced once across the narrow floor, then twice. Tied and untied the same thread at her wrist. She thought of that girl’s voice. Not the pitch of it, not the words—just the shape of sound unchained.

That evening, Morzan returned. He brought the scent of wet horse and sodden leather with him, trailing it into the room like a second shadow. He shook the rain from his cloak and spoke without turning.

“There was a time I thought your mother would bring you here.”

She didn’t reply. She didn’t even shift.

“She told you only fragments, didn’t she?” he continued. “Of the war. Of the oath she broke. You carry more than her silence, Muirgheal. You carry what she abandoned.”

His voice did not rise. It never needed to. The blade was always in the pause between his sentences, not the edge.

Meri sat cross-legged on the bed, head bowed. Her fingers looped and unlooped the thread from her sleeve again—careful, controlled. Each motion was a word she wasn’t allowed to speak. She named them in her mind: Steady. Silent. Unseen. Over and over. Not spells, but anchors.

The rain kept falling.

But she no longer watched it.

.

The fourth morning began as the last had ended—wet, dim, and stilled by fog.

Meri awoke with her cheek pressed to her sleeve, the rough wool damp where she’d dozed beside the shutter. The hearth was cold. The broth from last night still lingered on her tongue, and her stomach ached—not from emptiness, but from too much stillness.

They ate in silence. The broth was slightly salted, but it tasted like waiting. Like days strung together with no promise of shift.

When Morzan stood to leave, he paused by the door. Not in hesitation—he did not hesitate—but as if something unfinished hung in the air.

“You have her steadiness,” he said, as if they’d been speaking. As if her silence was permission. “But it’s wasted on a story she never let you hear.” His hand lingered on the latch. The silence between them thickened. “You’ll understand, soon.”

And then he was gone.

She didn’t rise for a long time. Didn’t move. Just sat there, eyes closed, listening to the echo of a truth he’d tried to plant in her chest. Wasted. Never let you hear. Soon. His words never hit like arrows. They bled in slow.

She waited, as if something might rise from the silence and answer back.

A voice that wasn’t his.

A name that wasn’t Muirgheal.

But nothing came.

.

The fifth morning brought fog so thick it pressed like wool against the shutters—dense and gray and airless. Meri dressed in silence, movements small, efficient, as if pulling on armor she no longer believed would save her.

Morzan stood by the hearth, gloves in hand. His boots were clean. He always made sure of that.

“We’ll ride today,” he said, as if it had always been the plan. “The weather will hold.”

She didn’t move.

He looked at her then. Just once. Just long enough to measure.

“There is something I’ve meant to show you,” he said. “It’s time.”

She didn’t speak. Her fingers closed once around the knot she’d tied at her wrist—tight, quiet, resolute.

Inside her, something braced.

Not for the ride.

For what would be taken from her along the way.

.

They rode before most of the town had woken, their horses’ hooves muffled by loam and old pine needles. Mist clung low to the ground, lifting only as they climbed into higher, thinner air. Meri didn't speak. She hadn't in days. Her jaw ached from clenching. Her tongue sat heavy, unused. Every breath in her throat felt stored—not spoken.

 Her eyes tracked the road like a hunted thing’s—not looking for escape, but for patterns, signs, anything she might read and store away.

Beyond the farms and narrow passes, past where even goat paths faded into meadow, the land fell open like a wound long healed but not forgotten.

The valley stretched wide below them, rimmed by stone-torn cliffs and crowned in early frost. Wildflowers spilled across the fields in reckless abandon—goldenrod, asters, yarrow—their crushed stems releasing sharp, bitter scent into the air. The old house stood skeletal and blackened, half-swallowed by ivy. The stones of the byre jutted from the earth like broken teeth. Even the well had caved in, its cover long since rotted through.

Morzan reined in and said, “This was your grandfather’s land.”

Meri dismounted without a word. Her boots sank into the wet turf. She felt the mud cling to her soles like memory. She did not touch the reins again.

Her breath caught, not from the climb—but from recognition. Not of the land, but of its silence. A silence like her own. This place had been burned and left. No rebuilding. No repair. Just time swallowing what remained. She understood that. She carried that.

She said nothing for a long time. She didn’t want to speak. She wanted the silence to hold her together a little longer.

When she did speak, it was low—hoarse and uneven, like wind pushing through reeds after long stillness. The effort scraped her throat, a raw tug against silence held too long. The words scraped out like something pulled from a wound that had scabbed too soon. Even hearing her own voice startled her—it didn’t sound like it belonged.

“I asked Mam once what her childhood home was like.”

Morzan said nothing. The wind answered instead, brushing past her hood.

“She said very little,” Meri continued almost to herself. “I think I understand now.”

Her voice was flat, but it carried weight—worn, quiet, but shaped by something sharp. Speaking hurt, not in pain, but in remembrance. The sound of her own voice felt foreign. And yet, somehow, anchoring.

She stepped forward, slowly, as if the air might crack beneath her. “How does one speak of a place that held both love and loss?” She didn’t expect an answer. “Some things live in the bones, not in the tongue.”

She turned to the ruins and said, more clearly, “This is a sorrowful place. Why bring me to a field filled with nothing but ash?”

Morzan had dismounted. He stood with one hand on a crumbling wall, watching the wind stir the grass. “Because it is yours, in part. A fragment of what little legacy you hold from your mother. These lands passed through her line for generations—each one poorer than the last. Wildfire saw them ruined. Your uncle sold them to me for more than they were worth. He’s gone north now. Borderline wilderness.”

Meri looked at him—not fully, just enough to show she’d heard. “What will you do with it?”

He tilted his head, thoughtful. “That remains to be seen. A man should leave something behind. I haven’t yet decided what’s fitting.”

The word scraped.

For him to own land tied to her mother’s childhood felt like salt rubbed into an open wound. She couldn’t name the wrong of it aloud, but it lived in her throat, pulsing.

“You should sell it,” she said. The steadiness in her voice cost her. It pressed behind her eyes and chest, a silent burn. “To someone from the town. Let them build again, if they wish. Not everything broken needs to be rebuilt by the hand that broke it.”

He didn’t answer. She didn’t expect him to.

The wind lifted a lock of her hair as she turned from him and looked to the mountains. The ridgelines folded on themselves like pressed paper, each one dusted in snow—old, distant, watching. She didn’t know if they offered judgment or solace.

But they remembered.

.

She walked the edge of the ruined homestead with careful steps, as if the ground might shift beneath her. Her fingers brushed the stone top of a fallen wall—lichen-soft, sun-warmed, uneven. Every touch felt like an echo, and her skin, too thin from silence, felt each one. The grass bent around her legs. Crickets stirred. Something small rustled under what might’ve been a lean-to long ago.

She stepped into what remained of the house.

The hearth lay collapsed, its stones sunken and overgrown with violet and weed. Dog’s tooth bloomed between the ribs of old timbers, and the faintest scent of scorched pine lingered. Fire leaves its mark long after the heat is gone.

She paused near what had once been a doorway. She knelt. Her knees met damp earth, and for a moment she didn’t move. Her thumb found the lines—uneven, shallow, the way a child carves when their hand still wobbles. The stone was cold. The mark, older than memory.
She stared at it, breath slowing. Her heart beat once, hard. Then again—like a muffled drum.

There, carved into the threshold stone, were faint marks—uneven, shallow, almost vanished by weather. She knelt. Ran her thumb over the lines.

A sun. A child’s carving.

She stared at it, breath slowing. Her heart beat once, hard. Then again.

“Did you know?” she asked. She didn’t look back. Her voice was sand-soft.

“I saw it years ago,” Morzan said behind her. “Didn’t think much of it.”

But she did.

“Mam used to carve suns,” Meri murmured. “When she was scared. One at every doorway. She said the light would guard those who passed beneath.”
Her voice thinned, like a thread fraying under breath. “She must have been young…” Her voice thinned. She blinked.

Wind pushed through the broken roof. The grasses whispered. Morzan did not reply.

From the hem of her cloak, she drew a thin thread—frayed, nearly worn through. She tied it to a blackened beam beside the hearth. Her hands were steady, but her chest felt hollowed, like a bowl too long left empty by the fire.
Not a mark for return.
But a mark for memory.

The valley below lay unruly and wild. Elderflowers bloomed pale against the far slope. Thistles crowned the curve of the collapsed well. And in the ruins of the byre, a young spruce had taken root—thin, but stubborn.

“I wonder if she looked back,” Meri said. “Or if she just kept walking.”

“She didn’t leave alone,” Morzan said. “I was the one who took her.”

That stilled her. Not the words. The certainty.

“She didn’t speak,” he continued. “Not once. But when the valley disappeared, she closed her eyes. And I knew she was grieving something she couldn’t name.”

Meri turned her face away. Her throat ached.

“You remember that?” she asked.

“I remember everything,” he said.

There was no boast in it. No cruelty. Just truth.

She nodded once. Said nothing else. The wind caught her cloak and tugged it wide.

She didn’t say it aloud.
But something inside her settled—like dust on an untouched table, like ash after flame.
Not healed.
But known.

.

They returned to the inn before nightfall. The ride back passed in silence.

That night, she didn’t light a candle. She didn’t eat. She sat by the window with her boots still on, the coals ticking faintly behind her. The memory of the ruin—her mother’s carving in the stone, the thread she left tied to the beam—pressed against her chest like a weight that refused to shift. She didn’t cry. But something inside her had begun to lean, quiet as a door left ajar in wind.

Meri slept lightly that night, dreamless but not restful. When she woke, the fire had burned down to a soft cradle of coals. She drank from the chipped clay mug on the bedside table—lukewarm water, faintly smoky—and dressed without speaking. Her throat ached from disuse, but she didn’t try to speak again. Words felt unnecessary now—like tools she no longer knew how to hold. The silence hadn’t left her; it had simply taken root, curling behind her ribs like smoke.

She thought the day would unfold slowly. But it didn’t.

By midmorning, Morzan told her to ready her things. They were riding again.

This time, they turned away from the main road entirely, following a trail nearly swallowed by undergrowth. The path twisted upward, climbing a low ridge. The wind shifted, carrying the faintest scent of oat mash and chimney smoke.

She felt it before she saw it—a pressure in her chest, a prickle at the base of her neck. The air grew thinner, the light too sharp. Something in her remembered before her eyes did. She gripped the reins tighter, the leather biting into her palms. She was not ready. She would never be ready. And then—

The trees parted. The valley opened.

And there, sunlit and alive, lay everything she thought she had lost.

A small homestead, humble and sun-washed, lay nestled at the valley’s edge. In the field below, people moved through rows of late harvest—baskets and blankets scattered, sheaves of grain lifted, sorted, passed from hand to hand. A woman stood apart, her back unbending as she surveyed the work with narrowed eyes, a child balanced against her hip.

Meri drew in a sharp breath.

It didn’t matter that a year had passed since she last saw them. Time hadn’t dulled her knowing. She would have recognized that stance anywhere. Her mother. Mam—who stood with the same strength she always had, eyes sharp even in rest, lips pressed in quiet calculation. Meri could almost hear her murmuring aloud the count of potatoes or the jars of cream. A quiet ruler of the little kingdom she had carved into the earth.

Then the spell broke.

She slipped off the horse and stepped forward, breath shivering in her lungs—and stopped cold. Fingers like iron clamped down on her shoulders, steady and sure. Morzan. He had stepped behind her without a sound. She hadn’t even noticed.

“We can go no further without running the risk of disrupting the wards,” he whispered against her ear, his voice low and careful. The Ancient Language bound the truth of it. “I won’t act against them while we are here unless you tell me to. We’re only here to watch, and to talk about a proposition I have for you.”

Meri’s gaze stayed locked on the field. Her lips moved before she could stop them. “Proposition?”

“You know what proposition means,” he said, almost chiding. “You also know there will be an exchange. Nothing is without price. The choice is yours, my child—consider it, and choose wisely.”

Her fingers curled inward. In the distance, she saw Elida. Taller now. She moved with an ease Meri no longer remembered, sleeves rolled, mouth half-open in mid-command. Conan trailed behind her. He was carrying something too large for his frame and laughing.

The weight of it struck like a blow to the chest. Her knees wavered—just slightly—but it was enough. The joy below, unguarded and ordinary, was a language her bones still spoke, but her breath couldn’t catch the rhythm. It stuttered in her throat, raw with the knowledge that she no longer belonged in that grammar of warmth and harvest and noise.

She leaned forward—and Morzan’s hands clamped tighter.

“Don’t make me restrain you,” he murmured.

A figure emerged from the barn—a boy near her age. Her heart leapt, stumbled. Eragon? No. The gait was wrong. The shoulders too wide. The hair too dark.

“I can lift the enchantment on you,” Morzan said. “Together, we’ll go down there and retrieve your mother. She will return with us and be well cared for. I won’t so much as enact justice—not as I should—and no harm will befall her while under my protection. We could even take the child on her hip. I’ll raise it as I raised you. Think of it, my child. We could be the family we always should have been.”

Meri’s lips parted, but her voice felt trapped in her throat.

“There are people to care for the rest,” he went on smoothly. “I expect Brom would spirit them away soon after, far from my reach. But your mother… she would be ours.”

She thought she had prepared for this. Rehearsed every reaction. Built her mind into a quiet room, stone-walled and windowless. But the sight of her mother’s hand resting against a child’s back—a hand she used to know by touch alone—cracked something clean through. That hand had once steadied her fevered head. Had braided her hair while whispering names of herbs. Had held a blade, once, for Meri’s sake. Now it held someone else.

She felt herself shaking.

“Or?” she managed.

“Or, we negotiate your loyalty. You swear yourself to me, and I will pull back my eyes and hands. I’ll let them live in peace. I won’t pursue them again. But you cannot go to them, Muirgheal. You’re no longer their Meri. Their little flower.”

His voice gentled with that name, but it sickened her now. She felt herself stepping back—not away from him, but back into his shadow, into the cold that coiled around her lungs.

“So choose. I will not offer this again.”

From the field, the goat bayed—Happy, or another that looked like her. The sound carved a hollow under Meri’s ribs. She watched Elida stoop and scratch behind its ears, then rise with that same careless grace she used to have before winter training stole it from her. Conan bounded past, thin legs swinging, a blur of linen and dirt and noise.

Normal.

It was normal.

She could smell smoke from the chimney—pine sap and oat mash. Heard the tin rattle of a bucket. The flap of wet laundry. Things that belonged to a world she had once protected with blood and vow and silence. Things she had ached for.

A life continuing. Without her.

Her breath came shallow now, clipped like someone holding in a scream. Her body tilted forward—desperate, instinctive. Her boot shifted in the stirrup. Her legs trembled beneath her cloak, not from fear—but from that terrible ache that came when the body remembered where it once belonged. The kind of ache that lived in joints and tendons and refused to be swallowed by reason. She had stood in that field. Once. Had bent to pick up Conan when he stumbled. Had argued with Elida over the proper way to stack bundles. Had kissed Mam’s cheek when no one else was looking. But that girl had vanished. And this girl—this stranger with her name—could only watch.

Morzan’s hands gripped tighter.

“Don’t make me restrain you,” he murmured, his voice colder now. Not a threat. A promise rehearsed.

Each word was weighted with poisoned sweetness.

A new figure emerged from the barn. A boy—almost grown. Her breath caught again. Eragon? But no. He was broader. Dark-haired. Laughing as he tossed something over his shoulder. Someone else.

“You could have them,” he said. “We could be whole.”

She said nothing. The quiet inside her was no longer armored. It was barren.

He went on. “Or—you swear. Your loyalty. One last time. And I let them live, untouched. But they’ll never see you again. Not as you are. Not as you were.”

He paused—then added, soft and deliberate, “Their little flower.”

The name struck like a nettle to bare skin. Not spoken with warmth, but with precision—like a finger pressed to a bruise he knew was still tender.

Meri’s breath caught in her chest. Her jaw clenched, and her throat ached with a thousand words she could not speak. That name—once whispered with love in the hushed dark of childhood, once stitched into lullabies and morning kisses—now felt like rot. Like something peeled from her past and offered back as a weapon.

She turned her face sharply away, but it didn’t matter. The hurt was already seeded. Not fresh. Just reawakened.

The wind stirred her cloak. Below, Elida laughed, and it broke her all over again.

She turned her face toward the field. Toward them. The echo of her own childhood blurred with the present: Elida laughing, feet kicking dust. Conan chasing butterflies. Mam wiping her hands on her apron. A life stitched together in a thousand little ways, each thread pulled tight by time.

Then Elida looked up.

Straight toward her.

For a second, Meri didn’t breathe. Elida’s gaze had caught on something—the way Meri stood with one wrist crossed over the other, fingers hooked in the edge of her sleeve. It was an old habit, born of winter training and too many mornings pretending not to shiver. A stance only a sister would know.

Meri flinched. Just slightly. Just enough.

Elida’s posture shifted—like a string had been pulled. She stepped forward, hesitant, then faster. Her mouth opened. A shout? A name?

She was running.

Morzan didn’t tense. He smiled. As if he had expected this all along. “Choose, my child,” he said again. “But choose quietly.”

Meri’s whole body froze. That instinct to reach out, to call back—to let her name tear free from its cage—rose like a wave. But Morzan was already turning, already tensing. She saw his hand twitch toward his belt.

No.

She bolted. Feet slamming against the earth, breath sharp in her throat. Not toward Elida—never that—but sideways, into the thicket, into the trees. Her cloak snagged on a branch. She tore free.A beat—her heart a drum of betrayal—and then she was riding. Hard. Not away from Elida, but from what she could never allow to happen. If Morzan moved, if he gave chase, if the wards shattered—

She would be the cause.

So she ran. Fast enough that the sob never made it past her teeth. Fast enough that her sister’s voice was swallowed by trees.

She didn’t look back.

Not even when the leaves closed like a gate behind her.

But something inside her had already broken open—quiet as thread unraveling in the dark.

Chapter Text

The return to Greynsi was uneventful. It took them little less than a week to reach The Beast, and in that time, very little passed between them. Meri kept her distance, riding behind Morzan when she was forced to ride at all, eyes fixed on the road’s dust and not the man who led her. He allowed the silence, and she was grateful. She wasn’t ready for words. Not after what she’d seen.

They stayed three days at the inn before leaving. Three days of silence cut by the noise of distant market bells and passing carts, of a world still turning while Meri’s own had been torn sideways. She kept mostly to the upper room, rising before dawn to press her forehead against the cold glass panes and watch fog unravel between the roofs. She did not speak. Not to Morzan. Not to the girl who brought meals. Her voice felt locked behind her ribs, as if using it would shatter something that had only just held.

Sometimes she would listen to the tavern below—the clatter of dice, the creak of chairs, someone laughing in a way that hurt to hear. And sometimes she couldn’t bear even that. She’d press the pillow to her ears and lie still, muscles drawn taut beneath the blanket. It was the ache of proximity to life without being part of it that haunted her most.

She watched the clouds roll across slate roofs and imagined them as fields she could run in. She counted the chickens in the alley below and made up names for them. She heard a girl—perhaps the innkeeper’s daughter—singing in a thin, bright voice while hanging sheets in the yard. Meri couldn’t look. Not for long. The sound of water in the basin, the scent of clean linen, even the idle flick of someone sweeping—it all felt too fragile. Like a life she’d left behind.

When they left, it was without ceremony. Morzan paid the innkeeper in silence and held the door without a word. Meri stepped out like a shadow peeling from stone. The ride after was slow, uphill, and marked by the hush of a quiet too complete to be natural. She rode stiffly, her hands sore from gripping the reins too tightly, her breath never quite filling her chest.

The dragon met them at the edge of a plateau at dusk, the air sharp with mountain wind. The descent into Greynsi was swift, uneventful, and without mercy. When The Beast landed in the courtyard, its wings cast great shadows across the walls. The gust they stirred brought the scent of moss and iron, of old stone and burned edges. Meri stood back, arms folded tight, and did not approach. The inn’s shadows still clung to her—a veil of silence and unseen bruising. Her legs felt stiff from days in the saddle, her hands raw from holding too tightly to leather and resolve. In the inn, she had barely moved. Three days of cold tea cooling untouched, of meals brought and left and barely eaten. The girl who served them never stayed long—perhaps sensing what Meri refused to show. Outside, she had heard life continuing: children running, carts trundling over cobble, a lute strummed badly by a window someone had left open. Every sound felt like something stolen.

Now, standing in Greynsi’s courtyard, her boots felt foreign to the stone. Morzan dismounted, his movements fluid, practiced. He unsaddled the dragon himself, murmuring to it like a priest tending an altar. There was reverence in him. Reverence, and something more unsettling: affection. She watched the way his fingers traced the edge of a scale, the hush in his voice that even the wind didn’t steal.

“There’s no reason to be afraid of him,” he said over his shoulder. “Unless commanded, he won’t harm you.”

But Meri said nothing. Her silence was its own shield. He had taken enough from her without also taking her voice. Her gaze did not meet his. If she looked too long, she feared she might scream or vanish. She didn’t know which would be worse.

When the dragon wandered off into the gardens, tail carving through beds of wilted flowers, Morzan turned. “That’s enough sulking, Muirgheal. Come. We’ve work to do.”

The name bit into her. She flinched, but only inwardly. The word caught like burrs in her throat. She followed, because she had to.

The tower had not changed. The scent of vellum, wax, and stale dust greeted her like an old bruise. Each step up the winding stair echoed with old humiliations. She kept her eyes ahead as they entered, refusing to glance at the corner where Lord Pinches’ cage had once hung. The absence of the bird struck her harder than she expected—a silence left behind by something caged too long and then gone without ceremony.

Morzan gestured for her to sit. She did, though her spine stayed rigid. Every stone, every groove in the desk, echoed with the memory of a girl who had once been made to kneel there. Her body remembered even when her mind tried to forget—the bitter chill of stone through thin cloth, the silence she had once been punished for breaking.

He unfurled a parchment and dipped his quill, the feather's tip whispering as if to fill the hush.

When he passed it across the desk, she stared—not at the ink, but at the way his fingers let go of the page, like it meant something to him.

“Written terms,” he said. “Per our agreement. Read it. Speak if anything’s unclear.”

She didn’t touch it. Her voice came hollow. “Do you do this with your soldiers? Draft contracts for obedience?”

“You’re not one of them,” he replied. “You’re something else. I wouldn’t treat you the same.”

The ink was still wet. His handwriting, as always, immaculate—every curve deliberate, like he thought beauty could make it more palatable. She picked it up with reluctant fingers.

“You’ll remain here,” he said, “work alongside me within the freedoms I allow. You’ll surrender any plans of escape. If you leave, it will be because I command it—or because you’re taken, and in that case, you’ll fight to return.”

She said nothing. Her eyes skimmed the lines but did not read. The weight of it lodged in her chest.

“In return, I remove my presence from the valley. Your mother and her children remain unharmed, untouched—so long as they pose no threat. Break the agreement, and I retract that mercy.”

Her jaw locked. “Why bother with pretense? You could take what you want. You always have.”

He turned away. “And it cost me. Your mother was my greatest victory. And my greatest loss.”

He returned with scrolls and laid them before her.

“These are her writings. She left them behind. I want you to read them. Understand what she was.”

Her hands hovered near the seals, not yet touching. The edges were cracked with age, one curling slightly upward like a leaf left too long in the sun. She stared, but the words didn’t register.

“You made me watch them,” she said, her voice barely audible. “You held them in front of me like a blade. And asked me to choose.” There was no tremble now, only a thin line of cold clarity threading through her words. “There was no choice. You knew that. That’s why it hurt.”

She did not cry. But she looked at him then, straight on, and there was no veil left between them—only the burn of something broken that refused to be buried.

“Quiet,” he warned, not harsh—just tired.

“Or what?” she snapped, eyes flashing. “You’ll leash me again? Like a dog?”

He rose. Poured wine. “You’re acting like a child.”

“Because I remember what being safe felt like?”

His gaze sharpened. “Brom left you.”

“He always came back.”

Silence pooled.

“You still call him father,” he said at last.

“Because he is.”

Something broke then. Not loud. Not sharp. But a fracture.

“You’ll never have my loyalty,” she said. “Not even if I swear it.”

He stared at her.

“You’re angry,” he said, softer, “because you know it’s over. They don’t need you. They moved on.”

Her throat burned.

“My daughter,” he finished. “Let them go.”

She gathered the scrolls and fled.

The Stillroom waited.

There, she wept. Not because of what she’d lost. Because of what she could not forget.

She read.

She read until dawn.

…

The frost came early that year. But the snow came later.

Weeks passed. The sun turned weaker, the days narrowed into smaller and smaller boxes of light, and Meri did not mark their passing except by habit. The scrolls blurred into one another, not by content but by weight—each one steeped in her mother’s voice and void of warmth. She filled her hours with reading, walking, sometimes not eating, sometimes too much. A quiet rebellion in slowness. In choosing her own hours, her own pacing. But the wound beneath it all stayed raw.

She did not speak to Morzan. Not truly. He came and went from her days like an errant tide. When he entered the tower, she moved to the far side of the room. When he addressed her, she answered with the fewest words required. Her eyes, when they met his, held the silence of stone. Once, he asked her what she had learned from the texts.

She said: “That she feared you, even when you thought she didn’t.”

He did not ask again.

They remained at Greynsi while the first snow fell. Then a second. The halls grew colder. The tapestries stiffened with frost around the edges. She lit her own fire now. Slept in the room nearest the eastern watch. Watched the hawks circle in distant spirals.

She did not try to run. Not yet. Not while she still burned.

Each morning, before the kitchens stirred, before the crows dragged sound into the tower rafters, Meri rose into the dark hour that had, slowly, become theirs. Tornac never called for her. He never had to. She moved by rhythm now, not command—her boots waiting just inside the door, laces already knotted from the night before, fingertips stiff with cold as she drew on her cloak. The chill met her like an old companion, sliding beneath the fabric to rest against her skin.

No one barred her passage anymore. No guards trailed her. No latches clicked shut behind her. Still, she walked as if they might—her ears half-turned to each shadowed corridor, the memory of footsteps and glancing keys stitched into her spine. Freedom, in this place, had a weight of its own. It had to be worn carefully, like armor that still remembered the last wound.

Every morning Tornac waited near the garden arch. His breath ghosted in the frigid air, a thread of silver against the gloom. He stood as he always did—one foot braced slightly forward, his hands hanging loose at his sides, not idle but aware, as if the stone itself might speak if he listened closely enough. The sky behind him was still iron-blue, and the frost along the hedge glinted like crushed glass.

Their training had softened. No longer rigid drills or measured tests. It had become something quieter—half-discipline, half-routine, a thread pulled gently through the hours before the world fully woke. He still adjusted her grip when she faltered, still tapped her wrist when her stance slid, but more often they walked. Past the frost-stiffened hedges. Beyond the outer wall. Into the hush of open fields that had not yet been stirred by birdsong or bell.

She knew he needed the quiet. Not because he ever said so, but because of the way he paused sometimes, glancing up as though listening for something higher than weather. Not the wind. Not the clouds. Just breath. His own. The world’s. A rhythm that steadied him.

He never said why. But she understood. Some griefs only loosened outdoors. Some names were only safe to grieve where the air could carry them.

Once, by a stream still half-glassed with ice, he offered her a strip of dried apple. He didn’t speak. His thumb brushed the edge of her glove and lingered a moment, not to comfort, but simply to remind her he was there. Another morning, he paused mid-step, bent to lift a stone—flat and river-smoothed—and turned it slowly in his palm as if weighing the memory it held. Without ceremony, he pressed it into her hand.

She looked at him, question unspoken.

“Good stones remember their place,” he said, his voice low, even. And that was all.

She kept it in her pocket, warmed by her palm by the time they returned. It stayed with her. Small, silent, grounding.

One morning, near the edge of the garden where the frost clung thickest and even the hellebore bowed its head, she asked—softly—whether the earth would thaw soon. The question surprised her. The sound of her own voice, tinged with wondering, felt like it belonged to someone younger.

Tornac chuckled, just once, low in his chest. “Distracted today,” he said, not unkindly.

She flushed, the cold deepening in her cheeks, and turned her gaze aside.

But the question had stirred something. A shape of memory rose behind her ribs—laughter on a riverbank, reeds snapping beneath quick feet, Eragon’s shout as he slipped on the ice, the two of them breathless with the kind of joy that didn’t need language. Their breath had fogged the air like smoke from a young fire, rising fast and wild. She said nothing of it. Let it drift upward with the gull overhead, the wind carrying it better than she ever could.

Their return to the keep always came too soon. At the gate, Tornac would incline his head—not quite a bow, never formal—and turn away toward the barracks. She climbed the tower stairs alone, pulse still ticking from the cold, the scent of cedar and crushed frost still clinging to her gloves.

Later, in the dim hush of the tower, she sat curled near the brazier, its coals sullen and slow-burning. The stone around her breathed cold, despite the heat, and the scent of old parchment clung to everything—ink, dust, a hint of oil from the lamp she kept low to preserve the shadows. Her fingers moved across the text out of habit more than intention, eyes tracing the columns, but not holding them. Her thoughts were elsewhere—pulled sideways by a silence she hadn’t expected to find.

One of the scrolls spoke of routine matters—shifting patrols, minor border tensions, the kind of things she had learned to skim for patterns. But then came a line with no follow-up. A report half-finished. A scout’s trail gone cold. Palancar agents had been withdrawn—or vanished. No elaboration. Just a clean absence where noise should have gathered.

Her breath stilled. She read the line again. Then a third time, as if repetition might fill the space it left behind. But it didn’t. The silence held. Not loud, not screaming, but intentional—like a door that had been shut softly, but with finality.

She waited until supper before she asked him.

Morzan stood near the hearth with his back to her, sharpening a quill with slow precision. The sound of the blade on wood ticked like a clock counting down.

“I read something,” she said, tone careful, even. “The agents in Palancar. They’ve gone dark.”

He didn’t turn. “Yes,” he said, in the Ancient Language.

Nothing more.

That sealed it. Truth spoken without room for doubt, without space for denial. The kind of answer that rang like a blade drawn clean from its sheath. There would be no comforting lie, no dismissal meant to soothe. It was done.

And yet—he asked nothing in return. Not that night. Not the next. He only watched her with that same unreadable patience, his eyes never sharp, never urgent. Just waiting. Always waiting. Like someone standing on the shore, certain the tide would rise again whether she came to meet it or not.

She left soon after, her pulse high in her throat, her palms damp beneath the folds of her sleeves. The tower felt smaller than it had before—as if the walls had drawn closer when she wasn’t looking. Even the quiet had shifted, pressing tighter around her, like breath held too long.

She hadn’t touched the scrolls since that first night—hadn’t let herself. Not after the way they burned. Not after the way they rewrote everything she thought she’d known.

But now, they pulled at her from the corners of the room. Not loudly. Just enough. Like bruises beneath a sleeve that ache with the memory of touch.

They waited, unrolled and patient, lined up like trial stones across the desk.

And she… she felt them behind her eyes, like a name spoken in a dream. Familiar, unwanted, inescapable.

Like an old wound pretending it had healed.

Eventually—two days after hearing the words she had barely dared hope for—the valley is clear—she forced herself to pick up one of the scrolls.

She didn’t do it from trust. Only from caution. She had no illusions about promises spoken in dim rooms with no one to witness them. Morzan had told her she would be left in peace, that her family would be untouched—but words alone were fragile. She needed to make herself useful. Predictable. Quiet. If she waited too long, she feared he might rescind his mercy, might claim the silence was broken simply because she’d paused too long between lines.

Still, the reading came slowly. Some days she couldn’t finish a single paragraph before the nausea rose and she had to walk away. She would push back from the desk, fingers still curled around the quill, and drift into the garden like smoke slipping through a crack.

There, beneath the brittle branches, she would let herself look at the stars.

She no longer told the starlight stories aloud—those tales of foxes and forest spirits, of ships that sailed the moon. But sometimes, silently, she found the old constellations and named them in her head. The Weaver. The Twins. The Tern. She would lie back against the cold earth, let the air prick her skin, and try to remember what it had felt like to hope for spring.

Then, eventually, she would rise again. Return to the Stillroom. Unroll the scroll.

It went on like that for weeks.

Then, one evening—just over a month after they’d returned from Carvahall—she made her way to the tower as usual, legs stiff from training, hair damp from the snowmelt in the air. The long corridor before the tower stairs was quiet, the sconces already burned low. Her breath echoed faintly as she climbed, step by measured step.

When she reached the door, it was already open.

Morzan was inside, seated behind his desk, a small stack of reports before him. But something was wrong.

His hand was clenched around one of the parchments—not holding, gripping. The paper was creased, crumpled at the edges. The candle beside him burned low, casting sharp shadows across his face. She stepped closer, but didn’t speak. This wasn’t new. He often read in silence. But the tension in the room was like a blade between them—present, but not drawn.

She moved to stand behind him as she always did after their evening drills. A habit. A place. But before she could fully settle, he stood.

The movement startled her more than it should have. There was no brusqueness to it—only precision. He folded the paper in slow, measured motions, then slipped it into his sleeve. He didn’t look at her immediately. When he did, his gaze held something sharper than anger.

Like he was searching for something. Or sending a silent warning.

Meri stilled. Completely.

“Were you with Tornac just now?” he asked.

The question landed oddly—not suspicious, but too calm.

“I was,” she answered, her voice tight. “Is something amiss?”

He studied her a moment longer. Then turned, as if the conversation had already ended.

“No. Nothing I did not already know.”

There was something in his movements now—something too smooth, too controlled. He crossed to the doorway, pulled his coat from the hook beside it, and shrugged it on with mechanical ease.

“I’m going to ask you to remain here and start without me,” he said without looking at her. “You know enough to handle a single day, I’m sure.”

She hesitated. “I—”

“I’ll be back around suppertime to collect you.”

He paused.

Then his voice changed—slightly colder. “Muirgheal, do know that the door will be locked behind me.”

The use of the name twisted something in her gut. She took a step forward before she could stop herself.

“There’s no reason to lock me in,” she said, pulse rising. “I’ll stay here. If that’s what you want, I’ll—”

“Be silent and do as you’re told.”

The force of it was like cold water poured over her chest. Not a shout—not quite—but enough to freeze her mid-breath. Her body stiffened. Not from fear. From the sheer precision of it.

He hadn’t spoken to her like that in months.

But now—now he had aimed to wound. And he had hit the mark.

The silence that followed was worse than the outburst. He turned back toward her, his face unreadable.

“I’ll be back later,” he said, voice smooth again, too smooth. “The door will be locked until then.”

And with that, he left. The door swung shut. The latch slid into place with a dull, final click.

Meri stood in the stillness that followed, arms wrapped loosely around herself. Her breath came slow. Controlled. She didn’t let it break.

She moved to the desk, hands brushing the surface. The papers were disordered—many already read, shoved back into the stack without care. She skimmed the first few, trying to find what had set him off. There was nothing. Troop movements, weather delays, a courier's late arrival. Routine.

But the paper he’d taken… she hadn’t seen it.

And that—not knowing—pressed harder than anything else.

She sat and began her notes. Her handwriting was clean, efficient. Without Morzan there to interrupt, to correct, to draw her into some long winding logic exercise, the work passed faster than usual.

When she finished, she pushed the scrolls aside and stood. She scanned the books on the wall without really seeing them, reached for one she vaguely recognized from a week before, and brought it back to the desk. Her fingers turned the pages. She read nothing.

She waited.

Night deepened.

The candle beside her had melted halfway down when the lock finally clicked again. She blinked—half-asleep in the chair.

Morzan stepped inside, his boots dark with mud. He wore a clean tunic, his hair slightly damp, the coat he had worn earlier nowhere in sight. His expression was tight. Sour.

He didn’t speak. Just gestured once, sharply, toward the door.

She rose and followed.

They walked side by side down the corridor, neither of them speaking. The chill from the stones bled through her soles. Her stomach ached with hunger she hadn’t noticed until now. Still, she said nothing. He didn’t offer.

At her door, he paused. For a moment, she thought he might say goodnight, might soften, might explain.

Instead: “I’ll be sealing your door tonight. No one will be able to open it except me.”

She opened her mouth, unsure even what she meant to say.

“I don’t have the energy to argue with you,” he added, cutting her off. “Know that I have my reasons.”

He didn’t elaborate.

“Tomorrow—no sparring. When you wake, read. I’ll come for you before noon.”

She gave a small nod, not out of agreement but surrender. Ducking slightly beneath his arm, she stepped inside.

The door shut behind her. The lock slid home.

Inside, her room was dim but warm. A plate of food had been left on the desk. She didn’t sit to eat it—just stood beside the chair, chewing slowly, her mind dull with exhaustion.

Later, as she lay curled beneath the blankets, the tightness in her chest still hadn’t eased. Her limbs ached, not from exertion, but from bracing too long against something invisible.

She didn’t know what had changed.

She only knew the change had come.

She found a plate of food waiting—lukewarm bread, stew gone thick with cooling. She ate it anyway, slow-chewing each bite without tasting it. Her body ached, though not from exertion. Just a kind of weariness that crept into the bones and sat there. When at last she lay down, she didn’t bother with the blanket. Didn’t curl onto her side or tuck her arms close. She simply lay flat, as if unrolled from herself. Still as paper.

The next morning passed without comment. She read. The scrolls blurred under her eyes, the words swimming in and out of focus, but she kept at it. When he arrived, they reviewed what she’d written—her thoughts, her notes, her guesses. He said little.

Then came silence.

He began vanishing again. First for hours, then days. She would wake, read, wait, do reports, and wait... Sometimes the meals came late. Sometimes not at all.

On the fifth morning, he didn’t lead her to the tower.

Morzan led her past the now unbolted door and down the steep stairway, his steps unhurried, deliberate. The stone beneath their feet was slick with age and condensation, the narrow passage steep enough that she had to brace herself with each descent. As they walked, he spoke—flatly, as if offering facts to a scribe, not guiding his ward toward the pit of something unspeakable.

He told her what this part of the keep was. What had been sealed here. Why the doors had remained closed to her for so long.

And slowly, as the dark pressed in and the scent of cold metal thickened, she understood. The dungeons. The hollow belly of Greynsi. A place where no birds sang, no air moved, no truth escaped unmarred.

She tried not to breathe too deeply.

The dungeons.

She had passed this hall before, but the doors had always been shut, sealed like a wound. Now they stood open, and she walked straight into the bone of something old and festering.

He told her who was inside.

And suddenly, the silences of the past days, his absences, the brief flashes of temper—they made a brutal, aching sense.

When they reached the bottom, where the air felt thick with iron and memory, he stopped and turned to her.

“Our agreement is not yet complete,” Morzan said, voice clipped and cold. “But I expect you to act as if it is. As I have.” A pause, soft and loaded. “I have a task for you today. If you choose not to do as I ask, I’ll consider our contract void, and I will be free to act as I please. Do we understand each other?”

Her tongue wouldn’t move. The back of her throat felt swollen. Still, she nodded.

Because nodding was easier than speaking. Safer.

The heavy iron door groaned as he pushed it open. She stepped inside, and the world narrowed.

The dungeon was carved into the bowels of the mountain itself, every surface slick with moisture and cold. Strange metal tools hung from hooks on the far wall—twisted things, shaped for agony. The stones beneath her boots were cracked and uneven, darkened with stains that the years had not erased. Water dripped rhythmically from somewhere out of sight.

And there, at the center, bound at wrist and ankle, kneeled Tornac.

Her breath caught.

He looked older, diminished—but unbowed. His head was lifted just slightly, his remaining eye fixed not on them, but on the wall behind them. Bruises bloomed along his cheekbone and neck, one eye swollen shut, his silvered hair matted with blood and sweat. He had not been broken—though it was clear someone had tried.

Morzan approached and crouched to his level, voice gentle as silk wrapped around a blade.

“I wonder,” he said, “do they know how incredibly fortunate they are? To have someone so loyal that you would risk not just your life, but hers.”

Her skin went cold. He meant her.

“I commend you,” Morzan went on. “It’s a rare skill—to give a performance so nearly perfect. It almost fooled me. Almost.” He smiled faintly. “But you forgot who trained you.”

Tornac said nothing. He didn’t move.

“I’ve gathered what I need from you,” Morzan murmured. “And I am grateful, in my way. But betrayal, no matter how artful, has its price.” He stood and turned to her.

With one smooth motion, he drew Zar’roc from its sheath.

“Muirgheal,” he said, voice soft. “Come here.”

She froze. Her hands were already trembling.

He beckoned with his fingers, eyes unreadable.

She stepped forward—slowly, each step heavier than the last. When she reached him, he held the sword toward her, hilt first.

She stared at it, heart rising into her throat. Then at him. Her eyes widened. She took a step back.

He seized her hands.

Fingers closed over hers, forcing the sword into her grip. He adjusted her hands, tightening them around the hilt until it felt fused to her palms.

Then he stepped away.

She nearly staggered under the weight. Zar’roc was heavier than she imagined—heavier not just in iron, but in what it carried. The blade glinted with a red-black sheen, its surface whispering of other deaths.

She turned to Tornac. And her heart cracked.

She thought of their mornings together on the sparring fields—his calm voice as he corrected her grip, the patient way he honed her skill without ever belittling her. He had a way of taming her anger—not with force, but with lightness, with the occasional joke, with a look that said I see you, and I’m not afraid.

She remembered the days when she hadn’t slept, hadn’t spoken, and still, he met her at the field without question. How he taught her in silence when words hurt too much, how he made her feel as though she might still be human.

If they had been given time—true time—she thought they might have grown close. A bond of quiet friendship, built not just in training but in shared meals, stories, laughter. She would have asked him about poetry. About the old masters. About the scars that shaped him. She might have brought him questions about herself, and found in him someone who would listen without fear.

But that time would never come. Not in this life. Not under Morzan’s roof.

I am sorry, she wanted to say. So very sorry. I don’t want to do this.

His eyes met hers.

There was no fear in them. No bitterness. Just a steady, quiet calm.

A soft smile ghosted across his bruised mouth.

Then he inclined his head toward the stone, not in surrender, but in offering.

Well then, my lady, his expression seemed to say. You’d best get it over with. Don’t draw it out. It’ll be your hand or his—and yours will be kinder.

She shook. Her hands ached from holding the sword so tightly.

But she shifted her feet.

Raised the blade the way he’d taught her.

A clean arc. Swift. Merciful.

Zar’roc swung true.

She heard it more than saw it—the dull thud of a body collapsing, the whisper of fabric against stone. She did not look at his face. Not at what had been lost.

Only the sword.

Blood clung to the blade in gleaming streaks—shades lighter than Zar’roc’s dark crimson hue. It glistened like paint, the kind she used to mix from crushed berries and dust, spread over old scraps of bark in her childhood garden.

Her hands would not stop trembling.

It took everything in her not to drop the sword, not to fall with it. She held it still. Her arms quivered. Her knees locked to keep from folding.

Behind her, Morzan was silent.

The dungeon seemed to breathe with her—slow and shallow.

She did not weep.

But she would carry that silence like a wound.

……
……

It wasn’t long after Tornac’s death that Morzan made good on his promise.

She spoke the words he required of her, one by one, each syllable heavier than the last. The oath wound tight around her like a slow-forged chain, links cooling against her skin, sinking into the hollows of her chest. It did not sting—it smothered. Her breath thinned between the words. By the end, she wasn’t sure if she was even speaking aloud anymore, or simply mouthing obedience to the cold hush that had filled the tower.

The windows had been shuttered early that morning against the snow, but still, the draft slipped in through the cracks. It ran along the stone floor and over her ankles, coiling upward like a ghost. Wax from the candles had pooled and hardened, dripped unevenly down the iron sconces. Her fingertips were ink-stained from earlier work. She could still feel the tight ache in her forearms from that morning’s sparring.

But it was Morzan’s gaze that weighed heaviest.

She felt it on her skin as she spoke, cool and level and unnervingly calm. He watched her like a man inspecting a blade for fractures—not angry, not triumphant, simply… curious. As if waiting to see whether she would break at the hilt or the edge. Whether she would shatter cleanly, or warp slowly over time.

When the final syllable left her mouth, she didn’t rise. She sat back into the chair—not out of relief, but because her knees had gone soft beneath her. Her ribs ached. The air smelled faintly of iron and ash.

But with her vow came his; he would not touch her family. Not her parents. Not her siblings. Not unless they rose against him.

She clung to that—repeated it like a mantra carved against the inside of her skull. They won’t. They wouldn’t. Brom had once given her a task, unspoken but clear: protect them. Not in battle, not with weapons, but with watchfulness. She remembered the way he’d wrapped her hand in his and murmured, watch them, little flower, the words rough from travel and wind. As he had protected her—even when she didn’t understand the cost—so too would she protect them.

Even if it looked nothing like protection. Even if she had to give up pieces of herself until there was almost nothing left to give.

She knew the oath was no fortress. It was a veil. A span of days. A thin window of peace before the tide turned. Eragon and his dragon were still out there, still growing, and sooner or later someone would notice. Someone would speak.

But for now, it was enough.

She prayed it would be enough.

That the blood on her hands, the hollowing of her voice, the unmaking of everything she’d once been—would be enough.

But Tornac returned to her -not in body, but in dreams. In the silent hinge between sleep and waking, where memory bled into breath. She saw his eyes—calm, steady. His bruised face. The gentle smile he gave her just before the end. She remembered his peace more than his pain.

And she remembered the sound—not of his body falling, but of her own heart cracking open.

She tried to paint again. Once. In the stillness of her chamber, when the Keep lay quiet beneath the weight of snow. But when she picked up the brush, all she saw was red. Not the red of Zar’roc’s forged blade, but the blood that had glistened on its edge—too bright, too real, like paint spilled on stone. She tried to add color. She tried to layer over it. But it came through, again and again, like something stained into her mind.

One morning, she realized she could no longer feel her pulse. Her fingers felt numb.

She cleaned the brushes slowly. Packed the paints away. Set them beneath her bed and did not touch them again.

Her stories, too, were locked in her desk. She stopped writing. Stopped imagining. There was no time. But even if there had been, she no longer trusted her hands to shape anything worth saying. Not when they had done what they had done.

She was tired now. Always tired. Bone-deep, marrow-drained tired. Dreamless or dreaming, it no longer made a difference.

With Tornac gone, and his nephew vanished like mist at dawn, Morzan took over her morning drills. The stone courtyard rang colder without his presence. Where Tornac had tempered her defiance with dry wit and calm hands, Morzan drove her with an impassive precision. There was no leniency. No praise. Only correction.

The first time her arms gave out and Aconitum slipped from her grip, she stumbled back, gasping. “I can’t,” she had whispered.

He didn’t pause. Not even to glance at her.

Only when she fell fully—collapsed to her knees, breath ragged, fingers twitching from strain—did he end the session. His face unreadable.

Afterward, she still worked in the tower, but her mind had begun to fray at the edges. The ink smudged beneath her fingers. She missed names, transposed figures. Every error earned a glance from him—not angry, not loud, just precise. Like a pin pushed between the ribs. Quiet and sharp.

She found herself shrinking in those moments. Apologizing in silence. Trying to become small. Forgettable. Still.

By midwinter, ice laced the stone paths and snow buried the sparring courts. Lessons slowed. She spent more time in the tower, alone.

It should have felt like reprieve.

It didn’t.

The silence echoed too easily.

One pale morning, the windows steamed faintly from her breath. The fire hadn’t caught properly, and the coals in the brazier gave off more smoke than heat. She sat wrapped in a cloak that smelled faintly of rosemary and ash, sorting through scrolls.

And then—she saw it.

A report. Eastern range. A sighting. Whispers of a blue dragon. A hatchling, they said. Near the valley.

Her heart lurched.

Eragon.

Her hands trembled.

She could not burn it. Could not tear it. The oath she had spoken coiled around her wrists like thorns. Even her thoughts felt laced with warning.

When Morzan entered, she handed him the scroll without speaking. Her breath held tight behind her teeth.

He read it. Then scoffed.

“These rumors come every few years,” he said, dropping the parchment onto the table with a flick of his fingers. “They’re never true.”

He didn’t look at her again.

She didn’t breathe until long after he’d left the room.

No command followed. No second glance.

Days passed. Then weeks. No further rumors came.

Eventually, she let herself believe it was over. Almost forgot.

Almost.

And yet—when the frost began to retreat and the wind shifted—she found herself standing in the castle garden beneath a pale, rising sun. The beds were still covered in a crust of snow, the soil dark and stiff beneath. The elven songs that once ushered in spring never came. The trees did not stir. The wildflowers did not bloom.

And for the second time in her life, she saw what many mortals always had—the slow return of life without magic. Without song. A budding tree here. A hesitant green shoot there. The aching patience of a world that must wake on its own.

Still, she listened. Every time she walked beyond the gate, every time the wind changed, she paused—just to be sure. Just to listen.

But the air held no music.

And the silence had settled too deep.

……

As winter began to wane, there were no whispering songs of the forest dancing through the night air, and no sudden of blossoming of flowers. When the time came for it happen, Meri stood in the gardens and looked over the still slumbering flora. With no songs in the Language of the Forest to herald springtime the world woke slowly, and for the second time in her memory she saw what many others did. Saw the world as those who never stepped inside the elven forest; the slow awakening of life after the cold clutches of winter that began with a small budding tree and later a world of life. She kept an ear out for the songs regardless, searching for their effects every time she wondered out of the castle Keep even with the knowledge that it would never come.

One day, during that early spring, that morning, Morzan was colder than usual—measured in the way he spoke, in how he corrected her stances with silence rather than words. There was no anger in him, only precision, which somehow hurt more. He didn’t yell. He didn’t need to. The bruises told the story.

He knocked her to the ground over and again until she was convinced that her backside was battered and as dark as the night sky. Even so he did not halt, and pushed her harder until at last she lay in on the ground in complete and utter defeat.

When she fell the last time, he paused beside her—not in concern, but in disappointment so quiet it chilled her.
“I expected better,” he said, not unkindly. “You were raised to survive, were you not? Or was that a lie you told yourself?”
Then, a beat too long.
“Get up, little flower.”
The name stung more than any blow.

Her voice cracked as she staggered upright, blade in hand. “Don’t call me that,” she hissed. “You don’t get to.”

He pulled her to the ground by her hair as he dodged her attack. His boot pressed onto her chest forcing her into the stone. “You are what I name,” he said, low and absolute. “That’s the truth of this place, Muirgheal. The world answers to the strong. Not to sentiment.”

He stepped away from her, dropping a stack of folded pieces of parchment on her chest. Without a word, he let something fall onto her chest—a small stack of folded parchment, clean and deliberate. “Next time you lie,” he said, “I won’t be so patient.” Then he walked away as if nothing had passed between them at all.

She lay there for a long time after he left, the weight of the papers pressing against her ribs like a second blade. Her hands trembled as she unfolded the first—ink blurred at the edges, her own handwriting staring back at her. She remembered writing it, once, in a moment of softness she no longer recognized. A poem. Nothing more. But here, even memory became a weapon.

Meri struggled to her feet. Her knees buckled once, then held. She pressed her hand against the cool stone wall and staggered down the corridor toward the Stillroom, breath hitching each time her weight shifted. The long hallway blurred at the edges, and her left side throbbed like something hollow had cracked inside it. When she finally reached the open doorway, she paused—breathing through the ache, steadying herself before stepping in.

Pethel was folding linens at the wardrobe, humming softly, a tune Meri didn’t recognize. She looked up and stilled when she saw her.

Meri caught the flicker in the woman’s expression—concern sharpened into something that looked like fear. Not for herself, but for what it meant.

Pethel didn’t scold. Didn’t ask why she hadn’t come sooner. She simply set the cloth down and gestured to the bed. “Sit,” she said, and crossed to the basin. Her voice was low, the way one speaks to someone already shivering.

“What happened?”

She offered a damp cloth. Meri took it, her fingers slow and stiff. She dabbed at her torn sleeve, watching the blood bead fresh again. The scrape burned, but it wasn’t the worst of it. Everything inside her felt scraped raw. As if the blow hadn’t just bruised her body but cracked something quieter beneath it.

Pethel spoke gently. “Our lord is a good man,” she said. “He provides for us. The children want for nothing. Even the lowliest are clothed and fed—”

“That means nothing,” Meri cut in, her voice hoarse. “A dog will still follow the hand that beats it, if it’s never known another.”

Pethel stiffened. But she didn’t lash back.

“I’ve worked places where kindness was a story for the dead,” she said, rinsing the cloth again. “Where bruises were counted like coin. Greynsi is not that.”

She knelt in front of Meri, dabbing at her cheek. The cloth stung. Meri flinched.

“He has his reasons,” Pethel murmured. “You’ll heal. He wouldn’t leave you like this if he thought you wouldn’t. He isn’t needlessly cruel.”

“It’s not about need,” Meri said, drawing back slightly, her voice no longer sharp—just cold. “It was a lesson. I kept something from him. He wanted me to feel it.” She shifted further up the bed, putting space between them.

Pethel sat back on her heels. “What did you keep?”

A beat of silence.

Meri looked down at her hands. The cloth had fallen into her lap, stained now with blood and something else—maybe oil, maybe old dust. She said nothing for a while.

“I didn’t lie,” she said eventually. “I just didn’t say.”

“That’s still keeping,” Pethel said softly. “What truth was so heavy you wouldn’t give it?”

Meri hesitated. Then, finally, she said, “My brother. I didn’t tell him who my brother is.”

The air changed.

“Morzan has a son,” Pethel whispered. Her voice trembled.

Meri’s eyes lifted—just enough to meet hers. “No,” she said. “Not his. Not ever.”

A quiet settled between them. The kind that swells when too much has been spoken.

Pethel rose, crossing to the wardrobe again, movements slower now, heavy. She pulled down a gown and turned back.

“I won’t pretend I don’t hear what’s done here. I won’t lie to you, girl. He’s... not always kind to those closest to him.”

She helped Meri dress, hands gentler than before. When she was done, she tilted Meri’s chin up and looked into her eyes.

“I’ve a daughter your age,” she said, “and she’s softer than you. Would’ve broken, where you didn’t.”

Meri didn’t speak. But her fingers curled into the gown’s fabric, holding it like an anchor.

“You’ve bent yourself well,” Pethel added. “But bend too long, and you’ll snap. If you want to survive here, you must know when to yield, and when not to.”

She paused, then added, “Come with me. We’ll get something for the pain.”

Meri followed. Not out of trust, exactly. But because she had nothing left to hold herself up.

Pethel led her through the winding halls. Without her, Meri might have wandered again—might have ended up in one of the cold galleries with nowhere to sit and no way out. She remembered that first day, dazed and raw, stumbling until someone had taken pity and pointed a direction.

The kitchen door was half-hidden behind a stone arch, muffled by the hum of voices and clatter within.

“Here, poppet,” said Pethel, nudging her toward a low bench near the hearth. “Sit.”

Meri obeyed. Her knees nearly gave again.

Across the room, Pethel spoke softly to a girl with caramel hair tucked beneath a headwrap. The girl looked like her mother—broad-cheeked and calm-eyed. For a moment, Meri saw Elida’s face instead. Elida at the churn, sleeves rolled up. Elida learning to skim the cream.

Her throat tightened.

She looked away and pinched her wrist beneath the table. Hard.
She would not cry.
Not here.
Not now.

It was a habit—this small violence. A way to fold the pain inward where it couldn’t be seen. She pinched again, not for the hurt, but for the tether it gave her.

She didn’t want to think of her family. She had gotten good at not thinking of them, had learned to tuck those memories into the back of her mind like herbs sealed in wax cloth. But once they slipped loose, they unfurled quickly. Now, they came all at once—uninvited, sharp-edged. Her throat burned.

She saw the farm on the edge of Carvahall. Her mother’s worn hands. Her siblings' wild laughter drifting from the trees. The tilt of Eragon’s head when he was scheming. Tessie’s damp curls clinging to her neck.

And then the thought she couldn’t banish—
Had it been a mistake? To give Morzan what he wanted?
Would it have been better to run screaming toward the farmhouse, to throw herself at them in warning, to shout for them to flee?
Would they have gotten away? Or would he have cut them down, one by one?

She didn’t know.
But maybe… maybe it would’ve been better that way.

A hand touched her shoulder, light but sudden. Meri flinched so hard her knee struck the underside of the table.

She turned—breath caught in her throat—and found the servant girl watching her. Orla. Wide-eyed, uncertain.

The girl offered a small, apologetic smile and held out a cup. “It helps,” she said softly, “with the nerves.”

Meri took it with both hands. Her fingers trembled as they closed around the clay. The steam curled into her face, warm and bitter-sweet. She held it close, breathing it in.

She hesitated—then asked softly, “What’s your name?”

“Orla,” said the girl. She ducked her head, as if shy of being seen.

“Thank you, Orla.”

The first sip was sharp, earthy, but it warmed her throat. Shivers passed through her like a tide, and her teeth began to chatter softly. She hadn’t realized how cold she was—not just her hands, but her marrow.

Orla nodded, then busied herself, taking an empty decanter and returning to her work. Meri watched her as she selected herbs from the bundles strung above the hearth and placed them carefully into a wide stone mortar. The girl moved with a practiced rhythm, her hands sure and quiet.

When she began to crush the herbs, the sound caught Meri in the chest.

Leaves cracking. Stone on stone.

It carried her somewhere else.

To another time, another room. One filled with low sun and the scent of bread dough. A place she once call the Quiet Heath- there she used to help her mother grind dried blossoms for teas and tinctures. Lavender was her favorite—how it would crumble, soft and chalky, under her small hands. Her mam had told her once that it was her grandmother’s favorite as well. They’d drink it together in the autumn, a small act of remembrance for someone Meri had never met.

She hadn’t thought of that in... in how long?

Here in Greynsi’s kitchens, everything was different. The smells, the light, the way the voices carried in the stone. And she—she wasn’t even sure if she still counted as that girl anymore. The one who used to wait at the edge of the forest for elves to return in spring. Who loved too deeply, ran too fast, asked too many questions.

That girl had been chipped away, piece by piece.

Greynsi hadn’t killed her all at once. It had pressed in slowly. In silence. In careful cruelties. In the way Morzan spoke to her, and the way he didn’t.

Like a flower crushed underfoot—not for hatred, but indifference.

And now… now all that remained was the memory of her. A flicker. A shadow in the shape of a girl.

But those weren’t the thoughts Meri let herself have now. Those came later—when the dark pressed in and she lay alone on her side, unmoving.

Now, she let the warmth of the cup soften her hands. She thought of Tessie’s arms around her neck. Of chasing werlights through the clover with Elida’s shrieks echoing behind her. Of winter play in the wooden byre, snow clinging to their lashes. Of the breathless joy of being needed.

She didn’t notice when the cold left her.
Maybe it was when she thought of lavender.
Maybe it was when her mam’s laughter passed like a ghost through her mind.
Whatever the cause, something eased inside her.

She let her eyes fall closed.

The warmth of the room wrapped around her—not the hearth, but the life of it. The clatter of clay, the slow turning of a spoon, the bubbling sound of broth thickening on the fire. Outside, birds were singing again. Someone laughed. Not at her. Just… laughed.

She didn’t remember the last time she’d been warm like this. Not just in her body—but in her breath. In her bones. The warmth would not last. But she would carry the memory of it—tucked into the hollow places like a pressed bloom.

And for now, that was enough.

Chapter Text

She stopped to catch her breath, to admire for a moment, no matter how short the moment might be, the jagged mountains of cold stone that rose out of the land. As a child, climbing was something she had done many times, and knew that the first foothold was always the most difficult. That while gripping that cold, hard precipice the ground would level out beneath her, and when she looked back, down at the sun-drenched landscape, her breath would catch in her throat. But this was not a mountain for her to climb. It was not a place where stone and flesh would meet, and the shadows of the mountain would be driven away by the gold light of the sun. This was not where she would stand high above and see the vantage point before her like a long and winding road.

These mountains were to admire as they were the only thing pleasant to look at. The rest of the landscape while lovely with its sweeping valleys and sweet grass spoke only of the burdening drudgery its people shouldered. The too thin men and women and children whose childhood ended long before. Dying the moment they could complete simplest of commands, and it death continued until they breathed their last.

There was never a sight that sorrowed her as much as them, and she could not look long before her breath caught in her throat. Nor could she afford to be distracted for long. It was a delicate balance—like holding a blade on her fingertips. One misstep, and it would tilt, clatter, and cut.

She felt a nudge her from within her mind, a warning, and turned away to fake interest in whatever conversation was being had once again.

They stood outside the tent’s reach, where the wind skimmed dry across the plain, and men muttered of war they’d never choose It was dull enough talk about supposed ravagers who have attacked the camps of the regions, likely in search of supplies for the upcoming winter and, disrupting the work and in some places putting a complete stop it altogether.

There were also rumors of urgals migrating through the area, headed south for whatever reason the creatures might have. To create strife perhaps, in hopes of a worthy and honorable fight if they cared for such things. It was not something she thought they would find if they continued threatening Morzan’s lands but rather flame and blood and misery.

A part of her, a rather large part, was more than glad that she would not be part of what was about to come. Of the slaughter that was soon to take place. This too was talked about and she listened, only chiming in whenever invited to give her own ideas or thoughts on the matter.

She had a good mind, as Morzan had told her before dragging her out here, but it needed sharpened. As it stood now it was dulled blade. Her intelligence was her only true asset, the only thing that she had inherited. The rest of who she was, the weaknesses he called out, were created from her life of isolation within the elven forest. Borne from an imagination having grown out of control, rendering her infantile in her unworldliness.

It was well known to her who he blamed for this, and she didn’t so much of think of Brom within his presence. Not anymore. Not now that she knew for certain that Morzan freely read her thoughts like one might read the pages of a book. That he was unbothered with the obvious intrusion, and had refused to teach her guard her mind.

He said that he would never place her in a situation that might require the skill, and she would likely be spending most of her days within Greynsi where it was safe, and when she was away, he would be by her side to protect her such threats, and so, there was no point.

His words dug into her skin like tiny thistles; scratching and aching at raw skin. It made her think that he must see her as one of his possessions. A creature to own, and no real person at all. That to him she only different than the slaves of the encampment because the blood she shared with the man. That because of the fact she was his daughter, she was treated both better and worse.

His treatment of her… it was the force of a water drop that hollows the stone; small when but repetitive wears it down to nothing but empty air. She didn’t like who he was shaping her to be, thinking that she hadn’t become a watered-down version who she had once been. Someone who was easy to go unnoticed as she slipped through the shadows, easily fading into the background.

There were times this would fade away like the morning mist in the warm sun, and the person she remembered rose within her but that girl had grown sharp edges and when she spoke, the words cut deep like seeping wounds. Bold and unapologetic, wild and reckless. Words that fell onto the fields of her mind like burning cinder during a drought. The fire that ravaged afterwards burned for days to come, leaving the land behind completely unrecognizable.

She still thought herself as Meri, no matter who that might now be. It was a piece of herself that she wasn’t quite willing to yet give up. That no matter what her true and proper name was or who she had become, she would always be able to hold onto the smallest, most basic piece of herself. The rest didn’t seem to matter as much anymore and so long as she was breathing it couldn’t matter. For now, the beating heart in her chest was enough to tell her that she was alive, and that had to be proof enough.

Meri shifted her feet as the conversation turned, eyes flicking from speaker to speaker. The words now mattered—details that must be carried, recalled, reported. What would happen next hinged on what she remembered. Her pulse ticked a little faster at the base of her throat. She forced her breath low into her chest, slow and even.

She could not afford error.

Not here. Not again.

When the meeting dissolved and she was dismissed, she did not turn away at once. Her hand twitched toward her ledger, then paused. She glanced sideways—just once—toward the dragon.

The Beast was still at his game. A goat pinned beneath one claw, its bones creaking as the dragon toyed with it the way a cat paws at something already half-dead. The creature’s cries cracked across the encampment, shrill and raw. It made Meri’s stomach twist, though she kept her face blank.

Morzan hadn’t called the creature off, as he sometimes did. The play would go on until the sound ceased. Until there was only silence and ruin.

She told herself it was better this way. Let the Beast stay focused on something else.

She lowered her head and returned to her script. The final line blurred slightly before her eyes—not from uncertainty, but from a kind of creeping dizziness, the kind that comes from standing too still too long. Her thumb began tracing slow arcs along the spine of the ledger—counting threadmarks, a habit from childhood—until her breath evened out.

She had only just finished writing when she sensed him near. No sound. No footfall. Just the slow length of his shadow crossing her hands like dusk falling too fast.

Morzan stopped a pace away, where the scorched grass still smoked faintly beneath his boots. He did not smile. He rarely did when others were watching. But something in the set of his shoulders—precise, unhurried—suggested satisfaction. The kind that needed no confirmation.

“You did well today,” he said, the words smooth as cold broth. No warmth. No texture. As if stating a fact about weather or stone.

He extended his hand. Not abrupt. Not commanding. Just inevitable.

Meri lifted the parchment slowly. Her fingers brushed the edge of his glove—cold, stiff leather, worn to smoothness with time. There was no welcome in the contact. Not even acknowledgment. Just the mute echo of past obedience.

He took the paper without thanks and began reading at once. His gaze flicked over the lines with mechanical ease. No visible reaction—until his eyes lifted briefly toward the camp: the broken fenceposts, the mud-sunk carts, the tangle of bones left behind. The dead goat’s leg still twitched where the nerves hadn’t stilled.

She didn’t watch the carcass. She watched him. His disapproval, as always, lingered not on cruelty—but on chaos.

“I believe I remembered everything,” she said, voice steady and measured. Not apology. Not pride. Just rehearsal. A line spoken at the right pitch, in the right tone—blunted just enough not to cut, not to provoke.

“You did,” he said, folding the parchment with surgeon-like precision. “Your memory is improving.”

There was no praise in it. There never was. Not even when she deserved it.

Especially not then.

She nodded once—just once—and slid the ledger shut. The real message would be rewritten later, alone, by lamplight. Where the ink could dry without anyone watching. Where her fingers could linger and check each name twice. The rewriting wasn’t habit anymore. It was compulsion. The only place she could afford doubt.

Morzan turned toward the camp again, gaze narrowing. “I’ve had enough of this place,” he said. “Shall we?”

She gathered her things with care. Every motion deliberate. Not slow—just careful. Across the clearing, the dragon crouched over the ruins of the goat. Its claws moved still, absently, as if not yet convinced the thing beneath it had no more to give. The clearing reeked of iron and bile.

Morzan did not spare it a glance.

They mounted without ceremony. His climb was fluid, efficient—like a man sheathing a blade.

Hers was slower. Intentional. A pause at the stirrup. A slight shift in the saddle. Not enough to delay, not enough to irritate—but enough to feel, if only to herself, like something she had chosen.

The dragon launched into the sky with a violence that felt practiced. Ritualistic. Wings cracked the air. Dust exploded around them. The first rush of wind slammed into her face, flaying her breath from her lungs. Before climbing into the saddle, she’d checked the same buckle three times—not for necessity, but rhythm. A gesture of readiness, not trust.

She didn’t gasp. Just closed her eyes and braced her jaw.

There was no freedom in the sky. Not here. Not when flight felt like being carried by the throat.

The saddle straps bit hard into her ribs. Leather burned beneath her arms. Her fingers curled tight against the pommel, not for support—but to feel something real, something unmoving.

She did not speak. Did not scream.

She endured.

She never slept in flight. But sometimes her mind floated—detached, half-lost, held in the rhythm of wings and the slow, bone-deep ache in her back. Time melted there. She drifted somewhere beyond thought, tethered only by the silent chant inside her chest:

I am here. I am still here.

When Greynsi finally came into view, it rose from the stone like a judgment: jagged towers clawing upward like broken teeth, catching what little light remained.

Her fingers were numb. Her face burned with wind-chapped rawness.

But she did not weep. She did not tremble.

She welcomed the ache.

It was the only proof she had left that she was still herself.

Even now.

.

When they landed at Greynsi, Meri slid from the dragon’s back with practiced care. Her legs trembled as they touched earth, but she did not falter. The ground was firmer than the sky, though it did not feel safe. The air still tasted of ash and scale—hot metal curled behind her teeth, acrid and bitter. Her limbs ached from cold and flight and the tightness of enduring.

She wanted only warmth and silence.

A corner of the library.

The familiar press of her ledger beneath her hand.

Some place where her thoughts were her own.

But before she reached the doors, Morzan’s voice cut through the courtyard.

“Come here, my child. I wish to speak with you briefly before you go.”

The words stopped her mid-step. Not their content—she had expected some command—but the tone. Cool. Casual. Coiled.

She turned. He stood beside The Beast, his back to her, brushing dust and grit from the creature’s flank with methodical strokes. His movements were precise, controlled—not affectionate, but proprietary. He touched the dragon the way one might clean a weapon: with reverence born of power, not love.

He always did this after flight. Never once let another approach during it. Not even her.

She wondered, not for the first time, if he loved the dragon—if he was even capable of what that word meant. Or if all his bonds were forged in ownership.

She approached slowly, her steps light, her posture careful. At the edge of reach, she stopped. The Beast shifted its massive head, one eye gleaming like dull gold in the torchlight. It blinked once—long and reptilian—and narrowed its gaze toward her.

Meri did not look away. She offered only the smallest glance, just enough to show caution, not fear. Then she composed her face. Polished. Pleasant. Unremarkable.

A mask she'd worn so long it fit without strain.

“Yes, my lord?”

Morzan did not turn. “I do not know how long I’ll be gone. This situation—tedious as it is—may take weeks to resolve.”

His tone was clipped, tighter than usual. Irritation, yes—but layered beneath it was something else. Not quite anger. Not quite distraction. It tensed the line of his shoulders. A current that had not yet surfaced.

She stood straighter. Quiet. Attentive.

Letting his silence fill her lungs.

“Upon my return,” he said, “we’ll be departing for the Capital. The King has requested an audience with you before the year ends. And though I loathe the thought, I shall not deny him.”

Meri’s breath stalled. Just slightly.

A chill rose behind her ribs, settling like stone beneath her sternum.

She kept her hands still at her sides, though she longed to rub the sweat from her palms against her cloak.

“You said I wasn’t ready,” she murmured. Her voice was soft, shaped carefully. “And forgive me, but I still don’t believe that I am.”

“You are not,” he agreed, and there was something nearly approving in the admission. “But that is why I’m telling you now. You have time to prepare—and you will. Pethel can advise you on the courtesies you’ve yet to learn. She knows the King’s court well.”

“I’ll speak with her in the morning,” she replied, steady as she could manage.

Her palms were damp. Her skin itched beneath her sleeves. Her jaw ached from holding the muscles of her face too still.

Morzan turned to face her then, brushing grit from his gloves with casual, practiced indifference.

“You’re wondering why,” he said, eyes sharp on hers. “Why the summons. Why now.”

She didn’t answer. There was no need. The question was loud enough in her silence.

“The King believes I’ve been squandering your potential,” he said. “He sees your bloodline and expects more than what I’ve permitted. He thinks you’ve been kept idle.”

His gaze did not waver. He stepped closer—not abruptly, but with the deliberate ease of someone who had never met resistance.

And with a sudden, unnerving gentleness, he reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

The touch sent a shiver down her spine. Not from fear. Not even from cold. But from the intimacy of it—the performance of care. A gesture shaped by memory, not meaning.

“You have the capacity to do more,” he said. “And you have improved. But there are… things still in you that render you incompetent. Sentiment. Hesitation. A lack of discipline. You were raised too gently.”

The words weren’t new. Nor were they cruel, by his measure. But they landed like stones against the hollow of her chest.

She breathed shallowly, eyes flicking past his shoulder to the quiet ripple of The Beast’s wing.

She bit the inside of her cheek. The sharpness anchored her.

“I understand,” she said at last. Quiet, but not broken. Her voice had shape. It carried.

Even as it trembled.

“If there’s nothing else, I’ll take my leave.”

Morzan waved her off with a flick of his fingers, already turning back to the dragon. The Beast huffed—a low, indifferent growl.

She walked away. Did not look back.

The door closed behind her harder than she intended.

Inside, the air was warmer, but no more welcoming.

She walked the length of the corridor twice before heading to her rooms. Supper was laid out. She ignored it. Instead, she paced the floor, hands clenched, breath caught somewhere behind her collarbone.

The King. The Capital. Another stage. Another set of rules.

She cursed him first—the King, his gaze like frost and his power coiled like a whip. Then Morzan, for delivering her like a gift. And finally herself—for not running when she had the chance. For waiting, like some docile creature being fattened for ritual.

When she finally sat at her desk that night, the page before her remained blank for longer than usual. Not for lack of thought, but because she could not bear to see them written.

The quill shook once in her grip. Then stilled.

And she began to write—not the order she would send, not yet, but something else. A name. A phrase. A line she would remember, even if everything else was stripped away.

Her hand moved in silence, long after the keep had fallen still.

……

……

It had been less than a year since she had taken the oaths. Mere months since Morzan’s “lesson” in the courtyard. Yet it felt like a lifetime ago. Something had shifted that day—subtle and seismic both. A quiet rupture, unspoken, but ever-present. Since then, time had moved strangely, like river-ice breaking beneath her: quick in places, thick and sluggish in others. She walked through each day as though underwater, the weight of it pressing into her chest and knees, living heavy in her bones.

Not long after that day, Morzan had summoned her again—this time not to the open courtyard, but indoors, to the study’s dim hush. The fire crackled in the hearth, though he had not warmed himself by it. He sat in stillness, composed as stone, while she stood across from him, shoulders drawn back, mouth dry. The space between them felt cavernous.

He had asked—no, demanded—every detail she could recall about her brother and the dragon. The questions came cold and crisp, each one barbed. His voice held the steadiness of a blade, the kind that cuts not with fury, but precision. He did not raise his voice, but each word landed like a blow. Her breath stilled with every question, her answers tumbling out too quickly. Not because she wanted to explain. Because she needed to survive.

She had never seen him so enraged. Not even when she had disobeyed him openly. Not even in the aftermath of her failed defiance. This fury was quieter. Controlled. A force that sat behind his eyes and burned without smoke. It encircled her like a noose.

It should have passed. Enough days had come and gone for the fire to cool. But it had not. If anything, it had been sharpened by time. She felt it in the way he stood as she spoke, unblinking, still. Her own words stuttered and spilled, awkward and incomplete. He wanted the whole of her memory—every flicker of expression, every scrap of laughter, of closeness. Her recollections of Eragon were fractured, weathered by years and distance, and made dull by grief. She gave him what she could, but it was never enough.

When she rose to leave, he followed her. At the threshold, he reached out—not swiftly, but with certainty—and caught her chin between two fingers. The leather of his gloves was cold against her skin. He tilted her face upward, forcing her to meet his gaze.

“It was unwise for you to deceive me,” he said. His voice was quiet. It always was, when the danger was real.

“You’ve proven yourself insolent,” he continued, with a strange sort of weariness, as though her defiance had disappointed him more than it had wounded him. “Should I wish it, I could take all your power. You would not lift a finger without my permission. Perhaps I would leave you a little will, for courtesy’s sake.” He paused, his gaze unflinching. “But I have no desire for that—not yet. It is my will to continue honoring you as my daughter, Muirgheal.”

The name tasted of rot. She held his stare.

“But know this: I will not permit such defiance again.”

He released her. She did not speak.

“If you have anything else to confess,” he added, brushing at a crease in his sleeve, “this is your moment. I will forgive you only this once.”

She said nothing. There was nothing left to say. Her secrets had already been stripped bare. Her strength gone to ash. She lowered her eyes. What she felt wasn’t shame, not quite. Not yet. Only a still, cold thing that pooled in her ribs. Defeat.

That night, she could not sleep. The threat echoed through her like footsteps in an empty corridor—steady, endless, growing louder the longer she lay awake. The idea of it haunted her more than his words. That one could strip another’s will so completely, make them hollow, obedient, unthinking. A body with breath but no self.

She rose before the sky lightened, wrapped her cloak around her shoulders, and wandered the frost-bitten gardens until her toes numbed through her slippers. She whispered to herself—not spells, not prayers, just familiar lines from old stories. Words she had once loved, repeated in rhythm to keep herself from unraveling.

For the weeks that followed, she was locked in her rooms. The days blurred into sameness. She was called only to fulfill orders or write reports. She had expected this exile. It was the price of failure. And still, she paid it willingly. If it bought Eragon more time, if it kept him farther from Morzan’s reach, she would pay it again. And again. Until she had nothing left to give.

She read the texts she was allowed, slow and deliberate. Even their edges were hollowed. They taught nothing new. But she read to remember who she was, what she’d once hoped to become. The ache of isolation curled around her spine, but she kept moving through it. A little slower each day.

Eragon lived in her mind as he had been—lanky, curious, so full of questions. She remembered him shouting across the valley, daring the wind to catch him. She remembered the way he laughed, too loudly, too easily. The way he never knew when to let things go. And she remembered the day he left—the careful way he packed, the grin he gave her when he turned from the gate. She had not smiled back.

At the time, she had been angry. She thought he had abandoned them. Abandoned her. But later, when she sat in the stillness left behind, she saw it differently. He had chosen freedom over fear. And now, she understood.

Sacrifice wasn’t glory. It was a daily thing. A silence you kept. A truth you buried. A smile you faked so no one asked too many questions. She wished she could tell him—just once—that he had been right to leave.

But Greynsi was a sealed mouth. No birds flew from its towers. No letters passed the gate.

So she hoped. Hoped he would live long enough to be strong enough. Hoped he would not be like her—trapped, reshaped, watching her reflection grow more like Morzan’s with each passing day.

She was not planning escape. Not really. She didn’t even believe it was possible. But she allowed herself, sometimes, to imagine. Just to know that she still could. That there might come a moment when the door would swing open and her feet would remember how to run.

Morzan, of course, was always planning. She saw it in the way he walked, in the way he spoke to others. He held every word like a blade behind his teeth. The world, to him, was a game. The Butchering Block. He taught her its rules each evening.

The set was beautiful. Hand-carved. The board dark as old blood, the pieces pale as bone. She remembered the feel of it beneath her fingers. Cold. Heavy. He beat her in every match. And when he won, he would explain why. Not cruelly. Almost kindly. That made it worse.

“It’s never the bold move,” he told her once, wrist loose on the stem of his cup, eyes already glassy, “but the quiet one that wins the war. Small advantages. Accumulated over time.” He said it as if she should be grateful for the lesson, as if pain refined into silence was a virtue. She hated him then—not in the screaming way, not in the sharp-blooded way—but in the low, steady way that corrodes over time. But she listened. She learned. Because she had to. Because in Greynsi, there was no prize for defiance, only the illusion of choice. And sometimes, when she was patient enough, when she aimed not with anger but precision, she won.

She never stayed after the second drink. That was the line. A simple line. A breath between moods. He never noticed. Or maybe he did. But she always slipped away—feet quiet, breath slower than his. Another small advantage, taken. He thought he had shaped her, pressed her thoughts into the shape of obedience, carved her into something pliant and loyal. Maybe he had, in the way fire reshapes steel. But Tornac had taught her where to place the weight. How to bide her time without vanishing. How to strike with purpose, not rage. How to wait out the storm, and still hold the knife.

She remembered the blade—its weight a familiar echo in her palm—the inhale before the strike, the silence after. Not the scream. Never the scream. That moment had its own gravity, pulling her breath inward like she might disappear with it. She did not like to remember. But the memory lived beneath her ribs, quiet and undeniable. Since then, there had been three more: two commanded, one unspoken. The last came in through the solar, quiet as dusk. She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t call out. She moved. When it was over, she cleaned the floor herself. She stitched her own side. No one helped. No one asked.

The emptiness unsettled her more than the blood. There was no horror left in the violence, only the stillness that followed. Maybe that’s how it began—this slow, invisible peeling away of what it meant to care. Not in great, rending losses, but in layers. One death at a time. Like stripping a fruit bare, skin by skin, until you forgot what sweetness had once lingered underneath.

Morzan returned Aconitum to her afterward. Restored. Polished. The gesture was meant as trust, or reward, or proof—she didn’t know. He also handed her a curved blade, hilt dark with wire wrapping. “They know you now,” he said. “They’ll keep coming.” She didn’t believe him. But she slid the knife into her boot anyway. Just in case. She always had.

When he was gone, the keep changed. The silence thickened in his absence. It didn’t feel like freedom, only the loosening of a collar. Her chambers offered no rest—every corner heavy with air that had no place to go. The walls listened. The mirrors watched. But the kitchen—only then, only when the halls grew quiet and the scent of his boots had faded—became a place she could slip into without permission.

She would sit near the hearth, folding herself small in the corner beside the kettle. Smoke soaked into her hair and sleeves. Heat gathered behind her knees. She listened to the kitchen clatter: iron on iron, the low thump of dough kneading, laughter worn at the edges like sea glass. Orla and her sister didn’t question her presence. They left bread near her elbow, muttered half-jokes as they stirred the stew, brushed her shoulder with theirs in passing like she was any other girl with chores and cold fingers. They never asked her name.

One night, a joke caught her off guard and she laughed—sharp, sudden, and foreign in her mouth. The sound cracked from her like splintered ice. It startled them. It startled her more. The feeling that followed wasn’t joy, not quite, but a kind of lightness, like a stone lifted off the chest without warning. It reminded her of something she hadn’t thought she could miss: the feeling of being unobserved, of not needing to perform. Not home—never that—but something gentler, smaller, unneeded.

When the sisters were absent, she read. Or at least, she held the books open on her knees and stared past them, eyes tracing the page without taking in the words. Sometimes she watched the stablehands or kitchen boys from the open door, marveled at how they moved without fear, without caution. They bent to their work without magic brushing their spines, without oaths tucked into their marrow. She watched and wondered what it might be like to live like that. To move with nothing behind you pressing your every step.

Her thoughts drifted. She imagined another life—a quiet one, unnamed and unseen. A home at the edge of a field, soil under her nails, no title, no blade. A life where her silence was her own, not a performance of obedience. But when that imagining turned too vivid, when the hearth's warmth grew too close, she would slip away again.

There was a back corridor behind the ovens, narrow and low, meant for coal and chickens. It opened into a courtyard where pigs grunted and scratched, where cows watched her with dull, wet eyes. She would sometimes rest a hand on their flanks—warm, solid, breathing. The realness of them steadied her. And always, she walked toward the garden at the center—not Morzan’s training yard, but the true garden, rough with greens and bitter roots, herbs grown for use not ornament.

No one stopped her there. No one owned that space.

She wandered among the stalks, brushing her fingers across soft leaves, pulling the occasional weed just to feel something give way beneath her hand. Her movements were slow, circular. Not hiding. Just existing.

Her feet always led her to the gate at the edge. The one near the guards’ path. From there, she could hear the steps. Count the clink of metal. Watch the rhythm of their pacing.

She told herself she wasn’t waiting. That she was only being cautious. That if something happened—another assassin, another breach—she would be ready. She memorized their patrols. The pause at the western turn. The longer gap when the shift bell rang.

She told herself it was for safety.

But the oath stirred inside her when she thought this way. Not sharp—just a weight. A suggestion. A whisper in her blood: Tell him.

She did not.

And so long as he didn’t ask, she wouldn’t.

If he ever asked, she would answer. That was the bargain.

But he never asked.

And so, she said nothing. Let the silence grow teeth. Let it curl beneath the surface of things, patient and hungry.

And waited to see if it would bite.

…

During one of her nightly walks—less than a week after Morzan had ridden out to deal with the ravagers—Meri lingered where the stone path frayed into dirt and the outer court gave way to the garden’s hush. This had become a habit. Not a refuge. Not quite ritual. Just a place to move when the air inside her head thickened, when her thoughts turned brittle and refused to settle.

Above her, the stars pierced through thinning mist—sharp, cold, unsympathetic. They glittered like frost clinging to a roof at dawn. She watched without awe. They hadn’t changed. They hadn’t lied. That was enough.

The guards, grown lazy in Morzan’s absence, patrolled in quiet loops—dull, predictable. She no longer counted their steps aloud. That had faded weeks ago. Her body knew the rhythm now. Her breath matched the turn of their heels, her bones holding the map without need of thought.

She didn’t need to think. That was the danger.

A breeze caught at the hem of her cloak. Not cold—just present. A finger against her ankle, a breath of something shifting. Her eyes turned with it.

There—a flicker.

Just beyond the hedge where the old rose border dipped, where petals bruised under weight and shadow pooled like ink. Not loud. Not threatening.

But there.

She didn’t startle. She hadn’t startled in months.

Her fingers found Aconitum’s hilt. Slow. Assured. The motion lived deeper than thought now—bone memory. Reflex stitched into her. It wasn’t fear. It was readiness. Not for violence—but for the moment before.

She stepped sideways, weight balanced, cloak trailing just enough to disguise the reach of her arms. Her voice cut low into the dark—toneless, as if shaped from stone instead of breath.

No answer.

Only the stillness returned.

Then—there. The flowers moved. Just slightly. Just enough. One tall stalk bowed, its pale bloom trembling as if it too were listening.

She stilled. Not just her body—her breath, her thoughts, even her memory. All of her waited.

It could have been nothing. The mind could sculpt ghosts from shadow when the soul hungered for warning. She’d seen faces before that weren’t there. Shapes behind glass. Echoes. But this time…

Her grip firmed.

She stepped forward.

And the dark gave shape.

Not soldier. Not beast. Not shadow made real by fear.

An elf.

Unarmed. Still. Tall in the way old trees are tall—not only in height, but in the way they take space. Light didn’t cling to him. It softened around his shoulders, like he had stepped from a memory too old to name.

She stopped. Her breath didn’t catch, but her chest tightened.

They stared.

A heartbeat. Then another.

And then—her hand lifted. Two fingers to her lips, then outward.

She hadn’t meant to do it. The gesture rose from some place older than language. A habit long buried. Something from the forest days. Before stone walls. Before obedience.

He returned it.

Just as softly. Without irony. Without pity.

The air changed. Not into safety. But into pause.

She felt it crack through her—like the first thaw against long-held ice. Not warmth. Just movement. Just proof that something still lived underneath.

His presence settled in her—not as threat, but as echo. The scent of crushed mint. Ash bark warmed in sun. Memory that didn’t explain itself.

She didn’t name him. She didn’t need to.

That world—the one he came from—had felt buried for years. Greynsi had salted the soil. But here it was, stirring in her chest like something that might not be dead after all.

She breathed once.

And then—

“You’re both wasting time.”

The voice snapped across the quiet like a stick breaking underfoot.

She didn’t flinch. But her shoulders caught. Her jaw locked tight.

She turned, slow.

She didn’t need to look. She knew that voice. The way a stone knows water even when it’s dry.

He was there.

Under the pergola. Veiled in mist and shadow. Watching.

Of course he was.

She didn’t move toward him. She couldn’t. The oaths wouldn’t let her. Not like chains. Worse. Like thorns hidden under skin, too deep to pull free. Every step toward him would sting. And still—some part of her wanted to.

She pushed it down.

Instead, she scanned the edges—wall-top, hedgerow, the slant of torchlight at the far end of the path. No guard yet. But the loop would turn. She had minutes.

Maybe less.

Her voice aimed toward the shadows. Sharpened. Measured.

“Neither of you should be here.”

She kept it steady, but her chest tightened beneath it.

“I don’t know what you think this is. But I’m not going with you. I can’t leave.”

From the elf—softly: “Can’t? Or won’t?”

She turned on him. Sharply. “You’ve got ears, haven’t you? Must I really repeat myself?”

He didn’t move. He shifted his weight. Not a threat. Just… listening.

It almost made her angrier.

She stepped again. Angling between them and the inner path. Her back to the hedge. Her front to them. Her whole self placed like a gatepost.

“You need to go,” she said. “I can only pretend so long. If I raise the alarm, Morzan’s men will come. They won’t ask. They won’t wait. They’ll gut you where you stand and hang your faces on the wall.”

The words dropped like stones. No urgency. No fire. Just the cold certainty of someone who had seen it happen.

The elf stepped forward—barely.

Light touched his cloak’s hem.

She stiffened, breath halting.

And then—

Brom stepped out of the dark.

She mirrored him.

One step. Balanced. Not closer. Not away. Just enough to mark the ground between them.

He looked the same. But she saw it now—the tension in his frame, the weight in his stance. His hand stayed near his hilt. Not ready to draw. Just near. Always near.

His face remained in shadow. But she felt the gaze.

It was always the gaze with him.

“We didn’t come all this way to leave you here,” he said. “Meri, I looked—”

“Don’t-” she said it like closing a door. “Don’t lie to me.”

The lie she meant wasn’t just about this place. It was older. Sharper. Lodged behind her ribs like a shard of old glass—quiet until touched, then sharp enough to bleed.

She lifted her chin.

“You knew where I was. You knew who had me.”

Her eyes tilted skyward. The stars stared back—blank and cruel and endlessly unchanging.

“I was here for years.”

The word cracked like a dropped dish. Years. She’d never said it aloud. Not like that.

“Did you even try?” Her voice stayed steady, but her breath didn’t. She knew where to aim. And she aimed there. “Or were you too busy raising your real children?”

His silence struck harder than if he had shouted.

She could feel the space between them aching—like a rope drawn taut between two cliff edges, fraying under weight. She felt its tension in her throat, in her wrists, in the burn behind her eyes she refused to name.

And still, she didn’t stop.

She wanted the silence to sting. Wanted it to echo in him the way his absence had echoed in her. He deserved to feel it. All of it.

“I care for you as much as I do your siblings,” he said, quiet. Not pleading. Just true.

She scoffed, bitter. “Then I’m sorry for them.”

He stepped forward again. She didn’t yield.

“Everything I’ve done was for you," he said, but his voice thinned around the edges, roughened like old parchment held too close to flame. "Drawing Morzan away, slipping through unrest—” he hesitated, only a breath, but it snagged the sentence—“it was for you.”

“That’s not true,” she said, and though her voice held an edge, it came wrapped in restraint—not meant to wound, only to hold distance. Her body felt hot beneath the cold of the night, the kind of heat that rose not from anger, but from the ache of old wounds pressed too hard. She wanted him to feel it—not just in the words, but in the force behind them. Let him carry that weight home.“You shouldn’t have come. He’ll come for you now. That blood’s on you.”

Her fingers curled tighter. Aconitum came free in one smooth motion. Not raised. Not threatening. Just held.

“Don’t worry about Morzan,” Brom said, but his shoulders shifted. His hand hovered near his side again, not for his sword this time, but for steadiness. A small, human gesture—almost invisible, almost enough to make her pause. Almost.

“I don’t,” she said flatly. “Not when you stop treating me like something soft.”

She stepped back—not in fear. Just reclaiming space.

“I’ve seen what he does to the ones who fail him. I buried them.”

Her voice didn’t waver, but her fingers curled tighter around the hilt—until her knuckles paled. The cold metal grounded her, kept her upright against the surge of memory that threatened to rise. Faces she hadn’t let herself recall pressed at the edge of her mind, and for a heartbeat, her throat went tight. But she blinked once, slow and deliberate, and anchored herself to the weight in her hand. She wouldn't let them see it. Not that.

“She’s taken oaths,” the elf said, stepping forward just enough to catch the light across one cheekbone, his expression carved in regret, not accusation. “He’s twisted her thinking.” His voice was gentle, but his eyes were watching her closely, as if searching—trying to find something left of the girl who used to follow starlight trails through wild marigold and fern.

But it was the way he spoke about her—not to her—that scraped. As if she weren’t standing there. As if she hadn’t just told them to leave.

Something curled inside her—tight and cold. Not fear. Not quite fury. Something older. Something worn smooth by repetition, like worry-stone thumbed too long in silence. She was not a relic to be rescued. She was here. She was still.

“There’s nothing wrong with my mind, you butter-brained leaf-licker,” she snapped, each syllable honed to cut—not out of immaturity, but by design. The insult wasn’t thrown in heat; it was placed. It was a weapon drawn from memory, from long-forgotten lessons in survival, in deflection. Let him blink. Let him flinch. She wanted the sting—wanted to drive back the pity in his eyes, the soft doubt in his voice. If they were going to doubt her sanity, she would show them exactly how sharp her clarity could be.

He blinked, clearly startled. His weight shifted back a fraction, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his features—but he didn’t retreat.

Good. Let it catch in his throat. Let it sit.

She didn’t want softness now. She didn’t want the gentle kind of sympathy that turned brittle in the light. She wanted edges. Distance. The firm kind of pain that told people to stay back.

They thought her warped—like she didn’t know what had been done to her. Like she hadn’t traced the shape of it every night with callused fingers and careful breath. Like she hadn’t walked the garden paths at dusk trying to remember what thoughts were hers and which had been planted like briars.

“Even if there were,” she added, her voice lower now, colder, “I’d still be more aware than either of you.”

Because they didn’t know what it meant to watch the world from inside a cage built of praise. To smile and kneel and nod and still find places to hide a knife.

They didn’t know what it meant to survive by seeming to surrender.

Silence followed—thick as wet wool, heavy across her shoulders. But she held it. Let it settle.

Let them sit with what they could not undo.

Brom’s eyes never left her. She could feel it—the same gaze that had once watched her swing wooden blades in a half-cleared field, that had caught her burying stories in the soil when words grew too heavy. That gaze was steady now, but not unshaken.

“What oaths?” he asked, voice low, dry at the edges—as if naming it would solidify something he wasn’t ready to admit.

She didn’t answer.

Then, cooly she said, “Late question.”

“We need to know what we’re up against.”

There it was—the war-thought. Always the strategist. He was already measuring risks, alliances, exits. Already thinking past her body, her voice, her will. Her eyes narrowed.

“You’re not up against anything because you’re leaving.,” she said. Her voice thinned, then cut—sharp and spare. “You don’t get to look at me like I’m still yours.”

Aconitum hung loose in her grip. Ready. But not raised.

He didn’t move.

Part of her wanted him to. Just a step. Just a reach.

Just so she’d know if she’d lower the blade—or lift it.

She imagined it: the sound of his footfall, the familiar weight of him stepping into her radius. The world waiting on what she’d do.

But he didn’t close the space. He didn’t offer defiance or comfort. Instead, he looked down. Then up. Then away—as if bracing himself against what he already knew he would do.

“You’re right,” he said, and it wasn’t surrender. It was something heavier. A relinquishing.

He raised his hand.

Silver caught the torchlight. A scar along his palm—a mark carved not in battle, but in oath.

Too late, she saw it coming.

“No—”

But her knees were already giving way. The world spun. Flowers and stone blurred into stars.

And this time—

She didn’t wake screaming.

She didn’t wake at all.

...

When she woke, it was beneath a sky smeared with the soft residue of stars, their light dimming in the hush before dawn. The world hadn’t fully turned yet. That between-time clung to the grass and her skin alike. A breeze moved through the hollow, threading its fingers through the tall reeds and her hair with a gentleness she hadn’t expected. It caught her off guard—the way a touch from a long-dead memory might: too familiar to flinch from, too tender to trust.

She didn’t open her eyes at first. She stayed curled beneath the blanket, holding herself still. The air smelled like wet ash and crushed wild mint. A fire crackled nearby, its voice steady and kind, layered beneath the murmurs of men—soft, restrained. Metal tapped quietly against stone. Insects whispered at the margins of the clearing. The land was not asleep, but it hadn’t yet woken either.

For a moment—only a moment—she let herself rest with it. Just another body in the hush.

Then something nudged her shoulder. Gentle, but firm enough that the quiet couldn’t be mistaken for safety anymore.

She stirred slowly, blinking against the pale bloom of morning light. Brom stood outlined by the fire. Taller than she remembered, though that might have been a trick of sleep. Or time. Or how small she felt now that everything was out of her hands. His beard had gone silver near the jaw. His shoulders were marked by travel, by years she hadn’t seen. But his eyes hadn’t changed. Still that deep, unyielding blue. Too knowing. Too familiar.

“If we release the spell,” he asked, speaking in the Ancient Language, “will you fight us?”

The words struck strange and slow—like stepping back into a house after years gone, the furniture rearranged but the air the same. It took her a breath to understand what he meant. Another to remember what she was bound by.

She moved to shift, but her limbs held still. Not by rope. By magic. A binding soft as breath but firm as stone. Panic lanced up through her chest—brief, controlled, but undeniable. Not fear of them. But fear of what might still be waiting inside her. What might rise if she moved wrong.

Her arms didn’t obey.

Her hands folded in her lap, quiet, as if still bound. The fire cracked softly nearby, the sound of pine sap popping in the heat. She didn’t look at them—only at the dark thread of grass between her knees, as if the answer might be written there. The question came before it was spoken, and she felt the air change with it.

“The oaths…” Her voice was thin at first, like frost over standing water. “I was given choices.”

Glenwing stirred near the fire. He didn’t move closer, but the shift in his weight told her his focus had narrowed. She could feel it like a hand resting gently at the base of her skull—not pressing, just present. When he spoke, it was with caution, not distrust. “What were the terms?”

She didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, she watched the steam curl off the edge of the mug someone had left near the coals. “Terms,” she said slowly, as though the word itself might betray her. “Not threats.” She laid the words down like stones over thin ice—deliberate, careful, rehearsed in silence long before now.

The memory of that moment still lived in her skin, half-sweet, half-cutting. Beneath her ribs, the oath didn’t pull. But it listened. It always listened. A hush that had shape, like mist wrapping a blade.

“It’s important I return,” she said, her voice steady, though the weight beneath it shifted. “There are… movements. You might not see them yet. But that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped.” Her tone carried no urgency, only inevitability. As if the tide had already begun to turn, and she was simply naming it aloud.

Brom scratched his beard—a gesture that, for one sharp second, knocked the breath from her chest. He had done that when he read her stories. When he tried not to show concern. The familiarity of it hurt more than any silence.

“Did he use your True Name?” he asked. Her fingers pressed together, thumb tapping each knuckle once, twice, again—ritual more than answer.

Her fingers moved—just slightly—against the blanket’s edge, pressing the weave between thumb and knuckle. “He was… careful,” she said, after a long pause. “He asked questions the way a craftsman taps wood. Looking for the hollow.” She let the silence stretch a beat. “But no. I don’t think he found it. I’d have known. I hope I would’ve known.”

The stillness that followed wasn’t cold. It carried weight—of time, of the questions they didn’t yet know how to ask. Firelight flickered in the dark crescents beneath Brom’s eyes, and she saw then how tired he was, how much of him had been worn down in her absence.

“You said you chose,” he said finally. His voice didn’t push. It folded into the space between them. “What were the choices?”

Her lips parted. Her breath caught and slid sideways. Then, quieter: “I can’t say.”

She glanced up just long enough to meet his eyes. Then down again, as if the look alone might fray the edge of the promise she wasn’t allowed to name.

“There are doors I don’t open,” she murmured. “Not unless the key is given. And some keys… only turn one way.”

She shifted, the blanket dragging against her knees as if reluctant to let go. The fire’s warmth didn’t reach her. She pulled her legs in tighter, as though shrinking might undo the distance between them—between this and before. “You should let me go,” she said, her voice not rising but sinking. “Before more damage follows. I shouldn’t be with you. I don’t know who it’ll shatter worse—me, or you.”

There was a pause. A quiet long enough to stretch. A crack popped in the fire, but neither of them looked toward it.

Brom’s voice came low—not disbelieving, not hard. Just quiet. Threadbare. “Too late for what?”

Her jaw twitched. She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

He sighed—not sharply, not impatiently. Just the long breath of someone who already knew the answer and hated needing to ask. “Is it the oath that holds your tongue,” he said quietly, “or the wound?”

Her voice, when it came, was steadied by exhaustion. “If it was honesty you wanted…” she said, not with bitterness, but with the distant ache of someone who’d rehearsed too many conversations alone, “you should’ve listened when I told you to leave.”

She didn’t speak it in anger. The words came like weathered wood, old and splintered. “I know you didn’t mean it as cruelty. But it still was. I didn’t choose to vanish. That decision was made around me.”

Brom didn’t flinch. But something in his shoulders dipped, barely. Like the weight of her words had found a place to settle.

“And now?” he asked. “Would you choose to stay?”

She drew in a breath through her nose, slow and steady, like tasting smoke. “I don’t know,” she said, finally. “Some parts of me… want to. Others are still asking permission.”

Glenwing stood now, no longer seated near the fire. Not pacing—he wouldn’t. Just standing. Arms folded across his chest, posture not tense but stilled, as though any movement might unbalance the air.

“You’ve been twisted by the oath,” he said. Not unkindly. Not accusing. Like someone speaking of a tree shaped by wind. His gaze held steady, but his hands—he rubbed the thumb across one knuckle, slow and absent, as though grounding himself. “It’s hard to know where the shape ends and the bark begins.”

She looked up at him, calm but edged. “I know what I am,” she said. “Even if I don’t always sound like it.”

Brom didn’t respond. But she felt the pressure of his attention—watching her not for answers, but for the shape of what hadn’t been said.

“If we freed you from it,” he said finally, “what then?”

Her gaze stayed on the fire. Her voice held. “Then you’ll see what I’ve chosen. Not because I was told. Because I chose.”

And in that moment, the fire didn’t crackle. The wind didn’t stir. It was quiet enough to hear the shift of Glenwing’s boots on dew-wet grass, and the ache in Brom’s throat as he swallowed whatever answer he had meant to give.

He reached for a wrapped bundle. She didn’t move to take it. Not yet. Her eyes found his, searching for the catch. There was always a catch.

But he only waited.

Eventually, she took it. Her fingers stiff around the waxed linen, the fold softened by travel. Inside: a heel of bread, some cheese, dried fruit—and a sweet bun, slightly crushed but still whole.

She stilled. Her breath snagged in her chest, just once. She stared at the bun. Its scent—faint and frayed with distance—carried a trace of something sunlit and small. Vanilla, maybe. Or memory placing it there.

She didn’t want to eat it. She wanted to be the kind of person who could.

But slowly, she bit in.

It was stale. Flattened. But still warm in its center. Still good. Still true.

She chewed slowly, as if taste alone might hold her together.

She remembered trying to make them with Orla once—how they’d fallen flat, dry and pale, and how she’d pretended not to taste the difference. Pretended it didn’t matter.

This tasted like before pretending.

She blinked hard. Swallowed. Wiped her mouth with the edge of her sleeve.

Glenwing had moved away. He stood near the horses, posture quiet but not idle. She didn’t scan the woods. Didn’t look for exits.

She stayed.

Brom murmured something near the fire—low, unshaped words that didn’t ask for her attention but somehow found it anyway. Memory curled close behind them.

She sat straighter. The ache in her spine didn’t lift. But it loosened.

When he offered her a hand, she didn’t take it immediately. But she didn’t draw back either. When he helped her rise, she let him.

He held her. Not tightly. Just long enough for her to feel the shape of it.

“I’ve always known who you are,” he said, voice roughened by ash and years. “You haven’t changed so much I can’t see it.”

She didn’t speak. But she didn’t pull away.

The oath hadn’t broken. But it had stirred. And underneath it, something else had answered.

When he stepped back, he gestured to the packs.

“Now,” he said, with a faint curve at the corner of his mouth, “let’s get you out of those ridiculous clothes. We’re going home.”

She didn’t nod. Didn’t smile. But she let him lead her.

And for the first time in a long while, she didn’t walk alone.

……

……

It would take them a little over a fortnight to reach home from where they had camped beyond the bend of the Toark River. The water cut through the land like a blade dulled by centuries, banks worn low by flood and time. Stunted willows clung to its edge, their roots half-exposed, their shadows long in the morning mist. Pale birds lifted in flurries from the reeds each time they approached the water, vanishing into the hush of the woods beyond.

The air carried the iron tang of river-stone and thawing earth—remnants of winter still held in the hollows. It was early spring in truth, but the forest had not yet caught up. Buds swelled but had not burst. The world waited, quiet and cold-edged.

Plenty of time for Morzan to discover what had happened. More than enough time for him to act.

She told Brom this, again and again, with a heat sharpened not by fear but by frustration. He listened, patient as old bark, and gave the same answer each time: that Morzan and his dragon were far from here, kept occupied by a trail that led nowhere. A snipe’s hunt, he called it.

She didn’t believe him.

She had been sitting by the fire when they last argued, braiding her hair with fingers that would not stop trembling. She had already stripped out of the fine dress, its bodice too tight with shame, its hem weighed down by the mud of Greynsi’s halls. The tunic and trousers Brom gave her were simple, worn soft by years of use, and too large in the way old kindness often is. She’d taken a belt from one of his saddlebags and cinched them close to her frame.

Then, without ceremony, she had torn off the pearl buttons and fed the dress to the flames. She did not watch it burn. Brom did. But he said nothing, only glanced once at her hands and then away.

She watched the sunrise instead. The grey melted slow, like breath from a wounded animal. Light crept over the fields and into the edges of her soul. She tilted her head to it, quiet as a prayer, and felt the morning like air after drowning.

It was Brom who came to her then, leading two horses by the reins—one she knew, and one she did not.

The bronze roan stepped lightly, its coat catching copper in the dawn. She knew this horse. Copperglow. Her mother’s favorite. Mam had named her with childlike joy, spinning in place like a girl and laughing until Meri couldn’t help laughing too. That laughter felt very far away now.

“Do you know what happened to Asrai?” she asked, not looking at him.

Brom shook his head. “We caught sight of her once—a shadow in the trees. Spooked and bolted before we got close. Wild herds run the north… maybe she found one.”

Her chest pulled tight. She turned her face from him, biting back the ache in her throat. There would be no more tears. She had emptied them already, wrung dry like cloth left too long in wind. It was just a horse. She knew that. But Asrai had been hers. One of the few things that ever truly had been.

“That would be best,” she murmured. The wind caught her hair and tugged at it gently, like a sister who still wanted to play.

She ran her fingers over the furs tied to the saddle, grounding herself there, before turning to Glenwing, who stood not far behind her father.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” she said, voice low. “But I owe you the words. What I said in Greynsi... I shouldn't have.”

The elf inclined his head, grave and without scorn. “You were not wholly yourself. And I do not believe I shall hear such words again. It’s good to see you unshackled, Meri. Truly. You have not been lost to us.”

She did not correct him. Every word she’d spoken had been hers. The venom, the fire, the fury—those hadn’t come from Morzan. They had been waiting in her long before Greynsi’s stones swallowed her.

“I must return to my people,” Glenwing said, his eyes on the distant treeline. “My part in this is finished.”

“To say thank you feels small,” said Brom. “You’ve done more than I could ever repay.”

The elf’s smile was faint, weathered by time. “As you once did for us, we now do for you. Gratitude flows both ways, Steelbringer. We shall meet again.”

There were no grand farewells. Glenwing simply stepped into the trees and was gone, his form swallowed by leaves and light.

Brom mounted first. Meri followed. The saddle felt strange beneath her after so long, but the rhythm returned quick enough. Muscle memory. A ghost of home in her bones.

“I kept him longer than I should have,” Brom said after a time. “The last few weeks have tested all of us.”

“It’ll be longer for us than for him,” she replied. Her voice held the edge of something brittle. “Are we riding for Carvahall?”

“What makes you think that?” he asked. “The road forks ahead. Could be any direction.”

“That’s where they are, isn’t it?” she pressed. “He took me to Carvahall last autumn. I saw Mam—on a farm. He used that... used her... to bind me. He gave me a choice, but it wasn’t one.”

She paused. His hands tightened on the reins.

“If we go there, we can’t stay long. Now that I’m gone, Morzan will come. For them. Unless I go back.”

“You are not going back,” Brom growled, and the sound of it made her flinch, though she tried not to show it.

She breathed slow, smoothing her hand over the horse’s mane.

“Then let me pass as a boy,” she said, not looking at him. “I’ll cut my hair. Bind my chest. It’s safer if they don’t see me. If they don’t know I’m... me.”

Brom didn’t answer immediately. The silence stretched. They crossed a narrow wooden bridge, the water whispering beneath.

“There’s a market town two days east,” he said finally. “We’ll get what we need.”

She nodded, and they rode a while in quiet.

“When did you get so wily, my flower?”

She gave a small huff—almost a laugh, almost not.

“If you wanted me soft,” she said, quiet but sharp, “you shouldn’t have raised me like a blade.” She looked at him then. Her voice cooler now. “Or left me with someone who hated you. And everything you are.”

He didn’t speak. Just spurred his horse ahead. But when he looked back over his shoulder, his face bore the expression of a man shouldering a weight he had carried too long.

And still, she followed. The hills rolled out before them like folds of a sleeping creature. The land remembered them, even if they had forgotten how to walk in it. The trees leaned close, listening. The wind carried old names.

The path ahead was steep. She didn’t know the way, not truly. Each step felt like a guess, the moss slick underfoot, the ledges narrow. It would be easy to fall again.

But she had started.

And behind her ribs, the viper waited.

Still coiled. Still silent.

But no longer asleep.

Chapter Text

They traveled with few words between them, the rhythm of hooves and wind filling the spaces where language might have gone.

Brom asked nothing of Morzan, nor of Greynsi, nor of the long, silent winter that sealed her behind stone—saying nothing, but seeing everything. He gave her space, held open with old patience—not the kind that coaxed speech, but the kind that understood how long pain took to loosen its grip, if it ever did.

She adjusted the reins once, then again, though they didn’t need it. Her eyes stayed on the trail ahead. A crow called from somewhere behind, but she gave no sign she’d heard.

When hoofbeats slowed or branches caught the light just wrong, she would glance toward him. The way his hands, once steady as duskfall, curled just slightly when she brushed too near the edge of memory. Now and then, the light caught his face just so—and she’d see it. A flicker. Not anger. Not grief. Just something old, and already decided. His jaw never moved—but once, she saw the muscle twitch. A stone beneath skin. A word unsaid.

It was the hush a blade makes before it’s drawn—the air thinning, the body already bracing. Her breath shortened on its own, shallow and slow, as if trying not to be heard. So she stayed quiet. Let silence thicken where pain might have gone.

She had hoped—foolishly—that he might fade behind her. Like smoke. Or a name misremembered in sleep. But the world wasn’t made for such mercy, and she knew it. If she wanted a life beyond him, he could not vanish. He had to die. Not as punishment. As severance. Root and branch. Ash ground deep. A name never spoken again.

She wondered, sometimes, if Brom could do it. Or if, in the end, it would fall to her. The thought sat in her chest like a piece of metal—cold, lodged deep. Wrong. Reckless. Maybe fatal. And still it stayed.

The land around them seemed to echo that stillness. Gorse and broom flared gold across the ridgelines. Oaks stood hunched in the meadows like penitent monks. The trail wound through shallow glens, steeped in the scent of wet bark and stone. The rhythm of hooves softened against moss and loam.

But Meri noticed what was missing.

No gulls wheeled above the river. No scatter of starlings broke from hedgerows. The distant bleat of goats—gone, though the slopes bore their signs. Even the wind moved strangely, its breath dragging close to earth instead of lifting clean through the trees. Not still—but muzzled.

It wasn’t just the absence.

It was how the absence had been arranged. Cart ruts faded too cleanly. Gateposts left swinging. A field that should’ve been turned, left to crust and sleep. A hawk’s bones, sun-bleached and whole beneath a fence rail—no feathers, no scatter. Just bones.

She said nothing. But her gaze stayed moving. Not to watch for danger. To track its absence. The shape of what tried not to be seen.

When Brom did speak, it was of gentler things. Mam. The children. His voice softened in those moments—rougher with care, like a blade dulled so it wouldn’t cut.

“A boy,” he said. “Iain. Year old now. Wild as a crow with a mouth full of thunder.”

She gave no answer.

“Your mother says he’ll be her last,” he added, tone low with that same faint wryness. “She said that after Conan. And Elida. And Eri.”

He glanced toward her, gauging.

But she didn’t smile. She was remembering Mam’s hands, stilled around a newborn—how her face softened in sleep. How her voice lowered, almost without meaning to, like speaking to something breakable not just in her arms but inside herself.

Meri adjusted the reins, eyes on the path ahead.

Mam always said the next would be her last. Said it with every child. But she never truly meant it. Not in her bones. Not in the quiet way her hands lingered too long at the cradle, or how she leaned in close to feel the breath of a new life. Meri thought she loved babes more than she ever dared to say.

They reached the market town near midday. The sun pressed low and thick, pulling gold from the earth. Pollen hung like dust motes. Sweetgrass. Sweat. Dung. Smells that rose around her like a memory she hadn’t asked for.

When they had first come to the town, Meri had refused to enter. She stood at the edge of the woods like a thing half-wild, hood drawn, watching the gates with a hawk’s caution. Only when Brom offered his cloak did she move.

“With the hood,” he said, “you can pass unseen.”

She nodded once, slipping beneath it. They entered the town.

They walked the rows without touching. Without speaking. Brom’s steps were measured, shoulders taut in that way that meant he was thinking too many things at once.

“If you want to pass as a traveler,” he murmured, once they were alone again, “you’ll need to look like one. No one trusts a face that’s too clean. Dirt tells a better story.”

She didn’t reply. Just bent to the path, pressed her fingers into the dust, and smeared it across her cheeks. Tucked the edge of her braid beneath the cap he’d bought her.

Brom was already mounted. Watching. But he said nothing.

She swung up behind Copperglow’s ears, the saddle creaking beneath her.

“If you’ve got a question,” he said, reins loose, “ask it. Just don’t ask for truth unless you plan to carry it.”

She waited a while. Let the wind shift. Let the land settle. Only when the quiet had stretched long enough to seem like a choice did she speak: “You were a Rider. You still carry power. Why don’t you use it?”

He didn’t look at her.

“Because magic’s breath,” he said. “And I’ve only got so much left.”

She studied the line of his jaw—the old scar just visible in profile, the skin there slightly raised like a thread pulled too tight. When he spoke, she caught the faintest twitch, as if something inside him clenched and braced. Part of her wanted to believe he was simply tired. But another part—the part shaped by silence and watching—recognized restraint. He was holding something back. And though she didn’t know what, she knew the weight of it.

“You’re lying,” she stated.

He didn’t deny it right away.

“No,” he said at last. “Just not saying everything.”

She didn’t press. She filed it away—like a pebble carried in the mouth until it smoothed, or a name meant to be spoken later.

.

They rode harder after that, as if to outrun the shape of the road itself. The land hadn’t changed—not in any way the eye could name—but to Meri it felt shifted, steeped. Familiar and wrong. The way a childhood bed feels after a fever. She knew this path, not from joy or homecoming, but from the long silence of watching it pass beneath her with no reins in her hands. A year ago, she had ridden this way under Morzan’s eye. Now she rode beside Brom. But her body hadn’t learned the difference yet.

The fields on either side bowed inward under the weight of their own quiet. Furrows lay crooked and overgrown. The broom-brush should have been buzzing with bees, but none stirred. She tried to listen for signs of spring—frogs, birdsong, the pulse of thawing water—but all she heard was the rhythm of hooves, the rustle of her cloak, the soft pull of breath too high in her chest.

A gate swung open on its hinge as they passed—slow, loose, like it had given up waiting to be latched.

She said nothing. She hadn’t spoken since dawn. Her mouth felt dry, her shoulders knotted beneath the wool cloak Brom had tucked around her when they broke camp. The air wasn’t cold. The chill lived elsewhere—in her memory, in the part of her that still expected to be watched for flinching.

The road was narrower than she remembered. Or maybe she had been smaller. Maybe fear had made everything wider.

She looked for the places where she’d considered escaping last time—before the inn, before the ruined farm. The breaks in the thornwall. The low gap behind the grain barn. Her body remembered every false opening.

The stream they crossed ran sluggish and brown. The reeds at its edge sagged. She remembered watching it through the inn window. Remembered how she’d pressed her palm to the glass and imagined slipping beneath its surface, just to break the binding that held her voice. No frog croaked now. No heron stirred. The banks were too quiet, too clean. Morzan had noticed that too, she remembered. He had said, “Even the water here understands discretion.”

Her stomach turned.

Brom didn’t speak. Not yet. But she could feel his awareness beside her—steady, present, waiting without pressure. His gaze flicked toward her sometimes, not sharply, but checking. A rhythm of concern not meant to be noticed.

When they made camp, the hush deepened. Toran circled once, then lay at her side with a quiet sigh. The fire caught slow. The food tasted of nothing.

And still Brom didn’t press. Only when the flames had fallen to coals did he speak. His voice was soft, angled into the stillness.

“You’ve ridden this way before,” he said. “Last autumn. Do you remember how far he brought you?”

She didn’t look up. Her fingers had been winding a thread from the seam of her cloak—one she hadn’t noticed unraveling until now.

“He didn’t ride the whole way,” she said. “Not near the end. We dismounted at the ridge. Walked the rest.”

Her voice was quieter with each word, like speaking summoned weight.

“He stopped above the farm,” she continued. “He watched. Not long. Just long enough.”

She didn’t say the rest—that she had watched too. That he had told her to. That he had placed a hand on her shoulder, not to comfort, but to steady her—like reins.

Her thumb pressed the edge of the thread until it bit skin.

“He made me look,” she said, as if the sentence alone could cut the memory clean.

Brom didn’t speak. Didn’t reach for her. He only fed another branch to the fire, his movements careful, quiet.

In the stillness that followed, Meri felt her breath return—but only partway. As if some part of her still stood on that ridge, cloaked in watching. Silent not because she chose to be, but because he had made silence her name.

Sleep came in shallow, fitful stretches. She dreamed of stone walls and shuttered windows. Of fox cries and locked doors. Of her mother’s back turned—unaware.

The trees thinned before the village came into view, their branches reaching backward like hands reluctant to let go. Meri rode with one hand wrapped in the reins, the other resting near her thigh, fingers brushing the leather-wrapped hilt of the blade Brom had returned to her—though she hadn’t drawn it since. The path had grown firmer beneath their horses’ hooves, packed by trade and time, but she felt no steadiness in it.

She remembered this road. Or rather, the feel of it—how it bent at a quiet angle before the stone wall, how the air changed near the barley fields. She had ridden here once, but not as herself. Then, she had been a shadow in Morzan’s wake, voiceless, watched, and watching.

Now, the silence was hers again. But it felt heavier. Not captive this time—just unsure. Untethered.

Ahead, the roofs of Carvahall rose in irregular humps behind wind-worn fences. Smoke lifted from a chimney or two, thin as thread. A dog barked once. Then stillness.

Brom slowed, just enough that she could ride beside him without jarring.

“If it’s too much,” he said, not looking at her, “we’ll ride through.”

Meri didn’t answer. But she shook her head once. Firm. Not fast.

The wind shifted—carrying the faint scent of baking rye and sheep wool and the bite of iron. And beneath it, almost hidden, something else: crushed hawthorn, old ash, and the memory of firelight in a place she hadn’t chosen to remember.

She pulled her hood forward and let the village come.

The path curved west before bending toward the rise. It was not the trail Morzan had taken—he had brought her down a hunter’s route through the heather, where old stones jutted from the hillside like broken fingers. There, the land had been bleaker, shadowed. They hadn’t passed the fields. Hadn’t ridden where the barley grew.

But now they did.

The earth here was soft with thaw, tracked by the heavy tread of carts and goats. A berry thicket had crept over the ditchbank, its branches still bare but dotted with green knots just beginning to form. A pair of magpies startled from the grass and vanished into the low branches of an alder. The air smelled of compost and rain and the kind of labor that left one’s back sore but breath deep.

Now, the house came into view—set slightly apart from the others, hedged by a low wall of stacked stone. The fence bowed in places, softened by moss and the slow pressure of children’s hands and seasons of wind. A tangle of twine held one post steady, as if someone meant to fix it and never did. Beyond it, the ground sloped gently into a yard marked by the silent patterns of daily life—ruts from a wheelbarrow, the half-moon scuff of someone’s heel turning soil.

The house itself was larger than the cabin, but unassuming—timbers darkened by years of sun and stove smoke, shutters repaired with mismatched slats. The roof sagged slightly over the porch, where a wooden bench sat crooked beneath a narrow awning. Onion skins curled in a basket left out overnight. A child’s cloak—small, red, one tie missing—had been flung over the railing and forgotten.

Then, it had seemed unreachable. Now, it was right there. The stone wall low enough to step over. The porch sagging slightly with age. But the distance hadn’t lessened. It had shifted—settled deeper, behind her ribs and under her skin. The distance was not in steps. It was in years.

A single boot print marked the edge of the path—pressed firm into thaw-soft soil, still dark with damp. She didn’t know whose it was. But the shape of it made her stomach twist. The kind of print left by someone who paused. Someone who belonged.

Meri stayed in the saddle, unmoving, the leather groaning softly beneath her as the horse shifted its weight. The house did not know her. It had held warmth without her. Laughter tucked into corners. A cracked bowl beside the basin. Quarrels that burned out before they turned sharp. She had not touched any of it. Had only been shaped elsewhere—beneath stone, beneath silence, beneath hands that never reached for comfort.

She felt the gap again. Not a wound. Not a wall. Just… the quiet ache of having grown in a different season than the rest of them. Her family had set roots here. She had learned to survive wind-blown. Callused. Watchful.

And her mother stood at the fence.

Not moving. Not waving. Just watching.

Selena’s hand rested lightly on the top rail, fingers curved—not with tension, but with care, like she was steadying something that threatened to rise. Her shoulders didn’t stiffen. They settled, slow as dusk, as if any sudden movement might undo the moment entirely. Her head tilted—just slightly—as if listening to some distant echo that had finally come home in the shape of a girl she no longer knew how to call daughter.

Her face held no clear expression. Not grief. Not joy. Just the held breath of someone who had waited too long to hope. The kind of silence that came after too many words never spoken aloud.

Brom slowed beside her, his own presence careful—measured to neither press nor vanish.

“He’s not here,” he said, voice low. “Come down.”

She didn’t move.

“He’s not here,” he said again, softer. “He’s gone.”

Gone.

The word didn’t strike so much as settle. Like dust in the hollows. Her fingers curled tighter around the reins, her knuckles blanching pale against worn leather.

Her voice, when it came, was quiet. Not fragile—just thinned by distance and memory.

“He brought me here,” she said—not to Brom, but to the trees beyond the path, the branches that remembered what no one else had seen. “Last fall. He stood there. Just… watched.”

She didn’t say the rest. Didn’t say how he had turned her toward the windows, made her look. How he’d said her name—not Meri. Not daughter. But Muirgheal. As if to plant a flag in soil never his to claim.

The word had stuck in her like a thorn. Carried through snow. Through silence. Through her own teeth.

She looked to the ridge, to where the trees bowed like watchers and the land folded in a shape she knew too well. Her hand clenched again.

And her mother—her mother didn’t call out. But her eyes stayed fastened to the place where her daughter sat, as if trying to trace something behind the bones. A gesture hovered in her fingers, half-lifted, then fell again. Not rejection. Not fear. Just the aching pause of someone too full of memory to speak.

Then Meri breathed. Once. Not shallow. Not loud. Just enough to ground her voice.

“I want to help you set the wards,” she said. “I know where he came through.”

There was no hesitation in the turn. No waiting. No asking.

She turned Copperglow and rode—not with flight in her limbs, but purpose, like stitching a tear back into place.

Behind her, Selena’s hand lifted again. Reached. Then curled back to the rail.

And Brom—still seated, still watching—held her in one long look. Not speaking. Just present. Then followed.

The clearing had not changed.

The moss still held the scent of thaw. The trees leaned as they always had, arms lifted skyward in slow communion. A fox’s track wound soft across a patch of earth still wet from snowmelt. But there were no broken stems. No scuffed stone. No sign of a body passing through.

That was the way he moved. Not to leave marks—but to unmake stillness.

Meri stayed mounted, her breath slow, eyes reading the land as she once read old maps—lines of shadow, curves of bark, the tilt of fern. She saw what didn’t belong. Or rather, what didn’t change. And that was answer enough.

The woods gave nothing.

Only wind, curling soft across her cheek, threading through her braid like old fingers. It smelled faintly of thaw and pine and something green just beginning to wake.

Behind her, Brom dismounted. Quiet as ever. His presence did not press—it balanced. A steadying shape beside her, not demanding weight, but something her breath could lean toward if it needed to. His boots disturbed no leaf, only the hush beneath it.

“He stood here,” she said. “Just… stood. Watched everything.”

Brom nodded once. Not in agreement, not dismissal. Just that small, weather-worn gesture of bearing witness—like a branch dipping under snow.

He raised a hand, palm outward, and traced the ward-line into the air. The words he spoke were soft, shaped more like breath than speech—meant for roots, for soil, for the oldest things that remembered how to listen even after silence. Not command. Not warning. Just a reminder to the land: we are still here.

The wind shifted, a hush passing low to the ground.

The moss seemed to darken—no sudden change, just a deepening, like water seeping back into dry roots.

Meri did not speak. She stood beside him, shoulders loose, eyes steady on the trees. Threaded through with quiet, but not empty. A stillness filled with weight, like a stone cupped in both hands. The dandelions bowed near her boots, their golden heads moving with more grace than sorrow.

Copperglow shifted behind them, exhaled once—a long, tired breath—and stilled again, as if the horse, too, felt the moment's shape.

They did not rush the silence. It left its own tracks.

But when it passed, they turned back.

The ride down was slow. Not cautious—just deliberate. The kind of descent that comes after something unnamed has been laid to rest. When they reached the edge of the trees, the barn came into view first—its sloping roof softened by dusk, sunlight catching on the western wall like a hand resting on old scars. Moss grew thick along the base stones. A weathered pail leaned forgotten beside the trough.

Brom guided them toward it without a word, letting the silence stretch as it needed. The sun had begun its slow descent, and light slanted long through the rafters, gilding dust and straw in a haze of gold. The air was warm with the scent of animal musk and old wood—goats, hay, and the faint mineral tang of iron nails in sun-warmed beams.

Meri hadn’t heard that kind of brightness in moons—and somehow it startled her more than a threat would have. She had already stepped back, swift and subtle, putting Copperglow’s flank between them. It wasn’t fear, not exactly. Just the memory of being startled in Greynsi and punished for it. Her hand twitched once more before falling to her side, her shoulders drawn tight like a bow not yet loosed.

Elida tilted her head, eyes narrowing. Her gaze swept over Meri’s boots, the dust on her cheeks, the guarded tilt of her posture.

“I think you’ve been tricked,” she announced. “My sister would never wear boots.”

Brom exhaled, something like a smile briefly tugging at his mouth before he swallowed it. “Go inside,” he told her. “Tell your mother we’ll be right behind you.”

Elida hugged him around the middle, unconcerned, then skipped off toward the house, braid swinging behind her like a banner from another time. She didn’t look back.

When the barn quieted again, Meri let out a long, silent breath through her nose and leaned her weight subtly against the roan’s shoulder. The smell of the animal—sweat and dust and saddle leather—was grounding. She rubbed her thumb across her palm, tracing the memory of a callus that no longer lived there.

“She’s not wrong,” Brom said, glancing down. “You, willingly in boots. Strange days indeed.”

“Better boots than daft slipshoes,” Meri muttered, but the line landed quieter than she'd meant it to—more memory than malice. Her voice came flat, stripped of tone. She gestured toward the house, but didn’t quite point. “What did you tell them? About where I was.”

The shift was immediate. His face hardened—not with anger, but with that old familiar tension that preceded hard truths. She had seen that look before battle.

“I told them the truth,” he said. “They know who had you. Where you were. Eragon too.”

Something flickered behind her eyes. “That’s why he was seen near Gil’ead.”

Brom’s jaw moved once before he answered. “That was something else. We knew we were seen, but not by who. The Empire surely knows by now.”

He hesitated, then asked, “Why didn’t Morzan act?”

She stared at the floorboards a moment before answering. “Because I gave him terms. As long as no one interfered—no one reached for me—he would leave the family untouched. That was the cost.”

She looked at her hand. Flexed it. Tapped it lightly once against her thigh, then twice more without meaning to—rhythmic, self-soothing.

“It’s done now. The terms are ash. He’ll come when he wants.”

Brom’s expression darkened. She caught it from the corner of her eye but didn’t turn.

“Tell Eragon to stay where he is,” she added. “The forest. The elves. He wants to help. But if he shows himself now, it’ll unravel everything.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.” Her voice softened, but not with regret. “The other choice was worse.”

She stepped toward the barn’s open doorway, drawn forward by something quieter than memory—like the thread of a dream she couldn’t yet shake. The wind moved the grasses just beyond the fence, and her eyes followed their shift. She remembered standing in that same doorway under Morzan’s shadow, watching the same grass bend.

“I know you’re probably planning to strike,” she said. “But if Morzan doesn’t come himself, he’ll send someone first. It’s foolish to stay.”

Brom didn’t answer right away. She didn’t turn to look.

“There are risks,” he said finally. “But there are risks anywhere. He’ll come. But not tonight. And not like you expect.”

Her eyes narrowed—not in argument, just in disbelief.

“I’ve known him longer than you,” he said gently. “He waits. He plots.”

Meri didn’t reply. Her gaze stayed fixed on the shifting gold of the field.

“There’s still time,” he said. “And your mother’s waiting.”

“We just saw each other,” she said, too quickly. The words felt foreign in her mouth.

And there it was again—that tightening, that recoil. She didn’t know how to walk through the door and be someone her mother could reach. Greynsi had taught her to play parts. But here, where truth lived, pretending felt like betrayal.

“I don’t know how to be her,” she murmured, barely louder than the breeze. She rubbed her thumb against her palm—an old habit, from when her words locked up and needed coaxing. “The girl she remembers.”

Brom stepped toward her. He raised a hand—hesitated—then let it fall.

“It’s time,” he said softly. Not as command. As invitation.

She didn’t answer. But she stepped forward—just once. Enough to follow. Enough to allow it, though everything in her skin warned her against it. Her heel caught briefly on a stone near the lintel—rounded, worn smooth by years of weather—but she didn’t stumble. She paused. A long breath. A swallow.

She would’ve delayed him for a lifetime if she’d thought it possible—let herself starve if hunger meant she could stand outside the door a little longer. But there was no more room for that. Not when each step landed in soil she once called home.

The farmhouse rose ahead—larger than the cabin had ever been, but built of the same quiet materials: pine darkened with age, stone patched with moss, a squat hearth visible through the window. A warped shutter creaked faintly in the breeze. Saplings had taken root too near the porch, and the lintel sagged just slightly at the center. The smells were old—ashes, goatskin, herbs too long hung and beginning to dry to dust.

She followed the scent through the doorway and stopped.

Inside, the light was yellowed and slanted, filtered through wool-draped windows and a haze of motes suspended in sunbeams. The air was thick with hanging herbs—garlic, wild onion, tansy, and a few fronds of something unfamiliar. Old sweat and woodsmoke clung to the rafters. A ladder hugged the far wall, leading into a shadowed loft cloaked in dark linens and the rustle of nesting birds.

Meri paused on the threshold. She felt herself narrowing, quieting—breath held to better hear the creak of the floorboards, the dip of a table leg into the clay-packed floor, the way the air shifted behind her as Brom entered and stilled.

Her mother sat at the table, shoulders square, as if bracing against a wind that never quite left the room. The parchment before her curled at the corners, its edges freckled with water stains, weighted by a smooth river stone. A cracked ink pot rested at her elbow, half-full, the feather clipped short—frayed at the tip from overuse. One finger moved—tap, tap, pause—keeping time with something no one else could hear.

She didn’t look up right away.

Not out of indifference, but because looking might mean believing.

When she did, the shift was slight—chin lifting, gaze sharpening like a whetstone’s kiss. Her eyes, ringed by shadows no sleep had softened, caught Meri’s—and for a breathless beat, the air between them cinched tight. Something flickered behind them, quick as minnows beneath river-ice. Recognition. Refusal. Grief held so long it no longer knew how to crack.

She rose.

Not urgently. Not slow. Just… completely. Every inch of her gathering with the movement, like a storm coming to its feet.

She crossed the room in three strides—bare feet whispering over plank, skirts brushing like wheat in wind. Her arms did not open in welcome. They reached. As if reclaiming something torn loose by storm and time.

Meri didn’t brace.

There wasn’t time.

The embrace came like flame meeting kindling—sudden, consuming, without room for thought. Her mother gripped her—not careful, not cautious—but with the raw, knotted strength of someone who’d hauled too many burdens up the same hill without rest. Her wool sleeves scratched Meri’s cheek. Elderflower clung to the threads. Her body was warm and real and unyielding.

The breath left Meri in one uneven exhale. Not a sob—just a collapse.

She didn’t cry.

She clung.

Her fingers, without permission, hooked into the shoulder seam of her mother’s tunic and held. Not seeking comfort. Just… tether. The kind of grip that children forget how to ask for. That only returns when everything else has been stripped bare.

And deep inside, beneath the ribs, something shifted.

That old viper—the thing Morzan had nurtured in her, fed on obedience and quiet dread—coiled, uneasy. It did not vanish. But it curled smaller.

Her mother felt it. Meri could tell. Not because she spoke. But because her hold changed. Tightened—not in fear, but insistence. A pressure that said: You are not beyond reaching.

Her arms weren’t soft. They were solid. Worn strong by garden stones, by weeping without witnesses, by waiting.

She didn’t rock Meri or whisper platitudes.

She held.

And when she finally eased back, her hands didn’t fall away—they remained, steady on Meri’s shoulders. The thumbs brushed once—calloused pads roughened from shears, soap, and ink. Her knuckles flared red, cracked faintly at the edges. Her body bore the same quiet toll Meri had come to recognize in herself: not ruin, but wearing. Not defeat, but holding through.

Her gaze stayed anchored on Meri’s face. The corners of her eyes shone, but didn’t spill.

“I’ve missed you, sweetling,” she said—her voice low, rusted through with salt and seasons, but whole. “More than you will ever know.”

The words didn’t wobble. They didn’t ask permission.

She didn’t press her for answers. Didn’t demand stories or offer false assurances. She only breathed once, shallow through her nose, then said:

“When Ida came back without you, we searched the woods for days. I thought you’d hidden yourself. I hoped you had.”

A pause.

“But when we didn’t find you…”

She let it hang there.

The rest didn’t need saying. It had already gathered between them. Thick as river fog.

Tessie, lost to the current.

Eragon, vanished into elven trees.

Meri—taken beneath shadow, swallowed by silence and a name not her own.

They’d survived the winter with each other.

She had survived it alone.

And still, her mother’s hands did not let go.

They didn’t cling. They anchored. One thumb brushing the edge of Meri’s collarbone. The other resting near her throat, quiet and still, as if waiting to feel her heartbeat.

And now she stood here—alive, returned. But wrong-shaped. The seams didn’t match. The thread of her voice had been spliced too many times. The stitching of the family had moved on without her, tight and necessary.

They had cried together. Buried things together. Remembered.

Meri had done all those things, too—but in silence. In secret. In a place where grief could not speak its own name.

The others had shared memory. Shared mourning.

But Meri’s memory had no mirror.

No one else had heard what she’d heard in the dark when her voice no longer belonged to her. When obedience had replaced identity. When every kindness was meant to tame.

She looked at her mother—truly looked. Not through the haze of childhood, or the veil of imagined safety. But with the eyes she had now.

The creases at the corners of her mouth ran deeper. New threads of silver glinted in her hair. And her left shoulder dipped just slightly lower than the right—the quiet burden of carrying children, firewood, sorrow.

Meri realized, without warning, that she was taller now.

Taller than the woman who once showed her how to thread calendula blossoms on a bone needle, careful not to bruise the petals.

That woman had taught her what healing looked like in small things.

And yet—there was no phrase that fit here. No story she could slip between them like balm.

There were things she wanted to say. So many. A hundred phrases. I’m still me. I’m not whole. I’m trying. But none of them rose. None of them felt true.

So instead, she shaped her mouth into a smile. A lie. But a tender one.

“I missed you too,” she said softly – this wasn’t a lie. Her voice didn’t break. It held like something stitched from habit, not hope. “Where is everyone?”

Her mother didn’t sigh—just let the breath out slow, like the soft collapse of a lean-to when the storm has passed.

“Elida’s with the baby,” she said, and some of the tightness eased in her jaw. “Conan went into town with Roran. My brother’s out in the fields. There’s more work now, but more hands, too.”

Meri’s eyes drifted to the corner of the room.

Once, books had lived there in unruly stacks—tilting towers with no fear of falling. She used to draw faces on the spines in charcoal, giving them names. Now, the shelves stood straight, cleared. The parchment was neatly bound in linen ribbon. The ink pots were fewer. Some altogether gone.

“I don’t understand why you chose Carvahall,” she said at last. Her gaze settled on the desk. “You always said it was too exposed. Too dangerous.”

Her mother’s lips parted, but it wasn’t her voice that answered.

“I’ve told you,” came Brom’s voice, quiet but firm, from the doorway.

He stepped forward, the late light brushing the edge of his face like a hand laid gently over years.

He sat, slow and deliberate. Folded his arms—not closed off, but steady. Held. His eyes were the same as ever—weathered, dark, and watchful.

“After you were taken, we couldn’t stay in the forest,” he said. “We had to protect what was left.”

There was no accusation in it. No shame. Just fact.

“Carvahall has no garrison,” he added, voice low, meant only for the room. “And if danger finds us again, we’re close enough to vanish into the Spine.”

His tone was even, but weighted.

“You said he pulled his spies. That’s to our advantage—for now.”

Meri moved to the bench across from him and sat stiffly. The grain of the wood was rough against her palms. She traced the edge of a knot with her thumb, round and worn smooth by generations of elbows and laughter.

“He bought land here,” she said after a pause. “Garrow’s farmland. Said he’d build something. Didn’t know what.”

Her parents exchanged a glance—brief, sharp, threaded with old understanding.

“That’s troubling,” Brom said. “Did he give a reason?”

“No.”

She rose again, the bench creaking faintly in protest. Her eyes caught the hearth—cold now, swept clean. Someone had left dried sage in a small clay bowl on the mantle. For scent. For memory. For protection.

“This house doesn’t feel like a farmhouse,” she said. “It’s… too much.”

“Garrow always dreamed of a fine house,” her mother murmured, moving to the corner to retrieve a basket. “When we arrived, it was half this size. He added on. Built from old plans he used to sketch at the table when he was a boy.”

She pulled out a piece of salted fish, its scent sharp in the warming air.

“He doesn’t seem the sentimental type,” Meri said, eyes narrowing toward the door.

“He’s not,” Brom replied as it opened again.

Elida came in, barefoot and breathless, a toddler slung over her hip, giggling. The child smelled of sun and sour milk. Hair pale as moth-wing, cheeks dappled pink from laughter.

Meri didn’t speak. She watched.

Elida shifted the child higher on her hip, her voice rising to match the child’s laughter. She moved through the room like someone who had never left it—stepping easily around baskets, nudging a stool aside with her toe, talking as though she hadn’t once stood in a frozen paddock whispering “Don’t leave me” beneath the stars.

“But he respects hard work,” Brom added. “And harvest’s been good.”

“Magically good,” Meri said, her tone dry.

“Not that he needs to know,” Brom muttered.

“I didn’t say we told him,” her mother added quickly, glancing toward her without judgment, but with watchfulness.

The door opened again with a soft scrape of wood against the lintel. Afternoon light poured in behind him, casting long bands across the floorboards worn pale by boots and sweeping.

A man stepped through—broad-shouldered, dust-streaked, the scent of hay and sweat clinging to him like another layer of clothing. His shirt was sun-bleached at the shoulders, his trousers patched at the knee. He moved with the slow weight of a man who’d walked uphill carrying fence posts, a slight limp softened by habit and pride. His presence filled the room like smoke—subtle, but clinging.

He wiped his hands on a frayed cloth, scanning the space without ceremony. The table, the hearth, the arrangement of drying herbs above—all taken in with one measured sweep.

Meri looked at him. Just looked. Her breath shallowed.

She had no memory of this face. No childhood tether. Only a name wrapped in other people’s voices—stories told over stew, laughter that had never quite included her. She had heard him spoken of, but nothing had prepared her for this: the shape of a man who was supposed to mean something.

“This your eldest?” he asked, flicking a glance toward her like checking the edge of a blade. “Meri wasn’t it? Bit of an odd name for a boy.”

The words didn’t sting. They barely registered. Her posture went still.

She didn’t speak right away. Her fingers itched, but she made no move. Only after a breath, long and brittle, did she lift her hand and remove the cap. Her hair—flat from heat and long travel—fell across her cheek. She tucked it back behind her ear with two fingers that still bore the faint blueing of bruises.

“My apologies,” she said, the words calm from long practice. “I forgot I was wearing it.”

He squinted. Not unkind—but not soft, either. “You sure she’s yours?” he asked Mam, tone flat as a stone. “Looks like she was fairy-swapped. That happens, near the northern woods.”

“Stop it, Garrow,” Mam said, sharp enough to cut through the air.

He shrugged, as if surprised anyone noticed.

Then he moved toward her.

Meri’s back straightened. Her fingers curled against the edge of the bench, barely brushing the grain.

He reached out.

His hand landed on her shoulder—heavy, too familiar for someone she didn’t know. Not rough, not cruel. Just too much. Her whole body tensed around it.

She didn’t flinch. But her breath turned shallow, caught high in her throat like a warning. The smell of sunwarmed sweat and old metal clung to his palm. She kept her eyes low.

The weight passed, but the shape of it stayed. Her skin remembered.

“I’m Garrow,” he said, settling onto the bench beside her. “This is my house. You’re welcome here, so long as you put in your share. Your sister’s told me you’re the storyteller of the lot.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.

“Not anymore,” she said softly, watching a chip in the plate beside her thumb.

At the end of the bench, Elida bounced in her seat, flour still clinging to her sleeves.

“She’s got more now, though! I just know it. I’ll wait, Mimi. I’ve waited this long already.”

Meri folded her hands beneath the table, palm to palm, until the joints pressed white. She said nothing.

It was easier that way.

Words didn’t know what shape to take anymore. Not after so many had been bent, fed back to her in someone else’s mouth. Even her stories—the ones she once whispered to soothe Elida to sleep—felt distant, brittle. Half-remembered threads worn smooth by hands not her own.

Her gaze lifted, caught the flicker of movement—Brom, bouncing the baby on his knee. The child squealed, round-faced and radiant, tugging his beard with damp fingers. Fair hair, brown eyes, cheeks full as spring pears.

Too much like Tessie.

Meri looked away.

The table murmured on around her, voices low and drifting like kitchen smoke. She chewed the bread—dry, sweetened only by memory—and let the fish flake and vanish without taste. Her teeth met greens but not flavor. Her tongue forgot to ask.

Instead, she watched hands.

Mam’s—sure, worn, moving with a rhythm older than speech. Elida’s—quick, eager, knuckles ink-smeared, sleeves dusted with flour, wrists still thin from girlhood but careless with grace.

Her sister laughed at something Roran said, and reached without looking to catch a cup before it tipped. She didn’t glance. Didn’t miss.

Meri studied her like a stranger might—tracking every shift of weight, the bounce of her braid, the way she sat wide-kneed and barefoot like she owned the air.

Garrow’s hands, by contrast, moved like the land—knotted, callused, blunt. Nothing wasted. Every motion made to last.

Even the baby, snug in the sling now and chewing a fist, moved like someone untouched. Curious. Free. Unafraid of edges.

Meri sat still. Boots on the floor, hands quiet in her lap. Beneath the table, her fingers found the frayed edge of her sleeve and began counting threads—three, five, eight—just enough to hold her in the room. She didn’t reach. She didn’t speak. There was no place to join—not at this table. Not yet.

She wasn’t part of this rhythm.

She was watching it pass.

No one asked her to help. And she wasn’t sure if that was kindness or distance.

Later, Mam lit a tallow lamp and led her down the hall. The air grew quieter there, tucked behind old beams that smelled faintly of cedar and dust. The wood underfoot creaked differently in this wing—less used, less familiar.

Mam opened a small door with a hush of hinges. Inside: a narrow bed tucked against one wall, a quilt of faded blues and greens. A low chest. A chair in the corner. Two shelves nailed crooked to the wall, holding a few old books with curling spines—some she knew, some clearly not hers.

“We brought what we could. Left what we couldn’t,” Mam said softly. “But what mattered is here.”

She stepped aside and pointed to a small bundle beside the bed—letters, tied with string.

“From Eragon. He never stopped writing.”

Meri stared at the stack. The paper was neat, the knots precise. A small bloom of wax sealed the topmost one.

“I’ll read them later,” she said, her voice distant in her own ears.

Mam nodded. Her smile was gentle, worn at the edges. “May sleep meet you swiftly, and your dreams be kind.”

It was a blessing from childhood. One spoken over her fevered body, over cries from the dark, over nights when she thought the walls would collapse from the weight of her own fear. She had once believed the words could keep her safe. Now, she wasn’t sure they could even reach her.

But when her mother stepped forward, arms out, Meri didn’t retreat.

She let herself be held—briefly, lightly. The embrace was soft as a clouded memory. She inhaled the scent of her mother’s clothes: herbs, ash, sun-warmed wool.

Then Mam stepped back and left her.

The door stayed open.

Meri didn’t move to close it.

The door stood open behind her, unmoving, its edge barely brushing the shadowed wall. Light from the hallway stretched across the floor in a long ribbon—golden, thin as a reed stem, flickering with the soft draft that moved through the house. It pooled at her feet like something living.

A tether.

A way out, if needed.

The walls pressed inward, not in hostility, but with memory. The room smelled of cedarwood and pressed linens, faint ash from the banked hearth beyond the door. The floor was swept, but not spotless—beneath the bed she could just make out a scuffed mark where something had once been dragged or dropped. A half-bent quill rested on the sill. Elida’s, probably.

She lay on the bed, staring upward, eyes wide to the darkness settling into the corners of the ceiling. It was the kind of room meant for rest, but her body didn’t listen.

She thought, not for the first time, that if she never saw a closed door again in her life, it would still be too soon.

Despite her words—and the exhaustion that pulled through her bones like a slow tide drawing out from shore—she knew sleep would not come easily. Her body was too alert. Her breath too shallow. So when she sat upright again, it was without resistance, like giving in to gravity.

The letters waited for her on the bedside table. Neatly stacked. Unsealed.

She didn’t touch them.

She only looked.

Her fingers brushed the edge of the top letter, then curled back. She traced a spiral once on the woodgrain of the table with her thumb—a motion from childhood, meant to settle racing thoughts.

The parchment edges were softened by handling, some ink faint where the quill had dried mid-stroke. A few bore old creases, careful folds, as if carried often before being set down. One had a sprig of dried fern pressed beneath it. She recognized the handwriting—Eragon’s. Or what used to be his. Even from across the room, she could tell it had changed.

They looked too fragile to hold. Too full of the boy she used to know, and the one she didn’t.

She was still staring at them—unsure if she wanted to draw nearer or turn away—when a small sound broke the hush.

A sniffle. Small, abrupt.

Meri stiffened.

She turned toward the doorway, heart already quickening—but it was only Elida. The girl stood just beyond the light, half-shadowed, rubbing at one eye with the back of her sleeve.

“Papa said not to surprise you,” she whispered, cautious but defiant. “Said you might… react.”

Her feet shifted, arms folding. “He also said we shouldn’t crowd you or ask too much. Said we’re supposed to be pleasant. As if we ever were.”

A huff of breath. Half-laugh, half-defensive. Then quieter: “But I’ve been holding my breath all day. And I haven’t seen you since the lake. I want to stay with you tonight.”

Meri looked at her.

The hallway light touched only part of Elida’s face, but it was enough. The shine in her eyes, the slight lift of her chin to hide the way her mouth trembled. The familiar set of her shoulders when she was scared but too proud to admit it.

Wordlessly, Meri folded her hands and scooted to the edge of the bed.

Elida crossed the threshold without waiting. She moved in a tumble of limbs and determination, scrambling up beside her, hair mussed, toes cold.

“How long did you practice that?” Meri asked, settling her arm around the smaller shape.

“I didn’t,” Elida said, too quickly. Then softer: “But I thought about it all day. Since I’m not allowed to use Sympathy against you.” She sniffed again. “I’d beat you for leaving me with it, if I could.”

Meri didn’t respond. But her hand paused briefly, then fell away.

“We should sleep,” she murmured. Not unkindly. Just enough.

“Alright.” Elida’s voice curled small again. “Just don’t kick tonight, okay, Mimi?”

Meri nodded. She pulled the quilt down from the foot of the bed—faded blue and stitched through with someone’s patient hand—and wrapped it around them both. Then she reached for the lamp and blew out the flame. A hush fell in its place. The band of hallway light remained.

For a long time, Meri lay still.

The weight of her sister’s breathing pressed softly into her side. The quiet of the farmhouse thickened—walls creaking, a shutter clicking loose somewhere beyond the kitchen. The whole place smelled of bread crust, straw, and the faint memory of dried herbs—lavender, maybe, and rosemary.

When her eyes didn’t close, she rose.

The floor cooled her feet like stone left out of sun. She moved carefully, not out of fear but familiarity—tracing memory as much as shape. Her fingers found the doorframe first, then the hallway wall, skimming over old wood that hummed with quiet lives continuing.

All the rooms were still. Brom’s snore drifted like a distant saw through timbers. Even Mam—who rarely slept deeply—lay undisturbed.

She stepped outside.

The air met her skin like breath held too long. Damp, earthy, edged with the faint metallic bite of dew. Wind moved low along the fence lines, rustling the wild oats and nudging the foxglove just beginning to bloom—pale spires reaching for a sky too distant to answer. She let it brush her cheek. Didn't flinch.

Above, stars pierced the dark like seeds scattered across a cold field. Somewhere beyond the first rise, an owl called once, then left silence in its place.

She walked to the edge of the far field, where the land fell into shadow and rock. The mountains stood quiet—shouldering the sky, unmoving.

Nothing stirred. No watchers. No beasts.

Just wind, and breath, and the waiting hush of spring.

She stood there for a long time, until the light began to change—grey drawing faint lines across the horizon, like someone sketching morning with the edge of a blade.

Then Meri turned. The hem of her tunic caught briefly on a bramble before slipping free. She returned inside. Her body colder now, but her hands no longer trembling.

She slipped back beneath the quilt beside her now-sleeping sister, who had drooled into the blanket and didn’t stir. Elida’s arm had curled toward her in sleep, loose and sure as moss claiming stone.

And still, Meri did not sleep.

She lay listening, watching, waiting. Not for threat. For pattern. For the rhythm of the house settling back into itself. One creak. Then silence. The soft shift of straw in the thatch. The faint tick of the hearth’s last breath cooling in stone.

She counted the quiet—not in seconds, but in the spaces between change. Even stillness had a cadence. And she had learned to hear what broke it.

Only when footsteps passed down the hall—slow, booted, familiar—did her shoulders ease. They didn’t pause outside her door. They passed by. A silent patrol. Someone walking the edge of something that could not be named.

She turned at last. Closed her eyes.

But even then, her hand remained curled near the quilt’s edge—ready not for battle, but for leaving, if needed.

Sleep came not as comfort, but as consent. A slow yielding. The kind that arrives only after every exit has been traced, every shadow tested. And—for one night—nothing waits to follow.

Chapter Text

At the edge of Palancar Valley stood the ruins of what once was a grand building. In its midst was a stairway which led to empty air and beneath it, like a pillar, was a spruce tree. It grew twisted, misshaped within the shadows of moss-covered stones in its attempt to rise toward the sun. Its tallest needles brushed the top steps of the stairway, new growth gleaming in golden light.

Legend said that this place had once been a lively outpost, bustling with the activity of a newly forming township until years later after an illness devastated its population when it was abandoned and forgotten as the township fled south. Yet, this was long ago, and after nearly a century of its abandonment, the desolate place was rediscovered and taken up once more. Its new occupants formed the land with a different significance than its predecessors, and for a time dragons roamed the land freely until the Riders fell away from the valley and it was once again forgotten, save for the few who dared to tell their tales. The wilderness in the end, as it did in all matters, swiftly took over the land. Even so, if one looked closely, or perhaps if they were daring, dug deep beneath the layers of leaves and dirt, evidence of the past could be found.

At the top of the stairway, Meri stood beside a column of crumbling stone, overlooking the sweeping valley beyond. The toe of her boot nudged the top of the fir tree as she halfheartedly listened to the conversation behind her. Elida chattered idlily to their cousin as they worked gathering wild edibles. Their voices, however soft, seemed to drift over the stillness of the forgotten dell as if in fear of stirring the ghosts beyond the grasses.

With such a distance from the farmland, in the endless wildlands, it was easy to imagine such stirrings in the wind. To see shifting forms in shadows, people who were not quite there and would never be. To hear falling footsteps amongst the rumble and crackling of broken sticks. To wonder over the past, and think of the people’s lives who had once live here. All of these thoughts made it easy to forget the present, and this forgetting soothed the twisting viper coiled tightly within her.

In the days that followed her arrival, Meri said little—but she moved through the house like someone memorizing a language she’d never learned to speak aloud. Her steps mapped the floorboards with caution, pausing where the grain changed or where old nails jutted just enough to catch. The walls didn’t echo the way she expected. Doors opened too easily. The hearth crackled too low. Nothing fit.

Still, no one stopped her.

Elida watched—waiting not just for stories, but for some shared rhythm to return. Meri didn’t offer either. Instead, she worked in silence. She gathered herbs with careful fingers, laid them out to dry as if she were back in Gertrude’s stillroom. Her hands remembered patterns that this place had never known: how to fold linen to soothe a fever, how to sharpen a blade without waking anyone. Her motions were precise, but they didn’t belong to this house. They belonged to wherever she’d survived.

Morning blurred into morning. Then came the soft rush.

She had not expected to feel so far away.

In the cabin she grew up there had been at least the shell of memory—shapes she had seen before, old corners she’d once curled up in. Here, there was only newness pretending to be familiar. Stone shaped by other hands. Rooms filled with voices that never once called her name in childhood.

She tried to match the pace of the house. Tried to catch the beat of it. But she was always a step behind.

Elida and Mam worked easily, shoulder to shoulder at the washbasin, at the hearth, elbow-deep in flour and rhythm. When Meri tried to join, her motions struck the air wrong. She stirred too slow. She scrubbed too long. Once, she snapped a handle clean from the broom just trying to help. Elida laughed—warmly, not unkindly—but Meri still flinched, her mouth pressing shut like a door against wind.

Sometimes, the fire popped just loud enough to sound like his voice. Morzan’s words came back in threads: You see? They’ve gone on without you. They don’t need you anymore.

Once, while shaping butter, she felt the thought rising like a boil and left—just stepped away, barefoot and smockless, out past the edge of the fence and up into the hills. She stood until the sun slid down the mountain’s spine and the wind brought no answer. No one had come looking.

After that, she stopped trying to join. She became a shadow in the corners of the kitchen, someone who reached for tools and pulled her hand back at the last moment. She let her presence fade behind the motion of others.

When she wasn’t lingering, she walked.

She didn’t walk toward anything. Just out. Her boots wore a narrow path across the same rise each day, always toward the edge of the wards, always with one eye on the sky. The sword stayed near. The knife never left her side. Garrow didn’t ask why—but he watched, in the way that people do when they sense something they can’t name.

And still, nothing came. No dragon. No rider. No word from the south.

Greynsi stayed silent, and in that silence, dread flowered.

By dusk she returned, always with dirt on her boots and nothing new in her hands. The house didn’t wait for her. Its rhythm went on—bowls stacked, shutters drawn, warmth shared in a language she hadn’t been taught. She ate little. She nodded when spoken to. She mended what she could and left the rest untouched.

At night, when sleep stayed distant, she slipped out. Always quiet. Always alone. The house didn’t creak when she left—just breathed behind her, as if releasing a held breath.

Outside, she walked the invisible edges. Over fences. Along creekbeds. Through furrows softened by old rain. She counted steps the way others count blessings. Marked shadows not for threat, but change.

She didn’t grow up here. The land held no memory of her. But she pressed her weight into it anyway, again and again, like a name spoken softly until someone might believe it belonged.

 Beyond the rocks, the foothills that surrounded the farmland were filled with golden brush-tailed grass and long flowering stems that waved in the wind. Murmurations of starlings glided on the trails of the wind, like great black masses of clouds, diving in and out of the sky in search of a meal to fill their bellies, and in the distance the meadowlarks sang their evening songs. Meri spent her days out there, watching the wildlife in the sky and unhurriedly harvesting dandelions, ramps, and nettle to be dried and later used.

Her wanderings did not go unnoticed. As they became part of her rhythm, Brom began saddling the horses to meet her silence with his own. They rode together—over the hills, through low brush, into the thinning light. He never pushed for words. A comfortable hush settled between them, worn as old leather.

She wished she could speak—of the years lost, of the hollows inside her she couldn’t name. To lean again into her papa’s voice the way she once had, when the world was smaller and his presence could mend it. But the words lodged low in her chest. Not tangled—dammed. Pressing behind her ribs like floodwater held back by instinct and splintered wood. She wondered what would happen if it gave way—if everything she hadn’t said rose all at once. What would drown? What would remain?

But the dam held.

So instead of speaking of Morzan—of walls, of oaths, of silence—she asked if he would teach her to guard her mind.

Brom didn’t question it. He only nodded once and began then and there—reins in one hand, his voice low and spare above the creak of saddle leather. From that day onward, their rides became rhythm: hoofbeats and instruction, breath and barrier, silence and stillness and the slow, steady shaping of a defense.

She learned quickly. Not out of pride. Out of need. She remembered too well the feel of another will pressing into her own, the sickening softness of a mind made open. Whatever Brom taught, she took and sharpened—not because he asked, but because she had to. Because in Greynsi, she’d learned what it cost to be known too deeply by the wrong eyes.

A full week passed before she made any real progress. Even then, it wasn’t clean. She could hold him off for moments—thin, trembling walls, easily rattled—but for the first time, her thoughts stayed hers. Just long enough. She came away pale and shaking, her breath caught low beneath her ribs like something hoarded too long.

Brom didn’t speak right away. He only watched her, quiet, with that same unreadable stillness he sometimes wore when studying the sky before a storm. Then, gently, he told her she’d done well. That she should take the rest of the day. Ride with Elida. Let her mind rest.

She blinked. It felt like dismissal—like being sent to play while the grown work resumed. A part of her bristled. Drew back. But something deeper, older, steadier understood.

It wasn’t punishment.

It was release.

Still, it sat wrong. She didn’t want rest. She wanted mastery. She wanted silence in her thoughts, and the power to hold it.

Even so, she couldn’t refuse Elida’s grin. Her sister had already jumped up from the table, half her breakfast left behind, and caught Meri’s arm before she could think to stop her. There was no pause, no permission asked. Just motion—toward the barn, toward the horses, toward something simpler than guarding the broken edges of her mind.

It hadn’t taken long for Meri to notice—not even a full day at the farmhouse. Elida didn’t say it aloud, wouldn’t have dared, but the eagerness was there beneath her voice, behind her glances. She was trying to be near again, slipping into Meri’s orbit the way she had as a child. Back then, she’d shadowed her without shame, trailing through the woods or curling beside her during chores, never asking permission because it had never been needed.

Now, Meri sent her away. Gently at first, then with growing sharpness. Elida always returned, quieter, warier, as if testing how close was too close this time. But the distance between them grew. Longer gaps. More hesitation. Until one morning, Meri looked back and saw no one. Her sister had stopped following.

It should have been a relief. Instead, it lodged like a burr behind the breastbone.

Elida would have followed her anywhere, even now. Meri could have pointed to the cliff’s edge and the girl might’ve nodded and taken the first step. That was the part that frightened her most. Elida wasn’t just reaching for her; she was reaching for something she remembered and needed to be true again. A version of Meri that had been safe to love.

But that girl was gone. And Meri didn’t know what version had taken her place. She wasn’t sure if Elida would still follow if she saw her clearly.

She thought, sometimes, that her sister had been lost in some private wilderness while she’d been lost in Greynsi—and now they’d both stumbled out, changed. But Elida looked at her like she hadn’t changed at all. Like she’d found her way back by sheer stubbornness and expected Meri to do the same.

Meri wasn’t a guide. She barely trusted her own footing. Elida would need a compass—someone steady, someone whole.

As they rode over the hills, Elida’s voice carried on, light and tireless, filling the silences Meri wouldn’t speak into. Meri let it wash over her. The rhythm of it softened the edges of her thoughts, drew her back from wherever her mind had wandered. The morning blurred—she couldn’t recall where they had started, what turns they’d taken. It was like trying to catch fish with bare hands in a river that never stopped moving.

A sharp laugh broke the fog. Elida again—always laughing a little too loud, a little too often, as if trying to summon joy by the echo of it.

Meri blinked. The valley reshaped itself around her—hills unspooling into gold and shadow, the stair beneath her feet, the scent of crushed grass in the air. She turned from the ledge and descended slowly, her fingers brushing along a length of twisted iron embedded in the stone. She’d picked it up earlier, turned it in her hand, guessed at its use. Some tool. Some ornament. Something that once held purpose.

But it remained silent. A relic without a name.

She let it go, letting it fall with a quiet clink. Some things, no matter how long she studied them, would not speak.

“You should come to the Midsummer Festival,” Elida called up to her, voice bright, as if the quiet of the ruins had never touched her. “Uncle takes me and Roran every year. There’s dancing, roasted apples, music, and real musicians—not just Garrow’s old fiddle. I think you’d like it, Mimi.”

Meri lowered herself onto the bottom stair, arms resting loosely over her knees. “I’m not going,” she said without much edge, only weariness. The kind that had settled deep in her bones and stayed.

Elida’s face pinched into a pout. “You always say that.”

“I always mean it. Stop asking. I won’t change my mind.”

Elida didn’t flinch, only tossed her gathered stems into the basket with pointed thuds. “But why not? You’re not a child, no one’s stopping you. You’re not going to wander the hills again all day, are you? It’s like you’re hunting someone—or hiding.” Her voice dipped into a playful whisper. “Is it a secret lover? Someone from… before?” She grinned, wide-eyed. “Roran fancies a girl in town, did you know?”

Meri didn’t move. Her gaze stayed fixed on the iron curled beside her boot, its rusted spine catching the last gold light.

“That’s enough, Ida,” Roran groaned, cheeks turning crimson. “Don’t go spreading nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense! I only told Mimi—she should know how daft you are.” Elida flicked her braid behind her shoulder like punctuation. “He made me leave flowers on Katrina’s doorstep. She thought they were from that butcher’s apprentice and now she fancies him. I keep telling Roran to tell her the truth before it’s too late.”

“I told you not to tell anyone!” Roran snapped, turning toward her, fists half-curled. “Why can’t you ever keep anything to yourself?”

“She’s not anyone, she’s Mimi,” Elida said, too sweetly. “And anyway, it’s not a secret if everyone already knows.”

She turned back to Meri, expectant.

Meri exhaled through her nose, slow. “Roran told you to stop, and he meant it.”

Elida’s smile faltered. “You’re just like him. Stubborn as a stone.” She shoved the basket aside with her boot and stalked toward the horses, her steps louder than needed, as if she wanted the world to hear them.

The clearing settled. Meri stayed where she was, gaze lingering on the iron in her hand. She turned it once, then let it fall. A soft clink against the stone. Some relic of a vanished world—curling, rusted, hollow at the center. She rose without hurry.

“I’m sorry for her,” she said, stepping beside Roran. Her voice had thinned again, more thread than sound. “She speaks before she thinks—and often louder than she should.”

Roran sighed, his shoulders loosening. “Most everyone knows anyway. Just don’t trust her with anything you’d rather keep.”

“I’ll apologize again. And again, until she does it herself.”

He huffed, wry. “That might take years.”

Meri allowed a faint, almost reluctant smile. “Then we’ll feast when that day comes.”

“A week-long celebration,” he said. “Morn could bring the ale.”

Her smile faded as quickly as it came. That shuttered look returned—gentle humor folding into distance. “It’ll be a week to remember,” she said, too quietly, and bent over the baskets again.

Not long after, Elida called out from where she stood beside the horses, her tone too bright, too breezy. “If we don’t go now, we’ll miss supper.” She pretended the argument hadn’t happened. “Maybe we should camp here instead. Catch a rabbit. Sleep under the stars like travelers!”

“We’ve got no blankets,” Roran pointed out.

“There’s grass,” she chirped. “It’s soft.”

“And wolves,” Meri said flatly, mounting with practiced ease. “Great beasts, big enough to drag off a goat or worse. They roam near the Spine, especially on summer nights.”

Elida froze mid-motion. “Wolves?”

“I read once they can bring down a dragon.”

The silence hit hard, sudden and cold.

Elida nudged her horse between the others, her chatter vanished, her posture tense.

Roran shot Meri a sidelong look. “I’ve lived here all my life. Never seen a beast like that.”

Meri met his gaze, level. “Doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

She didn’t mention the ones she had seen. Not wolves. Not beasts. Things with talons and coiling breath, voices like silk pulled slow across a blade. They lived in Greynsi. And in her sleep.

And she would not summon them here.

They rode on. Hooves soft against moss and fallen needles. The valley behind them dimmed into gold and hush. The ruin—like so much else—felt like a dream she hadn’t quite woken from.

She didn’t know if she was riding toward something, or away.

Only that the not-belonging followed her like a shadow.

…

…

That night, after they returned, her sister did not join her but slept by the hearth in a cocooning of blankets and she was forced to sleep alone. Meri thought having the bed to herself might allow her sleep easier but it did not. She spent most of the night rereading Eragon’s letters, debating if she should write him back before discarding the idea. There was nothing she could tell him that he wouldn’t already know, it was with this thought that she eventually fell asleep.

When morning came, her boots were missing. She searched the cabin quietly, barefoot on cool floorboards, her steps muted by the early hush. Room by room she went, even checking the loft behind the hearth, where dust softened everything into silence. Shadows curled in the corners, where old crates slumped beneath cobwebs and forgotten linens. No boots.

“If you misplaced something, I doubt you’ll find it up there,” Mam called from the kitchen.

Meri looked down at the railing, pressing her hand to test the wood. It wobbled beneath her palm, creaking as if it might tear loose with a breath too strong.

“I’ve gathered as much,” she murmured, stepping onto the ladder. “You haven’t seen my boots, have you? They’re not where I left them—nor where I didn’t.”

Mam didn’t look up. She was helping Iain onto the bench, settling him between a bowl and a slice of bread thick with butter. “Not I. But things tend to wander into the barn, somehow. You might check there.” Her tone suggested otherwise.

Conan snorted softly and clapped a hand to his mouth, stifling laughter. The kind that gave guilt away faster than words. Eragon used to do the same when he was young and caught out. Once, she’d been told, so had she.

“Aha,” Meri said, leaning slightly over the table, her eyes narrowed in mock seriousness. “Are you telling me there are kobolds in Carvahall? I thought they didn’t travel this far north.”

The boy froze mid-chew, his eyes going wide. He hadn’t spoken to her much—not since she came home. He kept his distance mostly, always skirting around her like she might vanish if he got too close. That he spoke now felt like something unspoken shifting its weight.

She didn’t mind the quiet from him. Or from Iain. Their silences felt simpler, less laced with what-ifs and worry. It was easier to be near them than anyone else. With the children, she could slip into something like memory—familiar, practiced, almost true. Close enough to pass.

“What’s that?” he asked, cautious but curious.

Meri smiled faintly and plucked a slice of bread and cheese. “House sprites. Usually helpful, unless you make one angry. I must have, if it ran off with my boots.”

Across the table, Conan’s gaze flicked toward Elida—too long and too telling. She hadn’t said a word all morning. Just kept chewing, kept her eyes on her plate. But when Conan met her stare, he flinched and shoved another piece of bread into his mouth.

“I don’t think it was a… ka-kol—whatever it was,” he mumbled around the crumbs.

“A pity,” Meri said lightly. “They’re rare, but they bring good fortune to the homes they favor.”

She stepped around the bench toward the door, balancing the bread in one hand. “Mam, any idea where these mischievous sprites tend to drop things once they’ve made their point?”

“The hayloft,” came the clipped reply.

Meri paused at the threshold, glancing back. Her mother was shaking her head, not at the children, but at her. A wordless warning.

They both knew there were no kobolds. No sprites. Only stories meant for children’s hearts—to frighten or to comfort. Not to be mistaken for truth.

There would be words later. Quiet, pointed ones. That much was certain. And she wouldn’t welcome them.

With a sigh, Meri stepped outside, the door whispering shut behind her. She knew what her mother would say next, once she was gone: something gentle but firm, something about the difference between imagination and truth. About how pretending too long blurred the line. About fear.

Meri knew fear well. And she knew, too, that truth—whatever shape it wore—did not always bring comfort.

She peered into the barn. The air inside was warm with dust and the low hush of work. Her papa and Garrow moved in opposite corners—neither speaking, their rhythms steady and separate. When she stepped over the threshold, they both glanced up, but only briefly. Garrow’s head dipped back down. The rasp of a file against wood resumed.

She crossed to him and leaned against the wall, shoulder pressing to the cool grain. “Briefly. Well enough.”

A pause. Her arms folded—not stiff, just contained. “Have you seen Elida or Conan come in?”

He shook his head. “No.”

The silence stretched. The cloth in his hand swept in circles across the dappled hide.

“What is it, my flower?” he said at last, voice lower. “You’ve got that look again.”

She yawned, though it felt more like habit than need, and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her eyes drifted toward Garrow, then down. The stall floor held her—dust layered in the grooves, hoof marks faded, a crooked splinter catching light.

Her thumb found a knot in the wall beam and stayed there, tracing it like a quiet anchor. She didn’t look up.

“I was just… wondering.” A pause, as if the words needed shaping before they left her. “We’ve been here a while. Longer than I thought we would.” She rubbed her thumb harder against the knot. “I keep… I don’t know. You’re watching the ridge every morning. Like you’re waiting. Or maybe not waiting, just… preparing.”

She glanced up then, not quite meeting his eyes. Her voice lowered further.

“You’re… preparing to leave, aren’t you? For him.”

 The question hung, brittle and half-swallowed. Then, with more steadiness—but quieter still: “If you are… I want to come.”

He didn’t answer right away. Just paused, then set the rag aside, patting the horse’s shoulder with a practiced calm. “Come,” he said quietly, with a tilt of his head toward the open doorway.

Outside, the morning had turned brighter—sharp light sifting through the barn slats and across the packed dirt path. They walked in step for a few moments, boots crunching through last year’s straw.

“It’s not that I couldn’t take you,” he said, voice low, his eyes still on the trees. “But that’s not the same as saying I should.” A pause. The wind caught a corner of his cloak. “But I’m not sure bringing you would help either of us. You’re not ready.” He said it with no edge, just steadiness. “Not yet.”

Meri rubbed a palm across her face. “You said that before.”

“It’s still true.”

“I’m not—” she started, then stopped, breath hitching. When she tried again, it was barely above a whisper. “I’m not weak.”

His gaze flicked toward her. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.” Her throat tightened. “I just—” She stopped. Swallowed.

His hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder—more pressure than weight, more warmth than force. She flinched, her spine going taut, breath catching beneath her ribs. But she didn’t pull away. Not yet. She held still a moment longer, just long enough to feel the shape of care in the gesture, the way it didn’t demand. Then, quietly, she stepped aside, the space between them not broken but rearranged.

“It’s not weakness,” she said, soft but certain. “That’s not what this is.”

His hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder—more pressure than weight, more warmth than force. She flinched, her spine going taut, breath catching beneath her ribs. But she didn’t pull away. Not yet. She held still a moment longer, just long enough to feel the shape of care in the gesture, the way it didn’t demand. Then, quietly, she stepped aside, the space between them not broken but rearranged.

Brom’s voice followed, low as bark under wind.

“No,” he said. “You’re not weak. But you’re hurting. And when hurt burns hot, it feels like strength.”

He looked out toward the ridge.

“I’ve carried that kind of fire. Let it lead me down roads I thought would quiet the noise. But they didn’t.” A pause. “Some wounds don’t close when you strike back. They just go deeper.”

Another breath.

“There are things we survive. And things we carry. Don’t confuse the two.”

Her gaze followed the breeze where it moved through the grasses. Something old stirred inside her. Not anger. Not even revenge. Just a deep, wordless ache to burn away whatever still clung.

“I’m not chasing him out of hate,” she said, the words slow, as if testing their own shape. “It’s not that.”

She paused, eyes on the ridge, where wind stirred the grasses like breath. “I just… I need to know he won’t come back. Not here. Not past that line.”

A swallow.

“I need to see it. With my own eyes. Or I won’t believe it. I won’t rest.”

Still, Brom said nothing. He let out a breath. Worn. Long.

“No.” His voice was firm now, though not unkind. “This isn’t the road for you. Not yet. Stay with your mother. When I return, we’ll talk again. But not before.”

A beat passed. “Promise me.”

She didn’t promise. Just looked away.

“When you do find him,” she murmured, “how will you kill him? His wards alone—”

“There are ways.” Brom’s gaze drifted to the tree line. “I’ve learned a few.”

“Trickery won’t be enough.”

“Maybe not,” he said, quieter now. “But even strong men have seams. You just have to find where they split.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then I do what must be done,” he said simply.

A faint scoff rose in her throat, but she let it go. The silence pressed between them again, neither yielding nor hostile. Just full.

She nodded once, then turned back toward the barn. The search for her boots resumed—ritual, not urgency. They weren’t in the loft. Weren’t anywhere boots should be.

By afternoon, she found them sunk in the muck beside the pigpen, heels caked, leather slick with slime.

She considered leaving them. Let the pigs have them, let the rot take them. But they were hers. The only pair that fit—not well, not clean, but honestly. Like the rest of her. Worn through. Scarred. Still needed. Too well made to give to the swine.

She knelt, wiped one clean on the grass, then the other.

She would need them.

Dismayed, Meri spent the better part of an hour slipping through muck and dodging the pigs as she dug her boots free. One had a chewed-out hole near the toe, and the other was scuffed and damp, marked with teeth along the rim. She studied them in silence, lips pressed thin, weighing whether they were beyond saving. They weren’t—barely.

Hauling herself out of the pen, she filled a bucket from the pump and crouched beside it, sluicing off the worst of the filth. Her dress clung with damp grit, and her hair was streaked with straw and river clay. She was as filthy as the pigs themselves.

After the boots, she’d bathe. The river would be cold, but it was better than dragging this stench indoors. Clean clothes would be another problem.

Meri owned next to nothing. What she wore belonged to her mother—ill-fitting things, either too short in the arms or too wide in the shoulders, as if the fabric meant to swallow her whole. Her old dresses had long since been passed down to Elida or left behind in one forest or another. Only the one she wore now had been tailored for her—barely. She tugged at the hem. It still felt borrowed.

The thought of asking Mam for something else soured her mood further. Her hands scrubbed harder, knuckles red from the cold water and stubborn grit. Garrow’s whistling carried across the field, light and off-key, and she let the rhythm pull her along. It made it easier to forget her frustration, or at least dull its edges.

The tune broke off suddenly as he rounded the corner. She glanced up, finding him watching her with a lifted brow.

“Elida’s mad at me,” Meri said dryly, holding up the soggy boot by its laces.

Garrow’s mouth twitched. “That girl’s the image of your mother. Stubborn as a goat and twice as likely to kick.” He crouched nearby, squinting at the state of the leather. “I don’t know whether to pity Brom or salute him. Your mam gave her share of grief at that age. I could tell you stories.”

“I’ve probably heard the worst already,” Meri muttered, then looked down at herself. Mud streaked her arms to the elbows. “Though this one’s on me. I’m the one who taught her how to be a spiteful little—”

Her hand slipped. The boot fell with a heavy splash, soaking her skirt. She grimaced, teeth grit, and retrieved it again.

Garrow chuckled, standing with a groan. “Makes me thankful I’ve only Roran to manage. And those boots—” he sniffed and wrinkled his nose “—you’d best keep them outside for a few days. That smell’ll outlive us all.”

Meri frowned. The idea of leaving them where spiders—or worse—might nest didn’t sit well, but he was right. The house was already cramped enough. She gave a nod of reluctant agreement.

She watched her uncle turn and walk back toward the field, his steps slow but unhurried. It had been the longest conversation they’d shared since she arrived. She’d thought him standoffish—plainspoken and distant—but maybe he was simply quiet. A man who only spoke when it mattered. There was something in him that didn’t quite match the calluses on his hands. Something thoughtful. Watching. Kind, maybe, in his own plain way.

It made her wonder, not for the first time, what Morzan had meant by those muttered suspicions—those offhand remarks about her mother’s family. There was a weight in them she hadn’t understood then.

She wouldn’t ask him now. Not ever. She’d rather go back and bury herself elbow-deep in pig’s muck than open her mouth to him again.

And she meant it.

…

Garrow was right, no matter how many times she cleaned the boots, the smell of filth langered becoming overwhelming in the summer’s heat.

 The following day she was forced to give up wearing them all together, the smell becoming pungent in the summer’s heats. Elida never looked so smug as she did then but it did not last for long before Brom beckoned her outside. They didn’t return until long after supper, and when she came inside, she handed Meri her boots glumly. Both boots were now thoroughly cleaned and polished and the hole patched, and they strongly smelled of lavender.

After apologizing, Elida went straight to bed, seemingly too exhausted to do anything else. As Meri watched her sister stumble to the room, and slowly stood thinking that she ought to follow after her but instead stepped outside and into the barn. There she saddled and she rode Copperglow down the road towards town, and watched the emptying streets from a distance. That next day they would be filled with merriment and great food and dance, and no matter how much she desired to she couldn’t be part of it.

She wondered what it would be like to slip into the crowd, to be a nameless face amongst many, but knew that in a town this remote there was no such thing. Each new person was a curiosity, and word could spread quickly from one town to the next. It didn’t seem unlikely that Morzan hadn’t already sent out his network to the valley and, at the very least, knew her location.

It wasn’t until the streets emptied completely that she returned.

……

……

It was some hours after Elida, Roran, and their uncle had left for the Midsummer celebration when Meri found herself in the doorway, watching her papa pack his saddlebag. His movements were slow, deliberate. Each item folded with care, each strap cinched with finality.

She knew this rhythm. The quiet precision. The way he didn’t meet her eyes. He meant to leave her behind.

The knowledge settled in her chest like a stone dropped into a still basin—no splash, just the heaviness that follows.

This was how he’d gone, years ago. Without warning. Without promise. Just gone. And Morzan had done the same—again and again. The sound of his boots, the turn of a key, and silence for company.

“When will you be leaving?” she asked softly, her voice not quite steady once it left her mouth.

“In three days’ time.” Brom straightened, wincing slightly as he pressed a hand to his lower back. “I’m glad you came. Your mother and I were hoping to speak with you.”

Her spine straightened, almost involuntarily. “If it’s something I’ve done…” She lifted her chin, voice too flat to sound defiant. “I’ll do better.”

For a moment, he said nothing. Just watched her. His jaw worked, unreadable. Then his face softened, and he rubbed a hand over his beard—like someone smoothing down something he didn’t trust himself to say.

“No, flower. It’s not that,” he said, gentle now. “I’ve received word—Morzan’s returned to Greynsi. He knows you’re gone. He hasn’t made a move yet, but I suspect he’s waiting. Do you have any idea why?”

Her gaze dropped to the woodgrain beside her. There were old carvings there—children’s work, maybe. Faint runes worn smooth by time and fingers. “He’s… waiting,” she said after a long pause. “Because he thinks I’ll return. That’s how it was left. Not in words exactly, but… it was understood.”

Her fingers found the edge of the frame. “Oaths or not, he thinks I’ll keep my place.”

A breath. “And if I don’t…” She stopped, then shrugged one shoulder. “He’ll know. Sooner or later.”

“What agreement?” The words came like a branch cracking under snow—quiet, but sudden.

Meri flinched, not because of the sound, but the stillness that followed.

Her mother moved into view, the way she always had—without fuss, arms full of folded linen, a steadiness practiced so long it passed for ease. She handed the bundle to Brom, then stood there, gaze not sharp, but too clear.

“I’ve waited,” she said—not accusing, just matter-of-fact. “We both did.”

A pause. Not quite breath, not quite silence.

“But it’s time now, Meri.” Her voice thinned, not from anger but from the weight of what hadn’t been said. “We can’t keep walking blind.”

Meri nodded—barely. Not agreement, not defiance. Just acknowledgment.

The shape of her leaned heavier against the doorframe now, shoulder pressed to the old wood like someone bracing for weather. She didn’t lift her head right away. Her eyes stayed on the worn carvings near her elbow—runes softened to near-ghosts, names long gone.

“Alright,” she said at last, so quiet it could’ve been missed. “I’ll tell you.”

Not a story. Not the whole of it.

But enough.

Each term came slow and careful—not because she had to think, but because they were already etched into her. Like tally marks carved into stone. Like beads on a thread she couldn’t unwind.

She didn’t look up. She just gave them the truth. Quiet. Dry. Unadorned.

When she finished, silence took the room.

Her mother turned to the window. Still. Regal. Something in her posture made Meri flinch inward—not from fear, but from the weight of unspoken things. It was the stillness of someone absorbing a blow she saw coming but hoped would never land.

“If he comes here,” Brom said, quieter now, “it would be best for you to be elsewhere. If things go to plan, Morzan will be dead before he gets the chance. But until then, don’t go into town.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Meri answered. Her voice came flat again. Distant. She didn’t know how else to speak anymore.

“Which explains why you’re here instead of enjoying yourself with the others,” Mam added, glancing toward Brom. Something passed between them—brief but unmistakable. Not blame. Just the sharp alignment of worry that had aged in both of them.

“Even after Morzan’s death,” Mam said aloud, “Galbatorix may still find us. He has other servants. We should have considered that sooner.”

Meri’s brow furrowed, her thoughts catching on the word still. “Who?”

“The Ra’zac,” Brom said, watching her carefully. “Servants of the King. Hunters. Unpleasant.”

“If they’re unpleasant,” Meri muttered, pressing her hands together, “I hope they stay far from here.”

She didn’t want names. Didn’t want more dark shapes crowding her memory. Her mind was full enough.

“I don’t think Morzan’s told Galbatorix where we are. Before I left, he mentioned the summons. Said the King wanted to see me... but he didn’t seem pleased. I couldn’t tell if he thought I wasn’t ready or if—” she hesitated, “—if something else troubled him.”

“He delays those meetings often, doesn’t he?” Brom asked.

She nodded. “Every time. And when he returns, he’s worse than before. Each time it deepens.”

Selena crossed her arms, mouth drawn. “A fine time for Morzan to grow a conscience,” she said, dry and bitter. “Still, a crack is a crack. Maybe it can be widened.”

The quiet that followed wasn’t awkward. It was too old for that. Just full. Heavy.

Brom’s voice, when it came, was low. “That’s valuable, Meri. If you remember anything else—anything—tell me before I leave. Every edge matters.”

She nodded again. But her mind had gone soft. Nothing rose to meet her.

“If I fail,” Brom said, softer still, “you’ll all go south. Without me. Don’t wait.”

“You’ll return,” Mam said. No hesitation, no trembling. Her voice was the clearest thing in the room. “We’ll plant roots here when this is done. For the children.”

Brom looked at her for a long moment. Then he exhaled, a small shake of his head, and gave her a mock bow. “You always get what you want, woman.”

Selena stepped forward and straightened the collar of his shirt, brushing invisible dust from his shoulders with the care of someone who’d done it a hundred times and never found it easier.

“You wouldn’t love me if I didn’t,” she said.

“I suppose I’ll have to find the boys, then,” he muttered, then turned toward Meri, raising a brow. “Iain still sleeping?”

Mam nodded. “Conan’s in the barn. Iain will be up soon, and they’ll want to splash in the river. They need a bath anyway.”

Brom rolled his eyes, but the weariness softened with a smile. “Fine. I’ll take them.” He opened a small sack, coins clinking like a memory. He passed them to Selena—practical, unceremonious. “That should get you through till harvest.”

Meri said nothing. But her eyes followed the motion. That old rhythm—resource tucked away, the house quietly fortified against some future they never named aloud. It was a language of preparation, of people who knew how quickly stability could vanish.

She had once kept her own stash beneath her mattress. A ribbon. A blank book. A plan for later.

But later had never come.

She watched as Mam slipped the coins into her pocket, the movement practiced and smooth. There was no pause, no counting. Mam had always done it that way—quiet hands, sharp mind. She stored crowns in hollow places. She kept the house alive in lean years. She had taught Meri those lessons once, and Meri had listened as a child listens: seriously, almost solemnly. As if saving was a kind of magic.

But she hadn’t touched her own stash in years. Dust had gathered. She didn’t remember where she’d hidden it.

Brom packed the rest of his supplies in silence. The bag jingled faintly as he tucked it deep into the saddlebag, where no eye would catch it.

The sound—soft metal on canvas—felt like a noise from a past life. A world where coin meant passage, safety, the means to move, to choose.

Meri lingered in the doorway. Her gaze fell absently to his hands, then drifted upward. She wondered where he kept his coin purse now. The inside pocket of his vest, maybe. He had taught her once—how to wear a blade, how to spot a lie, how to hide what mattered.

She didn’t need to know where the coins went. Not really. But the thought clung to her anyway, as if some part of her still wished to understand every way he prepared for leaving.

She followed Mam into the main room, where the wooden chest sat by the hearth. The room smelled of pine smoke and old wool, and the light had turned the floorboards amber. Mam knelt beside the chest and lifted the lid. Cloth rustled—a soft, lived-in sound.

“You’ve gone too long without clothes of your own,” she said, pulling out an armful of fabric. “While we work, I want to speak with you—nothing serious. Just a talk.”

Meri nodded, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “All right. What about?”

“Nothing much. Just… you’ve been wandering again.” Out past the wards, alone until dawn. I know you’ve never slept easy, but it’s grown worse.”

“I sleep fine.”

“You don’t.”

Mam didn’t press the point. She only laid the sewing kit on the table and spread the fabric beside it. Her movements, like always, were precise—neither rushed nor hesitant. The rhythm of someone who never wasted a gesture.

“Would you consider trying my tea again? It’s been years.”

“I’m not drinking that tea.”

“Still having the night terrors?”

Meri didn’t answer. She focused on the folds in the cloth, let the silence grow and grow, until her mother looked up again.

“Is this truly about sleep?” Mam asked. “Or something else?”

Meri hesitated. The words didn’t sit right in her mouth. “It’s not,” she said at last. “But I’ll think on the tea.”

Mam gave a small nod. “Fair enough.” She passed her a folded length. “Take what you like.”

Meri sifted through the cloth slowly, her fingers brushing over weaves and textures. Some were coarse. Some soft. She paused on a dark green—deep as pine after rain—and set it aside, unsure if she liked it or if it simply felt like something she remembered.

“And the other matter?” she asked.

Mam’s hands stilled mid-fold. “Your father told me you asked to go with him. To help end it.”

“I shouldn’t have.” Her voice barely rose. “It was foolish to ask.”

Mam studied her face a long moment. “It wasn’t. If I were you, I’d have asked the same.”

Meri looked up, surprised. The weight behind that sentence wasn’t pity. It was understanding.

Mam tapped the fabric, urging her to keep choosing. “I remember how Morzan was. How he could twist your fears and your hopes until you couldn’t tell one from the other. He may have treated you differently, but the end he sought was the same. I imagine part of you wants him gone just so the thoughts he planted will go quiet.”

Meri’s throat tightened. She handed her the green cloth without comment.

“Did he do that to you too?” she asked.

“Yes. And no.” Mam folded the fabric slowly. Her eyes weren’t on it, but somewhere far. “I can’t speak for your mind, only mine. But I remember what it was like. After I left him, I dreamed more of running than fighting. And when I wasn’t running, I dreamed of killing him.”

Meri said nothing, but her hands had gone still.

“Why didn’t you?” she asked finally, the question no longer rhetorical.

Mam smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Because I had you. And later, Eragon. I wanted to change everything, but couldn’t—not quickly, not safely. I had to let go of some things to make room for others.”

Meri stared down. “Don’t you hate it?” she whispered. “The woman you became. Morzan said... he said you never wanted this life. That you’d rather have died than lived as you do now. That you regretted all of it—because of us.”

Mam blinked once, slowly. “The woman Morzan knew was still a girl. Reckless. Wounded. Eager to be someone.” Her voice turned gentle, but firm. “I’d never trade the life I’ve lived since—no matter how hard it’s been—for anything I left behind in Greynsi. I thought you knew that.”

Mam’s reply came quieter still. “What else did he tell you?”

“He had me read your scrolls.”

 Mam didn’t flinch. “That explains much.”

She reached for the knotted rope without needing to ask. Meri raised her arms, muscle memory pulling her back to another life. The posture felt too natural, too obedient.

Mam measured quickly, noting the length in charcoal strokes.

“I was barely more than a child when I left with him,” she said. “Morzan knew how to find a wound and press it. Your grandfather—he was kind, but not always wise. Brom is both. You’re lucky.”

Meri turned her face away slightly, blinking hard. “I’m not his. Not really. I don’t understand how he can love me—not the way he loves his own.”

“If he heard you say that,” Mam said softly, “he’d be heartbroken. Insulted, even. He’s sacrificed more for you than you know.”

Meri’s voice broke in the middle. “I didn’t mean to insult him. I know he didn’t free me for your sake alone, but... how can he look past who my father is?”

Mam exhaled through her nose, quiet and even. She set down the rope and cloth.

“Morzan hurt him, yes. Deeply. But Brom didn’t turn away. He raised you. Protected you. Chose you. Not once, but again and again. That’s love, Meri—not blood.”

She laid a hand on Meri’s knee. Warm. Grounding.

Meri opened her mouth. Closed it. The words were there, but too knotted to move.

“If that’s true,” she whispered, “then why did he start training me so young? He never asked as much from Eragon or Elida.”

Mam didn’t smile this time. “Because it was needed. You had to learn control early—not because he feared you, but because others might. You’ve survived more than any child should have. Some scars run deep. Brom wasn’t willing to harden you through cruelty. But he wouldn’t leave you unarmed, either.”

Meri looked down at the cloth again, at the fine chalk lines and places still uncut. “I didn’t realize.”

“Youth rarely does.” Mam returned to her measuring. “So—dress or tunic?”

“Aren’t dresses more appropriate?” Meri asked, voice dry.

“You’ll have both. Dresses for ease, tunics for riding. A skirt you can throw over when needed. No one will notice a thing beneath a belt and cloak. Life is easier when you’re prepared.”

Meri nodded, small but certain. The idea of having choices—of claiming something as hers—unfolded gently inside her, like a leaf uncurled too early in the season. Fragile. Necessary. Not for comfort, but for what it might allow.

She sifted through the remaining fabric and pulled out a heavier bolt. Something practical. Durable. Good against cold and rain and long nights on the move.

“Do you think we might make a cloak as well?” she asked. “Winter isn’t far.”

Mam nodded. “With what’s left? I think so.”

Meri stood, gathering the fabric against her chest. It felt like weight and warmth both—but also like distance measured in steps. A task she could complete without needing to explain why.

“I’ll begin work now, if that’s all right.”

“Go on.”

In her room, she laid the cloth out across her bed with more care than was needed. The candlelight caught in the weave, turning the green into something deeper—like the moss beneath a frost-hollowed log. She smoothed the creases with both hands. Slower than she used to. Not for beauty, but for control.

She hadn’t sewn in Greynsi. At first, she hadn’t been allowed. Later, she hadn’t wanted to—not when even the thread might have carried eyes. But her fingers remembered. Each motion slid into the next with practiced rhythm. Not joyful. Not soft. But known. And that was enough.

The thread moved easily. Her breath did not. She folded one edge twice before stitching, not because it was needed, but because it offered quiet. Because it gave her something hidden, something hers. A place to begin again, even if no one else would ever see it.

When the cloak was half-measured and marked, she paused. Candlelight pooled over the table like a hush.

The scraps—what was left—they weren’t enough for comfort. But maybe for something else.

On impulse, she rose. Crossed the house. Took the measuring string from beside the hearth, where Mam had left it coiled and careless.

In the byre, Copperglow stirred. He didn’t whicker, only lifted his head and blinked at her with that slow, steady way horses have when they trust too easily. She touched his shoulder briefly, then measured the saddle. The breadth of his back. The space behind the girth where packs could sit.

She didn’t rush. But her hands moved with certainty. Assured. Not like someone fleeing, not yet—but someone preparing for distance.

Back inside, she lit a new candle and set the chalk to cloth. Her eyes stayed steady. Her throat did not.

There was something more she wanted to make.

Not a cloak.

Not protection.

Something hers.

Something to carry.

Something to leave with.

…

That night, when Meri rose to walk the farmland, she wasn’t alone.

She hadn’t noticed Elida slip out behind her—hadn’t heard the creak of the door, nor the faint latch sound as it closed. Her mind was too far elsewhere, weighed down by thoughts too old and bitter for naming.

Then a voice came through the dark.

“Are there really giant wolves in the Spine?”

Meri jumped, her hand flying to the hilt as she drew her blade and pointed it toward the sound. Aconitum caught the moonlight like a shard of ice—but Elida stood well beyond its reach, her steps quiet, deliberate. She moved through the dirt like a cat through long grass.

Slowly, as her pulse settled, Meri lowered the sword. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

“Neither should you.”

Elida stepped beside her, casting a wary glance toward the distant shimmer of river water. “You made that up, didn’t you? About the wolves. Just so I’d shut up.” She paused. “I can be quiet. Even if I don’t like to. I can.”

She didn’t look over. Just let the blade settle lower in her grip. “Maybe I did,” she said quietly. “But only because you believed it. You were never the quiet sort. That was never the problem.”

“It’s late,” she added. “You should sleep.”

Elida huffed, a sound that echoed Brom’s tired grumbling. “I will. When you do.”

A corner of her mouth tugged, not quite a smile. “That could take some time.”

She kicked a pebble down the slope. “I still wish you’d come today. It’s not like Ceunon—no gates, no rules,” she said and then more tentatively, “Did... did he ever let you go to things like that?”

“No,” she said after a pause. “He didn’t like crowds. Or joy.” Her voice was low, but even. “He said festivals wasted energy.”

“That sounds dreadfully dull,” Elida said slipping her hand over Meri’s. “What did you do, then? Write stories? Paint? I noticed you don’t anymore.”

She stilled. The contact startled something tender, but she didn’t flinch—just eased her hand away, slow, quiet. “I tried,” she murmured. “For a while.”

Elida pressed her lips together and hummed thoughtfully. “I bet you did something secret. Maybe you learned how to laugh like a villain and plot to overthrow kingdoms. Or you danced in the gardens under moonlight and held mysterious rites.”

“I would’ve liked that,” she said, voice soft. “Even the moonlit part.”

They stood quiet for a moment, the night around them humming with insects and soft wind.

“So?” Elida asked breaking the silence.

 “I spent more time indoors than out. Reading, mostly. Writing, when I could.” She looked down at the grass between her boots. “Then… less of both.”

“Is that why you’re always outside now? Because you missed it?”

Her nod was slow, unsure. “I suppose I did. Though maybe it’s the silence I missed more.”

“What about you?” she asked. “What have you been doing all these years?”

She expected a flood of chatter. Instead, Elida answered simply, “Mam says I have to be educated. Papa agrees. There’s always lessons or chores or something. I miss sparring. I miss Eri. I miss Tessie.” Then quieter, “I miss you.”

Her breath caught, but she didn’t speak. Just reached down and brushed her fingers across a blade of dry grass. She didn’t know how to respond to that.

“You’re here but…” Elida’s voice trailed off softening, “it’s like you forgot how to be.. You don’t call me ‘Lark’ anymore.”

The name landed like a stone in water—familiar, soft, and strange all at once.

“I didn’t know if you still wanted me to,” she said. “Didn’t want to take that without asking.”

“You used to. I didn’t like it back then, but... I don’t mind now.” She fidgeted, kicking at a patch of grass. “I also didn’t mean what I said earlier. About the boots. I was mad, but not really at you.”

She fidgeted. “I also don’t mind that you didn’t come today—even if I wish you had. And I’m sorry about your boots. I was mad.”

“I know.” She looked over, the moon catching her profile. “You were hurt. So was I.” A pause. “But it passed.”

“I’m glad you came out here. Even if you didn’t say much.” She glanced up, a small half-grin forming. “If we spar in the morning, will you stay for breakfast too? I never showed you the field.”

Meri hesitated, then nodded once. “Then show me,” she said. “We’ll start slow.”

Later, lying beside her sister, Meri stared at the ceiling and waited for sleep to slide away. But Elida rolled over and mumbled something in her sleep, and suddenly Meri felt it—a weight, not of weariness but of surrender. Like a tide finally reaching her shore. It pulled her under before she could rise.

She dreamed nothing. And woke late.

The sun stood high, casting pale gold across the thatch and tilled earth. For once, Meri felt rested. Not light, not free—but steadied. As though something in her had settled into place, even if she hadn’t yet learned the shape of it.

Elida reminded her of their promise with a bright voice and a glance full of expectation. After chores—brief ones, since Mam had done the cooking ahead—they set off together.

She found Elida near the edge of the field, Conan clinging to her hand as she tried to show him how to swing a sling.

“Mimi and Eri taught me,” Elida said, spotting her. “But I’m not great with it. You should ask her—she’s better.”

“No!” Conan shouted, ducking behind Elida’s skirts. “Not her! I want you!”

Elida looked up at Meri, eyes wide with a silent plea.

“Later,” she told the boy, crouching to his level. “After I get back from the fields.”

He nodded solemnly, then bolted toward the house like a startled rabbit.

“Thank the old kings,” Elida groaned. “He’s been pestering me for weeks. I can’t aim for silver.”

“I’m worse than you,” Meri said quietly, though the sting lingered. Conan’s words hadn’t wounded, not exactly—but they left a bruise. A reminder that she was still a stranger, even here.

“But I’m ready,” she added, smoothing the ache with motion.

Elida groaned theatrically, then grinned and tugged her hand. “Come on.”

They crossed the hill under sun and breeze, Elida chattering without pause. Her words rolled like creekwater, catching now and then on a root or memory, then flowing on. Meri let it wash over her, offering only the smallest responses.

The paddock was half-claimed by trees, its posts softened by moss and time. When they reached it, Meri pulled away, scanning the space with practiced eyes.

“No holes,” she said after circling. “We can work here.”

“Uncle knows we come,” Elida said. “He doesn’t mind—as long as he doesn’t see it. I’ve missed sparring with you.”

“It’s been a while for me too.” Meri flexed her fingers, then stilled them. “But I’d like to again. If you would.”

“Oh, yes! And after, we can swim—Mam showed me a place, just beyond the ridge.”

Meri said nothing. The thought of water made her stomach tighten. Elida caught the silence and pivoted without complaint.

“Did Morzan teach you to fight?”

“He taught me how to fall,” Meri said, voice dull as iron. Her hand dropped to Aconitum’s hilt, tracing the worn etchings there—old wardings, half-faded.

“But I trained under someone better. A swordmaster. He taught me more than Morzan ever could. It wasn’t the same as here. But it’ll still serve.”

She nodded toward Elida’s sword and held out her hand.

Elida passed it over without hesitation.

As Meri took the blade, a memory stirred—pine light through leaves, birdsong and the rush of spring wind. This had been hers once: a small sword, carved for a child’s grip, gifted before she truly knew why blades were needed. Her hand didn’t fit it anymore. But the weight was still familiar.

She gave it a test swing. The motion came back too easily. Her body remembered even if her heart didn’t trust it. The grip was smooth from Elida’s use, worn to a different shape. Not hers. Not anymore.

She held it out again, then closer—watching the metal catch the sun. Familiar. Dull. Like a lullaby half-remembered.

“You should pass this on to Conan soon,” she said. “And get yourself a proper sword. He’ll need to learn. Just in case.”

Meri curled her fingers around the grip once more. She hadn’t realized how much she missed this—not the violence, but the clarity. The way motion left no room for fear.

“Let’s start with the basics,” she said. “Afterward, I’ll ride. I’m not up for swimming.”

Though clearly disappointed, Elida nodded. “All right.”

They moved through the forms for over an hour—stances, guards, footwork. The rhythm returned slowly, like a song she didn’t want to sing but couldn’t forget. Elida moved with enthusiasm and a touch of wildness. Meri’s movements were more contained, taut, her breath measured.

Still, the difficulty was a welcome one. It asked something of her—not obedience, not performance, just presence. And for the first time in a long while, she found herself willing to offer that much.

…

Brom didn’t ride with her that afternoon.

So Meri rode alone—over the hills and into the hush of wind and tall grass, with only her thoughts trailing behind like smoke. At first, she’d been disappointed. Then relieved. The solitude gave shape to the things she hadn’t yet dared to name.

Her thoughts spun restlessly, buzzing like insects in the dark—always present, always humming at the edges. Unseen until stared at directly. And now, with no one beside her to speak or distract or soothe, she faced them. Turned them over one by one as Copperglow picked her way down the hidden road toward the old farmland ruins.

A plan took root, but not cleanly. It clung to her the way sweat did at the back of her neck—uncomfortable, persistent, not easily brushed away. She didn’t rehearse it aloud. She didn’t even think it in whole pieces. It came in flickers—what-ifs she couldn’t silence, small movements of her hands when no one was watching. She checked her satchel straps twice, then again. Her fingers flexed against Copperglow’s reins like they ached to hold a blade. Every gust of wind from the west made her glance over her shoulder, pulse ticking faster than it should.

It wasn’t resolve that pulled the thread taut.

It was the knowledge of what would come if she did nothing.

She didn’t stay long among the ruins. There was no need. She scanned the stones for disturbance, then turned back. No footprints. No scent of ash or blood. That absence should have calmed her. It didn’t. But for the first time in weeks, she was eager to return—not to the farmhouse itself, but to what she now understood must follow.

By the time the fields came into view, three truths had settled into her bones.

First: that Morzan, though a liar, sometimes buried truths beneath his lies like rot beneath blossom.

Second: that Brom had been shackled the entire time she’d been captive—unable to act, unable to strike—for fear of losing her.

And third: she could not remain in Carvahall.

She loved the land, the walls, the silence. But if Brom fell—if the fight ahead ended as many fights do—then Morzan would come. She knew the shape of his pursuit, the scent of his cruelty. He would find her, and if she was still here, she would bring ruin down upon them all.

She couldn’t let that happen.

She would not go back to Greynsi. Not even as a whisper of who she’d been. And she could not stay here, a fish flailing on dry land, not remembering how to breathe.

.

That morning, after Brom had left, she rode out alone. Not far—just enough to clear the valley, to feel the edge of the wind where the land grew steep and the trees kept their distance. The foothills held their quiet like a secret, brittle and dry beneath her boots.

She dismounted beneath the crooked ash and moved the stones one by one, hands careful, listening for any shift in the air. Nothing had been disturbed. No prints. No sign of scent or scrape. The bag was still there—stitched tight, wrapped in oilcloth, wedged deep between root and rock.

She crouched and pulled it partway free, just enough to check the ties. Her fingers moved automatically: testing seams, adjusting the balance of weight. The satchel held only what was needed—what she couldn’t risk taking last minute. A second knife. Salt. Dried root. A half-broken charm carved into bark.

Everything was as she’d left it.

But the relief didn’t soften anything. If anything, it sharpened her dread.

Copperglow snorted behind her, as if sensing something she wouldn’t name. Not yet.

She tied the satchel shut again and slid it back into place, letting her palm rest a moment on the soil-packed rock above it.

Not today.

But soon.

When she rose, the wind had shifted. She felt it along her spine—not a warning, not a welcome. Just the change of weather, the kind that made the animals restless and the crows fall silent.

She dusted her palms and mounted again. Not quickly. Not like she’d fled. Just steady, careful. Intentional.

She didn’t look back at the hiding place. Didn’t need to.

By dusk, she was home again, the smoke curling warm from the chimney, the scent of thyme and wet wool lingering near the door. But something had changed. Not in the house. In her.

A part of her had already turned.

Chapter Text

The wind whispered secrets.

Brom had once told her how to discover those secrets. Not by straining, not by chasing but rather in the hush of nothingness. “Be still and listen, little flower,” he had told her once long ago, setting his sword on the ground. “The wind speaks best for those who do not interrupt.” He had taught her to listen to it alone, under sky and silence, until the hush between gusts became a language all of its own. The wind was ancient and generous- its stories older than memory, eager to be heard if one was patient enough.

And, oh, how she had waited and listened! Her bare feet digging into the dirt, fingers tingled between leaves, she had let the wind find her. Its whispering curled around her like smoke; half-formed thoughts, impressions, images and stories never spoken aloud. She had believed in those secrets because her papa had.

Morzan had caught her listening once, in her early days within Greynsi. He had scoffed at the idea when she voiced it. “Foolishness,” he had told her coldly, “Ignorance dressed up in poetry. The naïve imagine meaning where there is only noise.” His voice had been sharp then, slapped like an iron blade, and final in a way that she knew even then would not be spoken of further. Even so, she had listened in secret but heard little to nothing. No stirrings, no images merely the soft hush of the wind between walls until, eventually she stopped the practice all together.

Yet now, hidden under the shadows of the night, she listened. Here were things the wind remembered, she thought leaning against a fence post, that people chose to forget. She waited uncertain, and as the wind howled over the starlit field. It circled around her like something alive; brushing the hairs from her neck, curling around her ears as if begging to be heard. It didn’t speak in words, just movement. A sound without shape. And for a moment, just a breath, it sounded like someone was calling her name.

Her eyes flashed open, and the moment’s spell vanished as if it had never happened at all. Perhaps it had never been anything. A moment she had imagined, and yet she stilled anyhow, hoping to return to the whispering. Some part of her still wanted to believe it mattered; that there was meaning, even if she couldn’t touch it. That something in the wind knew what she’d lost, and what she might still lose.

Alas, the longer she listened, the more the viper stirred uncertainly within her, and the more the wind pressed on, the less she trusted what she heard. Until at last, when the night was at its darkest, she turned away and stepped toward the outside the gate, Cooperglow’s reigns firmly in her hand.

There was nothing there but the wind before a storm and she was tired of waiting for ghosts.

…

The wind moved with a strange memory that night—curling low over the valley, brushing the long grass like it had wandered too far from the mountains and forgotten its name. It carried the weight of something unfinished. Something watching. It made the hair rise at the nape of her neck.

She stood at the edge of the magical barrier, where the boundary between safety and wild began to blur. Copperglow shifted beside her, stamping once. The horse’s breath came in pale bursts, curling and vanishing. The saddle was tight. The bags packed. Her hand was steady on the worn latch.

She could not explain to herself what she meant to do—only that she could not sleep anymore beneath that roof, not with the wind turning like a blade, not with her heart listening for hoofbeats that never came but might.

Not with the chance he might find her again. The thought clung to her ribs like ice.

Morzan’s reach didn’t end when she left Greynsi. There was no clear line between escape and aftermath—just a slow drift outward, like smoke that lingered in her clothes long after the fire was out. His presence wasn’t gone; it had simply gone quiet. Moved deeper into the shadow.

She didn’t fear him finding her. She feared being the way back in.

Because she wasn’t alone and she wouldn’t be the reason they suffered.

Not her mother, who had already lived through too much and said even less. Not her siblings, who still laughed with their whole bodies, like they didn’t yet know what the world could take. Not the patchwork shape of a home, rough-edged but real, with its tangled warmth and small rituals of care. Whatever this place was—whatever she was becoming in it—it mattered. And she would not bring him to its doorstep.

Sometimes, when the wind pressed too close or shadows shifted wrong, she felt it again—that tightness in her ribs, like a thread pulled taut from far away. She didn’t know if it was magic or memory. Maybe both. It didn’t matter. It was there. The bond. The trace of him. The knowledge that something in her still responded when it shouldn't.

She’d learned not to look over her shoulder yet the awareness stayed, steady as a splinter.

But she didn’t want to bring him back, either—not in body, not in name, not in some quiet unspoken way. And if there was no other choice—if he came close enough again—then yes. She would face him. Not because she was brave. Not because she was angry.

But because she couldn’t allow him to shape anything else.

She slipped the gate latch. It creaked.

The wind caught her braid and tugged it loose.

Then—

“Meri.”

She flinched before she turned.

The name came like a bell struck once in the dark—low, careful, threaded with breath. Her name, not spoken like a question, but a finding. A calling in the wind.

Her mother stood a few paces away, barefoot on the path. Her hair was unbound, spilling down her back in dark waves silvered at the ends. A shawl slipped low on her arms, half-forgotten, and the hem of her gown glistened with dew. She looked as though she’d stepped out of some older world, some threshold place between sleep and morning—where words hadn’t yet arrived, only the ache behind them.

Neither of them spoke.

The birds had not yet begun in full. The sky was just beginning to shift, streaked lavender and bone. And between them, the distance was not so far. Only a few paces of earth. Only a single breath.

Mam’s gaze held steady, unreadable but not unkind.

And Meri—Meri could feel something in her chest begin to shift. Not break. Not bloom. Just shift, like ice loosening on a river. She didn’t move. She didn’t trust her voice. But her hands, still at her sides, trembled slightly in the wind.

“You shouldn’t be out,” Meri said quickly—too quickly, the words tumbling like a snapped thread, like maybe if she said them fast enough, they’d bind the moment shut before it could unravel.

Her mother didn’t answer at once. Just stood there on the dewed edge of the clearing, her shawl slipping off one shoulder, her hands slack at her sides. The mist hadn’t burned off the fields yet. It clung to her skirts and the cuffs of her sleeves, curling like breath around the bones of her.

Then—her eyes lifted. Not angry. Not surprised. Just… quiet. The quiet of someone listening beneath the surface. Measuring the wind before it breaks. Measuring her daughter’s voice like it was a cup of water trembling in her hands.

“I might say the same to you,” she said.

She didn’t come closer right away. Only looked. Past Meri. Past the trees. To the shape of Copperglow’s broad chestnut flanks, twitching slightly with impatience. To the saddlebags, weighed down and laced tight. To the sword at Meri’s side, buckled so neatly, so deliberately, as if the fastening of it had been a kind of ritual. And something in her mother’s mouth changed—something small and hard and too tender to name. Not quite grief. Not quite fear. A stillness that felt older than either.

Meri’s hands ached from how tightly she held the reins. Her heart beat like a bird in a basket.

“I wasn’t going far,” she tried, voice thin. But the wind took it at once.

Her mam tilted her head. “Far,” she said, soft as dusk, “doesn’t always mean miles.”

The words landed somewhere deep. Somewhere Meri hadn’t looked in a while.

Mam stepped forward, slow and deliberate. The hem of her nightgown darkened with wet where it brushed the grass. Her bare toes peeked from her shoes—no stockings. She hadn’t planned to come out but rather she’d come because she knew. Something in her gut had stirred her from the hearth, told her to follow the scent of horse sweat and lavender oil and the silence Meri left behind like a wake. Her shawl slipped another inch.

“I wasn’t going to say goodbye,” Meri admitted. The words broke open inside her before they reached the air. “I thought it might be better not to.”

Her mother looked up at the sky. Her jaw flexed just once. Like she was holding something in—mercy, maybe, or the sob that always came after. But when she spoke, her voice stayed even, “So we’d find an empty stall and a cold gate. And no one to say what it meant.”

Meri’s mouth trembled. “I thought if he came back… I’d draw him away.”

“And if he doesn’t?” her mother asked.

“Then I still can’t breathe here. I still don’t know if I’m clean. If what’s inside me is mine.”

Mam’s eyes found hers. They didn’t shine—they burned. Low and steady. Protective as coals in a hearth.

“You think you’re poison, love?” she said. “You think running will burn it out?”

Meri couldn’t answer. Her throat was closing around something thick.

“I keep dreaming I opened the door,” she whispered. “That I let him in. That I’ve already done it.”

Mam stepped close. Her hand lifted, then paused in the air between them—hesitating, as if afraid one more inch might shatter something delicate.

“You didn’t open that door,” she said. “He forced his way through cracks that weren’t yours. You’re not the rot. You’re the one still standing.”

“But what if I carry the knife anyway?” Meri’s voice cracked. “What if it’s in me and I don’t even know until—”

Her mother touched her face. Not hard. Just enough. Her palm was warm, her thumb soft against the space under Meri’s eye. Not wiping away a tear—there weren’t any—but marking the place where sorrow had passed through.

“You think I’d let you walk into that dark with him still whispering in your ribs?” she asked. “You think I’d stand at the window and call it bravery?”

“I wanted to do something,” Meri said. “I thought—I thought if I went to meet him, if I ended it myself…”

Her mother’s face didn’t change but the silence between them grew heavier. Grief moved beneath her skin like water under ice.

“Then say it plain,” her mam said. “Don’t pretend it’s something softer. Say you mean to find him.”

Meri’s throat tightened. She didn’t whisper this time.

“I do.”

The wind stirred. The trees gave a long, low sigh, like they’d heard too many old truths spoken beneath their branches.

Mam didn’t look surprised. Just tired in a way that ran deep—older than the night, older than the scars they shared. She let out a breath through her nose, lashes brushing her cheek as her eyes closed. When they opened again, they were clear, unwavering.

“Then do it from solid ground,” she said. “Do it with your name still yours. Don’t chase him with your shadow for company and think that’s strength.”

Meri looked down. Her fingers were stiff on the reins. The leather had left pale lines in her palms, like she'd been trying to hold herself still and didn’t know how.

“I’m tired,” she said, “of feeling borrowed. Of waking with his voice tangled in mine. Of never knowing if what I want is really me, or just what he left behind.”

Her mam didn’t flinch. She stepped forward again and wrapped her arms around Meri, slow and sure. One hand settled at the base of her neck, the other cupped her shoulder. Not clinging. Just holding. Just being the place where nothing had to be earned.

“You are not made of him,” her mother murmured. “You never were. And you are not alone in this.”

Meri shut her eyes. Her forehead dipped to Mam’s collarbone. The scent of ash, earth, and wool wrapped around her—ordinary and real. Her pack lay behind her in the grass, heavy and strange now, like it belonged to someone else entirely.

“There’s no going back, Mam,” she said.

Mam didn’t speak for a moment. Just breathed with her. Just stood in the night and let Meri lean.

“You’re here,” she said quietly. “That’s what matters. Let us find a reason to stay.” She pulled back, brushing Meri’s wind-frayed hair from her face with one rough thumb. “Come on, my sweet. It’s cold, and you’ve carried enough tonight.”

Meri looked back toward the trees—at the trail she would have taken. The sky above was ink-dark, the path vanishing into it like a mouth.

Then she looked at her mother. The lines around her eyes. The steadiness in her hands.

She turned. Followed her across the grass.

And though the pack still sat where she’d dropped it, Meri let it be.

She didn’t need it tonight.

…

The hearth had gone to embers, casting no more than a rust-colored hush against the floorboards. The air inside was thicker than the wind—warm, with the soft tang of herbs hung near the lintel. Her mam moved without noise, stooping to feed the coals with split wood, cradling the kindling like she would a body. The fire caught slowly, unfurling orange into the silence.

Meri stood just inside the threshold, the door still resting half-open behind her.

The house looked smaller tonight. Not because it had changed, but because she had—like her leaving had stretched something inside her too far, and now she was afraid to come back into the shape of this life without cracking it.

Mam didn’t look back. She reached for the kettle, filling it from the crock and setting it in the coals with the same steady rhythm she used to bandage wounds, to braid hair, to hush fevered children. There was no ceremony to it. No questioning.

Mam gestured wordless at the bench beside the hearth. It was worn smooth from years of elbows, toys, cloaks laid out to dry. Meri hesitated—then stepped out of her boots, the cold clinging briefly to her skin, and folded herself onto it. Her cloak still smelled faintly of horse and heather. She slipped it off and carefully hung it on the wall.

From hallway the faint creak of a shifting child—a small breath, then stillness again.

Meri stared at the fire. Her body was calm now, but only in the way a fox stills after being chased—every nerve listening.

Mam lowered herself to the floor beside the hearth, one hand wrapped around her knees, the other stirring the ash with the iron poker. The light painted her face in flickers—softening the grief that always lived in the corners of her mouth, the grief she rarely let speak.

“You don’t have to talk,” she said after a while. “But I’d rather know what’s haunting you than watch you try to outrun it.”

Meri nodded once. Her mouth was dry. She didn’t try to explain the dreams, or the way the dark sometimes pulsed behind her eyes like a second heartbeat. She didn’t say the name.

But after a moment, she said, “I heard horses yesterday. Only for a breath. There was nothing there. I know that. But—”

“You thought it was him,” Mam finished gently.

“I was sure of it.”

The kettle hissed. Her mother didn’t move to pour it.

“I think I’d rather be wrong and gone,” Meri said, voice thin. “Than right and here.”

Mam exhaled slowly through her nose. “He is a ghost that likes to be believed in.”

Meri blinked.

“It’s how he lives,” her mother said, eyes fixed on the flames. “Not through blood or memory alone—but through fear. Through convincing you that you’re not safe even when you are.”

“Maybe I’m not.”

Mam turned to her then—no anger, just the quiet force she carried when the earth itself felt near.

“Then we’ll make you safe,” she said simply, “because you are, Meri. There are no haunts and he will not come after you again. Not so long I am here and Brom is breathing.”

Meri’s fingers curled over the edge of the bench. Her throat burned. She didn’t want to cry, not for this. But there was something about the firelight, about the way her mother didn’t flinch from naming the fear, that made it harder to hold back.

“You shouldn’t have had to say that,” she whispered.

“No,” her mother said softly, “but I did. And I will again, as many times as you need.”

The fire crackled. The kettle sang low and steady. Outside, the night wheeled on.

They stayed like that for a long while—long enough for the kettle to quiet, for the shadows to pull back into the seams of the room. The warmth of the hearth settled between them, not as comfort, exactly, but as presence: something alive and steady, something that didn’t flinch.

Meri pulled her legs up, chin tucked to her knees, watching the flames breathe in and out. Her mother didn’t speak. She simply sat on the bench beside her, one hand resting on the table’s worn edge, the other still loosely curled in her lap. They could have been statues, the both of them—two figures carved into some quiet corner of the world, where grief had already passed through and left its hush behind.

Outside, a bird stirred. Not a songbird, just the dry rustle of wings in bare branches. A breeze slipped under the eaves.

Meri’s toes had gone cold. She hadn’t noticed.

Eventually, Mam moved. Not with a sigh or a stretch or any sound of burden—just the same way the earth moves when seasons shifts: slow, inevitable, without fanfare. She rose and crossed to the hearth, where the fire had begun to sink back into its embers. The poker rasped gently as she stirred the coals, coaxing a low flame from the ash. The fire answered her as it always did, with slow warmth and the soft crack of breath returning to the hearth.

Meri turned her face toward it, letting the heat gather across her cheeks.

Mam moved through the room with a kind of quiet deliberateness that made it feel like ritual. Leather bag gathered. Cloak wound close. Boots laced. Each gesture clean and final, shaped by long years of necessity. She reached for Meri’s cloak where it hung near the door and shook the dust from it with a sharp snap, revealing the coarse weave, the faint scent of wind and the wild of night.

Meri hadn’t stood yet. Her body was warm but heavy, like something sunk into deep water.

Then her mother turned, holding out the cloak. She didn’t speak right away.

Meri rose stiffly and took it from her hands.

“Come,” Mam said. “We’ve work.”

Meri blinked, the word catching oddly in her ears. “Work?”

“With the healer,” Mam said, slipping the bag over her shoulder “Gerturde is cataloguing her remaining stores and she needs hands. And I need a reason to keep you from wandering off into the hills again.”

A protest flickered but withered before it found breath. Her mother’s tone wasn’t sharp, just settled. Like a door that had already been shut.

Meri pulled the cloak around her shoulders, its weight oddly unfamiliar. Her fingers hesitated over the clasp. Then, with a quiet click of bone against metal, she fastened it.

The door creaked as they opened it. Crisp morning air flooded the threshold, clear and clean and sharp in the lungs. Outside, the world held its breath beneath the weight of summer—damp earth, slow light, the hush before the insects woke. The morning leaned warm and drowsy, the grass bent with dew, the sky pale as milk. Summer pressed against the hills, thick with green and the scent of distant rain, everything heavy with waiting, as if the day hadn’t quite decided to begin.

They walked without speaking, their footsteps soft against the muddied track where the last rain had lingered. A bird startled from the bramble, wings catching the light before vanishing again. Somewhere far off, a dog barked—distant, dreamlike. The village was close now, but it didn’t feel real, not yet. The light was too soft. The trees too still. Meri’s boots felt heavy. Her cloak itched at the collar.

The closer they drew to town, the more Meri felt it: the quiet hum in her bones, the ache curling just beneath her ribs. She reached out—without thinking—and brushed her mother’s sleeve to slow her pace. Mam didn’t speak at first, just kept walking. Her breath came steady, clouding the air ahead. At last she said, “It’d be best you avoid the tavern and the butcher’s. Too many eyes.”

“I’d rather stay on the farm,” Meri muttered, tugging her wind-tangled hair beneath her hood. “Didn’t we agree I was better kept hidden?”

“We did.” Her mother’s voice was calm, but something in it had gone taut—like a string pulled just tight enough to hum. “Today is different.”

“She doesn’t need me.”

“She doesn’t need you,” Mam agreed but said no more.

Meri frowned. Her mouth opened, then closed. The words tangled in her throat. Another silence crept between them—one of the dense ones, heavy with things neither of them had said.

Mam’s gaze drifted toward the hills, then back to Meri’s face.

“We’ll want to call you something else,” she said quietly. “Merona’s not safe. And Muirgheal…” Her voice thinned. “That name was never given in love.”

Meri exhaled sharply through her nose. “We’re running out of names. What would you have named if not Muirgheal?”

Her mother gave a faint smile. “Before he gave you that name, before you were even born, I called you ‘Cricket.’ Or sometimes ‘rosebud,’ when you curled your fists like petals in your sleep.”

Meri groaned. “If you ever call me that, I’ll walk straight into the lake.”

A laugh—quiet and real—ghosted from her mother’s throat. It faded just as quickly, but the warmth of it lingered like steam off the stone.

They walked on, down the narrow path where dry leaves clung to the hedgerows like scraps of old parchment, brittle and flaking at the edges. Briars twisted through the lower branches, snagging the hem of Meri’s cloak, catching in her thoughts. Crows stirred overhead, shifting weight on bare limbs, and the wind smelled of dung and ash and last night’s rain.

“You’ll need a new name,” Mam said after a while and let out a long hum. “Let me think.”

Meri shrugged. “Doesn’t much matter. I’ve had names like splinters since before I could read.”

Her mother didn’t answer right away. When she did, her voice was quiet.

“Maraid.”

Meri glanced sideways. “That one of yours?”

“It was my grandaunt’s. Lived wild on the edge of the woods after fever took her husband. Folks stopped talking about her after a while. She wore boots too big and sang to herself. They said she lost her mind but I don’t think she did.”

Meri raised an eyebrow. “You want me to take the name of a mad widow?”

“I want you to take a name that wasn’t given to you by fear,” her mother said. “She left before the world could take her. It’s a name that went quiet on its own terms.”

Meri looked ahead. A crow hopped along a low branch, watching them.

“Maraid, then,” she said. “It’ll do.”

Her mother’s shoulders eased a little. “Just for now.”

“Sure,” Meri muttered. “Just until the next mess.”

A wheelbarrow lay tipped on its side behind a crooked gate, its wooden rim mud-caked, iron nails rusted to orange. A pile of cabbages slumped beside it, half-blanketed in frost. Nearby, a rake leaned against a fence patched with wicker and old twine, the tines bent, worn down by years of use.

Every corner of the village seemed to bear the ghost of someone else’s morning. Smoke puffed from clay chimneys, drawn pale against the sky. A side door creaked open, just long enough for a pair of hens to scurry out. Somewhere, unseen, the clang of a pail being lowered into a well echoed flat and metallic. A thin trickle of water followed, quickly muffled by a woman's low voice calling a name Meri didn’t recognize.

Bread ovens had already been stoked—she could smell the scorch of rye crust, mingled with the sour tang of ale dregs tossed from a doorway. Scrubbed porches waited for boots to return. A pair of children’s shoes, rough-stitched and still damp from washing, sat drying on a windowsill like offerings to the sun.

And all of it—every bit of it—was ordinary. Startlingly so.

Meri felt it like a blow: the hum of lives continuing, unbroken and unaware. The way the world had not stopped. Not even staggered. She stopped just shy of the door. The ache beneath her ribs gave a sharp twist, sudden and deep.

Yet, she did not reach for the latch.

The cottage loomed small but solid before her, hunched against the slope like something half-asleep. Smoke threaded from the chimney, the scent of it mingling with damp leaf mold and crushed pine underfoot. A wind moved through the trees behind her, stirring the last beads of rain from the branches. She could hear a thrush calling somewhere up the hill, bright and far away.

She stared at the weathered planks of the door. Its grain was worn smooth in places, darkened with age and old oils, nicked near the base where boots and baskets had knocked it over time. Her own reflection wavered faintly in the warped glass of the nearest window—pale, blurred, unfamiliar.

Behind her, a twig snapped. Then the quiet rustle of skirts in dew-wet grass, and the soft tread of familiar steps.

Mam came to stand at her side. For a moment, she said nothing. Her hand settled lightly on Meri’s shoulder, warm and steady through the fabric.

“Come,” she said, her voice low. Not unkind, but certain—like a gate swinging shut.

Meri’s fingers curled, then relaxed. She drew in a breath. The air was thick with the smells of earth and woodsmoke, but beneath that, she caught something else—lavender, sage, a faint medicinal bitterness that stirred half-buried memories of sickness and steam, of warm cloth pressed to her forehead.

She reached for the latch.

The iron handle was cool and slightly tacky with damp. It gave with a groan, and the door swung inward on tired hinges.

The scent inside struck her at once: fire, resin, dried plants. The air was thick with it, layered and lived-in. A long table stood by the far wall, cluttered with shallow bowls and linen pouches. The shelves were crowded with jars and bundles, some labeled in a sharp, angular hand. Garlic hung in fat braids from a beam overhead; near the hearth, a kettle hissed gently over the coals.

Gertrude stood at the hearth, sleeves rolled past her elbows, slowly grinding something in a stone mortar. Her thick silver hair was bound in a long braid down her back, and the muscles in her forearms moved with quiet, methodical strength. The smell of dried herbs and smoke clung to the air, rooted deep into the wood of the place.

When she looked up, her eyes sharpened with recognition. “Well, now, tat’s not the girl who steals wild garlic from my fence line, now is it?” she said, voice low and dry as old bark. “I’ve heard her had another girl tossed around like seeds on the wind. Figured it was feast-fire gossip. Another tale for the barrel-sitters.””

Mam’s lips twitched, one hand still resting at Meri’s back. “Elida’s still asleep. This is my eldest—Maraid.”

“Maraid, is it?” Gertrude’s gaze slid over her like a hand—not unkind, but deliberate. Measuring.

Meri shifted, the floor creaking beneath her boots. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this: to be seen so plainly. Like someone half-unwrapped and left in the open.

“Come in, then,” Gertrude said, wiping her hands on a rag and gesturing toward a low table near the far wall. “No need to hover like a ghost at the threshold. Sit. I hope you’ve steadier hands than your sister. Gods bless her bones. Elida means well, but she’s got the patience of a hunting fox and the gentleness of a kicked bucket.”

Meri blinked. “Elida comes here?”

“She comes to help from time to time.” Gertrude smirked faintly as she turned back to her mortar. “Full of spark, that one. All elbows and opinions. Useful, when she sits still long enough—though that isn’t often.”

Mam made a quiet noise—affection and exasperation mixed. Meri allowed herself a small smile.

“I don’t bite,” Gertrude added over her shoulder. “Not unless someone gives me reason. And even then, I’ve got better uses for my teeth.”

Meri slid into the nearest chair, stiff-backed and unsure. Her hands drifted to the cuffs of her sleeves, fingers catching on a loose thread. The table bore the marks of age and long use: knife gouges, burn spots, herbal stains worked deep into the grain.

Gertrude returned with a tray, setting it down with a quiet thunk! It held several shallow bowls and small linen pouches, the edges darkened from years of handling.

“We’re going to sort through what’s left of last my stores,” she said. “See what’s still good, what’s turned. Start with that bowl—red clover and burdock. You’ll know the mold by the sour smell. Anything brittle enough to snap can be saved.”

Meri nodded. She wasn’t sure if she was meant to speak, but Gertrude didn’t seem to mind the silence. She moved back to her grinding, slow and steady.

Mam filled the kettle and set it on the hearth. “She’ll be quiet but she listens,” she said, almost to herself.

“Good.” Gertrude didn’t look up. “Listening’s easier to teach than speaking.”

They worked in near-silence for a time, broken only by the scrape of pestle on stone and the soft rustle of dry stems. Meri reached into the first bowl, lifting a handful to her nose. Some of the clover still held its scent—faintly sweet, like sun-warmed hay—but the burdock had gone in places, reeking faintly of damp rot and old soil.

She picked through it carefully, fingers quick despite the nerves knotting in her stomach. Gertrude passed her a second bowl, then a third, without a word. The fire snapped behind them. Dust drifted in the thin beam of sunlight that filtered through the small window. Slowly, Meri felt her shoulders begin to loosen.

After a time, Gertrude returned to the table and nudged a dried sprig toward her. “Can you name that?”

Meri picked it up. The leaves were narrow, curled at the edges, with a sharp scent that lingered in the back of the throat. “Pennyroyal.”

“And?”

“Used for fevers. And to keep bugs away. You shouldn’t take too much—it twists your stomach.”

Gertrude arched a brow. “Or worse. And what does it smell like when it’s turned?”

Meri hesitated, then sniffed again. “Sour. Like damp wood left too long.”

“Good. Add it to the keep pile.”

Mam poured hot water into an iron pot and stirred something into it—mint, by the smell of it. She hadn’t said much since they’d entered, letting the rhythm of the work carry them.

When Meri glanced up again, Gertrude was watching her—not suspiciously, but with that same quiet appraisal from earlier. Like a farmer weighing weather.

“You carry something heavy,” she said simply.

Meri looked back down at the herbs, fingers fumbling slightly on a sprig of thyme. “I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I said.” The silence that followed was deeper—still, but not empty. “Most people,” Gertrude said, more gently now, “wait until they fall apart before they come to me. You’re here early. That’s something.”

Meri didn’t answer, not with words. Rather her hands moved more surely through the rest of her. They worked on until the sun had slanted lower, spilling pale gold across the floorboards. The light softened everything it touched—the curves of the jars, the worn grain of the table, the silver in Gertrude’s hair. Meri’s fingers were dusted with petals and resin, the faint perfume of rosemary and nettle clinging to her sleeves. Her knuckles ached faintly from grinding, her back sore in the steady, grounding way of honest work. Outside, the wind rattled the shutters, but inside the hearth crackled low, and the room smelled of balm and ash and something faintly sweet.

As the day faded, Gertrude handed Meri a small pouch—soft leather, worn at the edges, already smelling faintly of crushed herb. “Take this home,” she said. “Wild mint, a bit of valerian. For sleep, if it keeps slipping from you.” Gertrude straightened with a grunt and continued, “Return in the morn with my bag.”

Meri nodded without protest. She tucked the pouch into her belt without comment, but the weight of it was oddly reassuring. A thing with purpose. Her limbs moved slower now, reluctant and stiff. She rinsed her hands in the basin, the water gone tepid and clouded with herb.

At home, the day continued as if it hadn’t broken—Mam met her at the door with a nod and a bowl to stir. She helped with the stew, added salt and wild onion, tasted and adjusted until it settled into something warm. She mended a torn hem by the window where the last of the light turned the glass violet. In the corner, Conan was playing with wooden figures—lining them up, knocking them down—while Iian sat curled on a rug with a bit of bread, chewing sleepily. Elida tugged at her sleeve, murmured something sleepy, and curled into her side as dusk gathered.

Later, when she lay down beside her sister, the ache in her limbs gave way to stillness. For a long moment, she only listened—to the crackle of fire in the other room, the settling creak of beams overhead, the soft hush of wind tracing the eaves.

And then sleep came—not in a rush, but slowly, like mist rolling in over hills. Heavy, sure, and full of dreams that tugged at her from somewhere deeper. Not nightmares exactly, but things remembered sideways. A red stone. A cold hall. Her own voice, echoing back to her in a tongue she hadn’t meant to speak. Still, it was the easiest sleep she’d had in weeks, and she sank into it like earth.

The next morning, mist hung low over the fields, soft and silver, clinging to the hedges and the frayed edges of Meri’s sleeves as she walked. Mam had stayed behind to tend the farm—mending tack, seeing to the goats—but Meri didn’t need her to find the way. The path to Gertrude’s cottage was half-mud, half-memory, worn into her feet even then. Her boots left shallow prints in the waking earth, each one vanishing almost as soon as it was made.

She didn’t knock.

The door creaked open under its own weight, and the familiar scent of thyme, damp wood, and simmering broth rose to meet her—quiet and steady, like breath.

Gertrude looked up from her work, eyes flicking from the pouch in Meri’s hands to her face. “Set it by the mortar,” she said, voice low and even. “I’ll sort it later.”

Meri did as she was told, fingers brushing the stone rim as if to anchor herself. The knife made a steady shick, shick, shick against the whetstone, a rhythm as familiar as breath.

“I started the stew early,” Gertrude said. “There’s tea if you want it. Or you can sit. Whichever suits.”

Meri poured herself a cup with careful hands. She didn’t sit but stood near the hearth, holding the mug close to her chest. The warmth didn’t quite reach her fingers.

Gertrude paused in her sharpening. “Bad dreams again?”

Meri didn’t answer.

“That’s a yes,” the old woman muttered, setting down the blade. She wiped it clean with a bit of cloth and reached for a bowl of dried juniper berries, fingers moving with quiet purpose. “Dreams are like bruises. Some rise quick to the skin. Others take their time, then bloom all at once.”

Meri stared into her tea. “I’m tired.”

“I’d be surprised if you weren’t.” Gertrude’s tone was brisk, but not unkind. She worked the pestle slowly, the soft crack of berries grounding the silence. “The body can bear more than we give it credit for. But the spirit…” She shook her head. “That’s a different beast.”

Meri finally moved to the table and sat down opposite her. “I keep thinking I’ve outrun it. Whatever it is.”

“Outrunning don’t cure a wound.” Gertrude leaned over to brush the crushed berries into a small tin. “Just gives it time to fester somewhere quieter.”

Meri’s throat tightened. “Then what does?”

“Time. Stillness. Truth, when you can face it.” She fixed Meri with a sharp, unblinking look. “And sometimes, naming the thing that haunts you.”

Meri flinched at that. Her hands gripped the mug tighter.

Gertrude softened. Not in expression—her face was still weathered stone—but in her voice, like a shift in wind direction. “I won’t ask you to name it before you’re ready. But I know what it’s like to be followed by something that don’t sleep.”

Meri looked up, surprised. “Do you?”

“Oh, don’t look so shocked. You think you’re the only girl ever hollowed by a man with power and no conscience?” Her smile was a thin, bitter thing. “We all carry ghosts. Some of ‘em walk behind us. Some sit in our own skin.”

They sat with that for a while. Outside, a sparrow flitted across the misty yard. Somewhere beyond the trees, a raven called once and fell silent.

When Meri spoke again, it was barely more than breath. “It’s still in me. I feel it.”

Gertrude didn’t flinch. “Aye. I thought as much.” She reached for a sprig of dried yarrow. “Then we treat it like any sickness. Carefully. Steadily. No quick cuts.”

Meri lingered a moment longer after Gertrude’s words, her fingertips tracing the edge of the table—rough-hewn, worn smooth in places by years of use. There was nothing more to say, not then. The warmth of the hearth pressed against her back as she stepped into the cold, the door closing with a soft latch behind her.

The sky was low and pale, the ground damp from the morning’s mist. As she walked home, the silence did not press so tightly around her ribs. Something had shifted—not lifted, not yet, but loosened, like a knot given slack.

…

The weeks folded into each other like linens in a chest—soft-edged, unremarkable, but full of the weight of use. Meri came back to Gertrude’s cottage the following day, and the day after that, and again the next. At first she brought tasks in hand—roots to deliver, questions from her mother—but soon there were mornings she arrived without reason at all. Her feet found the path before her mind gave it permission.

She learned to sort herbs by scent and season. To watch for rot along the stems of comfrey, to slice yarrow stalks with a single clean motion. Gertrude never praised her outright but her grunts grew less frequent, and once, without comment, she passed Meri the knife.

Outside, birds took flight in brief, startled bursts, scattering like thoughts. The garden had gone brittle, save for the hardy calendula and thyme clinging to their final weeks. Gertrude taught Meri to cut the last of the rue and lavender with respect. “Even dying things have uses,” she said once, almost absently, while dusting earth from the roots. “Maybe especially.”

There was little speech between them. Not from disinterest but rather from understanding. Meri had grown into the rhythm of the place—the unspoken flow of work, the language of hands and glances. Sometimes she caught Gertrude humming, low and tuneless. Sometimes she hummed with her.

Sometimes Elida came too—never for long, and never without comment. She’d drift around the cottage like a wind let in by accident, all sharp eyes and restless fingers, poking at jars, wrinkling her nose at the smell of boiled valerian. Gertrude bore it with her usual silence, only raising a brow when Elida tried to sneak a sugared root from the shelf. Meri never asked her to come, nor told her to leave. Those mornings unsettled something in her—sweet and sore at once. Elida’s presence reminded her of the world beyond the herb-smoke and quiet. Of laughter, sometimes. Of the way her sister used to braid flowers into her sleeves without asking. But it also made her hands clumsier, her focus split. As if part of her was always listening too closely, waiting for Elida’s sigh, her teasing, the scrape of her boots as she wandered off again.

Back on the farm, the days narrowed. The fields yellowed and thinned as the season turned, their wild summer hum gone still. The last of the onions came in with mud clinging to their roots. Meri helped braid garlic into long, lumpy ropes and hung them from the rafters to dry, their papery skins rustling when the wind stirred the eaves. Chickens grew quieter in the cold, huddling close at dusk. Firewood had to be hauled daily now, armfuls stacked by the door with a groan and a thump. Her cousin took to splitting logs with half-shouted songs, while Elida preserved apples in vinegar jars, her fingers red from peeling.

The world tilted slowly toward winter. Mornings came darker each day, and a silver film crept across the ground before sunup—frost so fine it turned the grass to glass, each blade brittle and shining. Meri began wearing thicker layers, wrapping her wrists in wool before grinding seeds or stirring the great iron pot that Gertrude always kept warm with a simmer of bones, roots, or leaves. The hearth became a kind of heart. Its low, constant breath knitted the cottage together.

But still, no word came from Brom.

At first, Meri told herself the delay meant nothing. He often went longer than planned—weather, danger, secrets. Even so as the nights lengthened and the stars wheeled colder overhead, a silence began to grow inside her. Not panic, but instead a hollow, waiting sort of ache. She checked the sky too often. Listened too closely to any horse that passed near the village road. Her mother kept her face unreadable, but she, too, began watching the horizon with that quiet, measured stillness Meri knew too well.

And beneath that ache, something darker stirred. A sickness that coiled in her belly and uncurled slowly in the long hours between dusk and dawn. A cold, crawling dread that she didn’t speak aloud. Not even to herself.

Sleep had started to come easier, little by little—like water wearing down stone. It came not in a rush, but in steady, patient weight. She’d grown used to the rhythm of work, of muscle fatigue and low firelight, and the nights weren’t as long as they once were. But still, there were moments—between breaths, between dreams—when something old and waiting crept in around the edges.

She felt it most when her hands were still—when the knife was cleaned, the broth strained, the poultices cooling. Then, in that breathless quiet, the shadow of Morzan returned—not as a thought but as a presence, low and familiar. The memory of his voice, the scent of iron and old stone, the coiling thing inside her that still answered to him in her sleep.

It hadn’t stirred in weeks—not fully—but she could feel it now, watching, waiting. A tension in her ribs. A whisper threading through her dreams. She did not speak of it to Gertrude, nor to her mother, who already carried too many silences of her own. But the unease made her fingers tremble when she first touched anything sharp. Made her glance over her shoulder too often. Some mornings, she woke before the sun, breath caught in her throat, unsure what had startled her.

By late frost, Meri knew how to bind a wound with comfrey poultice, how to heat a stone to draw out fever, how to tell if a cough was lung-deep or just lodged behind the ribs. She learned, too, how to sit with silence—not the strained hush of avoidance, but the true, living quiet that made room for breath and thought and presence.

And in that stillness, something else took root. Not healing, not quite, but the bare beginning of it. Like frost crystals forming along the window glass—delicate, unseen until the light struck them just right.

Evenings at the farm turned dim and close. Smoke clung to hair and clothing. The younger children grew restless, then quiet again, curled like kittens beside the hearth while stories were half-told and mended clothes passed hand to hand. Meri rarely spoke, but her hands were always busy—shelling beans, slicing roots, or gently untangling Elida’s knotted hair when no one else could. She watched the world through the window and thought often of Gertrude’s knife, of steam rising from a salve pot, of the warm hush that lived inside the cottage just past the edge of the trees.

Winter hadn’t yet arrived in full, but it was already in the air—coiling in the hollows, threading itself through the woodsmoke and the wind. The village had begun to hunch its shoulders against it. Even the river moved slower now, dragging its skirts across the rocks like a woman bracing for grief.

But inside Gertrude’s cottage, there was always heat, always motion—cutting, crushing, steeping, stitching. Life, in its quiet forms. And Meri, no longer a guest, moved through it like someone learning the shape of home. Even as her papa’s absence grew sharper in her thoughts, and Morzan’s presence returned in ways she could neither name nor banish, the work gave her hands purpose, and purpose steadied her heart.

…

…

One night when she had stayed late into the evening to help with an ailing boy, the sky turned without warning. Snow had been whispering at the edges of the hills all week, but now it came sharp and certain. The wind picked up in ragged surges, tugging at the shutters like a beast testing its leash. Meri was fastening her cloak when the first fat flakes began to strike the windows—soft at first, then harder, faster, until they hissed sideways in the wind like thrown sand.

Before her hand touched the latch, Gertrude lifted a weathered palm without looking up.

“Not tonight,” the old healer said, voice dry as cracked bone. “No sense testing your luck when the mountain’s got its back up.”

Meri paused. Another gust slapped the side of the cottage, and the shutters jumped in their frames. Snow spun past the window in sideways sheets, ghost-white in the gathering dark. Lightning flared—uncommon for snow, which made it worse. The cottage flashed bone-pale for a breath before falling back into its firelit hush.

Gertrude rose, slow but certain, and drew the shutter bar with a solid thud. “That storm means to bury something. Maybe the road. Maybe you. Either way, you’re not walking out into it.” She turned, eyes steady beneath her unruly white brows. “You’ll stay here tonight, Maraid. No point offering the cold what little blood you’ve got left.”

Meri didn’t argue. Part of her—some younger, shaken thing—wanted to stay. She slid out of her cloak and folded it on the bench, hands tingling with the heat that followed cold. She cast one brief glance toward the door. Outside, the wind screamed between the eaves, a thin, serrated sound, while the trees thrashed like they were trying to shake loose their roots.

Gertrude settled again at the table, her knife resuming its slow, clean work through a pile of pine bark. “Snow like this’ll skin a hare mid-leap. Strip a roof if it wants. Don’t give it an easier mark.”

Meri eased down across from her, resting her chin on her arms. “Think it’ll last long?”

Gertrude shrugged. “Could pass by morning. Or dig in for days. First snow’s always wild—it wants to make a point.”

She squinted down at a gnarled root, then added, “Your mother, sharp as she is, knows better than to fight the wind head-on looking for you. She’ll know you’ll have holed up here with me. Fire, blankets, all of it.”

Meri didn’t answer right away. The fire snapped, spitting pine sap, but the sound felt far off. Beneath the wind and woodsmoke, something deeper hummed—an old pressure in the air, like the storm had roots as well as teeth. It moved through the stones of the house, whispering through the floorboards and up into Meri’s bones.

She angled her ear toward the shuttered window. The storm howled on, but beneath it—low, low—was something else. A shuddering groan. Not from the wind. From beneath it. The sound of buried things stirring. It was if the wind was screaming.

“You knew Mam when she was young, yes?” Meri asked, not quite lifting her head.

Gertrude’s brows rose. “Selena?” She gave a quiet snort and kept chopping. “Aye, I did. Fire-willed and half-mad, like most girls her age. Braver than smart, and quick to run toward things she should’ve run from.”

“She left?” She hadn’t meant to make it sounds like a question.

“Aye.” The knife slowed. “Left safety behind for something darker. Married that shadow too, too.”

Meri’s hands twitched in her lap. “She doesn’t talk about him. Not really.”

“Some wounds get quieter with time,” Gertrude said, setting the blade down beside the cutting board. “But quieter don’t mean healed. And some stories aren’t meant to be told until they’ve lost their teeth.”

“But they rot, if they stay inside,” Meri murmured.

Gertrude’s gaze turned to her—steady, unreadable. Then, after a breath: “Her mother was my friend. Closest I ever had.”

Meri looked up at that. “Her name was Juelina, wasn’t it?”

“Aye.” Gertrude’s voice gentled, as though speaking it brought Juelina into the room beside them. “Juelina had a voice like the wind before rain—low and sure. Never loud but people listened. Even when they didn’t like what she had to say.”

She began stripping thyme from the stalks, the sound soft as falling ash. “She could read people the way some folk read clouds or bark—without needing to be told. Had hands that knew how to mend everything but her own heart.”

“What was she like with Mam?” Meri asked, hesitant.

“Patient,” Gertrude said. “Firm, when she needed to be. Selena was always chasing edges, trying to outrun what was already in her. Juelina let her run but she never stopped waiting.”

Meri’s eyes dropped back to the basket in her lap, where she was meant to be sorting dried marigold. She picked up a stem, then another, twisting them gently between her fingers. “Did Mam take after her?”

“In some ways,” Gertrude said. “Selena’s got her strength, though she thinks it’s all her own. Got her stubbornness too—sharper-edged, more like a blade than a root.” She paused, then added, “But that quiet steadiness—Juelina’s kind—that runs in her as well. Deeper down, beneath the fire.”

A quiet fell. The fire crackled in the hearth. Somewhere outside, a bird called through the thinning snow, a sharp note in the hush.

“She would’ve liked you,” Gertrude said finally. “Juelina. You’ve got her eyes, and the way you listen. You think it’s hiding but it’s not.”

Meri felt something catch in her chest. “Mam says I don’t look like her.”

“You don’t,” Gertrude said. “Not in the way folk mean but you carry her in the ways that matter.”

Meri’s throat tightened. She bent her head over the basket, pretending to sort.

“She died young, didn’t she?”

Gertrude nodded, her hands stilling. “Too young. Not before she passed along what mattered. Quiet things. The kind that take root.”

She didn’t name them and Meri didn’t ask. Instead she blinked down at the marigold, its golden edges frayed with dryness, delicate as memory. The warmth of the room pressed close, but the ache beneath her ribs softened just a little—like something in her had been named without being exposed.

The wind slammed hard again. The shutters groaned in their sockets. A fine dust of snow leaked in along the sill and melted on the floor.

“I don’t think I’m—” Meri started, then stopped. “Never mind.”

Gertrude looked at her then, eyes steady, voice soft. “You’ve got that look. Like something’s shifting under your ribs. That bite in your voice, the way your fingers won’t rest. Storm’s not just outside you tonight.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Meri whispered.

“You don’t have to.” Gertrude stood with a grunt and fetched a folded wool blanket. “Some storms shake loose what’s already inside. Not always pleasant, but it clears the air. Or digs a deeper hole.”

Meri stood too fast and caught herself. “I should make a pallet.”

“Go ahead.” Gertrude handed over the blanket. “But don’t pretend you’re not dragging something behind you. Cold like this makes old ghosts loud.”

Meri blinked. “Ghosts?”

“Memories. Guilt. Or something else entirely. Something not of you, but in you.” Gertrude’s voice was still gentle, but it struck like flint. “If it’s festering, it’ll rise. Cold brings it up like a bruise.”

Meri knelt beside the hearth, spreading the blanket in stiff folds. The fire licked higher but cast more light than heat. She wrapped herself tightly and stared at the stones.

Outside, the wind had dropped to a lower pitch—less rage, more moan. The kind of sound a hill makes when it remembers what’s buried inside it. The kind of sound Meri had heard before.

And somewhere, deep inside, something pulled taut.

A memory that wasn’t only memory. A weight that pulsed beneath her breath.

It had been quiet lately. Not gone, but curled deeper. But now, in the hush of snow and firelight, it stirred again. A sickness coiling at the base of her belly, slick and slow. It didn’t speak—but it pressed.

That night, sleep came slow as thaw. She lay stiff under the wool blanket long after the fire had sunk to coals, listening to the wind worry at the shutters. The storm had quieted some, but now and then a gust would rattle the eaves or moan low against the door like something half-alive.

Gertrude had gone to bed hours earlier, her steps soft and certain beyond the partition. Meri stayed where she was, eyes open to the dark, letting the silence stretch.

Eventually, the stillness softened. Waking and sleep folded into one another like waves, and when dreams came, they were muddy, formless things. Nothing she could hold. Nothing she wanted to.

By morning, the dread had dulled again—coiled down like a snake in winter, though she knew better than to believe it gone. She rose slowly, joints stiff from the cold, and stirred the fire back to life with careful hands. Outside, the wind had settled, but frost still rimmed the windowpanes, catching the light like glass spun thin.

She moved through the morning in silence, rinsing herbs, sweeping stray petals from the floorboards, measuring out handfuls of dried linden and licorice root. Her body remembered the tasks even when her thoughts slipped sideways. It helped, this quiet rhythm. The feel of real things in her hands.

Gertrude appeared in the doorway, already tying back her sleeves. Her gaze lingered on Meri, measuring without judgment. “Still not falling apart?”

Meri let out a breath. Not quite a laugh, but something near it. “Not yet.”

“Well then.” Gertrude pushed a bundle of wintergreen toward her. “There’s balm to be made, and nettles to steep. No better cure for ghosts than a little labor.”

Meri took the bundle and sat, her fingers already working through the stems. She didn’t dare brave the cold. Not now. Not yet.

Outside, snow blanketed the world—soft and remorseless. It had fallen all night, and now deeper still. Drifts curled over the fenceposts. The trees stooped under white cloaks, their limbs sagging with the weight of silence. Somewhere out there, the farm would be half-swallowed, chicken coops hunched like sleeping beasts, the well-bucket stiff in its rope cradle. Wind whispered at the eaves, not fierce anymore but constant, insistent.

Inside, warmth held the room in a low, steady hush. The hearth cracked softly. Steam rose from a clay pot. The air was thick with nettle and smoke, and the green lift of rosemary. Beneath it all was the faint, sweet ghost of dried apples warming in a bowl near the fire.

The morning passed like pressed linen—creased, quiet, tucked in corners. Meri and Gertrude worked side by side at the long wooden table, their movements slow and practiced. The mortar rasped in its familiar rhythm, the dry grind of root and bark against stone. Leaves curled in small, obedient piles across the scarred surface.

No one said much. It suited Meri.

Every so often, a draft slipped through the shutters and stirred the scent in the room into something like memory. Beneath her skin, something ancient turned over and waited—but it did not speak. For now, her fingers worked. And she was not alone.

Then, without warning, the door crashed open—loud as a thunderclap buried in snow.

“Elida,” Gertrude said, without looking up from her mortar, voice dry as fennel seed. “Try not to tear it off the hinges this time.”

“I didn’t!” came the reply—young, breathless, and far too bright for the hush that clung to the cottage walls. “The latch caught!”

Elida swept in like a summer squall—boots dripping, cheeks stung pink by wind, hair full of melting snow and sunlight. She paused just past the threshold, scanning the room. Her eyes landed on Meri and locked there.

“You stayed out all night,” she said, she said at last, lower now, fierce despite the catch in her breath. “Mam nearly paced a hole in the floor with worry.”

Meri didn’t answer. Her fingers kept working the stems in her lap—parsley, or what was left of it—but her jaw set just a little tighter. Of course Mam had worried.

“Mind your feet, child,” Gertrude warned, still grinding. “These herbs didn’t grow themselves, and I’d rather not see them trampled under your boots.”

“Sorry, Mistress Gertrude,” Elida replied automatically, but her gaze barely flicked away. She stepped over the drying rack with exaggerated care, then dropped into the stool beside Meri, shedding urgency like a cloak.

“Mam said we should stay here and help till the afternoon,” she breathed, softer this time. Her voice had the nerve to sound relieved. “You look awful.” A beat passed. “But you’re not dead, so I win the bet.”

Meri shot her a look. “Was there actually a bet?”

Elida grinned, unrepentant. “Not one I planned to lose.”

Gertrude’s eyes flicked up at last, sharp as kindling under snow. “Shush, girl. Or take your muttering outside and let the trees carry it off. Either way, you’re stirring up dust.”

Elida sighed with great and deliberate suffering, flopping back against her stool like a felled sapling. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

Meri said nothing. She didn’t trust her voice to come out anything but cracked. Her fingers were shaking again—just faintly, just enough for the parsley to tremble as if it, too, had something it wanted to say. She shoved her hands deeper into the pile and tried to focus on the texture: crumbling leaves, soft stems, the way the scent clung green and sharp beneath her nails.

Elida’s elbow thunked onto the table. Her fingers immediately strayed toward the nearest heap of leaves, flicking and poking like a child testing pond ice.

“So,” she said brightly, drawing out the word like it might pull some mystery into the open, “what are we doing?”

“We,” Gertrude said coolly, “are listening to what the plants have to say—if your chatter doesn’t drown them out first.”

Elida blinked, solemn. “Oh. That’s easy.” She paused, lips pursed, as if listening to something beyond the room. She tilted her head and whisper, “Do you hear that?”

Meri lifted her eyes.

Elida’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial hush. “The plants. They’re whispering.”

Gertrude, without turning, said, “They’re saying ‘be quiet, girl.’”

Elida snorted. “Rude little weeds.”

“Reflective,” Meri murmured, then quickly ducked her head as Elida gasped in mock betrayal.

“You wound me.”

“You recovered.”

Elida grinned and nudged Meri’s knee again under the table, this time more deliberate. “You’re getting good at that,” she said.

“At what?”

“Being mean in a nice way. It’s a rare skill. Gertrude’s proud, aren’t you, Mistress?”

Gertrude only grunted and set another jar on the shelf with a thud.

Elida’s grin widened. “That’s a yes.” She plucked a curled sage leaf from the pile, turning it delicately between her fingers. She held it up to the windowlight, eyes narrowed in exaggerated study. “This one,” she said, solemn as a priestess, “looks like a dragon’s ear. See the little ripples? Maybe if I eat it-” She leaned closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll breathe fire.”

She glanced at Meri, quick and almost uncertain, as if to measure the spark.

Meri let out a breath she hadn’t meant to—thin, shaky, not quite a laugh. She fought the twitch at the corner of her mouth and muttered, “You’re more likely to sneeze for an hour straight.”

Gertrude didn’t respond with words—only passed over a shallow basket of stalks and a twist of twine, her movements precise. “Tie these into fives. Neat as you can manage. And no chewing.”

Elida took the bundle with a solemn nod that fooled no one. She immediately tied one crooked bunch, frowned, dropped it, and began again with theatrical care. “I don’t see why anyone’d chew them anyway,” she muttered but the twitch at the corner of her mouth betrayed her delight.

The silence that followed wasn’t the same as before. It wasn’t broken—but reshaped. Thinned and rippled with Elida’s fidgeting, the occasional squeak of twine pulled too tight, the scrape of her boot against the table leg, the soft huff of breath as she read unfamiliar herb names carved into cloudy jars. She didn’t hum, exactly—but the quiet seemed to pulse with her presence, like wind pressing gently against a tent flap.

And then Elida sneezed—once, violently.

“Ha!” she sniffled, blinking. “Told you. Dragon’s breath.”

Gertrude’s grinding slowed, just for a beat. “Child,” she said, with the great weariness of someone who had lived through many children, “if you go into spasms, I’m not wasting my poppy on you.”

“So you’ve said before,” Elida said grandly, and promptly tied two stalks into a perfect bow, then leaned across the table to inspect Meri’s pile. “Yours are too neat,” she said. “They look like something the elves would sell in pretty little gold pouches.”

Meri gave her a look.

“What?” Elida grinned. “It’s a compliment. You can be... very elf-ish.”

“Go chew a thistle.”

“Sounds like me missed me last night,” Elida whispered, and promptly tried to balance three stalks on her upper lip like a mustache.

Meri batted them away. “Gertrude will skin you.”

Gertrude didn’t even look up. “Let her play, if it stops her from tasting things.”

Elida beamed. “See, Mimi, Mistress Gertrude loves when I visit.”

“No, child, I love quiet,” Gertrude muttered.

But she didn’t send her away.

And the day went on like that—leaves crackling under fingers, wind brushing through the shutters, the soft clatter of glass jars and twine. And laughter. Small, stifled, just under the breath. The kind that surprised Meri when it rose from her chest like something she hadn’t quite meant to feel.

Elida’s presence left fingerprints on everything—on the bundles, the floor, the rhythm of the day. But when she finally quieted, legs tucked beneath her, hands busy and mouth full of questions that never made it out loud, she stayed close enough for Meri to feel her warmth. To let it soften the silence.

And for once, Meri didn’t mind the mess.

Outside, the light shifted. The warmth of morning slanted into something quieter—sun pale and angled through the high windows, picking out dust motes and glinting off the copper scales of a hanging sieve. The air had thickened with crushed leaves, the fragrance of green things yielding their secrets. Meri tied the last of the dried comfrey into a neat bundle, brushed the stems into place with her thumb. Her fingers were stained dark at the tips.

Across the table, Elida had produced a stub of charcoal from her pocket and was now quietly sketching a face on the side of a gourd. The gourd looked deeply unimpressed.

Meri glanced at the gourd between them—now boasting a lopsided charcoal smile and two uneven eyes. “You’re meant to be tying, not drawing,” Meri said, though her tone held no real bite. She didn’t look away from her work, but a twitch at the corner of her mouth betrayed her.

“I was tying,” Elida said breezily, feigning innocence with wide eyes. “Then this fellow looked me dead in the eye and demanded a portrait.”

Meri didn’t answer. She just gave her sister a long, quiet look from under her lashes—equal parts weary and fond, like someone watching a squirrel try to steal grain from a sealed jar. She exhaled through her nose and resumed sorting roots. The word hung in the air unanswered, but her silence was anything but cold.

From the hearth, Gertrude let out a sigh that could’ve wilted a full-grown cabbage. She stood stiffly, one hand braced on her lower back, and stretched with a series of ancient creaks and pops. “If either of you puts so much as a scratch on that gourd, I’ll have you scraping the privy pit down to the roots of the world.”

Gertrude only waved a hand, already shuffling toward the hearth. She lifted the kettle with both hands, her boney arms moving with practiced ease, and poured water into a clay basin to steep the bundles they'd finished. The scent that rose was sharper now—heat waking up the oils and bitter roots, turning the air thick with green.

It made Meri’s head feel oddly clear or maybe just tired.

Elida, meanwhile, had begun stacking her bundles in a careless little spiral, looping them in uneven rings like a flower crown. One slipped and fell apart and she let it, simply watching the twine unravel as though it were performing just for her.

“You’re making more mess than medicine,” Meri said, but she didn’t stop her.

“I’m making both,” Elida replied. “Balance.”

Meri shook her head, and before she could stop herself, the faintest smile curved at the corner of her mouth—small, fleeting, but real. She reached for the basket in Elida’s lap, intending to reclaim it without a word.

Elida clutched it dramatically to her chest as though guarding a sacred relic. “No! My crown!”

“You’re not a forest sprite,” Meri muttered, gently tugging anyway. “You don’t need a crown.”

“I am a forest sprite,” Elida declared with great dignity. “I have mud in my ears and moss in my soul.”

From across the room, Gertrude snorted without looking up. “You’ve got nettles in your brain, more like.”

“Same difference,” Elida chirped, undeterred.

She wriggled a hand into the basket and plucked out one of the bundled herbs, then held it up beneath Meri’s nose like a posy, eyes wide with mock seriousness.

“For you, milady,” she intoned in the worst imitation of gallantry Meri had ever heard. “May it guard you from plague, heartbreak, and Mistress Gertrude’s flying ladle.”

Meri blinked at the offering. “That’s mugwort.”

“Exactly.” Elida’s voice dropped to a dramatic hush. “A weed with dreams. Like me.”

Meri took the little bundle, slow and deliberate, and set it gently down with the others—not tossed, not ignored, but placed with care. Elida beamed at her as if she’d won a prize.

The light settled a little more. Shadows settled long across the table, catching in the curled herbs and glass jars like old lace. Outside, a sparrow scolded something with quick, sharp chirps, and the wind rose against the shutters with a soft rattle.

Meri exhaled.

The hush that followed was rich and slow and worn soft by use—the kind that needed no apology. Meri let it settle around her shoulders like a shawl, not quite warmth, not quite stillness, but something near enough to both. Her fingers ached faintly from twisting twine; her back would protest when she stood. But for now, the ache was good. Honest.

Outside, the sparrow had gone quiet. Wind threaded through the shutters again, gentler this time, and a thin shaft of evening light landed squarely on Elida’s cheek. She didn’t blink. Just kept tying.

The sun slipped lower, turning the room bronze, and for a little while, they worked without words. Just the rustle of leaves and the breath between jokes, the steady press of time around them.

Elida leaned her shoulder into Meri’s—not jostling, not teasing. Just there. A quiet gravity. And Meri let it happen. Let the closeness stay. Let her fingers fall still for a breath too long, just to listen to the rhythm of it: her sister beside her, alive and loud and strangely gentle, all at once.

The world narrowed to this: herbs on the table, light in the window, warmth against her arm. For a moment, no one said anything. Even Elida had gone quiet, tracing lines in the dust with the tip of a stalk. Her foot tapped idly against Meri’s under the bench—not quite fidgeting. Just... there. A pulse of presence. A reminder.

Elida had fallen quiet. Not completely—never that—but lulled into a hush that only came when her hands were busy and the air was soft. She was still tying bundles, slower now, her rhythm erratic but dogged. Every so often she glanced sideways, as if to make sure Meri was still beside her. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

The work drew on, and with it the light changed—turning gold through the open shutters, threading itself through the bundles of dried mint and marigold. Gertrude moved like clockwork, tending the stove, sorting glass jars, her presence a constant, solid shape behind them. At some point, she set down a shallow bowl of honeyed roots and said nothing when Elida snuck two, then three. Meri said nothing either.

Instead, she looked at the crooked little bundle in her hand—twine lopsided, stems poking out at odd angles, leaves slightly bruised from Elida’s overenthusiastic handling. It was nothing like the others, which lay in neat, uniform rows in front of her: tight, orderly, wound just so with smooth cord and practiced fingers. Still, she didn’t toss it aside. She turned it slowly in her fingers, studying its small, stubborn shape. Then, with a kind of quiet reverence, she leaned forward and nestled it into the pile. Not tucked at the back or hidden beneath the better bundles, but right there among them—as if it belonged by its own merit. It looked strange beside the others, a little wild, a little wrong. But it stayed. And somehow, that felt right.

Meri let her hands rest for a moment, fingers dusted green. Through the open window came the breath of the world outside—scented with drying hay and chimney smoke, and beneath it all, the hush of wind in the far trees.

The wind whispered secrets. Not the sharp, haunted kind it carried on the edge of the night, but softer now. Content to wait. A breath of sky slipping through leaves and lintels, curling around the edges of the room like a story looking for a place to land. It brushed her cheek and stirred a lock of Elida’s hair. She didn’t flinch.

Meri turned her face toward it and listened—not straining, not chasing. Still.

It did not call her name. It didn’t need to.

Because this, too, was its own language: the rattle of jars, the rustle of twine, the smothered laughter of a sister. The stories weren’t always old or ancient or aching. Some of them were here. Some of them were new.

And Meri, hands still and heart oddly full, let herself believe—for a breath, for a moment—that maybe the wind had been speaking to her all along.

Chapter Text

Gertrude knelt at the edge of the frost-cracked bed, wrapped in her old wool cloak whose hem had long since taken on the burrs and bramble of this garden. The movements of her body were slow, shaped by years and weather, but her hands moved with the same quiet assurance they always had—earth-stained, unhurried, answering to a rhythm older than speech. She dug the trowel into the soil with small, steady motions, pausing now and then to break the clods with her fingers, her breath a pale cloud in the morning air.

Meri crouched nearby, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, sleeves pulled down over her wrists. She did not speak, nor shift, but watched with a quiet, hollow attentiveness that was more presence than participation. The earth between them was hard with winter, black and brittle beneath its thin skin of frost, and when Gertrude turned the soil, the smell of it rose—damp, cold, laced with something older than rot. It lingered in Meri’s chest like a half-remembered voice.

For a while there was only the sound of the trowel scraping against stone, and the low murmur of wind brushing through the leafless hedge beyond the garden wall. Then, softly, without looking up, Gertrude spoke—her voice low and rough-edged, as though it, too, had come up from the ground.

“They say these were once women,” she murmured, and her fingers brushed aside the pale, skeletal stalks of yarrow that clung to the base of the wall. “Sisters. Born of frost and summer’s dying breath. Not girls, exactly—something older. Wilder.”

The wind stirred, lifting the ends of Meri’s braid and drawing a loose strand across her cheek. She did not move to brush it away. Her gaze settled on the yarrow, pale and dry, its seedheads like brittle crowns against the grey stone. The story was unfamiliar, but something in her braced.

“Virel, they called the first,” Gertrude continued, lifting a stalk gently between two fingers. “She walked barefoot into battle. Her feet bled, but she didn’t stop. They say where her blood fell, this sprang up.”

She laid the yarrow on her palm—thin, dry, aromatic—and held it for a moment as if remembering something she hadn’t said aloud in years.

“Stops the bleeding,” she said. “Carries courage in its bones.”

The scent of it drifted toward Meri: bitter, medicinal, with a sharpness that caught at the back of her throat. She swallowed once, but didn’t look away. Her arms tightened slightly around her knees.

“They burned her,” Gertrude said after a pause, quieter now. “Said she was too fierce. But the land remembered.”

Beyond the garden, crows moved over the stubbled field in wide, slow arcs. One called out—a rough cry that seemed to hang in the cold air before fading again into silence.

Gertrude turned, and her footsteps whispered over the stone path as she crossed to a tangle of silver-backed leaves nestled in the cracks between the flagstones. She crouched again, slower this time, and reached for a low-growing plant whose leaves shimmered with a ghostly sheen.

“Sylwen was the second,” she said, as if the story had always been there, just waiting to be uncovered. “Quiet as dusk. Spoke with shadows. Saw things others didn’t want to.”

She broke off a sprig of the plant—mugwort, with its soft underside and sharp, herbal tang—and lifted it to the light.

“Frightened people, even when they needed her,” she went on. “They left gifts at their doorsteps—bread, salt, ribbons—but wouldn’t meet her eyes. She vanished one morning. No one saw her go.”

She straightened again, holding the sprig between her fingers like a small offering.

“In her place, this. Dreamer’s herb. Keeps the dead from waking you. Helps you see through fog.”

Her glance flicked sideways toward Meri, who had leaned in slightly, her eyes fixed on the plant. Meri’s hand moved without thinking, her fingers brushing the leaf’s soft underside in a tentative, almost involuntary gesture—there, then gone.

Gertrude said nothing.

“Good for those with things inside they don’t know how to name,” she added softly.

Meri didn’t answer. Her hand had returned to her lap, folded in on itself again, the movement small and silent, but not empty. She remained there, crouched in the cold, still watching.

The last plant grew low and tangled near the fence line, its branches twisted and dark with stubborn white blossoms still clinging to the thorns. Gertrude bent low again, wincing slightly as her knees creaked, and reached carefully into the bramble. A thorn caught her thumb, and a bead of blood welled up, which she wiped away with the back of her sleeve.

“The third was Aurelle,” she said, her voice tinged now with something that might have been sorrow, or affection worn thin by time. “Youngest. Ember-blooded. Bloomed late. Died last.”

She lifted a thorned branch with care and held it up. Hawthorn—pale blossoms, small and brave against the wind.

“Folk called her sweet, once they’d earned it. She held the line when others faltered.”

Gertrude looked down at the sprig in her hands.

“Blooms when the rest are sleeping. Guards the heart. Heals what can’t be spoken.”

Meri stared at the blossoms, her breath shallow. They reminded her of something—someone—though she couldn’t name what.

“They say the sisters were cursed,” Gertrude said, her voice barely above the wind. “Or maybe they chose it. Gave themselves to leaf and root. Now they live in the ones who need them. In herbs and earth. In stories whispered to girls who don’t yet know their names.”

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then Gertrude turned, her arms full of cuttings and dirt, and made her way toward the garden shed, leaving Meri alone in the stillness.

Meri remained crouched where she was, the cold beginning to seep into her knees, but she didn’t rise. Instead, she lowered her hand again, slowly, and laid her palm flat against the turned soil. The surface was cold, but it gave slightly under the pressure of her fingers. She pressed deeper, until the tips of her fingers disappeared into the earth. Her eyes and let her breath slow, not seeking words, not even comfort—only that quiet pulse beneath the surface, that old remembering, steady and deep as winter sleep.

…

The house was dim, lit only by the hearth’s low glow and a single oil lamp near the table, its flame flickering in a draft from the eaves. Smoke from the cookfire curled upward in slow spirals, gathering in the corners like old ghosts. The room smelled of broth, damp wool, and elder wood—scents worn into the very bones of the house, like names no longer spoken aloud but never forgotten.

Meri slipped inside and closed the door with care, the latch catching with a soft click. Her fingers lingered a moment longer, pressed flat to the wood. The wind had followed her in—it whispered across the floor like breath across bare skin, stirred a corner of the rug, then died. Cold clung to her boots and sleeves, and a thin frost steamed faintly off her shoulders as the warmth of the hearth gathered around her in slow, uncertain folds.

No one looked up.

Selena stood by the fire, stirring something thick and dark in the pot. Her posture bore the fatigue of long years, the quiet curve of a woman accustomed to holding weight—without shift, without fuss. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, arms flecked with flour and ash. Her mouth was drawn not in anger, but in the habitual tension of those who carry too much for too long. The spoon moved in slow, unbroken circles, like a lullaby hummed to herself alone.

At the table, Roran sat sharpening a small hunting knife. A whetstone cradled in his hand, each stroke steady, deliberate. The blade whispered its edge back to life, catching threads of firelight, then vanishing again into hush.

In the corner by the wall, Conan sat cross-legged, a handful of carved wooden figures lined before him. Little men, some horses. He muttered to them under his breath—ritual words half-formed, half-forgotten—then swept his palm across the floor, knocking them over in a single motion. He paused, rebuilt. The horse always stood at the center. Always last to fall.

Iian lay beside him, curled like a cat against a folded blanket. One hand clutched a crust of bread, half-eaten, the other tucked beneath his chin. His lashes fluttered with the soft breath of near-sleep. A thread of drool glistened on his lip. The hearth’s glow moved gently across his ribs, rising and falling like waves against a far shore.

She bent and unlaced her boots, fingers stiff with cold. Each tug of the laces felt like pulling on threads too tightly wound.

The bundle in her hand was wrapped in dark cloth, soft at the edges where it had been held too long. Mugwort clung to it—sharp, bitter-sweet, mingled with the coppery trace of blood and the iron tang of old tools. She held it still, letting the warmth of it press into her palms. Her knuckles were scraped raw from the garden, the cold, the weight of it all. Still she didn’t set it down.

Behind her, Selena’s voice came soft, without turning. “You were long.”

“I stayed,” Meri answered. Her voice came out rough, as if scraped from stone. “She gave me this.”

She laid the bundle on the table, carefully. It landed with the gentlest thump, like a held breath made solid. Something final and unfinished in the sound.

Roran glanced over. His thumb paused at the blade’s edge. A quiet nod. Then back to the whetstone.

“You’ll brew it tonight?” Selena asked. Lower now. Not an order. A reckoning.

Meri nodded. “She said not too hot. It’ll turn bitter.”

A pause.

“She’s right.”

Garrow wasn’t in sight likely he was still out in the barn, or walking the fence again by lantern light. Finding things to mend that didn’t need mending. That was his way. The weight in the house wasn’t just winter. It hadn’t been, not for seasons. It hung in the air like dust too fine to sweep.

Meri lowered herself onto the bench, her shawl still drawn tight. She didn’t reach for the bread, though its warmth lay within arm’s length. Hunger had moved deep inside her now, like an animal gone to ground—silent, waiting. She watched Conan set up his soldiers again. This time a half-circle. Again, he knocked them over. Same order. Same end. The horse stood in the center. It fell last.

Iian had gone fully to sleep now, one heel tucked under his body, breath misting faintly at the edges.

Selena stirred the pot one last time, set the spoon aside, and turned. She wiped her hands on a linen cloth already damp from use. Her eyes found Meri’s across the room—tired, yes, but steady. Steady in that way that made it harder to meet them.

“You dream too much,” she said. No sharpness in it. Just truth, worn thin with time. “And try too hard to make sense of it.”

Meri looked down at her hands. Even by the fire, the cold lingered—not on her skin, but somewhere deeper, behind the ribs, where it curled and kept watch. Her hands were cracked, soil still under her nails, knuckles raw. She didn’t flinch from them.

“It’s not sense I want.”

Selena waited.

“What then?”

Meri’s throat tightened. “To know what’s mine.”

Selena crossed the floor. Her boots made no sound. She reached out and brushed Meri’s braid aside, the back of her hand trailing along her cheek. It wasn’t gentle, not in the storybook way but it was familiar. Bread-rough, wool-warm, shaped by work. Like wind through barley, like the way she used to carry baskets on her hip and hum songs with no words.

“You’ll know,” Selena murmured, “but not all at once.”

Roran rose, blade clean and bright in his grip.

“I’ll check the animals,” he said, voice low. Not weary but frayed, as if his thoughts had been walking ahead of him for some time and only just realized he hadn’t caught up.

The door opened. Cold spilled in, touched the hearth. Then it shut. The wind outside rose and fell like a tide on gravel. The beams creaked.

Another beat of silence.

Meri’s gaze fell to the bundle on the table. She thought of yarrow pushing through frostbitten soil. Of Gertrude’s dry voice, soft as tinder: Dreams’ve got teeth, same as wounds.

Selena didn’t return to the hearth. She lingered near the cupboard a moment longer, her hand resting lightly against the doorframe as if listening for something beyond sound. Then she moved—slow and sure—and crossed to the high shelf by the stove, one rarely touched.

When she returned, it was with a small bundle wrapped in plain cloth, bound with a single leather tie. She didn’t speak. Just set it down beside Meri’s cup.

Meri looked at it, but did not reach.

Selena’s voice came quiet, with the weight of something prepared long before this moment.
“He carved it before we left the ridge,” she said. “Said it should be yours, if ever you needed it.”

The fire popped. Somewhere in the rafters, a draft stirred the herbs strung from the beams.

“It isn’t a summons,” Selena added, watching the flicker of flame more than her daughter’s face. “Not a tether, either. Just a thread. One you can choose to pull.”

Meri didn’t answer. Her hands stayed wrapped around her shawl, her gaze still on the bread she wouldn’t touch. But something shifted—not in the room, but inside. A thread loosened, slow and soundless.

She hadn’t heard from Brom in months.

Not since he left—before the ground hardened, before the days grew thin with waiting. She hadn’t expected him to reach for her, not after everything. But some small part of her—the part that remembered the way he used to say her name like it meant shelter—had still felt the absence.

And now, looking at the bundle resting beside her, she knew she should have guessed.

Of course her mother had spoken with him. Of course she’d kept that thread alive, quiet and careful, folded beneath the rituals of soup pots and wool-drying. She had been reaching across the miles this whole time—just not for herself.

Once, before she was taken, they had used mirrors like this to speak with Brom in the elven lands. Her mother would hush the room, her fingers always steady on the rim, her voice low but certain. Meri had watched from the doorway, never allowed too close. And other times—quieter times—she and Elida had sat beside her, fingers brushing the bowl’s edge. She’d thought it was for protection. Maybe it was. But maybe it had always been something else, too—some quiet boundary between knowing and being known.

Now the mirror sat beside her. Her own.

Her fingers moved before she had decided. She reached and undid the leather tie, slow and careful.

The cloth fell back with a soft sound.

Inside lay a mirror—small and dark, its surface burnished smooth by careful hands. Not glass, but polished stone, river-born and rimmed in copper and iron. No runes marked it. No symbols. Just the clean, grounded weight of something made for use, not for show.

Its reflection was dim in the firelight. But it held stillness, a kind of listening. Like water before a storm.

She stared at it for a long moment, breath caught somewhere behind her ribs. Her hand hovered—then she touched the surface with her fingers, just once.

It was cold. Solid. Real.

Her throat tightened without warning.

She didn’t want it.

Or rather—she did, and hated that she did. That part of her still reached, still wanted to be seen. Still believed he might look back.

Her hand trembled as she rewrapped the mirror, folding the cloth along its edges the same way one might bind a wound. Her fingers were careful. Too careful. As though the mirror might bruise. Or she might.

Selena said nothing. She didn’t need to.

Meri pressed the bundle to her chest a moment, not for comfort, but to quiet the shaking in her hands. Then she tucked it into her satchel, between the thread spool and her small jar of wax salve—buried beneath things that asked nothing of her.

Not refusal. Not acceptance.

Just a thread, taken.

She stood, slowly. Her knees ached from sitting too long, or perhaps from the weight of stillness itself.

At the hearth, the kettle steamed faintly. She crossed to it and touched the rim of the earthen cup beside it—chipped, familiar, worn smooth by years. The movement felt like memory. Like rhythm.

She poured half a measure of water, the heat singing faintly as it met the metal. Steam ghosted upward, slow and coiling.

The herb bundle came to rest beside it. She unfolded it with reverence, as though opening something alive. The fabric peeled back to reveal a scatter of brittle stems: mugwort, yarrow, valerian. And something else—silvery-green, narrow-leaved, with a smell like crushed pine and cold sun.

She sifted through them gently with the tips of her fingers, then cupped a portion in her palm. The scent rose around her: bitter and earthy, tinged with the sweetness of memory and the ache of things not spoken.

Without ceremony, she tipped the mixture into the kettle. The herbs darkened instantly in the swirl of water, curling and blooming in the steam. She watched them for a moment, unmoving, until the scent filled the kitchen and the fire cracked its approval.

Meri stood still. Then, almost to herself:
“Come gently,” she whispered.

When she judged it ready—by feel, not by time—she reached for the cup again, poured slowly, and cradled the warmth between her hands. The heat soaked into her fingers, bone-deep.

Turning from the counter, she crossed the room in silence. Her eyes passed over a small drawing on the wall—one of Conan’s that hadn’t been cleaned. A smudge of chalk stars floated above a cluster of lopsided soldiers, barely visible in the dim light.

She paused. One finger brushed star’s corner, almost without thinking.

Then she went on, past the hearth, through the hush of the house, carrying the cup with her toward the back room she shared with Elida. The tea sloshed gently with each step, steam rising and vanishing into the cold. The back room was barely warmed by the fire’s reach. The small window on the far wall had fogged from within, rimmed in hoarfrost. The bed she shared with Elida was made, the woolen blankets pulled tight, her corner swept bare but for the stack of letters gathered near the baseboard. A crooked candle had long ago burned down to a nub beside them.

Meri knelt and pressed her hands to the hearthstone just beneath the wall. Cold radiated upward. She could feel the frost still caught beneath the floorboards.

The letters hadn’t moved. Not since she came back.

Some had yellowed at the edges. One still bore a smudge of soot. Another was wrapped in twine, half-unraveled. Eragon’s handwriting, unmistakable—slanted and careful, as though bracing each word against something he didn’t name.

She sat cross-legged before them and picked one up. The oldest, maybe. The paper was stiff with age, the seal cracked. Her thumb ran along the edge, just once. She turned it over. Held it to her knee. Tapped the corner.

She didn’t open it. Not this one. Not tonight. Instead, she laid it back atop the others—delicately, as if it might bruise.

Once, a letter from him had smelled faintly of green things. Spring ink, he’d called it. He’d written about a fox kit down by the creek—nothing of use.

Steam curled from the tea she’d brought with her. Bitter herbs and earthroot. She sipped slowly, letting it steep on her tongue. The warmth traveled down her throat like a thread pulled taut, then slowly loosened, as if something buried in her chest might follow.

A sound interrupted her wordless thoughts; bare feet against the cold boards, the whisper of linen brushing a doorframe. The hinges creaked, and Elida stepped in without pausing, without knocking, without caution. She never did. As if the space between them had never been broken. As if Meri might still be the same girl who would lift the blanket’s edge in welcome.

Elida crossed the room, her weight barely creaking the floor, and settled on the edge of Meri’s cot. Her braid had come loose at the ends, fine dark strands curling like down feathers at her neck. She smelled of nettle soap, sheep lanolin, and something quieter—ash, perhaps, or turned wool. The scent of winter’s work. Or waiting.

She didn’t speak at first. Just sat there, hands in her lap, shoulders drawn small, as though she’d hoped the silence might answer something Meri wouldn’t say aloud.

Then—fingers outstretched—she brushed the edge of the pile of letters. Her hand lingered, but she didn’t pick them up.

“You still haven’t?”

“No.”

Elida nodded once but she didn’t ask again.

Instead, she leaned back on her palms, eyes drifting upward to the ceiling where the frost had split the plaster into a spiderweb of white veins—delicate, branching, unhealed. Her voice came low, as if she were talking to the cracks.

“He doesn’t write like he used to. The letters are short. Just facts, sometimes. I keep reading the last one. Hoping something’s changed. That I missed a word. A hint.” Her breath caught, barely audible.

The words dropped, fragile and bare. Not angry. Not bitter. Just true.

Outside, the wind scraped along the eaves with a soft, toothless rasp. Beyond the window, a lantern bobbed through the dark—two figures crossing the yard. Pale light swayed between them, cupped in careful hands. Elida’s gaze followed it without thinking, as if drawn by an old tether. She watched the lantern drift past, far below the sill, detached and dreamlike, as though it belonged to strangers. It flickered once, then moved on.

In the hush that followed, Meri said nothing. She only held the mug between her palms, the tea long gone cool, the bitterness of yarrow lingering on her tongue. Inside her, the ache widened—slow and formless, like meltwater under ice. Quiet, but constant.

The faint sound of a latch clicking. Boots thudded across the threshold. Garrow’s voice came low, steady, the gravel of it softened by age and routine. Roran answered, his rhythm quicker, sharper. No quarrel—only the practiced syncopation of shared labor.

“You set the trap too high,” Roran was saying as they stepped into the kitchen.

“No,” came Garrow’s reply. “No, the tension’s wrong. The branch doesn’t snap clean—needs resetting.”

“You always say that.”

A soft grunt from Garrow—not quite agreement, not quite amusement.

Then the door shut behind them.

Elida stood. “I’ll warm the bread. He likes it fresh if he’s walked far,” she said, and she passed, her knee brushed against Meri’s—not hard, not soft.

Elida slipped out without another word, leaving Meri alone with the half-drunk cup and the pile of unopened letters watching from the floor like a second silence.

She picked one up again—another, this time. The seal intact. The edge of Eragon’s scrawl just visible where the paper curled. Her own name, written small.

It looked like him. Not in any true likeness—there was no portrait, no clear image—but in the slant of the writing, the uneven folds, the way the ink blotted slightly at the edges where he must have pressed too hard. That was him, always trying a little too much, too fast. She held the letter in both hands, thumbs brushing its crease, and breathed. In through her nose, out slow. The paper didn’t move. It was still warm from where her fingers had held it earlier, heat caught in the fold like a kept secret.

Then, after a long while, she set it down. Not with finality. Not with the weight of decision or any kind of closure. Just for now—like setting aside a cloak not yet dry, or a story unfinished but needing a pause. Her hands lingered against the table, fingertips tracing the wood grain like she might read something else there. She finished her tea in silence, each sip cooling against her tongue, her eyes not on the letter anymore, but on the space just past it. The part of the room where the light gathered softly. Where it was easier to think without thinking.

The earthen mug clicked softly as she set it down, empty now but warm where her fingers had held it. She stayed seated, spine curved, hands resting in her lap as if waiting for a sound or sign that wouldn’t come. Behind her, the hush of night pressed gently against the walls, held back by firelight and familiarity. But the hush lived inside her too, quieter still.

The letters rested fanned out like a scattering of ash. Not sorted. Not opened. Just left—as if the weight of them might shift something, if waited on long enough. Meri didn’t touch them. She didn’t move them away.

After a time, Elida returned with a plate and set it between them. she took a piece and didn’t eat the bread right away but rather held it in both hands, gaze flickering over the firelight as if the flames might shape her thoughts into something sayable. Her fingers tightened slightly on the crust—thumb brushing the rough seam where it had split in baking.

Then, softly, as though speaking to no one at all, Elida said, “He wrote once about the trees in Ellesméra. Not the ones shaped by spellwork or grown into houses—but the wild ones. Beyond the gardens, where no one went unless they were lost or looking for something.”

She paused, thumb smoothing over the crust again, slower this time.

“There was one, he said, so tall it bent with the stars. The bark was smooth as riverstone and pale—like bones left in snow. And sometimes… it creaked like it was breathing.”

Her voice was calm, almost dreamlike, but there was an edge beneath it—something not yet named. Not grief, exactly. Something thinner. Hungrier. Like the light that slips through branches before spring knows if it’s coming. And none her usual playfulness.

She turned the crust between her fingers again, then added, “He wrote it like a riddle. I remember the line: Some things grow tall because they are seen. Others grow tall because they are not.”

A breath escaped her—short, not quite a laugh. Just air.

“I copied it down. I didn’t understand it then. I thought maybe it was about one of the elf queens or something.”

Meri hadn’t moved. Her hands still curled around the mug, though the tea had long since gone cold. The steam had vanished, but she held it like warmth might return, if she gave it enough time. The way one might wait for a familiar footstep. Or the turning of a key.

“I think it was about you,” Elida said, quieter still. “Or maybe about what it means to leave. Or be left.”

She looked up finally. Her eyes weren’t wet, but something glinted there—something still and bright and unshed. Like starlight caught in thawing ice.

“I think he wrote to you more than he did to me after… after you were taken. Like maybe he thought you wouldn’t get them, but still had to try. Or maybe—” Her voice caught, just slightly. “Maybe he didn’t know how else to keep you close.”

The words didn’t press. They didn’t demand. They simply settled there, soft as dust on an open windowsill. Meant to be taken or left untouched.

Meri didn’t speak. But her fingers had loosened their grip on the mug. One hand drifted down, brushing the corner of the nearest envelope—its edge worn thin, a faint smudge marking the spot where someone’s thumb had pressed too hard, too long ago. Ink and salt, softened by time.

The silence stretched between them—not brittle now, but slow and porous. A thawing hush. Like bark warming under winter sun. Not healed. Not whole. But no longer sealed shut.

Elida took a bite of the bread, finally. She didn’t speak again.

Meri let her hand rest on the envelope. She didn’t open it but she didn’t let go, either.

Elida chewed slowly, eyes turned to the fire again, though her attention had drifted somewhere deeper. Into memory, perhaps. Or further off—into the shape of that wild tree bending toward stars, into the hush of spaces once filled by footsteps that would not return.

Meri’s thumb circled once over the paper’s edge. The silence was heavy, but not sharp. Like a stone held long enough to warm in the hand. She watched her sister in profile—the slope of her cheek catching the light, the strands of hair fallen loose from her braid, the familiar furrow between her brows that hadn’t eased in months.

Then, without looking up, Meri shifted.

Her hand, still resting on the envelope, reached out across the space between them and brushed Elida’s elbow. Not a grasp. Not even a press. Just a brief, unspoken contact. A murmur in the language of touch they had never forgotten.

Elida stilled. The crust paused halfway to her mouth. For a breath, she didn’t move—then she glanced sideways, uncertain, surprised. But she didn’t speak. Only swallowed, slowly, and let her arm lean onto Meri.

.

The house had gone still.

Not just quiet, but the kind of stillness that thickens when breath slows and rooms forget they were ever filled. The coals in the hearth had dimmed to a soft glow. One of the rafters creaked, long and low, as if settling deeper into its own bones. Somewhere near the door, the wind caught loose thatch and hummed through it like a low whistle.

Meri lay curled on her side, shawl drawn up to her chin, though she wasn’t cold.

Sleep hadn’t come. It wasn’t even close. Her body had long since gone slack with the appearance of rest, but her mind remained watchful—turning over things that refused to settle. The taste of the tea still lingered faintly on the back of her tongue. Bitter. Grounded. The kind of taste that reminded her she was still here.

Her hand drifted, without thinking, to her satchel where it lay tucked beneath her outer cloak, just within reach.

She didn’t open it. Just let her fingers rest on the softened leather. She could feel the shape of it inside—the mirror. Small. Dense. Quiet. Like a held breath.

The thought came unbidden.

I could call him.

Three words, plain as bread, and just as heavy.

Her thumb pressed lightly along the seam of the satchel. She pictured his face—not the sharp edges of memory, not the stone-set expression he wore the day they left—but the shadow of him. The way his voice used to soften when he asked her questions no one else noticed. The way he’d pause before answering, as if weighing each word before it crossed the air between them.

But what would I even say?

That was the part that snagged.

Would she ask him why he left? Why he stayed away so long it scraped? Would she accuse him of knowing how much she needed him and staying gone anyway? Or would she say nothing at all, just hold the mirror and wait for his voice to find her?

She didn’t know.

She only knew her fingers were trembling, just faintly, against the leather. Not from fear. Not quite. From something harder to name. Something like grief that hadn’t decided where to settle yet.

She pulled her hand back slowly and folded it beneath her cheek.

The mirror stayed tucked away, untouched.

But now she knew it was there. That changed things.

Not a summons. Not a tether.

Just a thread.

And threads could be pulled.

.

Morning broke not with light but with a breath—gray, dry-edged, wind-shivered. It combed the bare boughs with long fingers and carried a smell of stone and thaw. Meri rose before the rest. She did not wait for warmth or words. A crust of bread in her pocket, she stepped into the hush of frost and silence, her boots making little sound as they crossed the familiar ruts of the lane toward the low, earthen belly of Gertrude’s cottage.

The healer’s dwelling was as it had always been: half-swallowed by the hill, chimney bent like a question mark against the sky, the doorway strung with brittle herbs that knocked gently together in the wind—parsley, tansy, old marjoram. Inside, the air held its own weather—close and musky, steeped in soot and pine sap and the dull sweetness of dried lavender. Underneath it all, a lingering trace of the dream-tea she had sipped last night—bitter-root and chamomile, like the shadow of sleep cupped in the mouth.

“Shut that door, girl,” came Gertrude’s voice from the rear. “The heat’s not for the mountain birds.”

Meri closed it gently, careful not to let the latch clatter. Her fingers, reddened and raw from wind, worked slowly at her cloak. She left it beside the hearth, along with her gloves, and crossed to the table without speaking.

A mortar waited. Half-filled with wintergreen. Gertrude slid a bundle of licorice root across the worn surface without looking up from her ledger. The knife followed.

“No poultice today,” the healer muttered. “Just stock. Traders came in.”

The blade paused in Meri’s hand, just above the root.

“Now?” she asked softly.

“Earlier than most years,” Gertrude said. “Weather likely chased them north. Half the village is already sniffing round their wagons.”

Meri’s hands did not move.

She had slept, after a fashion. Not deeply. But the dreams had shifted. Less teeth, less flame. More a weightless, slow-drifting dark—like silt descending in cold water. No images remained. Only the shape of a hush, and something watching from its far edge. A breath without a body. The silence had settled beneath her ribs, still there even as she’d drawn on her boots.

And when she’d seen, in the dawn’s dull light, a blur of color between the trees—just past the willow bend—the feeling had stirred again. Not memory. Not yet. But a nudge, almost tender. A warning that didn’t come from fear, but from the tilt of something about to shift.

So it made sense, somehow, when Gertrude spoke. The Traders.

She hadn’t thought of them in a long while. Garrow had mentioned them, absently, over soup weeks back. An early thaw to the south, he’d said. But now they were here, and the dust of old years stirred in her mind.

In Ceunon, the Traders came often, wild as the wind they rode on—smelling of pitch and spice and oil. Their wagons were painted in colors too bright for the stone-gray town, and their songs rose over the rooftops like smoke. She remembered sitting once on Brom’s shoulders, small hands wrapped around his thumbs, watching as a woman tossed her a ribbon the color of sky—frayed, limp, soft from use. She’d kept it until nightfall, pressed in her fist like a tether to something not quite named.

Later, she and Elida had walked the row of tents together. Not to buy. Just to look. A woman with bells in her braid had shown them bone-handled tools. Meri had chosen one—plain, light, well-balanced. She gave it to Selena that night. Her mother had turned it once in her palm, nodded, and said only: “You’ve a good eye.”

But Traders, Morzan had once said, carried more than goods. They brought the kind of stories that slipped past locked doors. Names that knew how to twist. Maps that remembered paths meant to be forgotten. They smiled too much, watched too long.

“Don’t let the root dry,” Gertrude snapped, voice sharp as kindling.

Meri resumed slicing. The rhythm steadied her. Scrape. Press. Slice again. Outside the thick glass, the world shifted—light bent on lacquered wood, red cloth caught on the wind. The wagons were there, just beyond the rise. The scent of pitch bloomed behind her eyes like a memory too old to place.

Without warning the door banged open, and the wind swept in like a living thing.

“Mimi!”

Elida hurried through the threshold, half-tangled in her scarf, her breath fogging the air in short, excited bursts. She slammed the door shut with her boot and shook snow from her shoulders in sharp, flurried movements, curls loosening around her flushed face.

Gertrude sighed. “What’d I say about the birds.”

But Elida only grinned and gave a delighted spin that nearly knocked over the drying rack. Her arms fanned outward as though she might take flight. “They’re here! The green wagon with the sunburst wheels. I saw it. And a woman with bells in her sleeves. Come see.”

Meri’s knife didn’t pause. “I’m working.”

“You’re always working.” Elida leaned across the table, craning her neck, sniffing toward the mortar. “Is that licorice? Can I eat it?”

“No.”

Elida drew back with a dramatic sigh and flopped onto the stool beside the hearth, letting her boots thump dully against the stone. She slumped low, knees spread, chin tipped back, as if boredom had physically overtaken her.

The motion was too large for the space, too loud. It tugged at something in Meri—some thread once tied tight between them. The way Elida filled a room had once brought comfort. Now it brought only the faint ache of distance. The awareness of how much could change in silence.

“They’ve got rugs this year,” Elida said, nudging her heel against the table leg in soft, rhythmic knocks. “And glass beads. I saw Roran talking to one of the loom girls—looked like she was laughing at him.”

“Mm.”

“And Calder was juggling apples again. Poorly. Horst caught one before it shattered Sloan’s window.”

Meri’s mouth twitched. Barely.

Elida shifted forward, her voice dropping, a fragile newness creeping in. “Will you come?”

Meri glanced at Gertrude. The old woman didn’t look up, hunched as she was over a bowl of crushed herbs, but her voice came anyway—low and dry, like a breeze through seed husks. “Bring back tin. Two spools. Thin gauge. And don’t barter with that green-scarf liar. He’ll sell you threadweight dreams and swear it’s gold.” Her words held the same bone-deep certainty as always, as though she’d already seen the exchange unfold and disapproved of it thoroughly.

Elida straightened at once, boots thudding to the floor with a decisive knock. Her hands smacked once against her thighs in mock formality, and she offered a quick, soldier-stiff nod that didn’t quite hide her grin.

“Yes, Mistress,” she said, the title half-reverent, half-daring, her eyes bright with the pleasure of being given a task she could rise to. There was something earnest in it too, a flicker of the child who used to race to gather herbs before Meri could even name them.

Meri rose more slowly, the wood beneath her creaking in quiet sympathy with her knees. She brushed her palms along the edge of her sleeve, working sap from her skin in patient circles. It clung stubbornly, its scent earthy and sharp-sweet—resin and green bark, something still half-alive. It lingered in the lines of her fingers, grounding her. The kind of smell that settled into clothes and stayed for days, long after the work was done.

…

They wandered again, though even the word felt too purposeful. It was more a drift—loose-threaded, unspoken—through the morning’s soft press of footsteps and scent and voices half-raised. Around them, Carvahall stirred in its old, steady way: Roran’s laugh flared like flint by the well, Birgit lifted her daughter with a strength worn into her arms, and Gertrude stood by a table of dried herbs as if weighing something beyond the bundles before her. Meri dipped her head slightly in greeting, but the older woman had already turned, her stillness folding back into the market like smoke into dusk.

“They’re staring again,” Elida murmured, her voice pitched low and tight as a wire drawn thin.

Meri’s gaze lifted—slow, deliberate. At the far edge of the square, a cluster of boys loitered near the shadowed side of the cooper’s shed. Dust streaked their tunics, and one clutched a slat of broken kindling like a sword. Their faces shimmered with that half-familiar blur, like berries seen underwater—once known, now uncertain. One boy elbowed another, lips parting for a laugh that never quite made it. The tallest among them held her in his look a moment too long. Not mocking. Not hostile. Just watchful, in the way someone might study a shape they couldn’t name.

“They’re probably not,” Meri said, though she could feel the lie in her throat like a stone pressed flat. “You’re just bright today.”

“That’s not what they’re staring at,” Elida replied, her words soft but unwavering.

Meri looked down at herself. There was nothing remarkable to see—gray cloak fastened at the throat, thumb-worn mitts, a hem still damp and mottled from the last rain. Yet the feeling clung to her, unshakable. That prickle of air bending oddly around her shape. That hush that didn't belong to weather. Something followed her—not seen, not named—but real enough to shift the way people stood.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said after a moment, not quite looking at Elida. “If you want to walk with them.”

Elida turned fully, her gaze steady and unsoftened. Her face carried a tiredness Meri hadn’t noticed before, something brittle around the mouth, a hollowness behind the eyes like a candle burned low. “Do you think I’d leave you here?” she asked, not accusatory, not even sharp—just quietly stripped of patience.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You always mean it like that.” The words weren’t cruel, just worn—threadbare with repetition, like something patched too many times to pretend it hadn’t been torn.

Meri’s reply caught in her throat, and didn’t come. A slow ache unfurled across her ribs, quiet and familiar. She didn’t know how to explain the thing inside her that reached for distance, even when it wanted closeness. And she couldn’t recall what she had meant, not really. Not by the time it was said.

Across the square, a voice rose—clear and rhythmic, the singsong cadence of a trader’s call. It lilted through the air like a woven ribbon, catching on laughter and the shuffle of feet, tugging the young and curious toward it with the soft lure of marvels and half-truths. Somewhere nearby, a bell chimed—a hollow, beckoning sound.

Elida’s hand brushed against hers then, not held, not claimed—just a glancing touch, featherlight. “Do you want to go see?” she asked, already turning toward the sound. Her voice had shifted, touched with a kind of restless interest, the faint lift in it like something rising just before a smile.

Meri didn’t answer right away. She watched the crowd instead—how bodies rearranged themselves, how breath seemed to catch and hover. It was like watching water swirl before it drained. She nodded, once, and let herself be led.

The storyteller stood atop a green-painted wagon whose corners had worn down to raw wood, smoothed by years and weather. A carved staff rested in one hand, the other held the square’s full attention with the light ease of long practice. His voice was a wide, warm thing—curved like a ladle, deep like dusk. It settled over the gathered hush like a net, catching even the restless ones.

“…and when the dragon came down from the Iron Spine, the sky turned red—not from flame, no, but from the thousand cloaks of those who fled.”

Meri didn’t believe him, but belief wasn’t the point. She stood still and let the rhythm of his voice thread beneath her ribs, where breath sat shallower these days. There was something old in his cadence, something shaped to cradle silence. She listened. Not to be stirred. Just to be held in the sound for a moment.

Elida pressed in beside her, shoulder to shoulder, her coat brushing Meri’s sleeve. She wasn’t tall enough to see clearly through the grown crowd, so she rocked forward on her heels. Her eyes were bright, tracing the wagon wheels, the painted stars, the glint of trinkets hung like charms from the frame.

“He makes it sound beautiful,” she said softly, not looking at Meri but into the middle distance, as if the story shimmered there.

“It wasn’t,” Meri murmured.

“I know.” Elida didn’t move away.

A gust pulled at the high banners, one snapping sharply like cloth wrung out and left to dry. Below it, a girl lost grip on her loaf of bread, and a dog seized the string and bolted through the legs of the crowd, trailing delight and crumbs. Off to the side, someone dropped a ladle, and the clatter rang out like a bell. A baby gave a single sharp wail, then quieted again. And still the story wound on, and still the square breathed around it.

Then Elida’s hand darted down, quick as a child at harvest, plucking something from the trampled ground near the wagon’s wheel. “Look,” she whispered, lifting her palm.

In it sat two star-shaped buttons, one missing a point, the other dulled at the edges, soft with wear. She turned them in her fingers, eyes alight. “You used to love stars. You told me once they were the only thing no one could catch.”

Meri blinked. The words startled her—not in volume, but in shape, like a chord struck softly but off-key.

“I did?”

“You did. You made me swear not to chase them. Just to watch.” Elida’s voice caught on something then—nothing sharp, just the gentle thread of old memory. “I kept the promise, you know. Even when they looked close.”

Meri didn’t answer, but her lips parted. Her gaze rested on the buttons, on the way Elida’s fingers curled around them like something warm. She remembered stars, dimly. Not from above—but from patterns stitched into cloth, from maps drawn in chalk across the barn wall. And she remembered hands, smaller once, drawing them again beside hers.

Elida didn’t push further. She just slipped one button into her pocket and held the other out. “You can keep it,” she said, casual as rain. “If you want.”

Meri didn’t reach for it. She wasn’t sure her hand could reach out without trembling. Not then.  Even so something passed between them—quiet as breath, easy to miss if you weren’t listening. A small warmth beneath the ribs. A pause that didn’t need filling.

…

As midday neared, the crowd unraveled in slow threads, drawn by hunger and routine. The smell of smoked fish curled around roasted squash, sharp and sweet. Elida had already wandered ahead, drawn by a shimmer of hand mirrors—glass catching sun like cold stars.

A wind curled down from the rooftops, lifting a corner of the wagon’s canvas so it flapped, hollow-throated. Dust spun in the slats beneath the storyteller’s feet, caught for a heartbeat in the shaft of light that leaned across the square. Meri’s eyes stayed there, on that place—the edge where fabric lifted, where shadow met sun, where the story was beginning to fray. She stood in it for a while. Not in memory, not quite—but somewhere just outside it. A quieter room inside herself, where silence wasn’t something to be broken, only held.

Meri followed at her own pace. Past shawls dyed with crushed berries, past braids of dried herbs and tools hung like charms, past goat bells that moved but didn’t chime. Her hand found the rim of a basket—willow-woven, sun-warmed, familiar in a way nothing else was today. She paused there, not for what it held, but for the space between things. The hush in it. The stillness no one had to explain.

Meri followed at her own pace. Past shawls and ribbons trembling faintly in the wind, past tools hung like charms and goat bells that didn’t chime. Her fingers brushed the lip of a basket—willow-woven, sun-warmed, familiar in a way nothing else was today. She paused there, not for what it held, but for the space between things. The hush in it. The stillness no one had to explain.

At first, it barely registered—a cloth-covered table pressed into the shade behind a cart of hinges and pewter clasps, half-swallowed by the afternoon drift. Nothing called attention to it. No bright ribbons, no beckoning hands. Only a quiet sort of patience, as if it had always been there, waiting.

Meri slowed.

The table’s contents were modest: a scatter of hairpins, a tin tray of dulled brooches, skeins of thread curled like faded lichen. But near the corner, resting in a velvet-lined hollow dark as creek bed silt, lay a comb.

The comb lay nestled in a fold of linen, not buried in a heap, not nestled among trinkets. It had been placed, lone and parallel to the table’s edge, the way one might set a knife before carving. Yet it held her gaze as if it had spoken. Pale—not the creamy softness of ivory or the luminous sheen of shell, but the bleached, matte quiet of antler, worn smooth by years of unseen hands. One edge was carved with delicate, fine-set teeth, the other broader, shaped to fit the palm or glide along the curve of a skull. Its form was unassuming, almost humble, but there was intention in its craft—the soft arc seemed made to follow the nape of a bowed head, as though it had once known the shape of silence.

She bent, drawn not by impulse but by some deeper tether, and only then did she see the mark—an etching so fine she might have missed it had the light not struck at just the right slant. A lily, petaled and open, etched with a precision that wasn’t ornate but reverent. It bloomed from the base of the comb, circled by lines that might have been fire, or light, or simply the memory of both. There was no gold, no inlay, nothing to catch a trader’s eye. And yet, she knew it. Not the object itself, but the feel of it—its quietness, its refusal to speak louder than it needed. It belonged to a life not lived but remembered.

Her breath did not falter, but something in her body did. Her feet stilled on the dirt-packed path, the weight of her shoulders narrowed inward, a drawing-down that happened without thought. Around her, the low rustle of boots on grit and the sharp flutter of children’s laughter blurred and dulled, muffled as if by a thick cloth pulled over the day. Even the wind seemed to hush, brushing past her with a softened edge, as though it, too, had seen.

She couldn’t move.

The vendor looked up—a woman with worn sleeves and a face drawn into tired kindness, not unkind. “Got it from the coast, I did,” she said, mistaking Meri’s gaze. “Takes polish like rain off slate. You can hold it, if you'd like.”

Meri didn’t speak at first. When she did, her voice felt far away, as though filtered through snow. “How much?”

She didn’t want it. That wasn’t the word. But leaving it behind felt like turning her back to something not quite asleep.

The woman paused. For a heartbeat, her face emptied, like a mirror gone still. “For you…” Her hands returned to a spool of thread. “Just take it.”

Even now, her lungs hesitated around it. The comb did not bite, but her breath still recoiled from memory’s edge. She took a slow breath and reached her hand out for it. The comb settled into Meri’s palm with the hush of something long expected, as though it had simply returned to where it had always belonged.

 The weight of it was slight, yet it pressed into her skin with a quiet insistence, as if it carried more than shape—something remembered, or almost remembered. She didn’t linger over it. Instead, she slid it into her pocket without looking, fingers closing with the care of one handling something half-alive. The gesture was slow, measured, almost reverent—not out of fear, but respect, as though any sudden movement might startle the fragile thing that hovered just beneath her awareness.

And then the world exhaled, not all at once but in layers—sound folding back into the square, light sharpening where it had dimmed. Behind her, a boy’s voice broke through the hush, pitched high with triumph, the kind of unguarded joy only children could summon without shame. A dog gave chase after a gourd that rolled unevenly across the stones, paws scrabbling, tail a blur of movement. Dust lifted around them in lazy spirals, golden in the morning light. From a nearby stall, the wind caught a strip of blue cloth and tugged it free; it rose above the crowd in a long, sinuous arc, a ribbon of color weaving its way through the stillness she’d left behind.

Elida found her again near the herb tables, pinning a brittle stalk of lavender to her sleeve with theatrical pride, as if it were a lover’s token instead of a whim. Her eyes found Meri’s, bright and searching.

“There you are,” she said. “Thought you wandered off.”

Meri nodded. Her hands stayed hidden in her mitts, fingers curled tight.

Elida frowned slightly. “You alright?”

“I’m fine,” she said evenly.

Measured like water poured just to the rim. Elida watched her for a moment longer, eyes narrowing not in suspicion but in something quieter—something bone-tired. Then, with a shrug that wasn’t quite indifferent, only worn thin at the edges, she let it go. The space between them held no resolution, only the mutual consent to walk without breaking whatever had just been left unsaid.

They walked. The path was stiff with frost, the ruts from carts frozen solid and catching at their boots. Elida moved ahead in restless loops, her limbs drawn by some invisible thread of energy she couldn't seem to hold still. She skipped over ice-crusted puddles, humming an old tune—one too weighty and out of season for her age. Her shadow flickered between tree roots and tufts of hoarfrost. Behind her, Meri walked more slowly, each step quieter than the last. The comb pressed against her side through the fabric of her dress, not sharp but present, like a breath too close to forget. It moved slightly with each stride, a small nudge, a whisper not yet spoken.

She could still feel it, even when she wasn’t reaching for it. Not just its weight, but its shape—curved like the crook of her own wrist, smooth with long use. The fine teeth, once careful not to snag, had dulled over time, sliding through strands still damp from rain. She had been young when it began, though age had made the memory indistinct, as if looking through water. Still enough then, stiller than a frightened thing should be, because even breathing had felt like a trespass. She hadn’t turned. Hadn’t spoken. The comb had moved instead of him—slow, meticulous—as if carefulness might be mistaken for tenderness.

His hands had never lingered. There had been no affection in it. No cruelty either. Just a practiced stillness, an economy of touch. Arrangement. That was the word for it. A kind of grooming not born of care, but of ritual. The gesture was the message. Detached, impersonal, exact. As if the doing of it was more important than what it did. As if silence itself was the agreement. And in a way, it had been.

That was the shape of Greynsi—not found in the stone of the halls or the height of its towers, but carved into the unnoticed things. The comb on the washbasin, always set parallel to the edge. The linen folded without crease. The doors that never slammed but shut as if held in breath. The language of allowance. The choreography of unspoken rules. There was no tidy story to hold it. No arc or villain or simple name. Only the remnants remained.

She had never told Elida. Never spoken it aloud to anyone. Some memories lived not in speech but in the body’s smallest habits. Others remained locked inside the weight of an object—a carved comb, pale as bone, waiting in a market stall behind a cart of hinges. She had not found it by chance. No. Its arrival had not been coincidence.

It had been sent. Not lost or forgotten or traded by chance, but placed—deliberate as a shadow, as breath held beneath water. She could feel it now, beneath her fingertips even through the pocket’s worn fabric, as if it still carried the warmth of a hand not her own.

The weight of intention clung to it, subtle but unmistakable. Like the scent of ash on wind—dry, thin, and strangely familiar—it had found her again, tracing a path through time and silence with no need for name or witness. This was not a gift meant to please. It was a message, quiet as dusk falling over frost-laced fields.

 Not cruel. Not kind. Just known.

And she could not yet say whether it offered a bridge—or a tether.

…

Later, in the hush that settled over the house when lamps were trimmed low and the children’s rustling had faded into the walls, Meri sat on the edge of her bed.

Her knees were drawn up, heels tucked close, the arch of her bare feet pressed into the worn quilt’s stitching. A wool blanket clung loosely to her shoulders, its edge slipping down one arm like a half-forgotten shawl. She hadn’t lit a candle. The twilight had thinned into a dusky blue, faint as breath on glass, and the only light came from the hearth room below—gold leaking faintly beneath the door.

The wind was rising. It whistled soft and thin through the thatch and found the seams in the shutters. Now and then it tapped the wood—a light, uncertain knock, like a child asking permission.

On the low shelf beside her, the wooden box waited. Shallow, simple, unpolished. Its paint—once blue-green—was chipped and dulled to the color of rain-soaked lichen. The grain had begun to lift at the corner where her thumb always found it.

She’d painted it once. Long ago. Just after Brom had handed it to her—“For safekeeping,” he’d said in that quiet way of his, eyes already moving on. She remembered the way Elida, small and fierce, had insisted on helping. Her sister’s brushstrokes had been clumsy, splotching green where there should’ve been sky, but Meri hadn’t corrected her. That had been the point. Messy, shared, unrepeatable.

There, laid gently inside were the things Meri had hidden away: a tiny braid of yarn, sun-faded now and frayed at the ends. Three buttons, smooth with wear, the kind that once fastened a doll’s dress. And a pebble, pale gray with a lightning-shaped streak of quartz, gathered from the riverbank the summer Tessie had laughed herself breathless chasing frogs.

Tessie’s things. Her small, silent treasures. Things Meri had gathered when no one was looking, folded into cloth, and tucked away like seeds not ready to be sown. Her hand hovered above them now, not touching. Just there. Trembling slightly, caught between memory and breath.

Beneath them, beneath even the faded braid, the mirror waited—wrapped in its cloth, untouched since that night by the hearth. She hadn’t moved it to her satchel. Hadn’t brought it near the garden. It stayed here, in the box meant for safe things.

She wasn’t sure what that meant.
Only that she couldn’t bear to hold it. Not yet.

Outside, the wind rose again. Not knocking this time, but passing on.

And the comb was still on the bed beside her.

She hadn’t meant to place it gently. She’d meant to cast it aside, to fling it across the floor or bury it beneath weightier things. But her hand had moved differently—slow, deliberate. A gesture not of rage, but of restraint. As if she’d feared it might shatter something else if dropped.

It was beautiful. That was the trouble.

Silver filigree, fine as frost on glass, wound through its form like vines stripped bare for winter. The teeth were narrow, hand-carved, finer than anything this village could produce. No, this was not local craft. The inlay shimmered faintly even in the dimming light. Elven, perhaps. Or meant to appear so—an imitation born of wealth and quiet malice. A gift, once, if it could be called that.

She remembered the moment too clearly. Morzan’s hand at her temple, tucking the comb behind her ear with a precision that mimicked care. The slide of fingers through her hair like a spell half-spoken. He had said nothing. Only nodded, once, as if sealing a tomb. As if that silence were something to carry, to cradle, to rehearse.

Meri’s fingers curled against the edge of the box. Her breath caught, thinned, and hovered there beneath the bones of her chest, unspent.

The comb didn’t belong here.

Not with Tessie’s braid. Not with these humble, softened things shaped by love and time. Not in this room, steeped in beeswax and worn wood and the unfamiliar balm of safety.

She rose, slowly. The blanket slipped from her shoulders in a hush of wool, puddling at her hips.

She picked it up.

It was heavier than it should have been. That strange weight some objects gathered—not from mass, but from meaning. From memory. From too many hands passing them down with unspoken grief.

For a long moment, she only held it. Let it lie cold against her skin. It did not burn. It did not speak. Then, with no ritual and no flourish, she placed it in the box.

Carefully. Not with tenderness. Only with the precision of one laying down a shard that could still wound.

It didn’t belong, but neither did she.

Her throat constricted. She pressed a knuckle to it, the way one presses a bruise when no one must know. There would be no tears tonight. Not yet. The storm had not crested. But the wind had turned. She could feel it—subtle, certain. A shift just beneath the skin.

Around her, the house exhaled. A low clack—iron to stone. The scrape of the kettle being shifted. The hush of a chest opening, the sigh as it closed. Distant, a child laughed, and somewhere near the hearth, voices wove low in the rhythm of shared labor. Then, a knock—soft, measured, as if it, too, did not wish to disturb what was breaking quietly inside.

She looked up as the door cracked open, Roran stood there, his weight shifting from one foot to the other. Taller than she remembered. Still young in the face, but broader in the shoulders, as if the year apart had asked more of him than it should have. He didn’t speak right away. His voice, when it came, was gentle—tentative, but grounded. “Your mam says supper’s near. Bread and stew. She thought you might want it warm.”

He glanced past her, respectful, uncertain. Not at the box, not at her but rather at the center of the room, as if waiting for some sign he wouldn’t name.

Meri nodded. Her voice wasn’t ready. So she didn’t offer it. Only a small, soundless smile—barely a shift in the mouth, but enough to say: I heard. I’ll come. Please don’t ask.

Roran hesitated. Then, with the quiet understanding of someone who had learned how to leave space without fleeing, he closed the door behind him. His footsteps softened down the hall, uneven across the familiar boards.

She pressed her thumb to the edge of the box, where the grain had lifted slightly—just enough to catch the skin, familiar as an old splinter that never broke free. Her thumb circled once, then stilled, as if testing whether the wood still remembered the shape of her touch. Then, without hurry, she tucked it away—careful as folding a letter no one would read—into the bottom of her clothing chest, beneath the wool underskirts and the faded cloak she no longer wore but could not bear to give away.

As the lid shut with a soft wooden sigh, a memory surfaced—not with force, but like warmth rising from a stone left long in the sun.

Her father’s voice. Brom—not Morzan, never him. Just her father. Not speaking, not instructing, not warning. Only humming. A quiet thread of sound winding through the evening light, as he stirred the hearth pot with slow, absent motions. She could still see the steam, gold-lined, curling around his wrists. The smell of thyme and root vegetables, the ache of the long day behind them, and the hush that came after the little ones had fallen asleep. His back turned to her, his presence unspoken but near.

That memory was safe. It asked for nothing. It hadn’t been stolen or darkened. It was still hers.

Outside, the cold shifted again—subtle as a hand brushing fabric. A deeper breath of winter sighed through the seams of the shutters, threading between the boards like a creature searching for warmth. Somewhere in the pale beyond, a fox called—a short, high yip, then another, trailing off like laughter buried in snow. It startled a faint ache in her ribs, the kind that came when the world reminded her it still moved without her.

She didn’t move. Not yet. Just stood, arms folded loose across her chest, listening as the silence resettled itself. The room smelled of cedar and old cloth. The wind went on breathing.

…

…

The wind arrived first—pressing against the door with a low, insistent breath, not quite urgent, not quite hesitant, simply there in the way a tree might lean its long limb against a wall, knocking not to be let in but merely to be known. A presence. A touch of recognition. The knock came after—neither sharp nor shy, but settled and real, as if it had always belonged. A pulse, steady. Measured.

Gertrude didn’t stir. She didn’t need to. Her gaze, dry as ash bark and just as unflinching, turned slowly toward Meri. Her bones had declined the morning’s summons, stiff with the cold that had sunk into them like old silt settling deep in a jar left untouched on a high shelf. Even her stillness had a sound—a silence stretched thin over pain.

“Well?” she rasped, voice brittle with age and unconcern, like leaves forgotten in a tin. “The knees won’t answer. Yours still bend.”

Meri didn’t reply. Her hands, still marked with rosemary and ash, moved without rush. She wiped them—once, then again—on the cloth tied at her waist, more ritual than need. A pot of dried nettle sat cooling on the hearthstone, untouched since dawn. A frayed mitten, child-sized, lay beside the basin, half-damp and stiff with old water, forgotten after some task. The room smelled faintly of onions strung high above the lintel and smoke that had not yet decided whether it wished to stay or go.

She crossed to the door. The hinges, dry from the cold, let out a long, complaining groan.

She braced for wind, or perhaps a farmwife clutching an empty basket and the name of some herb caught in her throat. But it wasn’t wind. And it wasn’t any woman.

“Garet’s boy,” came Gertrude’s voice from behind, rusted with years but certain, as if she’d recognized the shape before Meri had fully seen him.

The boy stood awkward in the threshold, coat too large, collar nearly swallowing his chin. His cheeks were raw from the wind, and the sleeves bore salt-stiff creases where snow had melted and refrozen. His breath came in quick puffs, not from running—but from being seen. A held breath, finally loosed.

“Ma says—” he began, then stopped. Swallowed. His throat moved. “She says my sister’s breathin’ strange. Told me to come for the wise woman.”

Gertrude exhaled through her nose, a sound like bark rubbed against stone—not quite a curse, not quite a sigh. “Three months too late, if it’s what I think,” she muttered. “Frostlung doesn’t whisper in like mist. It knocks.”

The boy shifted. His boots creaked. “She thought it was just a chill,” he muttered. “Now she can’t hardly breathe.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It swelled—thick, shaped by memory, by winters before and the ghosts of children who’d faded in the same manner. Gertrude didn’t argue. She only turned her head—a basin tipping toward a lip. Not an order. Not even suggestion. Just weight shifted, attention passed.

Meri felt it land in her bones. Her eyes lifted to the shelf above the hearth, and already her hands had begun to move. Horehound. Feverfew. Pine resin tucked in oilskin. She saw each thing before she touched it. Her fingers didn’t hesitate. A spoon still held the mark of last night’s honey, crusted now. A bowl of apple peelings sat by the window—thin, browned curls that hadn’t yet made it to the compost bin. Life left traces when no one looked.

A sound rose beneath her thoughts—tight, stuttering breath in a child’s chest. She had heard it before. Too shallow to be useful. Too thin to hold life.

“Bundle up tight,” Gertrude said as Meri reached for her cloak. “I’m not sending you out just to bring back another half-dead one.”

No answer. Just the hush of wool pulled over shoulders, the door cracked wide again. The wind met her skin without apology—brisk, honest, awake.

The boy led her through the village, past the blackened stones of the smithy and into the thinner lanes where houses leaned together like tired old men whispering in the dusk. Snow cracked underfoot, sharp and fragile. A door creaked, then latched. Somewhere, a dog gave one bark, then none.

No one stepped out to greet them. But the town felt her—a breath drawn in and held. A waiting.

“Did you really live with the forest people?” the boy asked, voice clumsy with both fear and curiosity.

Meri’s eyes didn’t shift. “I lived with blood,” she said.

“What?”

“Never mind. Keep walking.”

He obeyed, and said no more.

Inside the sagging house, air clung thick with damp wool, soot, and fear. The hearth was lit, but the heat pressed rather than comforted. A clay mug steamed on the mantel, half-drunk, rim stained dark. In the corner, someone had left a broom propped by a cracked bench, bristles worn uneven from years of sweeping the same cold earth.

The child lay on a pallet, cheeks too red, breath too quick—a bird panicking inside a net.

The mother hovered. Her hands didn’t land—fluttering just above, afraid to know the truth touch might tell. “She went quiet yesterday,” she said, voice breaking apart. “I thought it was just a cold.”

Meri knelt. Her movements were deliberate, rooted in something deeper than skill. She touched the child’s pulse—too fast. Laid her palm on the girl’s brow—burning. Listened to the lungs’ frantic flutter. Not the breath of life, but not death yet either. Caught between.

Pine resin warmed in her palm, its scent rising sharp and honest as she rubbed it into the girl’s chest—slow, wide strokes, not only for the lungs but for presence, for grounding. Her fingers moved with a kind of memory, steady and firm, a rhythm not taught but inherited through moments like this. The warmth worked in quietly, not demanding change, only offering it.

Tessie had breathed like this too, in another season, in another grief. But that had been water, not fire—lungs reaching for air where none remained, small fingers slackening in hers as the river pulled and gave no answer. The thought flickered, edged in cold, but she did not let it overtake the room.

“She’ll need tea,” Meri said, and her voice was a stone dropped into still water—neither loud nor soft, but final. “Horehound. A full pinch steeped strong. No more.” The mother nodded, slow, her body still shaking in the joints. Her hands, half-clenched, fluttered like leaves that hadn’t yet realized the storm had passed. Her mouth opened once and moved without sound, as though some part of her still knelt beside the fire, waiting for permission to believe.

“And once she’s sweating, wrap her in dry wool,” Meri added, her tone unchanged. “Yours, if it’s all you have.” The woman blinked as if surfacing. She looked at Meri with a clarity that cut through the blur of fear. In that gaze was something more than thanks—recognition, perhaps, or memory, pulled up from some deeper place.

“You sound like her,” the woman said then, voice quiet as lint caught on breath. “The old one.”

Meri didn’t answer. Her jaw shifted slightly, a motion so small it might have been a swallow or the settling of unspoken words. She let the sentence fall between them like snow—untouched, but heavy.

Outside, the cold waited without resentment. She met it with bare honesty. The wind had teeth, but no malice. That, at least, she understood. It came without cruelty or comfort—only the clean edge of being known.

She wandered slow between the houses, where snow narrowed the lanes into corridors of hush. Her boots left quiet hollows. Moss clung to thawing stone near the bases of walls, and the eaves had gathered dusk like breath held too long. A door stayed open behind her, not in invitation, but from habit, or hesitation. A curtain twitched. Nothing was spoken.

The village did not welcome her, but neither did it turn away. She walked as one might walk through old prayer—known by cadence, not by name.

A boy near the bakery stared too long. When their eyes met, he looked down. Not with scorn—just uncertainty. His fingers tightened slightly on the bread-sack he carried, then relaxed. A flicker, unnoticed by most. But not her.

By the well, another split wood. One swing. A pause. No greeting, no dismissal. Just a breath between. The kind that did not interrupt or include. It existed. And she let it.

She gave it no name, asked nothing of it. Only marked it, the way one might notice lichen returning to stone, slow and sure and without ceremony.

At the village’s edge, Gertrude’s cottage leaned into the coming dark like a thought unfinished. Its roofline sloped with a weariness she trusted. The windows did not gleam, but glowed faintly, as if reluctant to forget the sun. Meri stood before it, still as a question, her breath softening in the air.

Behind her, a cart passed. Its wheels crackled over frost. The driver—wind-bitten, broad across the shoulders—met her gaze as he passed. He nodded once. Not out of kindness. Not welcome, nor thanks. Just recognition. A shape made in the dusk, acknowledgment carved from quiet.

Meri let him pass. Her hand lifted absently to her shoulder, brushing at the pine resin stiffened into the fold of her cloak. It clung sharp and clean to her skin, the scent of needles underfoot after a storm—green, wild, and indifferent to grief.

Inside the cottage, warmth gathered—not in abundance, but in the old, uneven way of stones that remembered many fires. The hearth hissed behind a curtain of steam. A pot hung heavy with broth, where bones had softened and nettles steeped. Not for her. Not yet. It waited, like the rest of the room, asking nothing but time.

The door creaked behind her and closed with a shudder, more from the wind than her touch. She stood a moment, unfastening her cloak with fingers stiff from the cold. Not shivering—she didn’t shiver now—but slowed. A knowing in the joints, a quiet protest of skin pressed too long against winter’s breath.

The table bore signs of the day’s life: a half-peeled root curled like a question beside the knife; a single frayed mitten, too small for any hand still living in this house, lay near the edge as if placed there to dry but forgotten. Its threadbare thumb pointed toward the hearth like a compass too tired to turn. A crust of bread remained on a chipped plate—bitten, not broken. Someone had meant to finish it. No one had.

Gertrude had not moved from her chair. The light touched only the curve of her jaw, sharp as the spine of a leaf dried on the sill. Her gaze did not lift—she didn’t need it to.

“Well?”

“She’ll hold,” Meri said, without hurry. “If the mother listens.”

Gertrude let out a breath that tasted of old tea and days too long. “They seldom do.”

Meri didn’t answer. She stepped to the hearth and ladled broth into a wooden bowl, hands steady even now. Steam rose—bracken and marrow and something bitter beneath, maybe burdock. Her body remembered hunger, but she didn’t sit. She drank standing, facing the fire. Each swallow slow, methodical. Not from manners. From ritual.

Behind her, the wind ticked against the shutter—soft, irregular. Like a beetle caught in woodgrain. Evening was closing in. The light deepened.

“Your fingers stink of resin,” Gertrude said at last.

Meri turned the bowl in her hands. “She needed grounding.”

“Aye.” The old woman’s voice rasped, like twine dragged across stone. “But you didn’t.”

Meri didn’t look back. She let the silence answer first—neither heavy nor hollow, only thick with the weight of something long kept close. “I’ve been thinking about my sister,” she said. “Tessie.”

The name did not echo. It didn’t need to. It moved through the room like a shift in air pressure—subtle, but palpable. As if the walls, too, were listening now.

Gertrude didn’t speak at once. Her eyes, dulled with age but flint-sharp still, stayed on the hearth. Her jaw moved, almost imperceptibly. A tightening, then release. Not pain. Recognition of someone else’s.

“Elida mentioned her,” she said finally, voice low. Not curious. Not prying. Just acknowledging what had been offered. “Only once.”

Neither of them tried to soften the moment. They left it bare, unpolished. A thing not yet shaped by speech. The air between them did not close nor widen—it simply held, like the hush before a thaw. No gesture came to soften it, and none was expected. In that quiet, the weight of what passed between them did not need explanation. It settled low, not heavy, but sure.

Meri’s gaze slid to the candle near the herb jars, burned low now, its wax slumped into pale ridges like melted lichen. The flame fluttered, small and persistent, casting a long, uncertain shadow across the shelf. Dusk had come without announcement. Another day sifting quietly toward dark, as if the world were retreating in its own skin, drawing back to its bones. The warmth of the room, such as it was, felt held together more by memory than fire.

She crossed to the cloaks hanging by the door—coarse with wear, still breathing in cold, their folds creased with the shape of old shoulders. Near them, tucked into the corner by the crooked broom and the pail thick with long-settled silt, she saw it. A child’s shoe. Mud-stiff, half-collapsed in on itself. One lace broken near the eyelet, curled like a husk. It had settled beneath the bench in quiet disregard, forgotten but not gone, where no one had reached in seasons.

She bent slowly, not touching at first, only looking. Her fingers hovered over it, shaped by the instinct to gather, to mend, to remember. Then stilled. Let her hand fall. The breath she released was not resignation, but reverence. Some things, she had learned, keep truer in silence. Unmoved. Left as they are. To lift them is to shift their meaning. To disturb what was not yet ready to be unearthed.

…

              …

That evening, the cottage did not greet her. It endured her return—unchanged, unyielding, as if it had kept its breath through her absence and would not let it out now. The air had cooled to bone and fiber. The fire had dimmed to a bruise of light, low and pulsing behind its grate like something wounded but not gone. The shutters held fast, their iron latches resisting even the thought of movement. Outside, the wind passed once along the frame and stilled, as if pausing to listen through the grain, hesitant to disturb what silence remained.

Meri stepped inside without lamp or noise, her boots drawing no voice from the floorboards. The door closed behind her with a latch-sound that felt older than the hinges—older, perhaps, than her own memories of the space. She did not remove her cloak. Its weight, and the weight beneath it, clung close to her shoulders, draping her like a shadow worn too long to shed. The scent of burnt sage lingered faint as the thread of a song half-remembered, and the walls held it without warmth, as if memory were something they tolerated, not welcomed.

She crossed to the hearth on quiet feet and knelt without thinking, her body folding in on itself in small, slow hinges. Wool met her knees, then bone, the motion not an act of ritual but of return—an old shape fitting back into place. Her breath drifted out and did not return for a long moment, as if waiting for the room to remember her. A fine frost veined the hearthstones near the edge, untouched by the fire’s reach. Not a biting frost, but the kind that waits—pressing gently into stone and skin, not to harm but to hold, until asked to leave.

The bundle of letters remained where she had left them, resting beside the wall with their edges slouched and their posture undone. Time had left its thumbprint—paper curled, softened with the breath of moisture and memory. The topmost was bound with twine, and the handwriting, slanted and narrow, had blurred at the edges, as if the boy who wrote it had been trying, gently and without knowing how, to become a man. Her hand moved before she meant it to. The letter came to her palm like a small animal, still warm from a former life, carrying the scent of something once whole.

Her breath caught, not sharp—but quiet, like a stitch drawn too close to skin. One thread of the knot had begun to fray. She tugged it as if pulling nettle from a sleeve—slow, steady, careful not to disturb more than needed. The twine gave way. Not all. Just enough to bare the wax seal to firelight. There was no sigil. No mark of office or legacy. Only a thumbprint. The kind a man leaves without thinking, pressed in habit or haste, unaware that the smallest imprint can carry weight. The weight of that fact sat heavy in her hand—not accusatory, not tender. Simply known.

She did not open the letter. She only rested it flat on her knee and let her fingers curl around its edges, the paper soft beneath her touch. Behind her eyes rose the shape of the girl from that morning—the one bent beside a sickbed, her movements quiet, precise. Her mother’s voice cracking in thanks. Her own hands, unshaken. Learned steadiness. Not pride. Just what the moment asked. And quieter still, at the root of her chest, something older stirred: the comb. Its hidden weight beneath her cloak. The remembered slide of Morzan’s fingers years ago, combing through her hair with the exactness of someone arranging a display, not touching a daughter. As though beauty were something to be groomed into obedience. As though she were something to be adorned, not known.

Her stomach did not clench. It turned slowly, inward, like a door shutting in a room no longer hers. Her thumb broke the seal with a dry sound, delicate and final—the brittle snap of something that had once lived. A beetle’s wing. A prayer left too long in air. That was enough. She folded the letter shut again, slow and neat, as if tucking a child beneath a blanket. Then set it down—on top of the others, not to smother, not to forget. Only to say: not tonight.

Behind her, the fire gave a long breath. One coal shifted, its glow flaring like a thought in the dark—brief, bright, and gone

Meri leaned back against the wall, her spine settling into the old plaster, the cool web of cracks she had once traced with Elida. They had run their fingers along them in silence, naming rivers they’d never seen, imagining currents beneath stone. Now those same lines held steady, small and unhealed, yet still bearing the shape of the house—like old wounds that refused to close but had learned to carry weight.

Her eyes shifted to the chest near the window, half-shadowed, its hinges dulled with age. She rose without rush and knelt beside it, lifting the lid with the same care she’d give a sleeping child. The air inside was still. She reached for the box buried beneath folded cloth, fingers brushing wool and cedar. When she opened it, the comb lay there, undisturbed.

She didn’t take it out. She only touched it—lightly, with the edge of her hand, as if testing the memory it carried. Not in fear. Not in rage. The gesture held no sharpness, only a quiet confirmation that it remained. A small, hard truth tucked away from the light, unseen but not forgotten.

Outside, the frost held its breath against the shutters. Above her, the rafters whispered in low, aching groans, their wood stretched thin with cold. Beneath the floorboards, the roots pressed deeper into the dark, slow in their murmuring patience. She didn’t hear them so much as feel their presence—like old grief sliding into joints before a storm, or the way something once buried begins to stir when left too long untouched.

Her fingers folded quietly in her lap.

Brom’s voice, remembered—not from lectures, but from those plain words left between tasks, dropped like seeds into passing silence—rose unbidden: “Courage doesn’t feel clean, Meri. It scratches. Leaves splinters. Sometimes it don’t come with a clear path—it comes with thorns and a reason to stay.”

Her gaze shifted toward the door. Not in search. Not in dread. Simply to mark the shape of what lay beyond.

Her satchel rested near the hearth, softened at the seams. Inside it, beneath a coil of string and a pouch of crushed valerian, the mirror waited. She hadn’t touched it since that night. Not because she’d forgotten. Because she hadn’t. Its presence was a steady pressure—like a letter she’d read but not answered, like a question waiting at the edge of sleep.

To use it would be simple. A whisper. A choice.
But choice was the part that stopped her.

What if she didn’t know what she would say?
What if he looked the same—steady and unchanged—and she no longer knew how to meet that gaze?

She told herself it wasn’t fear. Just... unreadiness.
But the mirror, tucked away and quiet, felt no judgment. It only waited.

Tomorrow, she would go to the garden again. Not to tend. Not to touch. Just to sit in the wind beside the yarrow, where old stories lay curled beneath the frost. Where hawthorn leaned into weather it never asked for.

She didn’t yet know which sister lived truest in her marrow—the fierce one who bore weight in silence, or the child who once laughed in the crook of her father’s arm and believed it safe. Perhaps she was both. Or neither. Or someone yet forming in the quiet frost between.

The garden would not choose for her. It would not answer.
But it would wait.

In the hush beside the yarrow, where old roots tangled with story, something unseen was beginning to turn.
A quiet, unfinished thing pressing up through frostbitten earth.

And for tonight, that small unrest was enough

Chapter Text

In the mornings, Meri rose before the frost melted from the grass. The hearth was always cold by then, ash settled soft as flour over the coals. She moved quietly, not to wake the others, and opened the door to let in the biting air.

Mist gathered in the hollows. The world felt emptied, as if something had stepped just out of sight.

She noticed it first in the way the hens scattered one morning before she reached the coop—not panicked, but restless, wings twitching, eyes turned upward. Nothing above but the yawning sky.

A day later, a black feather lodged itself in the thatching above the woodpile. She saw it while stacking kindling, wedged between dry stalks like it had been placed. Not dropped—set.

She stared at it long enough her breath began to fog. Then she reached up, took it down, and held it in her palm. The feather was longer than her hand, sleek and glossy, the color of wet stone with a sheen of violet when it caught the light.

She didn’t bring it inside. Just left it on the windowsill, and by afternoon it was gone.

When she sat on the step in the late light, mending Conan’s tunic, the thread slipped from her fingers. Her head turned before she thought to move. The trees along the field’s edge whispered, their bare branches flicking against one another like fingers, though no wind stirred.

She scanned the hedge, the crumbling stone wall beyond it, the low rise behind the barn.

Nothing.

But her skin felt tight over her shoulders. Not frightened. Just... aware.

At supper, Elida teased her for jumping when the kettle clanged against the hearth. Meri didn’t explain. Couldn’t find the words for something that hadn’t quite happened.

That night, as she bent to check the lock on the back door, she saw it. Reflected in the bucket’s still water, not above—but behind her, on the roofbeam. A shape, small and hunched and watching.

She turned—too late. The beam was empty. Just cobwebs trembling from her motion.

But the water still held the image a moment longer: a hook of a beak, a glossy eye, a weight that left no sound.

She did not sleep.

…

              …

One night when winter was at it’s coldest. When the frost did not glitter, but clung. When the wind moved not like a presence but a memory—threadbare and searching, curling under doorways and into the breath between heartbeats.

In the darkest hour of that night, the world seemed to have gathered inward. Trees held their limbs close. The well had crusted over with thin ice that cracked but did not break. Even the hens slept without shifting, as if the cold had hushed them into stone.

And in the house, something stirred. The fire had dwindled to a faint red hush, its last breaths stitched into the hearth's hollow as wind combed through the eaves like fingers unsure of their welcome. Meri stirred beneath her blanket’s edge, not jolted so much as unmoored, the way one wakes from a dream that hadn’t announced itself. As though something had turned in the soil beneath it. Or above. A dry click, perhaps, faint as settling wood—perhaps a rafter, perhaps claws shifting their perch.

She turned and seeing the place next to her empty, she had assumed Elida was by the fire, curled as always into the faded shawl that had once belonged to their mother—folded in like a fox, back to the room, her breathing slow and uneven with whatever storm her body held but would not name. But the hearth held only the dull red ember of ash and the long absence where her sister should’ve been. Meri stood a long moment in the center of the room, bare feet on the cold-packed floor, the weight of stillness settling into her joints. She breathed in—held it—and let the hush stretch tight inside her chest before she moved.

There was no urgency to her motion, only that familiar softness of step, the practiced caution of someone long used to rooms where silence was a skin to be preserved. Her fingers brushed the chair’s worn back as she passed, grounding herself with the feel of smoothed wood, the groove where Mam’s hand had once rested. She checked each corner, eyes adjusting to dimness, body listening more than looking. Then—light. A lantern’s muted pulse bobbing beyond the window, blurred gold against the sleet-dark. The byre. A birth, then. One of the goats must be down.

At the hearth, the pot still cradled the last of Mam’s tea-water. Meri pressed her hand against it—not warm, but not cold. Enough. She gathered the herbs without glance—yarrow, comfrey, raspberry leaf, fingers knowing their crinkle and dust. She didn’t hesitate at the door. Somewhere above, a light rustle—wings adjusting, or wind through the eaves. She stepped out before the question could land.  The air outside caught in her throat with the ache of midwinter, but she bore it without resistance. The night met her not like a wall, but like a body— white, wild, breathing.

The barn door hung open just a fraction, a breath’s width, the way people leave thresholds ajar for what’s sacred or hard. Meri shifted her weight before the door, fingers curling once against the lintel, then loosening. She stepped inside without calling out. Her boots found the quiet like a memory pressed flat. The scent struck her first: wet straw, coppered blood, milk and fur and effort. A living smell, old as the world. The lantern cast its low glow across the stall, where warmth rose from the bodies within and the storm outside battered its fists to no avail.

Elida knelt in the hay, sleeves pushed past her elbows, hair stuck damp to her neck. The old goat strained—side heaving, breath short. A low sound rose from its throat, not pain but the slow insistence of labor. Her face was unreadable in the half-light, but her posture bore that cold persistence. Meri remembered from the year Mam was sick—when Elida had pressed cloth to skin and refused to cry.

Meri did not speak. Words felt too brittle, too edged for this space—like glassware set on a stone floor, sure to shatter underweight. Instead, she sank beside her sister slowly, her body careful, knees parting straw. The warmth of animals and sweat and breath pressed close, a hush like the inside of a womb—dense, pulsing, waiting. The goat whimpered. Elida did not.

When their fingers brushed—just barely—Elida tensed. Not a flinch exactly, more like a restraint. Like a bird suppressing the instinct to fly. Meri felt it in her own bones. She’d become fluent in unsaid things. Their fingers brushed, faint as breath, when they both reached for a fresh cloth. Elida stilled.

 Meri felt the shift, that flicker of withheld heat, and did not pull away. She only let it be, as she had let so many things be—unspoken, unanswered, endured. Then Elida’s voice came, low and quick and sharp-edged. Not a whisper. A blade.

“We thought you were dead,” Elida said, plainly. Her hands had gone too quick—too tight now—pressing the goat’s flank with a kind of ferocity that had nothing to do with urgency and everything to do with control, as if the smallness of the creature might contain what the rest of her body refused to let slip. Her knuckles were pale. The thin sinews along her wrist stood out with effort.

“Mam didn’t say, she just kept baking bread but she stopped saying your name,” she said, not looking up, the words raw-edged and half-exhaled, as if they’d been lodged behind her ribs too long. “Like it might summon something or like it was a sickness.”

The words landed like an overturned bucket in still water—sudden, loud only because of the quiet they shattered. The goat stirred, a low sound catching in its throat. Elida’s mouth remained slightly parted, but nothing more came. Not a gasp. Not a plea. Only that brittle awareness that hung in the aftermath—she had meant to wound, and had, and was now left with the bruise of it echoing back.

Meri didn’t answer. Her throat closed. A sound stirred in Meri’s chest. Not a sob. Not speech. Just the bare shape of breath that didn’t know what to become.

She reached for the cloth but her gaze caught the edge of the herb-bundle she'd left by the post. The raspberry leaf—dry as bone—had slid forward, just slightly, as though nudged by breath. But the air was still. No wind. No movement. Only Elida’s shoulders, coiled with resolve.

The goat shifted, hooves scraping the stall wall. The next contraction came, rippling like a tide through the animal’s belly. In its next breath, it stilled beneath Elida’s hands like a child lulled mid-sob, not eased by time but by something more immediate—some steady pulse she couldn't name. Meri's breath caught. That hush… she'd felt it once. In Brom tent. In her mother’s hands when Tessie burned with fever and no one else could bring her down.

“But I didn’t,” she went on, still crouched low, her shoulder angled against the warmth of the goat. “I kept it. I held it like a knife. Because someone had to remember.”

The lantern swayed slightly as Elida turned, her face cast in a slant of gold and shadow. Her gaze, when it found Meri’s, did not waver. It burned steady. Meri moved closer, their knees nearly touching now. She reached out without thinking—then paused.

“May I?”

Elida’s jaw tensed. She didn’t nod nor did she speak but she leaned back, just enough to make space.

Meri kept one hand pressed to the trembling swell of the goat’s flank, the other beneath, braced in straw and warmth. The breath of the animal came in short, sodden huffs, its sides twitching as another contraction rolled through. Beneath her fingers, the skin quivered like wind on water. She remembered—not fully, but with the texture of something once familiar—the press of her father’s hand guiding hers across a belly like this, years ago, in some other barn, in some other season. His voice had been low then, almost reverent. Breathe with her, flower. Pain needs rhythm, not fear.

But she did not follow the memory further. She let it pass like smoke through a cracked door, unchased. Instead, she watched Elida, mirroring the set of her jaw, the steadiness of her hands, though Meri’s own were colder. Their movements had grown quiet now, synchronized not by trust, but necessity. “She’s too tight,” Meri murmured.

“I know.” Elida’s voice was low. Level. And then, quieter, like something half-remembered: “It’s turned wrong.”

The phrase snagged. It wasn’t what she said. It was how—the rhythm of it. The way Mam used to speak when she was half inside the wound, half inside the silence.

Meri knelt beside her. Her hands reached, but Elida’s were already there—steady, small, pressing just so. The goat cried once, then again, and then—

—a pause. Not quiet, exactly. But held. As if the air had been cupped between Elida’s palms. The goat shuddered, then eased—not with the resignation of pain but with the strange, unnatural softness of relief that came too fast.

Meri’s eyes flicked to her sister. Elida’s face was pale, brow furrowed—not with panic, but with a depth of focus that seemed older than her years. And her hands—still pressed against the belly—were flushed, the skin mottled with a faint, rising warmth. Steam curled from her fingers.

The goat let out a cry—guttural, ancient—and stilled. Meri turned back to it, catching the weight that slid wetly into her waiting hands. First the hooves. Then the head, slick and dark, folding into her palms. It let out a mewing cry and kicked weakly.

Elida, her shoulders slopped, drew it onto her lap. She held the kid against her chest with a kind of reverence. Her face masked. The umbilical cord hung like a question between them—slack, no longer pulsing.

Meri turned back to the goat but it lay with a limpness that said too much. It did not kick. Did not draw breath. It rested there, sudden and inert, as though it had always meant to stop here, in her hands.

Across from her, Elida rested her hand on the kid’s cheek, not comforting, only holding as it mewed weakly. Her face was pale, the line of her mouth drawn tight, as if afraid sound might unravel it all. She worked without speaking. Fingers rubbing the tiny chest, thumb brushing fluid from its nose. She murmured something, low and meaningless, the shape of a lullaby lost to time.

“You tried-” she began, then stopped.

Meri shook her head, barely. Her movements slowed. The warmth beneath her hands began to fade. Around them, the stall filled with the soft, indifferent the sacrifices of birth—afterbirth sliding free, the rustle of hooves, the stir of straw. One eye, half-lidded, seemed to peer at nothing. The world went on. The doe did not.

“I shouldn’t have had to.” Elida’s voice was raw. “If I were stronger…”

But she didn’t finish. Only wiped her hands. Held the kid close. A thin mewling thing, damp with afterbirth and the weight of what had just been lost to make room for it. She wrapped a scrap of cloth around its body, keeping its head in the open—an old towel that had once lined a basket of blackberries. One of the ears had curled oddly in the womb; now it pressed against the fabric like a petal bent in on itself.

Elida sank down beside her. Not quickly. Her skirts brushed the hem of Meri’s coat, and stayed there, close but not touching again. She looked at the bundle, then at Meri who was watching her with a long, guarded look.

“Did Mam teach you that lullaby?” she asked softly, her voice thinner than usual, like it didn’t quite know where to settle. Something inside her had unspooled, quietly, without notice. She felt it in the hollows of her bones.

“She used to sit like that. When Tessie had fever. When Eragon got the bone cough. She’d go quiet—like she was listening to something I couldn’t hear.”

Meri nodded. She remembered those nights too. The way Mam would kneel by the cradle with her head bowed, not praying exactly—but listening. Sometimes her mouth moved in the old language, barely a breath. Sometimes she’d press a hand to the child’s chest and hum—not a lullaby, but something lower, older.

“She’d send me away when she did it,” Elida added. Her voice had dropped. “Said it wasn’t for me. That it asked too much.” She paused and looked back down at the kid. “But sometimes I’d stay and listen.”

Meri stilled. The light crept in through the slats above the pen, golden and cold, touching the dried blood on Elida’s wrists. She closed her eyes, not to rest them, but to keep something in.

“You remembered it,” she murmured.

Elida didn’t look at her. “Not all of it. Just… enough.”

Outside, a crow called—far off and sharp. A wind picked up, tugging at the thatch, carrying with it the scent of meltwater and iron.

The kid nuzzled blindly at Elida’s sleeve.

A breath passed between them. One of those strange, shared silences that felt both old and unspoken. But when Elida reached for a cloth, Meri caught her wrist, gently. Their fingers brushed. Elida’s hand was hot—not fevered, not strained, but alive in a way that startled her. As if the warmth wasn’t from body, but from will. Meri stilled. The heat pulsed once, then faded, like breath into fog Just fingers resting against bone.

 For a long moment, they sat that way, hands faintly touching, the goat between them like a thing neither could carry alone- a stone laid at the threshold, too heavy for one hand, too sacred to leave behind.

…

The hearth had burned low in the night. Ash crusted the edges of the coals, glowed faintly, like old lichen. But warmth still breathed faintly from the stone, holding the cold at bay. The rest of the house still slept under layers of wool and breath, the air close and dim with the scent of smoke and earth, the faint sour of drying herbs strung from the beams.

Elida lay curled beside the fire, back to the room, arms around the goatling, the way she might have cradled a bundle of nettles—tender, but wary. A wool cloak had been pulled over her shoulders sometime in the night. It slipped now as she shifted slightly in sleep, a hand twitching beneath it, fingers still half-clenched as if dreaming of something she could not quite reach.

The kid’s breath fluttered in her lap. One of its ears twitched. Its belly rose and fell against the hollow of Elida’s palm.

At the table, Meri sat alone. She’d been there since before light, wrapped in a shawl, her tea gone cold. She didn’t drink it so much as hold the cup between her palms, as though for weight more than warmth. Her boots were damp from the barn. Straw clung to her hem.

She watched the fire, not Elida. She watched the shape of her sister’s back rise and settle. The room was quiet except for the faint rustle of the coals, the occasional creak of wood swelling as it thawed.

Beside her sat the satchel she’d taken from its hook without thinking, weight familiar against her hip. Inside, tucked between bundles of twine and dried root, the mirror waited. She hadn’t looked at it since the night Mam passed it to her. Hadn’t so much as touched the cloth that wrapped it. But she felt its presence now, like a question not yet asked. Not pressing. Not demanding. Just there. Waiting.

A crow called once—far off, muffled. Or maybe it was just the wind through the chimney.

Soft footsteps. The latch clicked. Mam entered with Iain on her hip, his curls tangled, cheek red from sleep. She was barefoot. Her breath clouded in the morning chill, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes went first to the hearth.

A pause, deep as a breath held in the chest.

Then she moved. Not fast—just with that sure, bone-deep care that had once fed her children in the coldest winters and buried one without sound. She adjusted the cloak over Elida’s shoulders, crouched to press the back of her hand against the goat’s ribs, checking its warmth.

Iain leaned over her shoulder, wide-eyed.

“Goat,” he whispered, unsure whether it was dream or waking.

Mam kissed his temple. “Shh, bean. Let her sleep.” She moved to stir the coals, laying in kindling with practiced grace, coaxing the fire back into breath. Iain climbed down to sit beside Meri, sleepy but watching everything with that grave-eyed wonder only children could keep.

By the time Garrow and Roran came in from the yard, their boots thick with frost, the light outside had turned blue-grey. They carried the cold with them, and the smell of dung and woodsmoke. Garrow’s beard was rimmed with ice. He paused in the doorway, gaze catching on the hearth and its new occupants. Roran gave a small grunt of recognition, not surprise.

“Found the little one, then,” he murmured, setting down the pail of water.

Mam didn’t answer, but the faintest breath of a smile moved across her lips.

Conan was last to rise, barefoot and blinking, tugging a wool tunic over his head. His eyes went straight to Meri, then to the goat, and he stopped in the middle of the room like someone arriving at a story halfway through.

He said nothing, only crept over and sat cross-legged on the other side of the fire, mirroring Iain.

Someone handed Meri a warmed cup. She didn’t know who. She lifted it, sipped, and let the heat settle through her chest.

Mam ladled out warm porridge with dried apple and a trace of honey stirred in from last summer’s combs. The pot hissed where it kissed the rekindled fire, steam curling upward like a breath exhaled in thought. Iain ate sleepily in his mother’s lap, sticky-lipped and leaning against her chest, eyes half-lidded. Conan had fetched spoons for everyone without being asked. He tucked them beneath the wool runner as if hiding them in a nest, watching Meri and Elida both from beneath his lashes.

Garrow left first—without a word, just the pull of his coat, the knock of his boots at the threshold. Duty was shaped into his bones. He knew where the goats would be hungry, and the snow would drift across the path to the shed. Roran lingered, eyes flicking to Elida once before shrugging into his own outer things. Meri followed after with a satchel slung across one shoulder, stepping into the white-fuzzed hush of the yard without looking back.

It was always like this: leaving without being asked. Letting Elida stay near the hearth. The silent division of labor. Her silence had weight, and it filled the corners of the room like wool stuffed behind the cracks in winter walls.

Outside, the snow had turned to a light fall of powder, crisping the ground. The air tasted like iron. Meri moved through it with method, legs steady despite the ache that coiled in her back from yesterday’s wood-cutting. She checked the water troughs, loosened the hay bales, milked what goats would let her. The kid’s mother had stiffened in the night—eyes already clouded, body already returning its warmth to the air. Meri dragged her out behind the barn, covered her with snow.

Above, a black shape circled once and was gone again, unnoticed.

Inside, Elida woke with her hands still folded around the kid’s curled form. The goat was warm now, its belly fuller from last night’s careful dropper-feeding—milk warmed slowly over the fire, thinned with a little water, poured from a leather pouch. Not cow’s milk. Garrow had muttered against it. Sheep or goat, if they could spare it. And she had.

Elida sat up slowly, as if her body remembered things before she did. Her hair was tangled. Her tunic bunched unevenly at the shoulder. She looked around the room with the gaze of someone returning from far off, then pressed her hand to the goat’s side again, seeking breath. It was there. Slow and warm.

Conan was crouched nearby, not watching her directly but waiting all the same.

“What’s her name?” he whispered.

Elida didn’t answer. But her fingers stilled on the kid’s flank.

Later—when the dishes had been scraped and rinsed with snowmelt, when the youngest children had gone to help Roran mend the sled harness—Mam came to her.

“Out back, there’s room in the stall near the chickens,” she said, not asking. Elida looked down at the goat, who had begun to bleat softly, uncertainly, its long legs folding and unfolding beneath it. “She’ll need feeding regular,” Mam added, voice low but steady. “Warm milk. Morning, midday, dusk.”

“I know,” Elida said. Her voice was rasped thin from sleep, or maybe silence.

“She’ll cry, being alone,” Mam added, softer now.

Elida finally looked up. Her eyes, pale and sharp, held something guarded but alive.

“She won’t be,” she said.

No one corrected her. Not then.

That evening, when the chores were done and Meri returned with hands chapped and dirt beneath her nails, she found the kid on a scrap of wool beside Elida’s cot. A hollowed gourd of milk nestled near the hearth. The crow, black as old pitch, sat on the windowsill again, head tilted. Watching. Waiting.

Meri didn’t say anything.

She just crouched beside the fire, tugged her boots off, and poured herself another cup of tea—this one hot, this one held longer in her hands than the one before.

…

…

The days passed like slow breath through wool, one indistinguishable from the next unless you knew how to listen. Outside, the world stayed pale and frozen. The snow didn’t fall often anymore, but what had fallen weeks ago remained, packed tight into earth and eaves, turning footpaths slick and the barn doors stubborn. Winter had settled deep, content to stay.

The goat—just bones and blinking eyes when at first—grew rounder. Her knees still trembled sometimes, and her coat stayed scruffy despite Elida’s combing, but she followed Elida like a second shadow. Slept beside her bed now, or when the hearth was warm, curled against her like a bundled sibling. Elida named her Nettle. “For her disposition,” Elida said, nose in the air, though her mouth twitched.

Meri had arched an eyebrow from her chair. “Yours or hers?”

“Both,” Elida had muttered, but with a rare softness.

Still, something had shifted. Elida had simmered some. There were quiet hours when she simply sat near Meri again, braiding straw or feeding the goat from a clay cup with its worn edge. No confessions, no apologies. But she let their elbows brush sometimes when they worked, and didn’t pull away.

…

The crow was perched on the far beam of the barn roof, cloaked in snow-shadow. Meri saw it when she stepped out to haul kindling. It didn’t call out or move, just watched—its feathers puffed like ink caught in the cold.

She said nothing about it that day. But after the fifth time it appeared—perched now on the fence post as she split logs—she found herself mentioning it to Mam as they shelled dried peas by the stove.

“There’s a crow,” Meri said, softly. “Keeps watching.”

Mam didn’t look up, but her fingers slowed. “They’re clever things,” she murmured. “They remember faces. Maybe it remembers you.”

Meri didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what it remembered her from.

…

The goat clacked across the floorboards more than once during mealtimes, but no one shooed her out. Conan fed her scraps when Elida wasn’t looking. Iain tried to ride her once, which resulted in a bitten sleeve and a very offended goat. He wept about it for nearly an hour until Elida gave him a dried apple slice and told him goats weren’t horses.

Most mornings, Meri rose before the others. She drank her tea in the hush before fire-warmth reached the walls, sitting wrapped in a shawl by the narrow window. Sometimes, the crow appeared then, as if drawn to that silence. Once, she raised her hand in a still, uncertain greeting. It dipped its head once, almost a bow, and vanished.

…

Conan asked about the sword a week later. Meri had left it, as always, tucked out of sight behind the chest in the corner.

“Can I try it?” he asked her one gray morning as she whittled by the stove. “Not to fight or anything. Just to hold.”

She studied him—how serious he looked, despite the berry stain on his cuff and the way his socks pooled around his ankles.

“Not now,” she said gently, but not unkindly. “Maybe in the spring.”

“Why spring?” he asked, already distracted, peeling bark off a stick.

“Things feel lighter in spring,” she said. “And the sword won’t bite as hard.”

He grinned at that, satisfied with the answer.

              …

And so, the weeks passed. Iain scattered crumbs for birds that never came. Elida carved odd little shapes into fence posts and refused to explain them. The goat grew bolder, once sneaking a heel of bread from Garrow’s plate. Mam’s hands cracked at the knuckles from washing, and she still hummed sometimes when she thought no one was listening.

The crow came and went.

And Meri watched. Wrapped in her silence, in the long stretch of waiting that winter always brought. Sometimes at night, she would hold the mirror, still wrapped, and let it warm faintly in her hands—never unwrapping it, never calling, but knowing.

Her body healed in ways too quiet to name. Her voice—still spare—warmed just enough to ask Gertrude things, or answer Conan with more than a nod.

…

Spring did not arrive so much as exhale—quiet and long. The snow receded in furrows, then patches, then sudden bare swaths of sodden brown earth. The river sang differently, fuller and quicker, and the trees began their whispered work of blooming from within. The wind was still cold, but it no longer bit. It carried the smell of turned soil, sheep lanolin, and the faint mineral scent of green things returning.

Meri noticed first when the goats’ coats began to shed. When the light lasted just a little longer past supper. When the windows no longer steamed so heavily in the morning.

She said nothing. But she wore her cloak open. She let her sleeves be rolled higher as she ground herbs at Gertrude’s. And when Gertrude, rubbing her aching wrists one evening, sighed and said, “You’ll need to do the salves tomorrow—I’ve no hand for the mortar anymore,” Meri only nodded and wrapped the jar tighter.

She had been doing more, slowly. Tending the small burns and the winter rashes. Binding a twisted ankle for the boy who tried to jump from the well's edge. Sitting beside a woman in the village whose breath rattled from the chest. Meri didn’t always speak. But her presence was a kind of balm. Gertrude began to send her alone more and instead of sparingly.

“You’ll go, won’t you?” she asked one morning. “They’ll listen better to you.”

It startled her, how much she didn’t resist. The role fit like something long folded and finally worn.

And the crow followed. Never too close. Never gone. Perched on the stone wall outside the hut, or on a fence-post near the stream. Meri would catch it in the corner of her vision—always still. Always facing her. Once, when she left an old woman's house where the fever had broken, the crow flew a slow circle above her and cawed once before veering westward. She did not speak of it to anyone.

Back at home, the farm shifted with the weather. Garrow muttered about planting too early. Roran chased Conan with a muddy boot, then gave him lessons in fence-mending. Iain fell into the river once and declared it “not that cold” while shivering violet-lipped. Elida and Nettle had found their rhythm—girl and goat, snide and stubborn. Nettle had started headbutting the door if Elida left her too long. Elida now carried a reed switch in her belt like a shepherdess and called her “my shadow with hooves.”

“You think she’s following me?” Elida smirked one evening, brushing hay from her tunic. “She’s spying on you for me.”

Meri, sitting cross-legged on the stone step, only raised a brow. “That’s what the crow’s for.”

Elida stilled, just for a breath. Then, wry: “You think it’s yours?”

“It isn’t,” Meri said quietly. “It just...doesn’t leave.”

They didn’t speak of it after. But Elida sometimes glanced at the rafters before stepping outside. And once, Meri found a black feather tucked beneath the little stones Elida collected near the hearth.

The thaw crept on. Shoots pushed from the fields. Water trickled in secret gullies. And within Meri, something also softened—not fully, not yet. But her hands moved with more certainty. Her voice didn’t falter when she gave instruction. And in the stillness before sleep, she no longer braced for dreams.

…

When the valley thawed happened it was sudden, loosening the ground with a soundless rush. Beneath the farmhouse, roots drank deep and ditches swelled. The old paths through the pasture turned to sludge and standing water. Fog rose from the low places, and the air smelled of turned earth and wet bark, as if the land had sighed in its sleep and not quite woken.

By midday, the west pasture was half water, shimmering and brown like hammered tin. Thin ridges where furrows had been planted now jutted up like ribs. The sheep had been moved already, their wet hooves churning the pen into black gruel. And the river—usually so composed—ran wide and quick with a voice like tearing linen.

Meri went to look. She didn’t ask. She only took her cloak and walked the long line of fence between the orchard and the lower field, boots squelching in the thaw-soft earth. The crow flew overhead, a long arc above the standing water, and perched on the crooked gatepost where the ice had cracked the wood. It waited there, watching as she crouched to study the split ground.

She brushed her fingers along the edge of the flood line. The water smelled of roots and rot. Worms curled on the dry lip of the slope, trying to crawl uphill.

Behind her, the door to the house opened and shut again.

“Meri,” Mam called.

Meri stood and turned. Her mother walked down the slope with her skirts lifted just enough to keep the hem dry. She didn’t look at the flood first. She looked at the crow. Only briefly.

It cawed once and flitted to the fence line.

Mam’s eyes followed it, unreadable.

“You’ve been out here long,” she said gently, brushing a stray wisp of hair from her cheek. Her fingers looked older in spring light—veined, chapped, strong.

Meri nodded. “It’s rising fast.”

“We’ll lose the outer garden. But not the beds near the wall. That soil holds.”

She glanced again toward the crow, now silent, now still.

Then, as if in passing, she asked, “It’s followed you since winter, hasn’t it?”

Meri hesitated. Her fingers curled slightly at her sides.

“I think so.”

Mam didn’t press. She only exhaled—softly—and turned to the water again. “Some things return when they’re needed,” she murmured, half to herself. “Even if we don’t know what they’re for.”

Meri glanced at her, but her mother had already stepped down to the fence. There was a wet hush to the air. The crow shifted once on its perch, wings slightly raised, as though preparing to lift off again.

Meri bent to pull a stick from the flooded row. It was tangled with old twine and bits of torn cloth. The remnants of last year’s scarecrow.

By nightfall, the children were inside. Iain asleep with one boot still on, Conan trying to dry a wet mouse he insisted had followed him home. Elida sat on the floor combing Nettle’s fur with the fire poker. The goat gave her a scathing look but stayed. Roran was sealing the lowest barn door with pitch.

Meri sat at the table, cloth wrapped around her knees, sketching a small map of the flood path for Gertrude. She’d go tomorrow. People near the marsh road would need help.

Mam moved behind her to refill the kettle. As she passed, she laid a hand on Meri’s shoulder—just briefly. A quiet, grounding touch.

Outside, through the warped pane of the window, a black shape still sat on the woodpile. Watching.

…

That next day, she was binding the boy’s ankle. Her breath paced to the slow rhythm of the cloth winding round flesh and bruise, each turn firm, even, deliberate—like all things must be when pain is near. The bone, thankfully, wasn’t broken. Only bruised deep beneath the skin, where breath itself could sting. He winced anyway, trying not to, and she steadied him with the quiet weight of a palm against his knee. The other hand slipped into her satchel for the comfrey. She knew exactly where she’d packed it. Knew the feel of the root, the slight give of the waxed pouch, the faint scent it always carried—earthy and green, like crushed moss under stone.

Her fingers had brushed the thing before her mind could name it, and already her breath had gone shallow—stilled in the way a candle stills when a door opens in another room. As if the air had changed.

The shape beneath the satchel’s lining was neither cold nor warm, but it had a presence—dense, silent, watching. Her skin recognized it. Not in memory, not exactly, but in the way calluses remember old work, and scars remember what split them.

It was that deep, marrow-held stillness—the kind that settles before a storm splits the ridge, or before a cry breaks out in a room you thought was safe. Her thumb grazed the edge of it once, the gesture so slow it could have been mistaken for thought. Then, with a careful precision that felt colder than fear, she drew it out.

A small wooden box. Cedar, worn to silk by time and long-held touch. There was no clasp nor carving. Only the grain—pale and whorled, the ripple-pattern of sand under water, the way eddies move just before stillness settles again.

She did not open it. Not yet. Her gaze passed over it, unreadable as winter glass, and she placed it beside her cloak, quiet and deliberate, like a bone returned to its grave. Then she finished wrapping the boy’s ankle with hands that did not tremble. Her fingers tied the knot with ease—it was a motion she had done too many times to forget. She nodded to him. His mother murmured something grateful, soft and unneeded. The kind of thanks that float in the room but do not land. They left. The door closed behind them, the sound light, but final.

Only then did she lift the box again. It made a sound when it opened—not loud, but sharp against the hush, the way a blade makes no cry, only division.

Inside lay the scorpion.

Dried and curled into itself, the legs drawn in, the tail arched high in that unbroken crescent of threat—a question poised, unanswered. Its body had dulled with time to the color of bone dust, of wood ash before the wind lifts it. It had not decayed. It had been kept—carefully, with a deliberateness that left no room for accident, no shadow of grace. Nothing about it was chance. Nothing was kindness.

The preservation was too exact. The curl of the tail too poised, the body too whole, as if time had been told to stop its work. It had been placed here by a hand that remembered how. A hand that knew what it meant.

She did not blink.

Around her, the stillroom held its shape, untouched, but it no longer felt like it belonged to the same hour. The nettle stalks above the hearth swayed faintly in the draft, their dry rustle almost inaudible, like a breath held too long. Rosemary clung to the stone walls—not as a fragrance, but as a memory lodged in the air, persistent, unspent. The fire’s edge whispered along a skein of half-carded wool, the thread unmoving, the spindle forgotten where it leaned. The room had not emptied. Every object remained in its place—the herbs strung in rows, the baskets under the bench, the iron kettle cooling—but something in the weight of the moment had caused all of it to pull away from her, as if the air itself had stepped back.

Outside, the wind dragged what might have been leaves, or straw, across the thatch with a sound that barely touched the ear. A goat gave one sharp bleat, far off, then fell silent again. A shutter knocked once, its loose hinge coughing against the stone before settling. The village moved on as it always had, unchanged in its rhythms.

But inside her, silence was no longer the hush between sound and speech. It had weight now, age—something older than her own voice. It had settled in her bones long ago, and now stirred beneath her ribs like the shape of a name she had once carried but had never dared speak aloud. It did not enter softly. It braced itself against the hollow of her throat, coiled up her spine in a quiet that ached. This was not a new silence. It was the old one—the one that had watched her become small, had taught her the precise stillness of not crying out, of disappearing without leaving the room. A silence that thickened the air inside her lungs until even breathing felt like a trespass. It remembered. And in remembering, it waited.

The stillroom had not changed. Not outwardly. The stones were as they were. The table, the hearth, the herbs in their suspended curl of drying. But the nearness it once held had thinned, as if every familiar object had turned its back or turned to stone. The warmth of the place no longer touched her. It regarded her now, quietly, as one might watch a stranger from the shadowed threshold.

And in that gaze, the silence deepened. The world held its breath—and in that hush, she heard her name.

Muirgheal. Gertrude’s voice, low and solid, just beyond the veil.

The world knit back together for the briefest moment. She inhaled—one breath, steady but narrow—and closed the lid with a muted snap. Her hand remained on the wood. The other rose and pressed over it, slowly, deliberately, the way one might hold a wound to keep it from opening. Her palms laid flat across the grain, firm, as if the press of warmth could smother what had stirred. As if she could keep the box from remembering.

Her shoulders did not lift. Her mouth stayed closed. But her jaw had locked, the muscle along it drawn taut with something unsaid. And her gaze… it had turned inward. Not toward memory. But toward the deeper place beneath it, where memory softened into sensation, and sensation into silence again.

The weight of the room pressed close behind her, but she did not turn.

Gertrude waited—a shape in the doorway, her presence low and steady like riverstone. Meri did not lift her gaze to meet it. Her eyes passed over the edge of the hearth, the hanging herbs, the scatter of wool half-carded on the bench. Then past them all, to the open air beyond the lintel. She moved.

One step. Then another. Her boots caught faintly on the threshold, brushing the worn groove that generations had made smooth. Her cloak stirred behind her, loosed by the wind, but she held the box tight to her ribs, beneath the wool, beneath the breath.

She crossed into the yard without sound.

Outside, the air had turned sharp with afternoon. The scent of damp straw and distant smoke threaded faintly through it. Her braid lifted once, swept back by a sudden gust that found the space behind her ear. She did not react. The cold brushed her cheeks like a hand with no intention of warmth.

And there she stopped.

Not halted. Not struck. Simply—stilled.

Her boots rooted into the trampled earth. Her cloak settled around her ankles. The wind moved, but she did not. Her face gave no answer to it, and her body no reply. The satchel was a quiet weight beneath her folded arms.

She let the air pass through her, let the silence return to its nest inside her chest. Eyes open, jaw clenched, her breath shallow—but there.

The box was hidden now, wrapped in the dark fold of her satchel and held to her ribs with the reverence one gives to a wound not yet scabbed. The air outside had sharpened while she was gone. It caught her cheekbones, clean and cold, and tugged at the edge of her braid until it lifted—pulled sideways by a wind that did not care to be kind.

The healer watched from the doorway. Meri did not look back.

The sky had turned white at the edges, pale with the thin breath of winter, though no flakes yet fell. Chimneys smoked faintly in the distance, rising into the dull air like lines on a page without words. Somewhere beyond the smithy, a child’s voice lifted, shrill and laughing, before falling away. A dog barked twice, sharp and quick, then silence returned. Greynsi lived in its usual rhythm. But she did not.

Her gaze drifted westward—past the goat nosing through husks, past the open gate swinging on its single hinge, to the far edge of the valley where the trees grew darker, thicker, and the stone trail faded into mist. She looked not for anyone, but at something—a direction, a knowing, a place she would not speak aloud. She stood so long that the cold found its way beneath the seams of her sleeves. Her toes numbed. Her shoulders caught stiffness.

The sun shifted behind cloud-thin light, then began to sink.

At the well, a man straightened from his bucket. He paused. She felt his glance, the brief hesitation of someone unsure whether to call out. But her stillness was too complete. Her profile offered nothing. He lowered the bucket again and left.

And still, she stood.

When she did move at last, it was without flourish. One step down into the path, then another. Her boots found their place in the muddy ruts. Her pace was even. Nothing in her gait said burden. But the way her arms curved around her cloak, the way her chin tilted slightly downward, said she carried something more than weight.

The scorpion lay motionless within the sealed box, but it was not what had changed.

Meri stepped across the yard like someone crossing a threshold no one else could see. Her boots made no sound on the frozen earth, and her hands—firm around the bundle pressed to her ribs—did not shake. But there was a difference, slight as the shift between breath held and breath exhaled. Not visible. Not explainable. Felt.

Her gait was neither hurried nor slow, but steady, as though her limbs had remembered a shape they had once unlearned. The tilt of her shoulders, the line of her neck, the quiet in her face—none declared anything. And yet something had come back with her. Not clutched. Not carried. But threaded deep, marrow-deep, like heat stored in stone.

The wind caught in the thorns at the gate, curled around the low walls, and sighed low—no longer dragging, but folding into itself. Snow flurried fine and sparse through the fading light. Not falling, but drifting, as if the air held its breath while she passed.

…

She went home slowly, taking the long way. The light, which had been hard and gray, settled into something gentler—dirt-colored and diffuse, like the weight of a wool blanket left out too long. Meri stepped between roots and half-melted snow patches, the path underfoot soft and uncertain. Each step left only the faintest mark. As if even now, she moved too lightly to remain.

The satchel was held still against her ribs, nestled beneath her cloak where it had warmed from her own breath. She did not clutch it. But her arms held firm, the way one steadies a bowl of water too full. One wrong step and it might spill—not the thing itself, but whatever hovered in her mind around it. That old shape.

Beyond the barn, the house slouched against the hill as it always had—weather-stained, quiet, as though grown from the slope itself. Smoke spiraled in a slow, untroubled thread from the crooked chimney. The shutters blinked against the last of the dusk, and the door sagged open a crack, pulsing firelight against the cold like a breath from some steady, sleeping beast.

She paused at the gatepost. The iron latch, unchanged, bit cold into her fingers—same as always. The chill steadied her now. It was honest. Honest in the way old things are—unaltered, and unmoved by what had broken in the years between.

She stepped inside without a word.

The door creaked closed behind her, folding the world away. No more wind at the eaves. No horses shifting in the dark. Only the hush of home: the sigh of thread pulled through cloth, the low tick of pine logs shifting in their cradle, the breath of fire filling the room like a held warmth.

Mam didn’t speak. She never needed to. Her mending stilled in her lap, and she simply looked up. A nod—barely there. But enough.

Meri set the satchel down near the hearth, slow, deliberate. The leather gave a soft breath as it touched the floor, as though it too had carried too much. She didn’t open it. Not yet. Just sat near, cross-legged, letting the warmth wrap itself around her limbs like a shawl.

Later, after the table had emptied and the lamps dimmed low, Meri drew the flap back—just enough to see the box beneath.

She didn’t touch it.

The fire behind her crackled low, almost sleepily. Outside, frost feathered along the windows. Wind pressed gently against the shutters, as if unsure whether to test them or leave them be.

Mam’s hand, once set aside, now rested palm-down beside Meri’s knee. Not touching. Not withdrawn. A kind of quiet company, like the hush before rain—held breath, not dread.

Meri’s fingers curled loosely in her lap. The box was just visible in the satchel’s shadow. She didn’t know if she meant to protect what lay within from the world—or the world from it. The silence stretched, but it didn’t fray. It held.

She didn’t look at her mother, not directly. Her eyes slipped instead to that resting hand, marked faintly with soot and wear. Hands that had packed bandages, plucked herbs, held her head when fever took her. Something in Meri’s chest gave a soft shift. Not pain. Not comfort either. Just weight. The kind that roots things.

Her breath escaped, uneven. A pause followed, long and lived-in. Her shoulders shifted, the smallest release, like a tree exhaling after snow melt.

The satchel didn’t move. The box inside remained quiet, but it might as well have been pulsing.

Mam’s hand lifted, only slightly, then lowered again. She didn’t reach for the box. “You don’t have to you, and I won’t take it from you,” she said at last, her voice low. “But I’d like to see.”

Meri said nothing. But her breath, tight and shallow, shifted just enough to stir the warmth along her ribs, as if the fire’s glow had entered her, coaxing her lungs to soften.

Mam moved carefully, unfastening the flap as if unwrapping something that might flinch from too much light. Her fingers brushed the lid of the box—back of her knuckle first, moth-soft. She didn’t lift it. The firelight flickered along the curve of her hand, catching in the whorls of her fingertips, painting pale gold into the creases as if memory itself were being read by touch.

Her fingers paused. Stillness stretched, heavy and aware, the way embers settle before they shift. Then, barely more than breath: “...He remembers what we were.” Not bitter. Not even regretful. The words floated like smoke rising from damp kindling—older than pain, older than anger. Her mouth narrowed, not in judgment, but in the slow restraint of someone who knew what it cost to speak truth aloud. And then softer as if it were a whisper; “What I could do.”

The flames bent low for a moment, then flared again. The box stayed closed. One of Mam’s fingers traced its edge, then lifted away—quiet, unshaken. Not afraid. Just… done.

“He’s trying to press the past back into your hands,” she murmured, “not knowing they’re no longer his to shape.”

She closed the flap. Not latched, not sealed. Just folded back in place, like the final page of a story neither of them were ready to end. A pause followed—not empty, but brimming with things not said. The box had not moved. But something between them had.

Mam’s hand stayed a moment longer on the rush-strewn floor, fingertips brushing the edge of Meri’s woven blanket. Then it slipped away with the ease of long habits—like the settling of ashes once flame had passed.

She stood and moved toward the small bundle near the door. Her steps made no sound but the soft shift of reed against stone. One by one, she laid the things beside the satchel: a dried sprig of sage, its scent released faintly by the warmth; a shard of obsidian wrapped in linen; a piece of cloth that carried the fragrance of lavender and broken stalks. The offerings found their places as if they belonged there—not explained, not named.

“You don’t have to do anything yet,” Mam said again, voice quiet as smoke, almost lost beneath the slow crackle of settling coals. “Let it speak first.”

Then she turned and left, her shadow stretching long across the hearthstones before the door sighed closed behind her. The hush that followed was not absence. It was presence deepened.

Meri did not move. The fire had drawn low, its breath quiet now, pulsing faint light into the hollows of the room. It did not flicker wildly, only glowed—steady, old, patient. The stones beneath her held its warmth. The scent of woodsmoke clung to her sleeves.

The box, still buried in the satchel’s hollow, did not stir. But its presence lingered—not weight, not threat. A quiet watching. A coiled waiting. Like something remembering how to become real again.

At last, Meri leaned forward. The warmth of the hearth tugged gently at her, as if to remind her where she was. She pulled the satchel closer—not to open it, but to give it nearness. Then she reached for the cloth her mother had left. The lavender scent rose like breath from a memory. Carefully, she wrapped it around the satchel, dimming its shape, softening its edges, as though protecting it from the air, or herself from what it might one day become.

She placed it beside the her. Not held. Just… placed. A quiet coexistence.

Her fingers hovered a moment longer, then withdrew. She turned onto her side, facing the hearth.

The fire was low but not dying. Its hush glowed across the worn floorboards, catching in the curve of her hand, the line of her throat, the softened edge of the satchel behind her. The warmth soaked slowly through her bones, threading itself into her breath.

…

Meri didn’t move for a long time. She sat watching the hearth, where the last of the fire lay curled like an animal at rest. The embers no longer burned, not truly—only glowed with the deep, slumbering heat of stones buried in earth. Breathing slow, almost forgotten. She waited with them. Beside them.

Then, without sound, she slipped off her boots and unfastened her cloak, folding it over one arm. Frost rimmed the corners of the window like lichen spreading across stone. The darkness outside was thick, undisturbed—still heavy with hours before dawn.

She moved through the house like a shadow with memory. Into the back room, where Elida slept with her cheek turned toward the wall, breath slow, lashes still. Her hair had been braided for sleep, the way Mam used to do when they were younger. It made her look smaller. Untouched.

Meri frowned. Then gently reached and tugged the blanket closer around her sister’s shoulder—a soft, habitual gesture, too old to forget. Whether Elida noticed or not didn’t matter.

She turned toward the old chest and crouched low, her feet placed with precision. These floorboards spoke in their own tongue—some with creaks like old gates, others silent as moss. She had long ago learned which ones creaked in the night. When her fingers closed around the box, she rose and returned to the hearthroom. The hush followed her, settling close as skin.

She sat cross-legged before the coals, setting the box before her. Her hands hesitated on the lid, then opened it. A flicker of breath passed through her lips, quiet as smoke.

She didn’t look long. Just enough.

Her fingers found the comb.

She hadn’t meant to take it from the traders. Or maybe she had. She couldn’t remember making the choice, only the weight of it afterward. Now, it was heavier than it looked. The shape of something she didn’t want but couldn’t ignore. A splinter of memory made solid.

Her gaze drifted—from the box, where the scorpion lay folded in its old husk of death, to the sliver of obsidian her mother had once pressed into her palm, wrapped now in softened linen. Then to the frost-fogged window, the long dark behind it.

And then, back to the comb.

She held it near the embers—not plunging it in, but close enough that it would begin to drink the heat. It softened slightly in her grip. She laid it on the hearthstone. One by one, she bent the teeth until they broke, each with a small, dry crack like old twigs. One. Then another. And another still, until it was no longer a comb but a ruin. Nothing left to groom or untangle. Nothing to make smooth.

She gathered the pieces—each splintered tooth, small and pointed, nearly sharp. She placed them back in the box, alongside the curled scorpion and the stone that once lived in fire.

Then she wrapped it all in the linen, slow and careful, like she was binding a wound.

She reached forward and laid the bundle into the coals, tucking the sprig of sage beneath it.

One hand stayed at her side, resting lightly on the satchel where the mirror remained wrapped, untouched. She didn’t reach for it. Not tonight.
But she knew where it was.

The fire, until then still as breath held too long, stirred. The embers brightened, flaring into tongues of gold. Flames licked up the offering not greedily, but reverently, as if recognizing something of their own within it—something scorched, brittle, long silent. The box blackened. The linen drew in on itself like drying skin. The sage let out a sigh of scent—clean, sharp, brief.

Smoke rose—thin, silver, almost human in shape—and twisted once in the air before dissolving.

Then the flames dimmed again. The hearth exhaled.

Ash settled like snowfall. Quiet returned.

Meri didn’t move the rest of the night.

….

That next morning, Mam had looked at her—just once, after banking the hearth—but said nothing. It had been enough.

Meri took her cloak and stepped outside before the house fully woke. The chill licked her boots, wet and sullen, and the fields looked heavy with silence. Below the slope, the creek had breached its edges. What was once a worn footpath now stretched wide and opaque—dark water rising up between roots and brambles, sluggish but insistent.

She stared at it for a long time. The path to Gertrude’s was gone beneath it.

No crossing today. Maybe not tomorrow either.

A sound cracked the stillness. Sharp, dry. A raven’s cry.

Her head turned slightly. The bird sat high in the bare ash tree just past the fence line—motionless save for the wind teasing the tips of its wings. She looked at it only once, expression unreadable, then turned back toward the shed. Her boots squelched softly in the muck.

She had chores to see to. She didn’t look back.

…

The hens were restless the next day. Muttering to themselves and pecking at each other’s feathers. One had nested in the woodpile again, and Meri had to kneel in the mud to coax it free. The air smelled thick with moss and old straw, as if the land was sweating from the roots up.

She gathered eggs in silence. Mud streaked her skirt. When she rose, wiping her palms on her cloak, she caught sight of a shape perched on the split fence: black, still, utterly patient.

The raven.

Its eyes glinted, unreadable.

She didn’t flinch, but her gaze didn’t linger either. Just passed over the bird like she might a stone or a shadow. And yet—there was something in the angle of her mouth, the way it tightened just slightly. Not in fear. Not even distrust.

Recognition, she thought.

…

By the third day, the river hadn’t receded. The rain had paused, but the sky still hung low and the soil hadn’t dried. She baked bread that morning, the fire crackling behind her, the warmth blooming outward into the stone kitchen.

As she kneaded, the dough soft beneath her knuckles, she caught motion out the window. The raven again—perched close now, on the beam outside the open shutter.

Steam rose from the bread. Her hands didn’t stop.

But her eyes, at length, lifted.

Their gazes met.

She didn’t know what she expected. The raven didn’t stir. Its feathers ruffled in the chimney-draft. Its head tilted.

She looked for too long. Then, quietly, she pressed her thumb into the center of the dough. Deep, deliberate.

The silence felt like a message.

She turned her back to the window.

…

The next morning she tried the path again. Foolish hope. The mud was thicker now, the water broader. Saplings leaned sideways in the current. Her breath fogged in the air.

She stood there a long while, alone in the hush of dripping branches.

Then—caw.

Startled, she turned.

The raven stood closer this time. On a low fence-post, sleek and calm in the grey light. It did not cry again.

Meri blinked at it. She didn't move, not for a long while. Then—slow, uncertain—she lifted her hand. Not in greeting. Not a warning either. Just... a motion. The way one might brush dust from a windowsill, or reach for a thread.

The bird didn’t fly.

…

The fifth day came. The floodwaters haven’t fully receded—only shifted shape, leaving the paths gutted and the fields bruised under their weight. The house breathes with closeness, and everything smells of mud and moss and creek-rot

She was out by the side yard, where the smokehouse leans and the last firewood stack glistens damply. The basket on her hip carries kindling that refuses to dry. Her boots are soaked. There’s ash on her cheek. Behind her, Elida grunts softly over a basin, sleeves rolled high, the scent of lye sharp in the warm air. The little boys shriek somewhere near the stream-bed, chasing frogs or each other. A door bangs, twice.

The farm is full of life, but no one is really watching her.

She turns toward the shed—and stops.

The bird is there.

Not perched high, not watching from a hidden bough like before. It is bold today. Plain. Sitting atop the old fencepost by the woodpile, hunched slightly, head tilted with unnatural stillness. Its eyes gleam—not with hunger, but with knowing. Glossy black. Familiar. Like stone left too long in shadow.

It doesn’t blink.

Meri does not call for anyone. She does not whisper her sister’s name. She does not move.

Even the wind holds its breath.

She shifts the basket off her hip and sets it down. The gesture is slow, quiet. Unremarkable to anyone glancing over a shoulder.

Her hand moves without thinking—then very much thinking—into the pocket of her overskirt. The comb is still there, its cloth wrapping thin and softened with wear. She draws it out. Unwraps it.

Bone-white. The teeth are broken now, jagged as flint. She’d snapped them all off in silence ago, one by one, each break a small deliberate mutiny. Still she’d kept it, tucked away like a wound that hadn’t closed.

The bird doesn’t flinch. Neither does she.

She breathes in—slow. Measures the moment.

And throws.

Not wild. Not in fury. Not to wound.

The arc is clean, smooth. The comb flashes like a tooth in sunlight, turns once in the air, and strikes the fencepost near the raven’s feet. A sharp, hollow crack of bone on wood.

The bird flutters, just once. Lifts into the air with a rasp of wings and vanishes behind the smokehouse.

Meri’s breath comes out slow. She doesn’t turn to see if Elida has looked up, or if her mother is watching from a window nor does she pick up the cloth. Doesn’t retrieve the basket. She walks back toward the house, past the laundry lines, past the chickens pecking at the damp straw. Past her sister, who doesn’t ask.

Behind her, something loosens—not a scream, not a cry. Just a thread unspooling. A quiet severing. A promise, broken first in silence, now cast into the dirt.

A girl’s comb. A man’s spell. A tether, fraying.

And in the house, unseen, a mother stills at the sound, and listens.

Chapter Text

The night clung to the valley like a slow breath held beneath the ribs of the earth, dense with the damp, rich scent of soil softened by spring’s first rains. The farmhouse sat low in the hollow’s cradle, its wooden beams exhaling faint creaks into the hush, reluctant to disturb the stillness settled like dust on curved ridges and moss-carpeted stones that ringed it. Meri lingered just beyond the trembling lantern glow, where the air sharpened with the mingled aroma of crushed pine needles and the faint sweetness of damp moss tangled thick along shaded creek beds.

Around her, the valley’s wild heart pulsed quietly—the whispered breath of trees leaning inward, brittle branches stretching toward one another as if seeking forgotten touch. Their buds hung small and raw, like tremors beneath closed lids. The distant river, swollen and restless, sang a low, insistent murmur beneath spring’s slow thaw, threading silver through reeds bowed heavy with rain. Crows cut the darkened sky with ragged wings, weaving through moonlight like shadowed watchers folded into the valley’s ancient memory.

Her fingers curled tight around the worn leather hilt of her sword, steadying the coil of nerves twisting like restless serpents deep in her belly. Her breath wove slow and visible, pale mist fading into the cold, each exhale a fragile candle-flame flickering in the vast dark—fragile yet defiant against the sharp bite of night.

She sought no solace in distant stars or the faint flicker of hearth fires scattered like soft lanterns across the valley floor. Instead, her gaze clung to the sharp horizon where forest met sky, searching for the smallest stir—a shadow slipping between trunks, the sudden flutter of wings, the restless twitch of unseen life lurking just beyond sight and sound, patient and watchful.

Memories rose like fragile embers beneath her skin—long afternoons folded in silence and shadow, where lessons came without words, heavy with a weight pressed beneath breath and bone. The glint of a smile that never reached eyes, hands resting too firmly, leaving marks no one could see but she carried, tucked beneath smiles worn like armor. Those days lay buried beneath the thawing earth, sharp as frost caught deep in marrow, coldness folded into the pulse of her veins.

And there—just within reach of the farmhouse’s worn wooden fence—stood the comb. Not where she had thrown it in broad daylight, but balanced now along the weathered top rail, clean and deliberate.

The morning after she had thrown it, she stepped out just after dawn, when the air still clung to night’s hush like breath held too long. A low mist hovered along the fence line, silvering frost-tinged grass, and there—where her gaze landed without meaning to—stood the comb. Balanced upright on the rail, waiting. Less an object than a held breath, brittle and suspended. Her body stilled. The cold reached her before the wind did, coiling up through limbs like a silent voice. She looked away as if burned, chest tight with pressure. Without thinking, she turned—not rushed, not slow—and went back inside, the door closing soft behind her, as if any louder sound might crack the brittle air wide open.

It had been a week since then, a week since that silent morning when the pale thing reappeared like a ghost on the fencepost—deliberate, untouchable. The valley stirred with its usual rhythms: dawn light brushing through budding branches, the river’s low murmur threading past the fields, distant caws stirring stillness like scattered leaves. But beneath these steady sounds, a subtle undercurrent hummed—an uneasy quiet clinging like frost to the edges of everything.

Inside the farmhouse, change was less spoken than felt. Mam’s eyes lingered longer on Meri’s bowed shoulders, the way her hands paused just so when gathering eggs or setting the table. The children exchanged glances thick with unspoken worry—Conan’s small offerings left unanswered, little Iain’s shy attempts met with guarded silence.

The air between them stretched taut, thin with the weighted. Garrow moved with careful restraint, words clipped and measured, afraid perhaps to pry too deeply into the shadows. Even the farm’s familiar noises—the scrape of hooves on stone, rustle of grain in sacks—seemed quieter, as if the world itself held breath alongside them.

Meri kept to day’s edges but her movements were smaller, contained. The sword at her side was worn but never far; her eyes scanned horizons with sharper edge. The comb, still unspoken, folded into the quiet tension beneath her ribs—a silent weight marking the line between who she had been and who she might become.

On the hearth’s worn mantle, a small wooden carving—shaped roughly like a bear—tilted slightly, the work of a younger hand. Conan had made it, no doubt, hoping for a smile or a touch. The carving caught the flicker of dying embers, shadows pooling beneath its uneven wings. The gesture hung in the air like a quiet plea swallowed by the room’s stillness.

Days passed, wrapped in familiar patterns but threaded with small fractures—shifts in glances, half-finished words.

Her hand tightened on the sword’s hilt, rooting trembling thoughts. The chill seeped through her cloak, sharp with pine resin and moss, carried on restless wind bearing the swollen river’s distant murmur—a song of rising floodwaters and slow-moving earth. Somewhere close, a brittle twig cracked—small and sudden. Her body coiled in response, muscles tightening, poised to spring or still as stone.

Beneath the vast, watchful sky, she stood like a sentinel carved from ancient roots—alone but unyielding. The night pressed close, thick with silence and threat, yet deep inside her chest a spark glowed—a stubborn ember burning beneath winter’s snow. She would wait. She would watch.

Far from the cold stones of Greynsi, her boots pressed softly into the thawing soil, the wild woods folding around her like whispered secrets. Grass rustled—dark and unfamiliar yet tangled deep into her bones—woven tight with stone walls and unspoken secrets.

A hollow ache settled beneath her ribs, subtle but relentless—a quiet pressure rising slow with every breath. The night air carried the faint echo of damp stone and cold metal, prickling her skin sharp as shattered glass. Her throat tightened, the ghost of old fear folding in on itself like a wound that refused to heal.

She did not voice it aloud, but it burned fierce beneath her quiet—No. The word folded into a breath caught between heartbeats, unspoken but absolute: she had never truly left Greynsi.

That tether, curse and chain both, coiled still—unseen, unbroken—a silver thread humming low beneath her skin, a slow-burning ember flaring stubborn against the dark.

Her fingers clenched again on the leather-wrapped hilt, knuckles pale beneath the moon’s watchful eye, grounding her once more in the present. The restless whisper curled at her breath’s edges, carried on shifting wind.

And so she stood, unmoving beneath vigilant stars, the weight of past and present balanced like a careful dance. The soft scent of pine and moss mingled with the promise of spring’s slow bloom. The valley held its breath—and Meri did too.

…

The sky was just beginning to light when Meri stepped inside, the door closing softly behind her. The hearth fire was low, amber embers flickering faintly against the rough stone. Near the flames, the kettle steamed gently, left there again, as it had been every night.

Mam sat by the table, her hands folded loosely in her lap, still as the shadows pooling beneath the low ceiling. Meri caught her mother’s eyes for a breath—sharp and quick, then retreating like a bird startled by its own shadow. The corners of Mam’s mouth pulled tight, not in anger, but as if she held something fragile inside, too delicate to share.

There was a small hitch in her breath, barely a sound, but it made the quiet in the room feel heavier. Her mother’s fingers twitched slowly, curling and uncurling with the rhythm of something held back, something that refused to settle. No hand reached out, no voice broke the hush. Instead, there was a weight in the stillness.

Mam’s silence stretched between them like a fragile thread, one that could snap with the slightest tug. Meri felt it wrap around her, a quiet restraint pressed hard. Her mother watched her with a careful distance, as if afraid that any closer might break the fragile peace they both clung to.

In the corner, where the firelight failed to reach, a faint imprint on the floor caught Meri’s eye—a small handprint, smudged and barely there, left by Iain when they’d been chasing shadows earlier that day. The quiet reach of children trying to anchor a world that felt fractured.

The silence might have held forever, if not for the kettle’s soft hiss slipping into a low boil. Mam rose without a word, her hands moving with the familiar quiet of someone who’s long stopped reaching for comfort. She poured the water into a clay cup, steam rising in curls that blurred the air between them.

Meri stayed at the doorframe, fingers brushing over the same groove her father had once carved there, a half-moon dent smoothed by years of passing hands.

“Mam,” she said, softly—so soft it barely passed the space between them. A question lived beneath the word, though no question was spoken.

Mam didn’t look up, only set the cup down on the table. Her voice, when it came, was dry as dust brushed from stone. “You’ve always held things too tightly. Even when you were little.”

Meri said nothing, but her throat ached. Outside, a breeze rattled the shutters—nothing more than wind, but it felt like a warning.

Mam turned then, slow and deliberate, her eyes shadowed in the firelight. “Not everything hidden keeps you safe,” she said. “Some things fester.”

A pause and then Meri nodded once, barely.

“I’ll go to Gertrude’s,” she murmured.

Mam only nodded, then reached—one small motion—to tuck a loose strand of Meri’s hair behind her ear. Her hand lingered, light as a moth-wing. Then fell away.

The sun had peeked over the horizon, a slow drip of warm gold pooling across the crooked timbers as Meri crossed the threshold into Gertrude’s kitchen. The room was dense and heavy with the faintly sour weight of dried herbs strung in faded garlands from the low rafters. The sharp, almost bitter hint of crushed thyme sifted through the stale air, weaving quietly with the heavy musk of earth and smoke—like secrets folded deep into the seams of the walls.

Outside, a lone crow let loose its hollow call, the sound threadbare, unraveling slowly into the thickening dusk as though reaching for something just beyond the edge of hearing.

Gertrude was still asleep. Her mornings started later than most but she never minded the works starting before she did.

Meri’s hands moved with practiced steadiness, rough and callused, scraping the ginger root against stone with a steady rhythm born of habit and necessity. But her mind had drifted far away—pulling inward, tracing the thin shadow.

There had been no questions from Mam that morning. Just a look, steady and unyielding, as if her eyes could press through skin to the thing Meri wouldn’t name. Not harsh. Not warm. Just… knowing.

Her gaze flickered toward the stool by the hearth, where the uneven pool of fading sunlight spilled softly over a small, folded parcel. A slow stillness settled in her bones, the space between heartbeats stretching taut. She stopped.

There, resting with careless cruelty atop the cracked wood, was a sprig of wolfsbane—its flowers pale and brittle, petals curled inward like folded flags that spoke only in silence, their edges fragile as old skin. The faint scent was a ghost of cold bitterness, drifting thin and sharp, threading its way beneath her ribs with the quiet weight of warning—like frost creeping under a doorframe before winter’s final claim.

Beneath the sprig, a sheet of parchment lay worn and softened at the edges, the fibers whisper-thin and trembling beneath her tentative fingers. Her touch was reverent but trembling, as if the paper might crumble beneath the weight of all it carried, a silent threat pressed into every crease.

The words inscribed there were hers—not the careless half-formed lines scattered in moments of restless thought, but a passage painstakingly hidden. A shard of memory pulled from the cold stone heart of Greysni’s chamber, from beneath a loose floorboard.

It read: The girl did not run. She stayed within the house without windows, where the wind whispered broken lullabies. She said she was not afraid. It was nearly true.

The letters were heavy, their meaning settling slow and hard in her chest. No longer just a fragment of a story—they were a mirror, turned inward.

Her breath caught—a quiet hitch like a leaf caught in sudden wind.

In the quiet, the flower whispered of things kept secret, of danger folded inside beauty. She remembered the stories, told low and guarded—how the plant marked the line between safety and shadow, a shield veiling venom beneath soft petals.

And Mam’s voice stirred again, not as a sudden interruption, but as something that had always been there—woven into her bones, her silences, her choosing.

Not everything hidden keeps you safe.

Meri stood motionless beside the hearth, one hand still lightly braced on the old table as if steadying herself against something deeper than balance.

She hadn’t told Mam what she’d hidden. Not the words written like bruises. Not the dreams stitched out of Greysni’s damp silence.

And Mam hadn’t asked but somehow… she had known.

A muscle in Meri’s jaw flexed. She picked up the letter again, gently now, the way one might lift a fallen bird from a snare. Her thumb traced the edge where the fibers had softened from time and heat and carelessness. The line she had once scrawled in defiance—or was it surrender?—felt different now. Heavier. Sharper.

She said she was not afraid. It was nearly true.

The letters had not changed but she had.

Mam’s words echoed still, quieter now, like something spoken long ago yet only just understood.

It wasn’t the pain that festered, but the silence wrapped around it. The choice to stay quiet. To protect others by hiding what had already carved itself into her bones. She thought of Tessie’s curls, warm in her lap. Of Elida’s narrowed eyes, and the way her fingers curled into fists when Meri wouldn’t answer. Of Mam’s silence, and how it was never empty—it was a wall holding back a sea.

She folded the letter again—not hiding it this time but holding it.

Then, turning to the shelf, she took down a small linen cloth. With careful hands, she wrapped the sprig of wolfsbane, folding the corners in like a midwife bundling something too fragile for the world. When she set it in the satchel at her hip, it was no longer a threat.

The crow cried again. The morning deepened.

But even after the bundle was stowed, Meri didn’t rise.

Her hand lingered in the satchel, not on the cloth-wrapped sprig—but beside it. Beneath the bundle, beneath the herb pouch and thread spool and the paper she hadn’t meant to read again, lay something weightier. Softer. The cloth-wrapped mirror, still untouched since the night her mother had placed it beside her cup.

She drew it out now without fully meaning to. The fabric gave under her fingers with a hush like a breath released too slowly. She didn’t open it right away. Just held it in both hands, thumb brushing the seam, heart pulsing too near her throat.

The stillness of Gertrude’s house pressed around her—warm, shadowed, watchful. Outside, the wind stirred the thatch like a restless sleeper. The scent of thyme and iron clung to the corners of the room.

Meri lowered herself back onto the stool, slowly, and unfolded the mirror.

It caught no light—just a dim, river-dark sheen, the kind of surface that didn’t reflect so much as listen.

She stared at it. The silence between her and Brom had stretched long, longer than winter. And yet…

“If you’re there,” she murmured, voice rough with things unsaid, “I won’t ask if you knew.”

Her finger drifted to the edge of the mirror, touched the rim as if steadying herself on the rim of a well.

“There was a story,” she continued, quieter now. “And a flower. One I buried long ago. He found it. Or someone did.”

Her voice thickened. Not with fear. With the ache of carrying too much alone.

“I didn’t mean to write it for him. I wrote it for myself. To stay whole. To remember what was mine.”

She swallowed.

“But he read it anyway.”

A long pause followed, breath held like a wound.

“I think I need you to know that. Not because I can’t bear it—but because I can. And I shouldn’t have to alone.”

She didn’t look away. The mirror gave no answer. No shimmer. No voice. But the silence felt less hollow now. Like something had been met, if not returned.

Her thumb swept once more across the rim, then she rewrapped it, slow and steady, like folding shut a door that no longer needed locking. When she slid it back into her satchel, her fingers no longer trembled.

She rose.

The sun had shifted outside, brightening the far side of the window until the wood glowed gold along the grain. Her breath steadied. Her spine straightened.

And when she opened the door to the hillside and stepped into the wind, it no longer felt like a warning.

It felt like weather.

…

The path down from the cottage was steep and slick with thaw. Water bled through the moss in slow pulses, seeping between roots, pooling in the low places where stone met leaf mold. Meri moved without rush, her boots darkened to the ankles, the satchel heavy at her hip.

Her fingers brushed the flap now and then, grounding herself in the quiet shape of what it held. The flower no longer felt like a warning, not exactly. It was a thread—one drawn between knowing and not-saying, between her mother’s eyes and her own refusal to be seen.

At the bend in the trail, she paused beneath an alder whose limbs still bore the memory of winter. A single leaf clung there, dry and curled, a final echo. She looked up at it, not knowing why, only that something in her recognized the gesture. The stubbornness. The hush before letting go.

Below, the field sloped out in soft ridges, the grass low and patchy where the snow had fled. Smoke rose thin from the house chimney. Someone had lit the fire again.

She didn’t go straight there.

Instead, she crossed to the narrow path behind the barn, where the thicket grew up around the boundary stones. This had once been the children’s hiding place, years ago—overgrown and brambled, full of secrets and dares. It was still half-sheltered from the wind, quiet, unseen. The place where things could wait.

And there, tucked just inside the thorns, sat Conan.

His knees were muddied, one hand scratched, but he didn’t flinch when he saw her. His carving knife rested in his lap, dull-edged and clumsy. At his feet, half-buried in shavings and damp leaves, was the shape of the bird.

It wasn’t finished.

The wings were too thick, the beak too long, the grain split near the tail. But it sat upright. Solid and waiting.

He didn’t speak. Only looked at her with eyes that weren’t asking for anything—just watching, as if some part of him understood something larger than the shape of wood.

Meri crouched beside him, her breath close and visible in the cold. She didn’t reach for the carving. She didn’t need to.

“It’s alright,” she murmured after a moment, voice low and almost hoarse. “It doesn’t have to fly.”

Conan blinked. His lips parted, then pressed shut again. He nodded, barely.

Silence held between them—thick, but not empty.

A crow passed overhead, its shadow rippling across the field, then was gone.

Meri stood slowly, knees stiff from kneeling. She looked down once more at the unfinished bird, then reached into her satchel and drew out the linen-wrapped bundle.

“Can you keep something for me?” she asked, softer than before.

Conan straightened, eyes flicking to her hands.

She didn’t unwrap it. Just placed it beside his carving, the linen already damp at the corners.

“It’s not dangerous anymore,” she added, not to convince him—but perhaps herself.

He nodded again. Then, carefully, as if it were no different than a twig or a stone, he lifted the bundle and tucked it inside his coat. No promise spoken. No oath asked. Just a child and a secret, shared.

…

Meri’s hands were wet to the wrists, the basin lapping cold against her skin. She stood by the open doorway where the light was clearest, rinsing the dirt from the day’s gathering—sprigs of yarrow, a handful of nettle, a few stubborn stalks of sweetgrass. The greens floated, their edges torn and curling, clouding the water with soil and ghostly fragments of root.

A wind stirred through the doorway, soft as breath, brushing a strand of her hair across her cheek. She didn’t tuck it back.

Each stem she lifted felt more delicate than she remembered. She worked slowly, not because of weariness, but because something inside her asked for silence. Not the empty kind—but the kind that comes before a word is spoken. That hush before a truth unfurls its wings.

Her breath moved in and out, steady as the rhythm of water, though beneath her ribs a familiar tension lingered, like the afterimage of a braced flinch. Even now, in safety, her body listened for things she couldn’t name.

The story. She hadn’t meant to write it, at first.

In the quiet of Greysni’s stone-blooded rooms, when Morzan had left her alone for stretches long enough to think, she had gathered scraps—ash-burned parchment, charcoal tips, a stolen stub of ink. She had hidden them in the hollow beneath a broken tile, slipping them back each time she heard the drag of his boots in the corridor. Even the sound of them now haunted her sometimes—in dreams, or when the wind swept just right across the eaves.

She’d written it in the dark, mostly. Knees drawn to her chest, hunched over the page like a bird shielding an egg from frost. Not a letter. Not a journal. A story.

It had been her only way out then. To name things without naming them. To place fear and memory in a girl not quite herself, in a house not quite Greysni. A story with false windows, false names, but a heartbeat real enough to steady her own.

She had written it because she needed to. Because Morzan had demanded silence, obedience, clarity—and the story was none of those things. It was confused and strange and fragile and hers.

And she had hidden it.

Even when he found it, weeks later—when he held the pages like evidence in his fingers and asked, “Is this supposed to be you?” with that flat, sharp tone—she had not answered. Her heart had hammered loud enough to hear, but her mouth had stayed closed.

And yet—somehow—he had kept it and sent it back. All this time later. Bound and folded and wrapped with wolfsbane like a snare disguised as a gift.

She lifted a clump of nettle from the water, shaking off the excess, laying it to dry on the cloth beside her. Her motions were steady, but her chest felt taut, as though held together with thread.

Meri couldn’t help but think, why send it now? To remind her who she’d been? Or to prove he still held some piece of her—that even the things she made in secret were his to return?

The room was quiet save for the drip of water and the faint creak of the wooden frame as the wind shifted. Dust floated in the doorway’s light, suspended like breath not yet exhaled.

Her gaze drifted toward the satchel again, where the story lay folded in linen, untouched since that morning. The idea had begun as a whisper: show Mam.

But now it pressed deeper.

Mam, who had always listened without reaching. Who had never once asked what it had been like there, but whose eyes had searched hers, quiet and unwavering, in the mooncycles since her return. Who touched her less now, but with more care—pauses before every movement, as if unsure what Meri could bear.

Would she understand?

Would she read between the crooked lines, the girl who did not run, and see what had been endured? What had been claimed?

Meri rubbed her thumb against a stubborn clot of soil on her palm, watching it dissolve in the water. A ghost of scent rose from the herbs—green and sharp, the kind that wakes the skin.

She wasn’t ready to say it aloud. Not yet but perhaps it didn’t need to be said. The story was still hers. Not just the writing—but the choice of what to do with it, and that choice—after all that had been taken—mattered more than anything.

She wrung the cloth dry, folded it over the herbs with care. The sun had dropped low across the lintel, catching on her shoulder like the touch of someone familiar. She didn’t flinch. She stood a moment longer in that light, letting it rest on her like a hand that asked nothing.

Quietly, without ceremony, Meri crossed the room, her hand brushed the satchel once more.

She hadn’t meant to reach for the mirror again—it wasn’t habit yet, not ritual—but her fingers moved on their own, tracing the fold of the cloth, the seam where she’d tucked it away. It felt no different at first. Cool. Still.

But then—faint as warmth from a stone left in sun—a heat pulsed beneath the fabric. Not sudden. Not bright. Just... present.

Her breath caught.

She stilled.

It wasn’t magic, not in the way stories claimed. It didn’t glow. It didn’t speak. It simply was—a weight she hadn’t known she’d missed until it stirred. The mirror held its silence, but the cloth felt changed in her palm, the same way water feels different when it’s being watched.

No voice. No image. But it was him. She knew it.

The warmth pulsed again, barely more than a breath—then faded. Not withdrawn, only… settled. Like a hand laid gently over hers, saying I hear you, and no more.

She didn’t unwrap it. Didn’t need to.

Instead, she closed her fingers around the bundle—not to hide it, but to hold it back. To keep it safe. To choose when and if she answered again.

And this time, she did not tremble.

…

Meri moved through the days with a slow, careful breath—each moment folded into the next like a whispered prayer carried on the wind. The crow’s sharp cries echoed in the spaces between her thoughts, a jagged thread weaving through the fragile calm she tried to keep. It was always there, a dark pulse beneath the hum of the morning light, a presence that turned the ordinary edges of her world brittle and sharp.

She rose early, before the first pale gleam of dawn, and stood at the threshold where shadow met the waking land. The air was cool, heavy with the scent of damp earth and pine resin, the faint promise of rain hanging low. Her sword lay at her side—drawn now, the cold weight a steady comfort against the restless dark.

The garden was a quiet place in those hours, the soil soft under her fingers as she tended to the fragile shoots. Each leaf seemed to tremble with a secret life, the green fragile and tentative like a breath held too long. Meri’s hands lingered over the wolfbane she had given to Conan, its pale leaves and clustered flowers trembling faintly, as though aware of the unseen watch that shadowed her steps.

Inside the house, Mam moved with a quiet grace, folding linen or stitching seams with hands that seemed to carry the weight of unspoken things. Their eyes met sometimes—brief glances filled with a tether of understanding, a shared hesitance that wove between the quiet moments. The story she had hidden beneath its linen wrap waited like a secret heart beating slow and still, pressing against her ribs with the weight of all the things she dared not say.

And then there was the crow.

Its calls sliced through the night with increasing sharpness, each cry a shard of ice that seemed to cut deeper into the stillness. The bird would appear at the windowsill, restless and insistent, stirring the air until it hummed with unease. Some mornings, Meri found a single black feather laid where she walked—a silent token left by unseen hands, a reminder that the watch never ceased.

The unease coiled tighter inside her with each passing day, twisting in the quiet spaces beneath her breath. It was not just the crow, nor the scattered herbs disturbed in the garden, but something older—something waiting, patient and unyielding, threading itself through the fragile fabric of their days.

At night, Meri held her sword close, fingers tracing the worn hilt as she stood vigil beneath the ink-dark sky. Her breath came slow and steady, a quiet drum against the rising tide of shadow.

…

…

The afternoon sun slanted through the kitchen window, painting streaks of dust and warmth onto the worn wooden table. Meri sat with her shoulders tense, the weight of quiet days settling heavy like damp earth. The house felt small—too small for all the words unsaid, for the stories she carried folded beneath linen, for the shadow that hovered just beyond the edges of their hearth.

Elida moved beside her, busying herself with folding scraps of cloth, her fingers nimble but her face tight with the same restlessness that pressed at Meri’s chest. The sisters shared a silence that stretched too long—thin, fragile, and taut with everything left unspoken.

Meri’s gaze drifted toward the basket where Mam’s sewing tools lay scattered. Most of the needles were smooth, pale bone—worn and shaped by patient hands over many years. But among them, a few steel needles caught the light: long, thin, cold and sharp, used for mending finer cloth or delicate embroidery. Her eyes fixed on one such needle, its silver gleam stark and purposeful.

Elida looked up, brow furrowed. “What are you doing with that?”

Meri’s voice was low, edged with a weariness that felt almost like a fracture. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to stitch something—something real—before it all unravels.”

The needle was small, but in her hand it felt like a silent promise, a way to pierce the tangled threads of silence and fear. She thought of the story hidden away, the weight pressed beneath linen, and the crow’s black feather left like a wound at the doorstep.

Elida’s eyes softened then, a quiet understanding passing between them—no need for words.

Meri’s breath caught, a small, sharp tremor beneath the stillness. She held the needle tight, as if by that simple grip she could hold together the fraying edges of their lives—their pain, their fear, the things left too long unsaid.

Outside, the wind whispered through the trees, a low and restless voice. Inside, the silence between them cracked just enough to let something new slip through—fragile, dangerous, but real.

The needle’s coldness seeped through her skin, mingling with the restless ache that had settled deep in her bones these past weeks. She swallowed the sharp taste of weariness and looked toward Elida, whose eyes, so often guarded, softened beneath the weight of shared knowing. A breath passed between them, a thread fragile yet unbroken.

Meri traced absent lines along the wood grain of the table, feeling the rough texture steadying her. The house held its own breath, caught between dusk and night, the scent of pine and smoke lingering like a faded memory. Somewhere beyond the windows, the crow’s harsh call scraped the stillness, a reminder of eyes that watched and waited.

Her hand tightened around the needle again, the cool metal a quiet pulse beneath her skin. It was a small thing, but for a moment it felt like the only thing tethering her to the fraying pieces of herself—her family, the story folded and left in the open, the long nights spent standing vigil with sword drawn.

Then the shadows deepened, stretching long fingers across the worn floorboards, and the weight in her chest pressed down harder. The knot of unrest twisted tighter.

Meri rose with slow resolve, her gaze lingering on the empty hearth where the last embers glowed low and red. The silence around her felt thicker now, filled with the unspoken truths that waited just beneath the surface—things that could not be hidden forever.

When night came, she moved toward the door, sword in hand, the blade cool but steady against her palm. Just as her fingers brushed the rough plaster of the wall, a soft voice called behind her—steady and familiar, a tether in the dark.

“Meri, stay in with me. Just for now.”

The simple request rooted her to the spot—Mam had never once asked her to stay inside. Slowly, she turned and crossed the room to sit beside her, where Mam’s hands were already busy with thread and cloth, the needle catching the firelight in quiet rhythm.

For a time, nothing passed between them but the rustle of wool and the low crackle of the hearth. Then, without looking up, Mam reached to her side and placed a folded bundle on the table between them. Familiar. Soft-edged with use.

Meri stilled. Her breath caught in her throat. It was the story.

Returned not with questions, nor with praise—just placed gently there, as if laying down a stone at the edge of a grave. As if to say: I see you. I carry this with you.

Her hands trembled, though she did not reach for it. Just looked. Just breathed.

Mam said nothing of it, but the silence around the gesture was louder than speech. The story had been received, not taken. Held, not judged. That alone made Meri feel as though the ground might shift beneath her, as though some old frost had cracked underfoot.

When Mam finally spoke, her voice was a thread woven of sorrow and resolve, steady and grave. “You should know,” she said, “that Brom is coming tonight. He won’t stay long, just to the fencepost and then he’ll leave. You need to go with him.”

Meri’s eyes drifted down to Mam’s hands, moving sure and slow over the worn fabric. The cloak she was stitching was unmistakably Meri’s own—threadbare, softened by years of wear and care.

“We would give you the spring if we could,” Mam’s gaze met hers, fierce and tender all at once, “but this is a path we both believe will keep you safe, even if it means tearing you from the soil beneath your feet.”

That look—slow and heavy—fell over Meri like a shadow, chilling and certain. Her fingers curled tight around the cold needle hidden in her pocket, the small weight a quiet defiance against the quiet unraveling of everything she had known.

The room felt too still, as if the walls were holding their breath. Meri’s heart twisted in a slow, raw ache—so much left tangled beneath the surface. Words surged, urgent and tangled, but her voice found only this fragile thread: “Why tell me now?”

Mam’s eyes softened, the lines around them deepening. “Because no one could know.”

The silence stretched then.

Meri lingered for a long moment, watching the firelight move across her mam’s hands, memorizing the cabin in quiet detail—the sag of the roofline, the curl of smoke rising through frost-heavy air. Then she stepped out into the dark and approached the fencepost.

Before Mam had told she was leaving, she had meant to drive the needle into the wood—sharp, deliberate, like a signature. But now instead, she laid it down with the softness of a falling feather, a loose thread from her dress looped through its eye. Pale, fine, nearly invisible in the dark.

She knew how Morzan would see it. How it would make him pause. Not with rage, but with thought. Not a threat. Not defiance. There was no challenge in the gesture. Only a quiet understanding of the rules he played by—and how to shape the silence between them.

It wouldn’t stop him. She knew that. But maybe… maybe it would stay his hand. Enough to keep his fury from her family. Enough to make him think twice, in the way only symbols could.

She had lived long enough beneath his shadow to know which gestures stirred his attention, and which ones he mistook for strength.

Meri stood a breath longer than she needed to, eyes on the post—on the weathered comb and the waiting needle—before turning toward the shed, where her bow lay tucked beneath a coil of rope, nearly forgotten.

The world had folded itself into silence by the time Meri returned to the house, bow in hand. She moved through the rooms without a sound—bare feet brushing against worn floorboards that held the ghosted impressions of a thousand steps before hers.

The house was heavy with its own quiet memory, each corner holding weight. She paused outside her bedroom door, her hand resting lightly on the rough wood, hearing the soft rhythm of her sister’s and the goat’s breath—deep and even in sleep, the slow rise and fall of dreams undisturbed.

A flicker of something sharp and tender pressed at her throat. Meri couldn’t put into words what she wanted to say, not the way she wanted to say them but she couldn’t vanish without a word again. She knew that doing so would hurt Elida in more ways than any weapon.

Stepping into the room, she pulled out a book, one of the old books where her childhood tales were left unfinish. Mam had saved most of them, hidden them away Meri’s return having dragging them over land after abandoning the cabin in the forest. And though Meri hadn’t read through them in her months here, she knew which book held the stories Elida treasured most.

She pulled the wooden box out from beneath her bed and sorted through them in the candle until she pulled it out. It was a simple book, leather bound with faded and faded painting on the front. Her fingers traced over the birds she had once spent hours perfecting, and opened it and turned to the last page.

Meri set it down on her knee and looked through the box for her ink and quills. Mam had preserved them carefully, each hidden within folds of linen. Preserved with care. Not as if they were packed away and hidden from view but like one would after a burial.

Elida had said that their mam didn’t speak her name after she taken. She remembered how the words felt like a blow, how it hurt and ached even now. Someday, she’d ask but not while things were still so raw. Not when words gathered in throat but refused to shape the sounds around them. Refused to be said the way she meant them.

Meri bit the inside of her cheek, hard enough for the pain to pull her from thought, and trimmed one of the quill’s ends and opened a bottle of ink. She inhaled deeply and turned back to the book. The paper was thin and pale, almost translucent in the faint light, and slowly she inscribed it in her careful hand with a story:

In the thick hush of the foggiest night, two fox sisters curled beneath a tangled oak, their tails entwined like whispered secrets. One sister’s amber eyes gleamed with quiet resolve as she slipped away into the shadowed woods, her footsteps soft as falling leaves. “I will return,” she promised, her voice a breath against the chill air, “when the first light breaks the sky.” The other watched, heart tight with the weight of waiting, as the night swallowed her sister whole. Dawn stretched slow fingers through the mist, painting the world in pale gold and shadow. And there, at the edge of the waking woods, the returning sister’s silhouette shimmered like a promise kept.

As she let the ink dry, she returned placed everything back into the box and returned it to its home under the bed. She placed the notebook among Elida’s book on a shelf, far from Thistle’s hungry reach stepped away. Her sister would see it and read it and know.

Meri went through her chest of clothing, finding a long, dark tunic and trousers laying at the top. Mam had set them there, silently telling her to wear them. She’d have known that her daughter wouldn’t wish travel in a dress.

After she’d changed, her dresses folded, her gaze drifted to the leather satchel that hung from a peg—the one lined with pockets for herbs and roots, tied with faded cords scented faintly of lavender and chamomile. It was stitched by Mam’s steady hand, meant to hold healing and protection both. She unbuckled it slowly, weighing it in her hands before slinging it over her shoulder, the strap cool against her skin.

Turning, Meri turned to a worn wooden box she lifted a bundle of letters—edges softened by time, Eragon’s hand scrawled in faded ink, carrying the weight of distant days. Her fingers trembled as she tucked them deep within the pockets of her satchel. Beside the letters lay a string of beads, delicate and worn smooth from years of touch—blue and green glass. They slipped into her palm like whispered promises.

Next came the knives—each with a handle carved from worn wood, smooth and shaped to fit the curl of her fingers as though made for her alone. She gathered them carefully, the blades resting cold and sure against the leather sheathed at her waist.

In the quiet, her fingers lingered over a small bundle of flint and tinder, a carved wooden whistle, and a strip of cloth embroidered with the shape of a hawk in flight—an emblem Brom had pressed into her palm once years ago. She tucked these things into her satchel beside the mirror

The room was still, and the shadows deepened as Meri took one last breath and closed the door quietly behind her.

When Meri sat down beside Mam, she was handed her cloak, freshly mended with a simple pattern near the clasp. It hadn’t been there that morning.

They sat there for a long time as night deepened, both watching the fire. Their silence said such more in the silence that passed between them, words they both didn’t dare speak aloud. Promises they would not voice.

Outside, the fog thickened like soup.

In the darkest hours of night, Mam stirred beside her and stood, handing Meri the pack resting beside her. “It has everything you’ll need,” she said simply.

Her fingers brushed a stray lock of hair behind Meri’s ear, a touch both tender and laden with the effort of holding back. They stood locked in that gaze, as if trying to imprint the shape of the other’s face onto memory before the night claimed them both. Mam was first to break the stillness, inhaling a long breath, turning away as if speaking silently with the shadows.

Then Mam turned away, her footsteps echoed softly, and stepped toward the door and after pulling pack onto her back, Meri followed. 

The fog slipped through her ankles, cold fingers trailing upward. She glanced back, catching the warm, flickering candlelight spilling from the window—fragile and hesitant like a flicker of hope—and then stepped forward into the shrouded world where Brom waited.

Where the farm met the edge of the wild, the night held its breath in the hush of a boundary, a seam where mist and shadow braided themselves tight. Brom stood just beyond the last gnarled wood of the fence, the dark folding over him like a heavy cloak. His breath rose in pale, steady puffs under the moonlight, fingers clenched around the worn leather of his satchel as if it held every tether to the world he carried.

He did not move forward. Did not cross the fragile glow spilling from the hearth, that small island of warmth that might have bound him if he stepped too close. Brom said nothing, his gaze flicking toward the dark beyond—eyes catching ghosts that only he could see. Then, as though drawn back by some silent summons.

After a moment’s hesitation Meri stepped towards him, turning once, a last glance at Mam’s retreating form before she slipped into the night. The fog seemed to swallow them whole, leaving only the faintest trace of their passage and the cold promise of what waited beyond.

And on the fencepost, draped in the chill of dew, the comb remained—its teeth broken, weathered like a relic forgotten beneath the eaves for weeks now. Beside it, placed with quiet intent, lay a silver sewing needle—bare, unthreaded, and sharp as frost. A silent thread waiting to stitch a new, uncertain path through the darkness.

A/N note: For those who are curious what exactly Meri and Morzan's silent conversation would have looked like over the last chapters, this is it:

There is no wind in the space between them. Just the hush of breath, of presence. The light is thin, high through the rafters, falling in a kind of hush that doesn't warm. Meri does not sit. She stands at a slight angle, half-turned toward the doorway, hands loose but not idle. Her palm brushes once across her hip as if checking for something absent—then stills.

Morzan waits a breath before he speaks, his eyes on her hands, not her face. "I sent you the comb. Not for beauty. Each tooth, a tether. A mark," Morzan said, softly, almost fondly, watching her hands rather than her face. "You left—and still, I'm a part of you."

Meri's fingers curl slightly where they rest at her side. Not a flinch but memory rising under the skin. She doesn't lift her gaze. When she speaks, her voice is even, stripped of tremor, "I'll accept it but not because I want to but because I'm not ready to say no. Don't mistake it as a gift you sent chains carved to look like care. I used it once but it never made me yours."

"And the raven, I send to you you that you may walk free for now but I'm watching and I'm never far." Morzan tilts his head. His stance stays loose, but his eyes narrow, something faintly searching and he continues "I see the turn of your head when it cries. I see how you recognize it as me."

Her jaw tightens, a fraction. She allows herself a slow breath, grounding, before her words return. "I hear it in the mornings. Not because I fear it—because I know its eyes aren't its own," she replied. "It doesn't not scare me."

He steps a fraction closer. Not enough to threaten but enough to press the weight of his presence into the air between them. His hands are loose at his sides, but his gaze does not wander. "The scorpion… I left it nestled in your satchel. You carried it for days," he says. "You didn't even know. That's how close I still am. You carry me still, Muirgheal."

"It was dead. Preserved like pain," she says and then her voice lowers. Something in her posture shifts—small, internal. One arm crosses her chest as if to still her own ribs. Her voice lowers. "I carry many things. But not all of them wound me now."

Morzan's expression flickers—something caught between satisfaction and loss. His voice, when it comes again, softens with a kind of reverence that does not belong. "And then the fire. Lavender, stone… You laid them down like offerings. Even your silence has shape."

She shifts, a slow movement of her shoulder, like something loosening beneath skin. Her eyes do not meet his. "It wasn't rage. It was release. I burned what you gave me to remember—and to stop remembering," Meri says and now her eyes lift. Steady. Grey and unreadable. The way stone is unreadable before it breaks. "I want it to end. And yes—I want you to know. No more watching. No more claiming. No more quiet wars."

He smiles faintly, and it is not a kind thing. He takes one step back, almost theatrical, then watches her anew. "You threw the broken comb at the raven. You could've buried it, hidden it. But you wanted me to see," Morzan say and draws a slow breath, the smile slipping into something else. His voice lowers to a strange, almost rueful hush. "So I placed it again—on the fencepost. The same comb, reshaped. Not a weapon. Not a trap. Just... what was."

"I saw it. I didn't touch it. Some things can be returned but not reclaimed." Her reply is softer than before. A breath more intimate but her fingers do not unclench.

He studies her—not as a father might a daughter, nor captor a prize. Something in between. And then, almost offhandedly, he asks: "Then you stood there with your sword. Are you waiting for me, my child?"

"No. Waiting through you," Meri says. Her voice comes quiet, but without flinch or falter.

A pause. His mouth hardens slightly, a line drawn in thought. Then: "I found your story. The one you wrote as a child. I returned it. Pressed with wolfsbane. Beautiful... but poisonous. Like you."

She does not blink. Her hands have stilled at her sides, fingers slightly curled, not in readiness—but in refusal. "You sent it back to wound me. But you didn't change a word. Even poisoned, it was mine. You couldn't touch that."

A silence folds between them. Then—half-turned, not quite facing her anymore.

When he speaks again, voice low, angled. "You gave the wolfsbane to the boy. Conan, isn't it? A warning, tucked inside your care."

Her body stills entirely. Only her eyes seem to darken, some inward tide crossing beneath her voice. "He's too young to know the shape of a shadow," she says and takes a breathe. "But I do. I wrapped it for him the way no one did for me."

His head tilts as if to say something more, to lean again into persuasion—but then he stops. Instead, a quiet sigh. Then, with that almost coaxing lilt: "My crow still circles. Still watches. You may dress your sword with flowers, but I remain the wind around your steps."

Her reply comes with no movement. Only her breath deepens, steadying her spine, rooting her. "I understand what you're saying. I've learned to speak your language—let that be enough," she replies. "You are not my master. I'm stepping away for now by my own choice."

If Meri had stabbed the needle into the fencepost, she'd be saying: No more! Come and closer and I will make you bleed!

Chapter Text

Meri’s first step onto the upland vanished into the fog as if swallowed whole, the sound of her own breathing suddenly too loud in her ears. The mist pressed close—thick and damp—curling along her neck like a cold breath, tugging at her cloak’s hem as though pulling her back toward the warm, familiar glow of home. But home was already out of sight, swallowed by shadow and secrecy.

Ahead, Brom moved silently through the gloom, more shape than man, his cloak flowing behind him like dark water. Meri strained to keep him in view; the fog blurred his edges, making him ghostlike. He hadn't spoken since they’d stepped beyond the gate—not even a whisper of comfort—and the heavy quiet unnerved her. Each step felt like stepping into forbidden ground, a quiet trespass against something she couldn't name.

Their boots slipped softly over shale and moss, every footfall careful and deliberate. Meri’s eyes traced Brom’s steps, mirroring his cautious placement. Heel first, toes clear of any twig or loose stone. Her muscles tensed with the effort of silence; her heartbeat drummed in her ears as if urging her to turn back before it was too late.

A distant snap echoed suddenly—a branch, perhaps, broken by some hidden creature—and Brom froze instantly, one hand raised sharply. Meri’s breath snagged painfully in her throat, her muscles locking tight. She pressed her palm hard against her mouth, sure the sound of her pulse alone could betray them. The silence afterward felt louder than any scream, a thick, crawling quiet that made the skin along her spine tighten.

The land itself seemed complicit in their flight. Hollows opened before them without warning, hidden until the last moment, forcing her to rely solely on Brom’s steady presence. Damp ferns brushed her legs, cold and startling; brambles snagged quietly at her cloak as if reluctant to let her pass. A startled crow flapped noisily upward from an unseen perch, and Meri froze, blood humming anxiously beneath her skin.

Finally, Brom moved again, melting forward like smoke. Meri followed, her limbs heavy, doubts pressing in as close as the fog. What had frightened Brom so badly he wouldn't even speak? she wondered. Who—or what—waited out there in the darkness, watching for a single mistake?

The sky above was colorless, starless, a heavy blanket of ash, and the mist swirled around them in eerie, slow pulses as though the hills themselves were breathing. Brom led her through this twilight world, fast across open stretches, slow and cautious when a hollow opened like a yawning mouth. In that uncertain rhythm, Meri felt the first prickling sense of being utterly alone—even with Brom so close she could touch him.

When at last Brom turned sharply, dipping into the thick shadows of a shallow burn, Meri hesitated. Branches clawed lightly at her cloak, damp earth slid beneath her palms as she steadied herself against gnarled roots. Brom had stilled completely again, eyes fixed on something unseen in the darkness ahead. The silence stretched thin, brittle, until she felt as though it would snap at any moment.

And suddenly she knew: this was no simple journey, no ordinary caution. They were running—hiding—from something that hunted in the dark beyond the mist. This realization squeezed the air from her lungs, sent a shiver racing up her spine. The land around her felt both shelter and threat, a world holding its breath, uncertain whether to betray or protect them.

She swallowed hard, drawing closer to Brom’s shadow, desperate for the reassurance his silence had stolen. Here, in the trembling dark beneath the heavy fog, Meri understood for the first time the true weight of silence—the terrible, necessary secret of vanishing.

The path stretched ahead, dark and indistinct, vanishing into a dense tide of fog that crept along the upland. Meri’s eyes strained through the gloom; senses sharpened by a growing unease. Every faint rustle, every distant crackle of twigs, tugged at her nerves. She adjusted the pack at her back, feeling the reassuring weight of bow pressing firmly against her spine and sword at her hip. They no longer felt like tools for travel, but lifelines.

Beside her, Brom moved soundlessly, his shape a darker smudge against the gray veil. He paused often, head tilted slightly, listening for dangers she couldn't yet perceive. Each time he stopped, her heart skipped, the rhythm of her breathing turning tight and shallow.

Through the mist, small fragments of the world emerged and disappeared with unsettling clarity. A twisted branch loomed suddenly close, its bark stripped raw, pale and ghostly. Meri startled, fingers twitching toward her bow. A few paces later, something scurried in the undergrowth—quick feet over fallen leaves—too light to be human, yet it quickened her pulse nonetheless.

Brom’s silence, usually a comforting anchor, now felt like an unspoken warning. It stretched taut between them, his alertness infecting her own movements. She found herself mirroring him: stepping lightly, eyes constantly shifting from the uncertain footing ahead to the endless gray around them. Every hollow, every shadow seemed poised to spill forth something dangerous.

Hours passed unmarked except by the slow fading of stars she could not see. Meri’s muscles burned with quiet tension, the ache in her shoulders matched by the pressure at her temples. Finally, as the mist thinned slightly, Brom halted abruptly. She nearly collided with him, swallowing a startled gasp.

"What—" she began in a whisper, but he raised a cautioning hand.

Ahead, faint hoofbeats vibrated softly through the earth. Meri’s chest constricted sharply; her hand tightened on the bowstring looped at her wrist. Brom guided her wordlessly into a shallow gully, gently pressing her downward until the earth enfolded her like a protective cradle.

They crouched there, breaths shallow, as unseen riders passed nearby. Her heartbeat became a drumbeat, wild and relentless, until at last the sounds faded into silence again.

Brom released a slow breath, easing upright, but the tension remained in the set of his jaw. Meri climbed to her feet, knees weak, eyes wide as she sought reassurance in his steady gaze.

"Not far now," Brom murmured softly—words more felt than heard. "But keep close."

Meri nodded, steadied herself against the weight of her pack, and stepped forward into the fog once more, alert to every whispering leaf, every shadowed hollow, every small movement in the land around her—each one a reminder that their path was both a refuge and a hunt, uncertain in the mist, every step shadowed by the fear of discovery.

…

They descended into another bourn, a narrow creek bed choked with bramble and slate. Meri crouched low, slipping her boots into the shallow runnel; the shock of cold water raced up her calves, sharpening her senses once again. She flexed her toes against the gritty bed, small stones pressing through the thin soles of her boots. Brom settled his pack quietly on a flat rock nearby, his movements controlled, deliberate, as if any sudden noise might alert something lurking just beyond the mist.

He opened a small pouch and produced two stiff breadcakes, placing them silently beside her. She glanced up as he reached once more into his pack. They ate quickly and silently, the bread tasting faintly of smoke and yesterday’s hearth. The warmth settled briefly in Meri’s stomach, a fragile comfort against the tense uncertainty of their journey. When they rose, the thinning mist curled around them like hesitant whispers, the sun casting watery gold across the uplands.

They continued in silence, the sky was lightening now, Brom leading down a gentler slope toward the flattened grasses near an old shepherd’s fence. Meri’s eyes caught each small detail: the bent stalks of wild rye, crushed grass that betrayed recent passage, the faint scuff of footprints nearly hidden in the earth. At each hollow and rise, Brom dipped low, and Meri shadowed him exactly, her footsteps deliberately mingling with his, blurring their trail into one shared passage.

When they crested the ridge and the dark silhouette of Watcher’s Peak faded behind them, a fresh hush gathered—purposeful and steady. Meri’s pack now seemed lighter, the tension in her shoulders softened by the rhythmic sway of her bow and sword. She drew comfort from the small embroidery at her throat. Mam didn’t embroider often. Once she had shared with Mari how she hated the task but loved the beauty held.

Ahead, Brom guided them toward a jagged opening, the dark mouth of a crumbling tower framed by ivy-covered stones. Meri slipped in behind him, heart quickening as shafts of pale dawn pierced the broken roof, lighting small patches of worn stone. The air was heavy with moisture and the cool scent of moss, silence breathing thick around them, as if the tower itself held its breath, uncertain whether to shelter or betray them.

Inside, the ruin breathed quiet. Stone walls, once part of some forgotten watchtower, rose in uneven lines around them, the upper levels long since collapsed to moss and time. Ivy clung to the mortar in dark curls, and in the corners where the wind couldn’t reach, dust and old feathers stirred gently in the draft. The smell was earthen and still—ash, lichen, leather, and long memory.

Two horses waited within the crumbling shelter; their forms half-shadowed in the tower’s fading light. The chamber had clearly known Brom’s presence before: a shallow firepit swept clean, its ashes tucked neatly beneath a shelf of stone; a stack of seasoned pinewood hidden behind fallen rubble; faint depressions in the dirt where saddle gear had once been laid, as if the earth remembered the weight of old burdens.

The dark-dappled mare, young but steady, stood with her head bowed slightly, breath coiling in soft spirals from her nostrils. Her eyes held a patient, untethered calm—the kind born from long roads and unspoken bonds. Meri watched the mare quietly; drawn by something she couldn’t name. When she looked closer, the dapples on her coat formed soft, irregular whorls like frost blooming on a pane. Mistpine, she thought, without needing to say it. The name rooted itself without ceremony. It simply was.

Beside her, Nightburrow stood like a shadow forged from coal—his flanks dark and gleaming, eyes steady and unreadable. He pressed his side to the stone, unmoved by wind or age, his ears twitching faintly in the hush.

Without speaking, Brom stepped forward and reached out, drawing Mistpine’s reins into his hand. The leather creaked faintly, worn smooth in places. Then, with the ease of long understanding, he turned and held the reins out toward Meri. The motion was unadorned. No instruction. No explanation. Only trust, passed hand to hand like fire cupped in quiet palms.

Meri accepted them. The leather was cool, smelling of resin and wool. As she crouched to check the girth strap, her fingers slid over the warm silk of Mistpine’s coat, brushing small patches of dried sweat and the faint tremble of breath just beneath the skin. The mare flinched slightly at first, then stilled. Meri’s palm lingered a moment longer, grounding them both.

The saddle’s buckles clicked softly into place. She ran her hand along the belly strap, testing its tension with care, her focus narrow and inward. A quiet ritual she had done all her life for as long as she’s remembered.

Above, a loose stone shifted in the tower’s broken crown. It clinked as it fell, the sound sharp in the still chamber. Meri froze, breath tightening in her chest, the air cold against her throat. But Nightburrow only shifted his weight, a hoof scuffing the ground with slow dismissal.

She turned toward Brom. He stood still, watching her—not as a sentinel, but as something steadier. His mouth curved slightly, almost imperceptible, and the shadow of pride softened the lines around his eyes and for a moment, the ruined tower felt like a hearth.

They settled in that halted pace for only a heartbeat, tension humming softly between them. Brom’s gaze flicked restlessly from shadow to shadow, muscles taut beneath his cloak. Then abruptly he tapped Nightburrow’s shoulder, a quiet urgency clear in the gesture. Meri quickly gathered Mistpine’s reins, cloak tight around her neck, feeling the mare shift beneath her—alert, sensing Brom’s unease.

They led the horses swiftly through the ivy-dark ruins, their footsteps quickening as they emerged into a night sharpened by urgency. Mistpine and Nightburrow responded instinctively to their riders' tension, stepping lightly, swiftly, hooves muted against the damp earth. Brom rode just ahead, shoulders tight, eyes scanning the darkness, never lingering on any one spot. Meri matched his pace, heart quickening with each brisk step.

The hours blurred into one continuous rhythm of silent urgency. Meri learned quickly how to encourage Mistpine’s pace without sound, how to lean forward slightly, urging speed without words. Brom’s caution was infectious—she felt every shift of his gaze as an unspoken warning, every pause as potential danger. The land rose and fell rapidly beneath them, brambles catching at their cloaks, streams crossed hurriedly, Brom’s hands tense and vigilant on reins and pommel.

Morning came with little relief, painting the sky briefly in thin strokes of rose and gold. But Brom did not slow until the sun climbed high, burning away mist and shadow alike. At last, atop a gentle rise, he halted, quickly dismounting and guiding them into a hidden hollow where thick ferns and a shallow spring offered brief shelter.

Meri slipped swiftly from Mistpine, leading the mare to drink, heart still hammering from their relentless pace. Brom moved quietly but urgently, setting packs down near a fallen oak. He handed Meri water and a piece of salted meat without a word, his gaze never resting, constantly alert for signs of pursuit.

She drank gratefully, her cloak slipping from her shoulders as she rubbed Mistpine’s neck, soothing the mare's rapid breathing. Nightburrow shifted impatiently nearby, and Meri sensed the tension had not yet left Brom. He crouched by the water, taking quick sips, eyes scanning the perimeter of their makeshift camp. The quiet, sunlit hollow felt anything but safe; instead, it carried a fragile peace, temporary and strained.

“Not long,” Brom murmured, almost to himself. Meri met his eyes and nodded in silent understanding. They would ride again soon, faster still, trusting only distance and silence to shield them from the unseen threat that hunted them through mist and shadows.

They led the horses swiftly through the ivy-dark ruins, their footsteps quickening as they emerged into a night sharpened by urgency. Mistpine and Nightburrow responded instinctively to their riders' tension, stepping lightly, swiftly, hooves muted against the damp earth. Brom rode just ahead, shoulders tight, eyes scanning the darkness, never lingering on any one spot. Meri matched his pace, heart quickening with each brisk step.

The hours blurred into one continuous rhythm of silent urgency. Meri learned quickly how to encourage Mistpine’s pace without sound, how to lean forward slightly, urging speed without words. Brom’s caution was infectious—she felt every shift of his gaze as an unspoken warning, every pause as potential danger. The land rose and fell rapidly beneath them, brambles catching at their cloaks, streams crossed hurriedly, Brom’s hands tense and vigilant on reins and pommel.

Morning came with little relief, painting the sky briefly in thin strokes of rose and gold. But Brom did not slow until the sun climbed high, burning away mist and shadow alike. At last, atop a gentle rise, he halted, quickly dismounting and guiding them into a hidden hollow where thick ferns and a shallow spring offered brief shelter.

Meri slipped swiftly from Mistpine, leading the mare to drink, heart still hammering from their relentless pace. Brom moved quietly but urgently, setting packs down near a fallen oak. He handed Meri water and a piece of salted meat without a word, his gaze never resting.

She drank greedily, her cloak slipping from her shoulders as she rubbed Mistpine’s neck, soothing the mare's rapid breathing. Nightburrow shifted impatiently nearby, and Meri sensed the tension had not yet left Brom. He crouched by the water, taking quick sips, eyes scanning the perimeter of their makeshift camp. The quiet, sunlit hollow felt anything but safe; instead, it carried a fragile peace, temporary and strained

Above them, a lone hawk wheeled slowly, its piercing cry slicing sharply through the tense quiet. Brom rose, adjusting his cloak around his shoulders, his gaze still wary. Meri stood slowly, brushing away bits of grass and fern that clung to her trousers, the movement slow, deliberate, feeling each ache and strain of their hurried journey.

Brom moved with quiet precision, unsaddling Mistpine and Nightburrow as though his hands remembered more than his mind had to direct. Leather straps slid loose beneath his fingers; buckles unfastened with soft clicks that echoed faintly in the hollow space. He brushed each flank with measured strokes, not rushed but deliberate, until sweat-damp coats gave off a dull sheen beneath the fading light—less for vanity, more for comfort, respect.

The horses leaned into his touch, one after the other, their breath rising in slow clouds, tails swishing lazily against the evening hush.

When the tack was hung and checked, Brom turned to gather pine needles and soft ferns, piling them in a thick bed near the shelter of a fallen oak. His movements remained economical, but there was care in them—each handful arranged so no sharp twig would jab her side, no stone hidden beneath the green.

He glanced toward Meri, the silent weight of suggestion in his gaze. She could feel it—rest. But instead of sitting, she crossed to Mistpine with her shoulders still squared, fingers already reaching for the mare’s withers.

“I can help,” she murmured, not defiant, just stating what the moment needed.

Brom didn’t argue. He didn’t need to.

While he brushed Nightburrow’s flank, Meri worked through Mistpine’s mane with her fingers, coaxing out burrs and tangles, letting the rhythm steady her breath. The mare lowered her head, eyes half-lidded, the way horses do when trust takes root. When she finished, Meri knelt by the pine bed and added her own handful of ferns—selecting only the softest, flattening them with her palm, checking the earth for stones the way she’d once done for her younger siblings in leaner days.

Only then, once her hands had given what they could, did she sit her knees drawn up. She rested her head against the tree and closed her eyes.

Brom passed her the water gourd, tapping her knee. She drank slowly, the metal rim cold against her mouth, the taste faintly bitter with pine sap.

For a moment, the forest seemed to settle around them. Not silence—there were the soft ticks of cooling tack, the shifting of hooves, the distant call of a nightjar—but something close to stillness. The hush before a choice. The pause that means stay ready.

Meri let the gourd rest in her lap, fingers loose. Brom crouched nearby, not watching her, but not looking away.

Then his gaze lifted. Not sharply, but with sudden purpose. His eyes traced something in the dark: a shape, a shift, or perhaps only a feeling rising through the forest’s skin. He reached out and tapped Nightburrow’s shoulder. Quiet urgency. The gelding lifted his head at once, ears pointed and alert.

Meri was already rising. Her fingers found Mistpine’s reins with practiced ease, drawing the cloak tight at her throat as she stepped forward. The mare stirred beneath her touch, sensing what words had not named.

“Rest,” Brom murmured softly, his voice a gentle rasp. “I’ll take first watch.” His tone was soft, almost tender, as though he’d briefly reclaimed a sliver of his calm. Meri pressed her hand briefly against his in silent gratitude, the warmth of his touch a quiet reassurance. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply of the cool, fern-scented air, and the tension in her muscles gradually eased away into sleep.

When she woke, she couldn't remember closing her eyes. Twilight had pooled deeply in the hollows around them, shadows stretching thin beneath the gathering dark. Brom sat across from her, firelight playing over his features as he polished a clay cup, his movements measured and deliberate. Noticing her stirring, he nodded in greeting.

“Better?” he asked quietly, offering her the warm cup.

Meri took it gratefully, sipping slowly, savoring the warmth that soothed her throat. “Much,” she murmured, voice softened by sleep.

Brom offered a crooked, reassuring smile, but his eyes remained cautious. “We’ll leave soon,” he said gently. “The night will carry us farther.”

Meri curled deeper into her cloak, eyes tracing the shapes of Mistpine and Nightburrow grazing peacefully beneath the rising moon. She found herself clinging to the comfort of their small camp, yet the memory of their hurried journey tugged her back to alertness, preparing her heart and body for what lay ahead.

True to his word, Brom gently shook her awake as the moon hung low and heavy. “Ready?” he murmured softly, handing her Mistpine’s reins.

Meri nodded and swung into the saddle, feeling Mistpine’s steady warmth beneath her like a comforting hearth. Nightburrow moved alongside them as Brom mounted, leather creaking softly in the hush. They moved back onto the hidden track, stars overhead guiding them forward. As the cold night air brushed her cheeks, Meri felt less like an intruder and more a silent part of the land’s quiet heartbeat, guided onward by Brom’s steady presence into darkness and hope alike.

Yet when dusk found them at a ruined shepherd’s hut, the tension curled close again. Brom worked without hurry—gathering fallen timbers, unrolling his scant blanket, and rolling Meri’s cloak into a pillow—but something in his quiet held a thread taut enough to hum. When he handed her the cloth-wrapped jerky, his hand hovered a heartbeat too long. “Eat now. Night travels demand strength.”

Meri chewed slowly. The salted meat was sharp against her tongue. She hadn’t realized how hollow her stomach had become. Still, the food did little to ease the tightness behind her ribs. Her eyes drifted to the windowless wall, to the ruined roof where stars peeked through, uncaring and cold.

She didn’t speak her thanks aloud. Instead, she looked down at her hands—stained with dew and dirt, rough at the knuckles—and let the silence between them speak what she could not.

At dawn’s edge on the fourth day, the world fell away into a hidden valley fringed by pines. Meri’s heart lifted sharply, then faltered—hope catching like a thorn. Perhaps here they would rest longer. Perhaps this was the refuge Brom had hinted at.

But when she looked to him, his expression hadn’t changed. Only a soft slackening at the corner of his eyes, the barest tilt of his chin toward the darkened slope.

"Soon," he murmured. Just that. Not a promise but rather a postponement.

…

And so, the days folded in on themselves. Each hour thick with stillness, each breath measured between shadows. Meri stopped asking questions aloud. Instead, she watched—Brom’s back, the way his fingers flicked when he sensed a shift in the wind, the way his shoulders tensed and held when no danger was yet visible.

She learned to move as the land moved. Not forward, but around. Not loud, but true. The land had a language of its own. One she was just beginning to understand.

And when the moment came—Brom halting abruptly as dawn bled grey into the grass—Meri was already holding her breath.

He led the horses down into a shallow dip, crowned by tall grass and whispering ferns. The reins were looped with barely a sound. He knelt beside a narrow gully and pressed his palm to the earth, nodding once.

“See how the earth cradles itself?” His voice, hushed, like the edge of a prayer.

She knelt beside him. Her blood pounded, thick and too loud. Her fingers curled around the bracken he handed her.

Brom slipped into the hollow, his cloak drawn tight, body curved inward like a shadow folding itself into earth. “Breathe slow,” he said, barely audible. “Let the wind carry your scent.”

Meri obeyed. She lowered her chin, pulled her limbs close, letting the ground take her. The scent of stone and old root filled her nose—wet moss, crushed fern. She didn’t close her eyes, but her gaze unfocused, steady on the grain of soil an inch from her cheek. Stillness became instinct.

Then the hooves. Sudden. Sharp.

The sound split the quiet—stone cracking beneath iron, a violent rhythm building fast. Then a shout. Another. Words she almost understood. Too close.

Her muscles locked. Her breath caught halfway and stayed there. Even her heartbeat felt loud enough to be seen.

Brom’s hand brushed her hair—light, but shaking. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “Wait until they’ve passed three horse-lengths.”

She didn’t nod. She didn’t dare.

The riders tore through the pass—hooves slamming, blades drawn. Dust followed them like smoke. She heard the hiss of fabric, the groan of leather, the scrape of a scabbard. One voice called something over a shoulder—half-command, half warning.

She counted. One. Two. Three.

Only then did she move. Slowly. Her knees buckled when she stood. Her palms were streaked with mud, fingers stiff from gripping earth. She didn’t remember when they’d touched the ground.

Brom moved without speaking. He freed the horses—slow, steady. No sudden sounds. Mistpine shifted and let out a low nicker. Nightburrow snorted once and shook his mane, but remained calm.

They returned to the trail. Neither of them spoke.

The silence was no longer absence. It was weight. Memory. A margin of survival.

Meri glanced once at Brom’s back as he rode ahead. His shoulders were square, posture unchanged—but the quiet around him felt sharper now, like it had teeth.

Is he afraid? The thought slid in before she could stop it. She didn’t like the question. It stayed.

Still, she followed. Not because she was told. Because that’s what she knew.

And somewhere in the long stretch of silence that followed—step after careful step—Meri made herself a quiet vow: she would learn that silence. Study it. Master it. Even if it stripped her bare.

What they feared in whispers had taken shape.

Now, the watchers had names. And horses. And swords.

…

Brom kept moving, but his rhythm had changed. It wasn’t fatigue. It was calculation. He paused too often now—abrupt halts that sent Meri’s heart to her throat before she realized he wasn’t stopping for danger, but because of it.

Each time, he would stare long at nothing. Listen hard. Once, she moved to uncap her canteen and his hand flashed out—not rough, but fast—and pointed to the ridgeline. Three birds had scattered moments before. Not flying in panic. Just gone. Too clean. Too quiet.

Another time, at a bend, he pulled them hard behind a split in the rock. His eyes swept the slope below—then dropped.

“Boot prints,” he said. “New. Not ours.”

He crouched and traced the dirt with two fingers. Just enough to confirm what he already knew.

The air had shifted. It felt thinner. As though sound might carry farther. As though breath itself might be overheard.

They weren’t traveling anymore.

They were being tracked.

Meri knelt beside him, tucking her sword hilt deeper beneath her cloak. She rested her chin on her arms, watching him without speaking. Watching the way his shoulders hunched ever so slightly now. The way he double-checked the horses’ tether. The way his fingers shook just after they stopped moving.

He’s unsettled. She could see it now. Not strategy nor habit but rather fear.

And it hollowed her, clean as a cut.

“Papa…” Her voice barely passed her lips. “You’ve never paused like this before.”

He didn’t look at her. Only the faint shift in his jaw, the flicker of something pulled taut. Then: “I’m learning too. This land holds old whispers.”

She wanted to ask what kind. Whose.

But his hand reached out first. Tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. His fingers trembled, just once, before falling away.

“Rest now,” he said. “We leave when the sun dips again.”

And then he stood and turned toward the horses.

The silence he left behind rang louder than hooves.

…

Brom moved to the horses with a stiffness she hadn’t seen in years. Not the weariness of age—something else. Something closer to the weight of decision. He didn’t hurry, but every motion felt like it had been measured in advance, calculated not to make a sound.

He unclipped Mistpine’s saddle first, murmuring low in a language Meri barely recognized—half comfort, half command. The mare’s ears flicked, soothed. Her flanks glistened faintly where sweat had dried, silvering beneath the first spill of moonlight through the canopy. She shifted her weight, nosed at Brom’s sleeve once, then stood still.

Nightburrow waited without a sound. The gelding had always been quieter, but now he seemed more shadow than animal. His breath fogged the air, and the gleam in his eyes was not fear—it was memory. Like he knew this game. Had played it before. Perhaps he had.

Meri stayed where she was, half-curled on the bed of pine. But her eyes followed Brom.

He laid out tack and saddle with the reverence of someone preparing a burial, not camp. Straps unbuckled with the soft creak of leather; blankets folded not for comfort, but concealment. He moved like someone who had learned what it cost to be found.

Is this how he was before I knew him? It was a strange thought—jarring, like stepping into cold water.

She watched the curve of his back, the hitch in his breath when he straightened. The way he checked the horses again—one glance too long, one ear cocked toward the dark beyond the ridge. Not once did he relax. Not even when he sat down. Not even when he breathed.

She remembered how, as a girl, she used to think he was unshakable. That if he stood at the door, nothing could reach them. That he saw everything. Knew everything. That danger would turn and walk the other way just by meeting his eyes.

Now, watching the slope of his shoulders in firefly light, she thought that there was more than he saying, or to be honest, wasn’t saying.

A breeze slid low through the trees, cool and damp with fern-scented air. She took a breathe, trying to calm her thoughts.  Still, she didn’t lie back. Didn’t close her eyes.

Instead, she watched Brom move through the small tasks—unwinding a rope, checking the wind, running his palm along the ground where they’d walked in. Things he hadn’t done the same way days ago. Things that said he expected eyes behind the dark.

Whatever followed them now wasn’t just threat, and whatever it was, it wasn’t far behind.

Brom rose without a word and moved to the horses, hands practiced even in dusk. The saddle straps creaked low as he worked, each buckle unfastened with quiet precision—his fingers nimble, deliberate, always gentle. Mistpine shifted her weight beneath him, flanks damp with travel, her breath rising in pale clouds. Silver light pooled along her spine in flickers, catching the curl of steam along her mane. Nightburrow stood farther off, motionless but alert, ears turning to the hush behind the trees as if listening for more than wind.

Meri watched from where she sat wrapped in her cloak, knees drawn in. Brom’s movements carried the hush of long roads and dangers not yet passed. Even here, hidden, the air did not soften. It pressed down—thick with pine resin and frost, and something older still, a tension coiled into every branch above.

When her eyes grew heavy, she gave in at last to the ache in her bones, curling into the damp wool folds of her cloak. The birch leaves whispered overhead, their song caught in a half-breath lullaby—brittle and wind-swept, like lullabies meant not for comfort, but for concealment. She didn’t remember sleep coming, only that the weight in her chest began to lift, as if her breath had finally found its shape again.

When next she stirred, the world had darkened.

The sky had bruised into deep twilight, and the air carried the bite of frost not yet fallen. Her breath hung faintly in front of her, drifting like smoke.

Brom was already mounted. He sat still atop Nightburrow, reins slack in one hand, his eyes trained upward—reading the movement of wind through the birch crowns like a map only he could see. When her gaze found his, he gave the smallest nod.

Mistpine stirred as Meri approached, tail flicking once. She climbed stiffly into the saddle, limbs thick and slow with half-sleep, and fell in behind Brom without a word.

The forest pressed close again as they moved—branches crowding the trail, hooves muffled by pine needles and rotting leaves. The only sound was the occasional crack of an unseen twig beneath them, each one slicing through the stillness like a blade.

No words passed between them.

They reached the edge of the village just as dusk clung low to the rooftops—dim light stretching long over warped fences and shuttered windows. Lanterns flickered like fireflies behind oiled paper. Somewhere, a wooden pail struck stone. A goat bleated once, then silence.

Meri’s pulse quickened. These were not their people.

She pulled her hood lower, felt the fabric brush her lashes. Every shadow seemed to shift. Every window felt like an eye.

Brom moved beside her like a shadow stitched to her path. His voice brushed her ear—low, earth-toned. “Keep walking. Hood down. No names, no eyes. We’re wind. We pass.” His hand, rough and warm, closed around hers just long enough to press a small purse into her palm. “Drop it at the well,” he said, quiet but edged. “Don’t stop. Let the horse drink. Let the silence be enough.”

She gave a small nod, throat dry. He slipped a coin purse into her palm—light, familiar. His hand barely touched hers.

“Drop it at the well,” he said. “Walk slow. Don’t speak. If they look, let them look past you.”

The stone well stood just beyond the last row of houses, moss-covered and ancient, its shape slouched slightly as if exhausted from all it had seen. The lane around it curved inward, too quiet, like a place the village had forgotten on purpose.

Mistpine bent her neck to drink, breath steaming against the cold. Her lips touched the surface, sending faint ripples across water that held no reflection.

Meri moved forward; cloak pulled low over her face. Her boots scuffed the damp earth, and every step felt counted. The air had changed—thicker now, like it knew something she didn’t.

She reached the well and let her fingers trail its rim, rough and cold, the moss wet beneath her nails. The purse in her hand felt heavier than it should. She tilted it slightly, and the coins slipped into the dark.

Clink! The sound rang out—soft, but wrong. Too sharp. Too final. Like a signal misfired.

A figure shifted nearby.

A man with a crooked cap sat on the edge of a cart, whittling. Or pretending to. His knife paused mid-cut, head turning slightly, just enough to catch her shape in the corner of his eye. His gaze brushed hers and slid off, not lingering—but not blind either. His hands resumed their motion. Too steady.

Her breath stalled in her throat, sharp behind her teeth.

Another door creaked open. A voice murmured something in a tongue she didn’t recognize. Not loud. Just enough to be heard.

She didn’t look. Didn’t move faster. But the weight of watching grew—behind shutters, past chimneys, between the cracks of the cobbled lane. The village wasn’t speaking. It was listening.

Then—footsteps.

Soft, but closing. Two. No—three. Approaching, then halting. Not directly behind her, but nearby. Deliberate. Like someone adjusting course.

Meri's hand drifted to the edge of her cloak, fingers tightening on the wool. She fought the urge to turn, to run, to look.

Then a shape stepped into her peripheral vision—just beyond the well, across the lane. A child, barefoot, holding a carved stick like a sword. Watching her. Silent. Still.

She inhaled—slow, silent, shallow.

Then Brom was there. Just behind her. Not touching, but close enough that the hairs on her neck rose. He murmured something low under his breath—not words, not yet—but she felt it. His presence pressed the danger back a fraction. A shift in weight. A change in the air.

They turned without pause, moving in step. Mistpine lifted her head, and they vanished back into the lane, their shapes folding into the broken line of dusk.

But even as the houses slipped behind them, Meri didn’t look back. The feeling lingered—like hands that hadn’t touched her had still reached.

Something in that village had seen her, and chosen, for now, to let her pass.

…

The trail rose beyond the village, narrow and winding through bare-boned trees. Wind tugged at her cloak, scenting of woodsmoke, thawing leaves, and the distant iron tang of snow. Brom’s glances over his shoulder grew more frequent, his shoulders tight with quiet certainty.

At the top of the ridge, he pulled Nightburrow to a halt and raised a hand. “There,” he said, and pointed.

Below them, nestled in a shallow fold of earth, stood a cluster of cairns—stones heaped with reverence long ago, their meaning worn smooth by time. Brom dismounted without sound and led the horses through the brush. Thorns snagged at Meri’s hem. Her breath caught as a hawk called once across the valley, sharp and high and gone.

They reached the hollow beneath an overhang of fern and stone. Brom brushed the ferns aside like curtains and motioned her in. She slid from the saddle, boots crunching over pine needles, and led Mistpine into the dark shelter.

He draped her cloak more tightly over her shoulders and rested a hand there, grounding her. “Stay close,” he said, not stern but tired. “I’ll keep watch.”

Meri sank down against the ground, its cold seeping into her spine, and let herself breathe. Brom crouched at the hollow’s edge, eyes sharp beneath his hood, watching the ridgeline with the stillness of a creature who knew he was being hunted.

And in that stillness, she felt it—the closeness of the forest, the eyes of the night, the hush between hoofbeats that could still give them away.

The fire was small. No larger than a cupped hand, shielded by a ring of stones and Brom’s careful shaping. It gave just enough warmth to soften the air between them, but not enough to cast shadows that could betray them. Meri sat cross-legged with the cloak pooled over her knees, watching the thin flame dance, its light licking the hollow’s edge.

Meri sat cross-legged with the cloak pooled over her knees, watching the thin flame dance, its light licking the hollow’s edge. For days now, their movement had followed no single hour.

They had ridden mostly by night—sometimes slipping out under cover of evening, other times not leaving until the moon was high. They traveled through mist and frost, often riding past dawn and into the pale hush of noon. But the last stretch unfolded beneath full daylight, thick with fog and the hush of watching trees. It was Brom’s decision—quiet, deliberate, without explanation. She didn’t ask. The rhythm shifted, but the tension did not.

Dusk had bled violet into the trees by the time they reached the ravine’s curve. Mistpine and Nightburrow moved carefully over moss-slick roots, their breaths clouding the air. They had just crossed a low gully where the land dipped into shadow and the air turned thick with the scent of soaked bark and rusted iron. Water pooled between the roots, slick and still, and ferns brushed against their knees as the horses climbed the opposite bank. Mistpine’s breath came slower now, her steps careful, not from weariness, but from the feel of something not quite right.

It was the kind of quiet that didn’t settle—it waited.

Meri noticed first. Not by sight, but by the way her mare shifted beneath her, ears angling to the left. The reins twitched in her fingers. Her lungs stalled mid-breath, as if her ribs remembered danger before her mind caught up. It wasn’t fear, not yet. Just the edge of something.

Brom halted. Said nothing. His hand hovered near his belt—not for his blade, but for the signal she already understood. Wait.

The forest bent in toward them. Leaves dripped from the last of the fog, their edges jeweled with dew. A crow cawed once, sharp as a cracked branch—and then silence swallowed the sound whole.

From the brush, the shape burst. Not fast, not loud—just sudden. A pup. Brindled, rib-thin, soaked to the bone. He half-tripped into the trail, legs uncoordinated with his panic, nose pressed low to the loam as if scent alone could summon whatever he’d lost.

Meri blinked. The pup circled wide, slipped on a wet patch of moss, and scrambled back toward the trees—but didn’t run. His eyes flicked toward her, wide and wet, the whites showing too much. He looked like a creature who hadn’t slept in days. Maybe more.

Mistpine snorted but didn’t shy. Nightburrow shifted his weight, muscles tense, ears pinned to every movement in the brush. But no new sound followed. No predator. No call.

Just the pup, panting, sides fluttering with breath that didn’t steady.

He stood crookedly—paws splayed, tail low, as if unsure whether to flee or collapse. Then, as if pulled by something older than caution, he stepped forward and sat—just outside reach, but watching Meri with an unblinking stare.

She slid from the saddle without thinking. Not a choice. Something quieter. Something in her that moved toward broken things without knowing why.

The forest didn’t interrupt. Even the birds held back.

She crouched, cloak tugging over her knees, and extended her hand palm-up, fingers loose. “Hey,” she said softly—not cooing, not calling. Just a thread of sound in the hush.

The pup swayed once, and then leaned in. His ribs pressed against her palm. His head dropped low, nose brushing her wrist, and then he folded into himself beneath her hand—curling there with a soft, low whine, so quiet it almost wasn’t sound at all.

His fur was rough and matted, crusted with old mud and sharp with pine sap. But beneath it, warmth. Life. Fragile, trembling life.

Meri eased her arms around him. He startled, gave a breathy yelp—but then went still again. His heart thudded against her collarbone, fast and hard like a bird caught in storm-thick air.

Behind her, Brom exhaled through his nose. His boots moved carefully through the ferns. When he spoke, it was quiet and even.

“Let him stay.”

She looked up, startled by the certainty in his voice.

Brom wasn’t watching the pup. He was watching the tree line. “He’s seen what we haven’t. Heard what we missed. A creature doesn’t run like that unless something taught him how.”

Meri nodded, her fingers tightening just slightly in the pup’s coarse fur. She didn’t offer protest or agreement. Just held him.

Brom moved to the base of a wide, hollow-bellied fir—the kind of tree that had outlived storms and buried its own branches beneath centuries of needles. He crouched and swept aside a mound of damp leaves with the back of his hand, revealing a hollow large enough to hide a child.

Brom didn’t answer. He turned toward a massive fir, its roots buckled wide from the ground like an open hand. “If it comes to it,” he said, brushing needles aside, “you’ll hide him. Trees keep a secret.”

She followed his hand and noted the hollow within the roots—deep enough to cradle a small body, shadowed enough to disappear completely. A hiding place without a name. She nodded, understanding what he hadn’t said without saying it fully.

“I’ll carry him,” she said simply

She followed his hand and noted the hollow within the roots—deep enough to cradle a small body, shadowed enough to disappear completely. Meri nodded, understanding what he hadn’t said without saying it fully.

Later, as they made camp beneath the cairns, she unfastened her cloak and tucked the pup beneath it, his body curled into the curve of her side. His small, dirty, warm breath fogged the wool. He whined once in his sleep, and she hushed him with her palm.

Across the fire, Brom carved in silence, though his eyes lifted now and again—not to the woods, but to her as if trying to memorize the way she held something fragile and alive again.

And it struck her, faint and fleeting, how rare it was to carry something new. A small, strange creature who hadn’t yet learned what danger meant—and who, by morning, would know her scent.

The fire had burned low. Just a whisper of ember tucked into the cradle of stones, breathing light but no heat. Brom sat with his back to the overhang, knife laid aside now, hands folded loosely in his lap. His eyes traced the edge of the trees beyond the hollow, the places where dark thickened and movement might be imagined.

Meri had not slept again.

She sat cross-legged near the fire’s edge, her cloak pooled around her, the pup nestled in its folds. His small body was curled tight against her ribs, nose pressed to the seam of her tunic. She could feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat—still quick, but no longer frantic. A living rhythm, soft as rain tapping bark.

She had thought to wait until morning, but the name had settled somewhere beneath her sternum and would not leave.

“Toran,” she said aloud, barely more than breath.

Across the fire, Brom turned his head, but said nothing.

The pup stirred faintly at the sound, one ear twitching, then settling again.

“Toran,” she repeated, this time slower. She brushed a hand down the rough line of his back. “It fits. He’s a scrap of wind, a little thorn. But he stayed. That counts for something.”

Brom’s gaze rested on her a moment longer, then dropped to the pup.

“You’ve always named things,” he said softly. “Even the broken cart wheels. That old washtub. I remember when you called the garden scarecrow Fernhart for no reason at all.”

Meri gave a small, almost-smile. “It kept the birds off. Maybe names do more than we think.”

She tucked Toran closer, the tip of her nose brushing his scruffy ear. He smelled of pine dust and wild root, like something that belonged to the land long before men put borders on it.

“I don’t want him left behind,” she said after a while. “Even if we run. Even if it gets worse.”

Brom didn’t respond immediately. His fingers traced the worn edge of his cloak, calloused thumb catching on old stitching.

“There’ll be places ahead where you’ll have to make hard choices,” he said, voice graveled. “But this—” he nodded toward Toran, curled like a question mark beside her heart “—this isn’t weakness.”

She let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. It was not relief. Not comfort. But something near to permission.

A branch snapped somewhere down-valley—nothing near, but close enough to pull Brom’s attention sharply. He stood, scanning the slope, hand brushing the hilt of his long knife. The night gave no answer.

When he settled again, he laid a thick pine bough across the fire, letting the scent rise like a spell meant to keep wandering eyes away.

“You rest,” he said.

“I won’t sleep.”

“Close your eyes anyway.”

She nodded, more out of respect than agreement, and leaned back against the cairn stone. Toran pressed into the crook of her arm with a small sigh, warm and solid. The stars blinked down through the ragged canopy, indifferent and infinite. Somewhere far off, a nightjar called—a long, mournful note that sank into the earth like a needle threading through loam.

Meri listened to it. And to Brom’s quiet breathing. And to the pulse of something steady beneath her skin that might one day become safety.

She let her fingers rest lightly on Toran’s back, and whispered the name once more, not to test it now.

…

The woods around them had a breath of its own. The birch leaves whispered like gossipers just beyond hearing. Meri curled deeper into her cloak, drawing it close against the unease threading the air. Her eyes, gritty with fatigue, drifted shut, and the murmuring leaves began to lull her. Still, some corner of her mind clung to wakefulness. Tomorrow, we cross deeper into the wilds, she thought—but the thought dissolved into darkness before she could hold it.

In the hush of that hidden hollow, with Brom’s silhouette vigilant beside the horses, Meri found a fleeting peace—not comfort, not ease, but something not quite fear. It was enough.

They had moved mostly by night until now—slipping through darkness like a stitch between seams. But the last stretch unfolded under pale skies, daylight thick with fog and the hush of watching trees. It was Brom’s decision—quiet, deliberate, without explanation. She didn’t ask. The rhythm changed, but the tension didn’t.

When Meri stirred again, twilight had deepened into something colder. The sky had bruised to a deep indigo, and frost rode the edges of ferns like silver breath. Brom was already mounted, Nightburrow’s reins coiled loosely in one hand, his eyes scanning the canopy as if listening to the branches themselves.

He caught her eye and offered a brief nod.

Frost had crept in while she slept—sometime between dusk and moonrise—dusting the ferns in silver at their edges. The air was sharp enough to bite, and her breath left faint ghosts in front of her. Night had deepened while she dreamed, and now it wrapped the trees in stillness. Brom was already mounted. Nightburrow stood poised and silent beneath him, reins slack in his hand as if the horse needed no guiding.

His eyes were turned to the trees, listening—truly listening—as though the canopy might offer warning before the trail did. When he caught her eye, he gave a single nod.

Meri rose slowly, limbs stiff and sore. She swung onto Mistpine’s back, her muscles still warm from sleep but already seizing with cold. The mare stepped forward soundlessly, her hooves muffled by pine needles and moss, and the hollow faded behind them without fanfare, claimed again by shadow and stone.

The silence held as they rode—stretching, shifting, never still. Twigs snapped now and then, just off the trail, each one like a breath drawn too sharply. Meri flinched at the first, stilled at the second, and by the third had learned not to show it.

They kept to the narrow paths, the ones that twisted around old growth and avoided open clearings. And when they reached the edge of the village, dusk had settled like smoke.

The light pooled low and gold behind warped shutters, thick with the hush of stories not meant for strangers. Chimneys exhaled thin threads into a sky the color of worn iron. Somewhere, a door creaked and shut again—careful, slow. A dog barked once, unseen, then went silent. Toran darted ahead and then scampered back but made no sound. Mistpine’s tail flicked.

They skirted the village at dusk, where the light pooled low and gold behind warped shutters, thick with the hush of stories not meant for strangers. Chimneys exhaled thin threads of smoke into a sky the color of worn iron, and the bark of unseen dogs echoed down crooked lanes. Somewhere, a door creaked and shut again, careful and slow. Every step beneath Meri’s boots pressed into the dirt like it might betray her.

There, just beyond the ridge, hidden by bramble and a shoulder of frost-hardened fern, stood a hollow marked by an old cairn—stones blackened with lichen, stacked with the careful reverence of someone long dead. Brom dismounted without a word and pushed through a thicket of brush that parted like a curtain drawn aside for dusk.

Meri followed. The hush beneath the canopy swallowed them whole.

The hush beneath the canopy swallowed them whole.

Branches closed overhead, needles brushing like fingertips across cloaks and saddlebags. The air inside the hollow was colder, close-pressed. Beneath the damp bracken, the ground exhaled the smell of stone and rot wood—older than trail, older than warning.

Brom paused just inside the curtain of green, scanning the space as if memory alone might mark its safety. Then he stepped forward and layered her cloak tighter across her chest, the motion steady, impersonal—but his hand lingered a moment on her shoulder.

“Stay close,” he said, voice low. “Tonight, we don’t take chances.”

Meri nodded, not trusting her voice. She moved to the base of the cairns and crouched low, knees drawn beneath her, spine to the stone. The markers rose above her in silence, black with lichen, their shapes worn but unbroken—watchers more than gravestones, their presence old enough to command quiet without asking.

That morning, Brom settled at the edge of the hollow, just beyond reach but not out of sight. He did not lean back. One hand rested near his belt, fingers curved around the hilt of his knife—not gripping, but near enough.

The fire was small. No larger than a cupped hand, shielded by a ring of stones and Brom’s careful shaping. It gave just enough warmth to soften the air between them, but not enough to cast shadows that could betray them. Meri sat cross-legged with the cloak pooled over her knees, watching the thin flame dance, its light licking the hollow’s edge like a secret unwilling to be told aloud.

Brom hadn’t spoken since settling the horses. His presence was not silent in the way absence is silent—but in the way trees are: always there, always listening. He sat across from her now, whittling a sliver of wood with the small knife he kept on his belt, his movements rhythmic and slow, more for thought than purpose.

Meri didn’t ask what he was making. She rarely did.

The pup had curled into the space between her hip and her ribs, warm and trembling in his sleep. His breath rose and fell in quick flutters, like leaves shifting just before the wind. She didn’t know what to name him. Naming things made them real. Kept them. And they were still moving, still fleeing, still too close to losing.

A nightbird called from deep in the trees, its voice lilting and low. Brom paused, cocked his head toward the sound, then resumed carving.

“You’re tired,” he said after a while, the words softened by smoke and moss. “But you don’t sleep. Not fully.”

Meri didn’t answer. Her eyes stayed on the fire, lashes casting shadows across her cheeks. After a beat, she said, “Dreams don’t keep quiet like you taught me to.”

His hands stilled. “No. They don’t.”

She looked up then, only briefly, catching the way his jaw tightened, how his gaze didn’t meet hers but rested just to the side—on the stone, the flame, the path behind them. Not fear. Regret, maybe. Or knowing. She wasn’t sure which was heavier.

“I used to sleep best when Tessie curled up beside me,” she said. Her voice was thin and steady, like the edge of a blade cooled too fast. “Even when she kicked me in the ribs. I never minded.”

Brom’s breath caught faintly, as if something old had brushed the edges of his chest. He set the knife down beside him. “She always had cold feet.”

“She always climbed into bed last,” Meri murmured. “Even when Mam told her not to. She said the night was too big without me in it.”

Neither of them spoke after that. The fire cracked softly between them.

After a long moment, Brom leaned forward, pulled a crust of bread from his satchel and broke it in half. He offered her the larger piece, holding it out without looking directly at her. She took it in silence.

As she ate, he spoke again, almost as if to himself.

“Every step further from the roads makes us harder to follow,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean we’re safe. They’ll try again. He will.”

Meri didn’t ask who “he” was. She didn’t need to. The silence between them had already said his name enough times to wear it thin.

“I know,” she said quietly.

And that was the truth of it—simple and bitter. She knew. Her body carried the knowing like old scar tissue, healed wrong in places, but firm.

The fire shrank. Night gathered tighter around them. The pup stirred once, then settled again.

After a while, Brom looked at her fully—not as one watching for weakness, but as one remembering who she had been before all this: the child who could name every plant by touch, who ran fastest across the river stones, who had once braided her sisters hair without needing to be asked.

He didn’t need to voice what he was thinking. Meri knew by the look in his eyes; it was the same look he’d get whenever returning home after a long trip and seeing her for the first time in a long time. As if he were noting changes, he wasn’t quite willing to voice.

Meri curled deeper into her cloak, the fire’s last warmth pressing into her palms. She looked at the little pup beside her. Thought of Tessie’s cold feet. Of laughter on the forest floor. Of the cottage they were still days from reaching, if they reached it at all.

…

Dawn after dawn slipped by. The grasslands grew sparser, then greener, then bled into bruised skies again. Brom offered kindness in quiet ways: a crust of bread, a murmured warning before a bend in the trail. But always the pressure of pursuit hung behind them—like a scent only the hunted could smell.

At last, they found trees again. A narrow path led into dark timber—older, wilder. Mistpine’s flanks brushed pine needles; Nightburrow’s hooves sank deep into loam.

Brom glanced back. "East now. The ravine will carry us safely. No patrol dares follow its bend."

Meri leaned into the mare’s gait. The forest was thick with the scent of moss and resin, of places forgotten by roads. “East to where?” she asked.

He turned in the saddle, eyes soft with something near sorrow. “To the cottage at the forest’s heart. The one where you grew up. Where the trees knew your name.”

She held the image in her chest like an ember. A promise wrapped in branches.

“Two more villages before we vanish for good,” he murmured. “Keep your head down. Speak only when you must. We have ten nights yet. Every one must be earned.”

Meri nodded. Her hands curled around the worn leather of the pack, grounding herself in its weight, its scent. Toran’s breath warmed the hollow between her ribs and arm, steady and soft beneath her cloak. Each hoofbeat pressed into moss with reverent care, like the land might remember them if they weren't cautious.

They passed trees Brom had marked long ago, each notch in the bark no bigger than a thumbnail, but each one exact. A trail only he could read. His fingers brushed each one in passing, less a habit than a ritual.

By midday, the trees opened onto a fern-draped overhang. Rock curved like a low ceiling, blanketed in moss and dew-dark lichen. Brom led them beneath it and unsaddled the horses with silent precision. He laid Toran beside Meri, built a fire with seasoned bark, and warmed a pot of thin broth over it.

As steam curled into the hush, he spoke—quiet and steady. “Tonight, we choose our path,” he said, handing her the tin bowl. “River valley or marsh. What do you think, flower?”

She didn’t hesitate. “The marsh.”

He tilted his head. Waiting.

“Better to sink into quiet earth than be seen,” she said.

Brom gave a single nod, no smile. Only approval, worn and silent. “Then the marsh.”

…

They entered the marsh under night’s full weight, the path behind them vanishing almost at once—swallowed by stagnant water and the soft decay of peat and silt. Fog clung to them in drifting sheets, brushing their cloaks like hands that didn’t grip but never fully let go. The trees grew sparse and skeletal, their trunks pale and barkless, leaning at angles that made the eye question its own balance. They resembled watchers, but none dared move.

The air changed first—thickened. Slowed. Pine gave way to bog myrtle and water hemlock. The ground grew spongy beneath the horses’ hooves, and the trees grew farther apart, pale as bones and just as silent.

Water pooled where the path should’ve been, reflecting sky that held no warmth. Insects danced at the edges. Somewhere, a heron cried—sharp and sudden—then all was still again.

Toran squirmed beneath Meri’s cloak, ears twitching, muscles tense. Before she could restrain him, he leapt from her lap and landed in the shallows with a soft splash.

“Toran—!”

But Brom raised a hand, eyes fixed ahead. “Let him run,” he said, voice low but sure. “He’ll hear what a blade cannot.”

Meri stilled. Toran paused, nose high, then darted off through the reeds—his brindled form low to the earth, zigzagging across mud and root. A silent scout in a land that didn’t want company.

The air thickened as they pressed deeper, humid and cloying, sharpened by the sour-sweet scent of rot. Wet lichen clung to the bases of trunks, and patches of standing water bloomed with scum. Even the insects had gone quiet. No croak of frog, no hum of wing. Every sound was dulled to near silence. The horses’ hooves sank with wet reluctance, their movement slow and uneven, and even that seemed swallowed by the fog. It was as if the marsh refused to echo, refused to remember.

Meri said nothing, her breath shallow beneath the weight of her hood. The damp had soaked into her cloak, into her boots, into her bones.

The world shrank around them, narrowing from ten paces to five. The moon, fractured by fog, filtered down in broken strips of light, catching the still surfaces of water that held no reflection but gleamed faintly, like the eyes of something submerged. Mistpine hesitated at each step, testing the ground before her with careful weight, her ears flicking back at every shift in wind. She avoided patches that quivered underfoot, instinct guiding her more than any lead.

Meri kept her eyes low. It was easier that way. Safer, sometimes, not to know what waited in the dark beyond the reeds. But something shifted at the edge of her sight—a flicker, too precise to be wind—and she glanced sideways without thinking. A pool to her left, deep and still, ringed with water hemlock. In it, her own face stared back. Pale. Unmoving. Lips parted as though about to speak.

She hadn’t spoken.

The reflection lingered too long. The image was too sharp, too whole, as if the surface weren’t water at all, but glass. It didn’t waver. Didn’t breathe. Then, without warning, it fractured—breaking into a thousand trembling ripples.

Meri blinked and looked again. The image was gone. The surface held only floating leaves and soft green filaments. A single bubble rose and burst.

She moved on, slower than before, her legs beginning to ache not only from cold and effort, but from the weight of that moment. The fog folded in tighter, making it difficult to measure distance, direction, or even the slope of the ground. Every tree looked the same; every pool looked deeper than the last.

Another stretch of water, this time to her right, drew her eye in spite of herself. Her face again, sTorang back, but wrong in ways she couldn’t name. Hollowed around the eyes. The mouth set, not in fear or anger, but something flatter—resigned. And behind her image, barely visible in the dark gloss of the water, stood another figure. Slightly taller. Cloaked. No face. Only shape.

She jerked her head up. There was no one. Just Brom ahead, his dark form steady, his cloak dragging through the reeds. Toran had vanished again.

Meri’s grip tightened on the reins, her fingers twitching as she flexed them once, twice. Her heels pressed gently against Mistpine’s sides, just enough to feel her mare’s body, her warmth, her life beneath her legs. Another pool. Another glance. Her reflection again, but stripped of movement. Lips slack, face drained, eyes open but not seeing. Her own cloak, her own braid, her own stillness—held perfectly in place as if the marsh had made her its own.

She tore her gaze away and didn’t look again.

Up ahead, Brom slowed. He glanced back once, his face mostly hidden beneath his hood, but the brief glint of moonlight caught the angle of his jaw, the quiet study in his eyes. He didn’t speak, only nodded forward.

Meri guided Mistpine after him. The water rose to her ankles and then fell again. Her legs trembled from the cold, from the drag of her soaked cloak, and from the effort of not letting her mind spiral back toward the still pools. She kept her eyes forward. She no longer needed to see to know what waited in them.

The trees thickened as the ground finally began to rise. The water retreated in inches rather than strides. The fog thinned but didn’t vanish, trailing behind them like a second shadow. Toran returned as they crested the first ridge, breaking through the reeds in a low splash. He padded to her side, wet and trembling but alert, his ears twitching as he pressed gently into her leg.

She reached down, fingers brushing his flank, the contact sudden and grounding. She didn’t speak. Neither did Brom. They just rode until the ground beneath them felt less like memory and more like earth.

By the time they reached firmer footing, where moss grew thick beneath their boots and pine needles whispered beneath the trees, Meri felt something shift inside her. Not release. Not safety. But a loosening—like a muscle long clenched had finally, briefly, forgotten to hold.

The marsh had stopped reflecting her face. She didn’t look back to thank it.

She was only glad it had stopped.

…

They reached land just before dawn. The water thinned first—no longer sucking but sliding, curling away from their boots and hooves as if unwilling to follow. The ground lifted in uneven knolls of moss and root. Dew stitched itself in fine silver threads along the grass, gathering at the tips like caught breath. Behind them, the fog hung low over the water, trailing back in torn shreds through the reeds.

Mistpine and Nightburrow stepped out slow and sure, shoulders glistening with marsh water, their sides streaked with mud and the long red lines of cattail. Each step left the soundless imprint of weight and intention. They did not rush. They did not hesitate.

Meri's fingers were stiff around the reins. Her legs ached—not just with cold, but with the hollow pull that came after fear had burned itself low. Toran nosed ahead again, quiet in the underbrush, his coat matted and dripping but his ears alert, flicking with every shift in the trees.

Brom didn’t speak. His gaze kept to the tree line—sharp, searching. Waiting for something that might not show.

The light changed.

Not a full rising, but the slow grey bloom that came before it. The trees ahead deepened in color. Shadows grew less sharp, more layered. The air lost its stagnant cling. A breeze moved through—cleaner, edged with pine and crushed fern. It passed across Meri’s face like a hand she hadn’t expected. She pulled the cloak tighter around her shoulders, not from cold.

There was no line drawn. No signpost or stone.

But they crossed into it all the same.

The marsh gave way beneath them, and the ground held. The trees rose—not scattered, not skeletal, but whole. Their trunks wore moss like breath held low. Needles underfoot softened their steps. The silence didn’t lift. It changed. Became listening.

Brom’s shoulders eased, just barely. He didn’t stop watching. But the lines around his mouth weren’t as sharp. He turned once, looked back the way they’d come, and then nodded—not to her, not to himself. Just once, and then forward.

“Here,” he said, quiet. “Look sharp.”

Meri leaned forward in the saddle. Her eyes followed the curve of bark, the lay of ferns, the catch of pale lichen tied in a knot around a thin sapling. She saw a break in the underbrush, almost nothing—until Brom disappeared into it like a shadow returning to its shape.

She followed.

The briar tugged at her sleeves. Thorns scratched at her pack. But the bracken closed behind them like a door latching softly.

The sound changed again.

No more distant water. No more wind through reeds. Just the hush of pine needles under hoof, the soft rasp of leather shifting, the small huff of a horse exhaling. Her own breath, slower now. Steadier.

The underbrush parted into a hollow ringed with beech trees, broad and pale-barked, their roots thick as limbs and half-buried in moss that clung like memory. Morning light filtered down in fine strands, touching stones, touching her face.

Brom stepped down first. He ran his hand along one of the roots, brushing back damp moss until he found a shallow carving. His fingertips paused there.

“Deer used it,” he said. “Children, too. You did, once.”

Meri slid from Mistpine’s back. Her legs were unsteady, but she didn’t stumble. She moved beside him, and her fingers found the same mark—worn, softened, but still there. It felt as real as anything had in weeks.

“We’re close,” Brom said, glancing down the path that wound past the tree’s base. “Let the land carry you.”

They didn’t speak again.

The path threaded forward like something grown, not made—bending where the trees bent, sloping where the roots allowed. Ferns brushed her knees. Lichen draped from branches like strands of hair left behind. Brom rode just ahead, touching bark now and then, pausing at each place the old signs had been left. He remembered them without needing to look long.

Meri followed in silence, not out of fear now, but something quieter.

It wasn’t comfort. Not yet.

But her breath came easier.

And the forest did not look back.

Chapter Text

The path threaded forward like a vein through the forest’s body—carrying the slow pulse of memory beneath moss and root, bending where the trees bent, sloping where the roots allowed. Ferns brushed her knees. Lichen draped from branches like strands of hair left behind. Brom rode just ahead, touching bark now and then, pausing at each place the old signs had been left. He remembered them without needing to look long.

Meri followed in silence—not out of fear, but from a quieter thread, like cloth no longer pulled taut. It wasn’t comfort. But something had loosened. Her breath no longer caught on the seam.

A jay called overhead, sharp and sudden, then fell silent. The hush that followed wasn’t still—it breathed. With wingbeats. With small scurries beneath the underbrush. With the whisper of pine needles falling through the canopy in slow spirals.

Toran darted through the bracken, tail high, paws kicking up soft scatterings of leaves. He vanished, then reappeared again with a flash of white fur and the bounce of a creature too young to tread lightly. A splash at the edge of a brook, the low whine of his nose pressed to an old fox trail. He looped back toward her like a tether, circling once before racing ahead again.

Each sound the forest made was an old note returned: the wet slap of moss underhoof, the hush of her cloak brushing alder. Birdsong like water across stone. The crack of a branch somewhere far, then quiet again.

She didn’t speak. There was no need to.

It was as though time had folded back on itself, letting her step through a seam that had been waiting for her alone. Not to return her to what had been—but to let her walk alongside it, briefly, without being swallowed whole.

When Brom slowed, she slowed too.

The old deer path widened, just enough for sunlight to filter through—filtered gold through mist, limning the edges of her mare’s ears and catching on the fronds of curled ferns. Her breath made no cloud, but she still felt the weight of it leaving her chest, as if her ribs had forgotten what it meant to breathe without bracing.

And then the cabin came into view.

She had dreamed this moment a hundred ways. Not in grand visions, but in quiet, half-snatched imaginings during the bleakest hours—those long, muffled nights in the carved stone of Greynsi. There, where the air tasted of soot and stale stone, of smoke that never cleared and wool that never truly warmed, and the walls seemed to lean too close, she had buried her face in furs that never smelled like her mother’s hands and conjured this: the thrum of the wind along the eaves, the feel of thyme crushed beneath bare feet, the porch rail’s rough grain biting gently into her palms.

She had dreamed of the old swing, its rope worn and splintered, shifting with the weightless memory of a child who had long since outgrown it one sat in it, of the way morning light soaked into the wood just past the threshold. In her mind, the floorboards gave like memory under her step, and her fingers trailed the edges of rooms she hadn’t seen in years.

In the dreams, the grass was wet and cool and forgiving. Her name was still spoken softly here. And she had belonged. The light always fell soft. Her mother’s laugh would drift from the garden, the one with the flower beds carved into crooked stars. She never turned to look in those dreams—just knew it in the curve of the swing’s rope, the hush of bees threading through lavender, the sound of wood groaning in the night. She felt it in the ache behind her ribs when she imagined her mother’s voice drifting from the garden, or the worn handle of the door beneath her palm. The place had never spoken in words—only in the quiet liturgy of what had once been safe.

And now, with the ache of travel stitched deep between her shoulder blades and the back of her tongue dry. Her eyes scanned the underbrush with the caution of someone long-stalked, every footstep placed as if the ground might betray her. The trees no longer whispered the Songs of the Forest—they watched, their gaze heavy.

The path had once been wide enough for children’s games—mud-streaked heels and laughter fleeing into dusk—but time had narrowed it. Nettles brushed her sleeves. Ferns spilled over mossy stones, reclaiming what had been given up. The forest hadn’t forgotten. It had grown thicker around those memories, cloaking them in root and shadow.

But it parted for her still, as if it recognized the soles of her boots, the shape of her breath, the way sound seemed to falter just before she arrived, like leaves pausing mid-rustle or insects stilling their wings—an old rhythm that returned to meet her tread.

Toran walked ahead, his tail low, nose brushing roots and old hoofprints. Behind her, Brom rode in silence. Not watching her, not leading but moving with her—his steps quiet, deliberate, the kind of movement that didn’t ask for space but knew how to fit within it. 

She kept her eyes forward, not out of defiance, or strength, but because she could not bear to look back. The ache in her chest pulsed—not sharp, but steady. Like a song caught in her bones. Like the faded shimmer of a childhood painting left too long in the sun—still there, but dulled, its colors worn down to memory.

Then—between two leaning pines, sat the cabin.

She went still.

It came into view half-draped in ivy, its roof sagging at the left beam. One shutter dangling like a loose tooth. Yet it stood all the same; the chimney still crooked, still traced with moss like a memory grown green. The garden gate had fallen sideways against the fence, not broken—just tired.

Her garden had gone wild in her absence. Basil reached tall and flowered. Thyme sprawled golden across the path. But the tulips, bright as summer coins, still held their corner. As if someone had whispered to them daily, even in her absence. Their scent rose on the wind: warm, bitter, real.

Meri leaned forward in the saddle, her fingers soft on the reins. She did not smile but something in her chest shifted. As she were hearing her name carried by a wind that remembered the shape of her voice.

Brom dismounted. He did not speak. His gaze held on her for a breath—quiet, unreadable—before it slipped past her shoulder and landed heavily on the house. His hands moved to the packs, slow and sure.

She swung down, boots striking moss-soft stone. Her legs ached from the ride, but she didn’t stagger. She stood still, letting the scent of the earth wrap around her—damp moss, turned soil, and the sharp green tang of nettle crushed underfoot. It clung to her cloak and filled her mouth like memory—raw and grounding; the taste of a childhood dare to chew a wild leaf.

She didn’t step onto the porch right away.

Instead, her path curved with the garden’s edge. Stones half-sunk beneath moss gave slightly underfoot. Between the roots of the apple tree, she slowed.

Lungwort—low and silver-dappled—had crept in unnoticed. Its early blooms hung in between shades, not quite blue, not yet pink. She crouched beside it without thought. Not to name, not to touch. Just to be near something that had grown quietly while she was gone.

Rain clung to the leaves. Her fingers hovered once, then lowered. The plant yielded without fuss, then stilled again.

She stayed like that a moment longer. Knees damp, breath even.

Then rose.

The porch waited, swing still shifting on its rope.

The door caught at first—swollen wood refusing passage, as it always did when left too long untouched. Brom leaned his shoulder against it and gave a firmer push. With a reluctant groan, it shifted, hinges sighing like an old man roused from sleep. The sound landed in her chest like thaw breaking a winter stream—slow, splintering, inevitable. She stepped through first, and the air swallowed her like water.

Inside, light fell through streaked windows, casting dust into gold. The table still stood. Its leg was braced with the old river stone. The twine lay coiled near the hearth. Above it, the ribbon hung—pale now, like old petals, but intact.

She reached the table and rested her hand on its edge. The grain lifted beneath her skin. Her thumb slid over the shallow groove left by a child’s impatient knife.

A sharp ache bloomed beneath her ribs, the kind that came not from surprise, but from memory hitting too fast. Her hand stayed, fingers splayed over the wood as if she were trying to hold something steady.

It was there, as she stepped toward the hearth, that she noticed the first of many—the small scatterings of a life paused too quickly. An earthen cup left on the sill, rim chipped, still filled with painted river stones faded by time - dragon eggs as they once called them. A wooden spoon lay on the floor where it must’ve rolled from the table. And in the corner by the cupboard, a small satchel, its drawstring half-pulled, still holding dry sprigs of lavender and a rusted needle tucked inside.

She bent and picked up a length of painted thread—one she remembered using to wrap a namesday gift, once. Her fingers turned it gently, like it might speak. The color had dulled to dusky rose, but her hand knew it. The feel, the weight. She tucked it into her cloak pocket.

Toran was sniffing along the hearth stones, his nose clicking softly with every breath, tail wagging in uncertain beats. He moved in small, curious loops, nosing at floorboards and brushing his muzzle against the old firewood pile. The scent of soot and herbs clung to the corners like stories, and Toran, still half a pup in the way he explored, drank in every trace. He paused at the edge of the hearth, ears twitching, and looked back once—then padded in a slow circle before settling, tail curled, nose buried deep in his fur as if anchoring himself to this strange, remembered place he’d never seen before.

Behind her, Brom's voice came quiet, rough with time. "We didn’t have room," he said simply. "And there wasn’t time to choose what mattered. Only what we could carry."

His words sat in the room like old boots by the door.

Meri turned the thread once more between her fingers. Her voice, when it came, wasn’t sharp, but low and steady—more breath than blade. "Why leave at all?" she asked, not looking at him. "The forest would’ve protected you. That’s what you always told us."

Her eyes scanned the walls, the beams, the small familiar wounds of a life interrupted. She didn’t say who she meant by 'you.' She didn’t have to.

Brom exhaled through his nose, slow. His hands stilled where they’d been adjusting a pack. “The forest listens,” he said at last, voice low, eyes on the floorboards. “But it doesn’t take sides.” He paused, then added, quieter still, “Not when the fire’s already inside the walls.”

Meri’s hand tightened on the thread until it bit her skin. The warmth of the room dimmed, the dust no longer golden, just heavy. She didn’t speak.

Her gaze drifted to the hearth, to the shadows beneath the kindling. Her throat ached—not from holding back tears, but from the silence that had lived there too long.

She knelt slowly, set the thread down, and with her other hand, she reached into the satchel and pulled out the sprig of lavender. It cracked faintly in her fingers, scent blooming—sharp, dry, clean.

She breathed it in like it might steady her ribs. Then she stood, not looking at Brom, and moved to the next room.

Beside the bed, the old wooden beads still hung from their string, faded but intact. Tiny carved animals swung lightly in the draft—deer, foxes, a bear with no ears. She stood beneath them for a moment, watching how they moved. The air was colder in here. Quieter but not empty.

The blanket cave still stood. The old quilt hung from the ceiling beam where it always had, though one corner had slipped loose from its nail and draped wearily down the side. The fabric, once patterned in faded reds and greens, now bore the softened bleeds of time—stained by firelight, thumb-smoothed edges, and dust that held the shape of her breath. It sagged in the middle, as though exhaling after years of keeping still. But it remained—a tented hollow in the far corner of the room, just wide enough for a girl to curl beneath and imagine she was elsewhere. She used to slip inside with a candle stub and a book, or sometimes nothing at all, just the quiet thrum of her own heartbeat and the hush of night pressing in around the cabin. For years, she had slept there, long after she’d outgrown the need.

Behind her, Brom’s voice reached softly through the doorway. "None of us touched it," he said. "Not once."

His voice didn’t explain why.

It didn’t have to.

Meri didn’t step inside—not yet. Her eyes stayed on the fold of the fabric, the dip in the floor where she’d curled herself small in the winters. Her fingers tightened slightly where they brushed the wall.

"How long are we staying?" she asked.

Brom answered without pause. "A few days. A week at most. Just enough time to rest. Gather what we need. Repair what’s damaged."

His voice carried no promise.

She gave a small nod, barely more than a breath, and kept her feet outside the cave.

She’d go inside later. Alone. She knew what waited in there—and she wasn’t ready to face it. Not with until she was alone.

Her throat clicked as she swallowed. She pressed one hand to the edge of the bed and tested its weight. The straw had gone soft with age, slumped toward the middle like it, too, had been waiting. Then, quietly, she turned her head and looked at Brom—watched the way he stood in the doorway, hand resting against the frame. His posture was easy, but not careless. He carried his unspoken words like a cloak.

Meri studied him—not with suspicion, but like a gardener walking the edges of a field before frost, memorizing what still grew, knowing it would not last. She left the sleeping room not with haste, but a stillness that clung to her steps. The house breathed around her, beams creaking gently in the eaves as though recognizing the shape of her passage.

In the main room, Toran had moved again—now sniffing at the base of the cupboard, his hind legs stretched behind him in a lazy sprawl, tail tapping twice against the floor before stilling. A small strand of cobweb clung to his whiskers. He blinked at her, unbothered.

She crouched beside him, brushing the web free with a knuckle, then let her hand rest just behind his ears. His fur was warm. Soft, though flecked with the dust.

“I used to hide food here,” she murmured, half to him, half to the cupboard. “Half-dried apples. A carrot once. Mama never could figure out why it smelled wrong.”

Toran sniffed again, as if confirming the memory, then gave a soft sneeze.

She smiled softly, barely formed, and straightened slowly nudging the cupboard open.

Inside, the shelves sagged slightly, still lined with jars. A few had tipped in the years of absence, their contents long spoiled—mold blooming like moss across old preserves—but one jar, sealed with wax, remained intact. Rowanberry jam, the label smudged and nearly unreadable. She held it up to the light. The color glowed faintly, like embered leaves pressed behind glass.

Behind her, Brom moved toward the hearth. The way he set the kettle down—quiet, precise—said he’d found the same dust-thick emptiness. But he didn't clear it away. Not yet.

“You think we’ll be found here?” she asked, still watching the jam catch the windowlight.

His reply came after a moment. “Not soon.”

She turned toward him. “But eventually.”

Brom met her eyes. “A place like this can’t stay hidden forever.”

Meri didn’t nod. She simply set the jar down with care, as if noise alone might wake something fragile. Then she said, softer, “Then I want to see it all before it goes.”

…

They turned to the work of settling in, quiet and spare. The horses were led to the byre—its roof still held, though one beam sagged like a shoulder too long burdened. Brom checked the latch and water trough, muttering to himself the way he always did when weighing what could be repaired and what must simply endure. Meri lingered near the fence, watching her horse crop at the grass like it knew the taste.

She stepped back into the house after, sleeves rolled and braid half-loosened by wind. She moved toward the corner where the old broom hung—twigs brittle, handle dulled to the gray of weathered ash. Her fingers curled around the smooth middle, and she paused.

Eragon’s carvings still marked the upper length. Tiny animals: a fox, a crooked-winged sparrow, what might’ve been a bear. The names were there too—some nearly rubbed smooth. She turned it slowly, the wood warm from the afternoon. Her own paint—swirls of blue and sun-yellow—still clung to the lower end, though faded. And on the thickest part of the shaft, a handprint—Elida’s. She’d dipped her fingers in Meri’s paint and gripped it tight, claiming it with the full might of a younger sibling’s stubbornness. Meri had been mad at her for wasting the paint but her sister just said it needed a mark.

Meri’s throat caught. She ran her thumb over the faint line of blue that curved through the center of the palm.  A child’s mark—bold and careless.

She took a long breath and swept the floor.

Dust stirred, then danced. The broom moved in sure lines, following paths once familiar. She cleared the hearth, the corners, the stones worn smooth by bare feet. Each stroke carved the space anew, pulling something hidden back to the surface.

By the time she reached the door, light had shifted—the gold thickening into amber.

Brom stepped in again, a coil of rope slung over one shoulder. He didn’t comment on the clean floor or the soft trail of prints now visible there.

They worked until dusk, unpacking the satchels, brushing down the horses, hanging herbs to dry from old nails. A rhythm, slow but steady, returned.

The cabin would not be home again. But it would hold them, for a while.

…

When the fire finally caught, it did so slow and low—just kindling, just breath. Brom fed it in quiet increments, coaxing warmth without speaking. Meri watched the flame’s first light paint the undersides of the rafters, the edges of the room shifting gold.

She moved toward the cupboard again, not to search inside this time, but to kneel. Beneath it, half-tucked behind the baseboard where her fingers had once fit easily, lay the box.

A child’s box—pine-slabbed, uneven. The clasp was a loop of twine knotted thrice. She pulled it loose, slowly, as if undoing something older than rope.

Inside: pebbles, their colors faded but not gone. A dried leaf, still faintly crimson at its tips. A wooden bird carved with lopsided wings. And a piece of ribbon—blue, stiff with time—folded in on itself like it had grown tired of being bright.

She didn’t cry.
She didn’t smile either.

Her thumb brushed over the ribbon, slow. The frayed edge caught against the pad of her finger, and she let it. No flinch. No hurry. Just the feel of it—stiff with years, folded into itself like something too long forgotten.

Her breath rose, steady but narrow, like wind threading through tight-stacked stones. She held it there, not on purpose, not out of fear—but because the shape of her body had remembered how. Then let it go.

One long, soundless exhale.

The fire crackled behind her—soft, almost shy. It didn’t fill the room. It didn’t need to. Its warmth reached only as far as her heels, curled beneath her where she knelt. Still, she didn’t move.

Just sat with the box open in her lap, the dust not brushed away, the light not shifted. The past didn’t pull at her. It didn’t speak. It simply rested—unfolded now, no longer hidden behind a baseboard.

And Meri breathed in deeply.

Behind her, Brom said nothing, but she could hear the shift of his boot as he stoked the fire. The sounds of settling. Of holding ground.

“I buried this the day Eragon left,” she murmured. “Said it was only ‘til spring.”

Her thumb brushed the wing of the bird, a corner chipped, the paint on one eye smeared. She remembered making it. Elida had painted the eyes crooked on purpose, laughing like she knew something Meri didn’t. Maybe she had.

Outside, Toran barked once—sharp, then quiet. A squirrel, maybe. Or something less ordinary. Brom rose, crossed to the door, and opened it just wide enough to look.

Meri stayed where she was, hands still cradling the box.

She whispered, more to the space than to Brom, “What happens after this?”

He didn’t answer at first.

Then, without turning, he said, “We do what’s next.”

She closed the box gently. Slid it back where it had been. Not hidden now, only waiting.

What came next? The words felt soft in her mouth, but vast. Like stepping to the edge of a trail she didn’t remember choosing, not knowing if it led to safety or something more complicated. 'Next' could mean a new name. A new weapon. A way to disappear so well even her memories might not follow. Or it might mean picking herbs again. Threading beads for no reason but to keep her fingers busy. It might mean watching the sky without flinching.

She didn’t know yet.

But she would need both hands free to find out.

“Then I’ll need more thread,” she said softly. “And a needle that won’t break.”

A pause. And then Brom’s voice, low and steady, from the doorframe: “There’s a spool in the saddlebag. Bottom flap.”

Meri nodded once—almost to herself—and stood. Her knees ached from kneeling so long, the kind of ache. She crossed the room slowly and took the saddlebag from its place beside the door.

By the fire, Brom sat now, one leg stretched out, the other bent. His hand cradled a steaming cup, the scent of pine tea just beginning to steep in the room. His eyes were on the flame but not fixed to it, more watching something behind it, beneath it.

She sat a pace away. Not beside him, but not apart. Close enough that the warmth reached both of them.

He spoke first, voice low. “You always kept your bits of thread wound around twigs. Said it was prettier that way.”

She glanced down at her hands, at the spool now cradled in her fingers. “I think I wanted the forest to hold my work too.”

Brom gave a quiet hum of agreement. Not approval—just memory shared.

The fire popped. Outside, a bird called once, then stilled.

Meri leaned her head back against the wall, the wood cool through her hair. Her thoughts wandered—not far, not fast. Just enough to wonder if maybe there were still twigs in the cupboard she could use.

Meri rose quietly, the wooden spool cupped in one palm, and crossed back to the cupboard. The floor creaked beneath her heel—not loud, but enough to remind her that the house still noticed every step.

She crouched, lifting the edge of the lower shelf with care. Dust clung in a thick line along the back wall, but nestled near the corner was a bundle she recognized even before she touched it—thin birch twigs, bound loosely with garden string. She had gathered them once for kindling, but then kept them for weaving thread, because the bark peeled like parchment and felt soft against her fingers.

She unwrapped the string and chose one, running her thumb along its edge. The birch had grayed, dulled with time, but the memory it stirred was fresh—sunlight on the dirt, Elida singing off-key as she crushed berries into dye, Meri’s fingers sticky with sap.

She brought the twig back with her and, without comment, began winding the thread—slowly, almost ceremonial, as if this, too, was part of finding her place again.

Brom watched without watching. His cup hung loose in his grip, mostly forgotten. He hadn’t spoken since the last hum, but his shoulders had eased a little. Not in peace, but in permission.

The silence stretched, but this time it didn’t press. It held.

The tea’s scent deepened—pine, a hint of chamomile. Toran shifted in his sleep, one paw twitching as if he dreamed of the trail or of something much older.

Then Brom leaned forward and set his cup down, the movement deliberate, his voice even.

“Tomorrow, we’ll check the traps. See what’s still usable. I’ll check the roofline. You gather what you need.”

She nodded, her eyes still on her work.

And as night settled further around the cabin, the light from the fire curved gently across the floor, touching the edge of the unwound thread.

Later, when the fire had worn down to its heartwood core and the kettle’s last curl of steam had vanished into the rafters, Brom rose. He did not speak. His movements were quiet but purposeful, the kind born of long winters and many nights where silence had been more companion than burden. As he passed behind her, he touched her shoulder—fingers light, no pressure—just the weight as if to remind her to rest soon. The same way he as done when she was child eager to avoid bed.

She didn’t turn to look. She only nodded slightly, not even sure if he saw it.

The door to the sleeping room clicked faintly as it latched behind him. Then the house seemed to settle once more, but not into silence. It was the hush of deep night—the living quiet made of many small things: wind brushing the outer walls in uneven strokes, like a palm reading the grain of old wood; the faint creak of beams shifting overhead; the irregular drip of rainwater gathered in the corner of the eaves, though no storm had come.

Outside, a branch tapped gently against the far window, a broken rhythm that echoed like the ticking of a forgotten clock. From somewhere beyond the fence line came the dry bark of a fox—brief, almost startled—then nothing. The forest did not sleep, not really. It watched, it murmured, it turned its roots in the dark.

Meri stayed by the hearth, still wrapped in the shawl her mam had packed, the wool scratchy against her throat where it bunched. The fire was mostly coals now, but they glowed with a steady pulse, like the slow breathing of something ancient and alive. She watched the red deepen, watched the shadows climb the corners of the room until the familiar lines of furniture blurred.

The cottage had grown smaller in the dark, yet more full. Every beam and wall felt dense with breath and memory. She could feel the weight of it pressing inward—not heavy, but close, like the tucked-in warmth of blankets once piled high to keep out winter. She could almost hear her siblings’ old laughter muffled beneath the floorboards, could imagine the thud of someone falling from a too-small bed, the way Mam used to murmur half-words while stirring the fire before dawn. There had been life here once—clumsy and bright. It hadn’t vanished. It had only quieted.

She looked toward the sleeping room, toward the door now closed between her and the beds she had once shared with giggling bodies and whispered secrets. Her ribs ached. Not from pain, not from grief even—but from the hollow shape absence makes when it lingers too long in the same place.

Greynsi had carved into her. Not like a blade—but like wind through stone. Slow, grinding. Unseen until too much was missing to ignore. Carvahall had tried to offer something soft again, but she’d never found the shape of herself there. Not fully. That life had been layered with watching eyes and the press of being too much and not enough at once. Too quiet. Too changed.

But here—here, the air didn’t lean in with questions. It didn’t need her to explain. It remembered the shape of her silence and left room for it.

Somewhere in the dark, Toran gave a small huff in his sleep, his body stretched out near the door like a line drawn between what had been and what waited. His paws twitched. Then stilled. His breathing grew slow again.

Meri let her head fall back, pressing lightly against the wall. The boards were cool, solid. She could feel the knots in the wood through her hair, and beneath them, the heartbeat of the house itself—old and steady.

She didn’t close her eyes to sleep. Only to listen.

To the night.

To the memories that didn’t ask to be named.

To the breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

.

The coals in the hearth barely stirred, only the faintest blush of red threading through the blackened wood. They gave off no heat now—only a faint shimmer, like the memory of embers beneath ash, still breathing, but no longer trying to burn.. Meri hadn’t moved in some time. Her shawl had slipped down one shoulder, forgotten. Her fingers had gone still in her lap, caught in the habit of fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve but no longer working at it.

The quiet stretched.

Wind shifted in the chimney with a sound like breath drawn and held—a hush that pressed lightly on her ribs. Not cold. Not comforting either. Just... drawing her forward.

She rose slowly.

The floor spoke beneath her feet—a long wooden sigh that sank into the bones of the house. Toran’s ears flicked. He blinked up at her, whiskers twitching, then let his eyes fall closed again, head nestled back on his paws. She touched his flank as she passed, not enough to rouse him, only enough to say I see you.

The door stuck slightly in its frame. She pressed her palm to it until it yielded, and the outside air slipped in around her like a veil pulled loose.

Dew had already begun to settle. The scent of damp earth lifted, bright and pungent—moss, clay, crushed wild onion. Somewhere nearby, the slow drip of leaf-water. And beneath it all, the distant hum of nighttime things waking or waiting. A moth tapped against the doorframe. A toad gave a wet sound under the herb bed.

She didn’t reach for her cloak. The chill wrapped around her bare arms like streamwater—thin, persistent, and clean.

Meri followed the line of the garden with bare feet, stepping carefully between thistle roots and fallen twigs. The stones remembered her weight, gave slightly where they had always given. A leaf clung to her ankle. She didn’t brush it away.

The magnolia stood just beyond the shed.

Its limbs were bare, save for tight, sleeping buds that curled like small fists against the spring air. The bark was silver-pale under the moon, slick with dew. Beneath it, the earth held the shape of old footprints softened by time—hers, once. And others.

Meri stopped close enough to feel the tree’s stillness. Not a stillness of death but something gentler. A kind of hush that waited to bloom.

She reached out, brushing her fingers along the lowest branch. It felt warmer than she expected. The kind of warmth held in stones overnight. She slid her palm along the trunk—slow, slow. Her breath hitched halfway.

A curl of moss had taken root in a notch near the base, plush and green even in the moonlight. She touched it without thinking, then drew her hand back. Tessie would’ve laughed at that. Or tried to pluck it. Or asked a hundred questions before breakfast about what moss ate and whether it dreamed.

Her throat burned.

She sank lower—not kneeling, not bowing—just letting her weight ease into the earth, her hand still resting against the trunk like it might know how to hold memory better than she could. The bark was cool beneath her palm, rough and silent. The branches above shifted gently, not in wind exactly, but as if stirred by something passing between them.

She stayed there, forehead tilted to the bark, eyes closed and listened to the night itself—crickets pulsing in the underbrush, a moth’s wings brushing bark, the far-off hush of a stream that never stops moving.

Then, slowly, she reached into her pocket and drew out a length of thread—a pale green strand, frayed and faded from sun and use. It had once tied a bundle of mint or thyme. She turned it between her fingers, let it breathe in her hand a moment longer, then reached up and tied it to the lowest branch with a single, careful knot. No bow just a knot.

She pressed her palm once more to the bark. Then she turned, the grass whispering beneath her feet. She didn’t look back.

The knot held.

…

Morning arrived veiled in mist—the kind that softened edges and hushed birdsong, casting the world in pewter light. Dew clung to the windows in beads, trailing slow lines down the glass. Beyond the walls, wood creaked in a rhythm she knew without looking: Brom was on the roof, shifting his weight with the steady care of someone who fixed things without announcing it.

Meri rose in silence.

She hadn’t slept in the bed that night but on her bedroll beside the hearth. Her muscles answered stiffly, dullness that had settled into her limbs.

She pulled her shawl tighter and stepped barefoot across the floor, boards sighing beneath her tread. The sleeping room door yielded with a low scrape, the latch giving way the way it always had—slightly too soon, worn smooth from small, impatient hands. Cool air met her first. Then the scent: old wool, a trace of lye, cedar tucked into corners where mice might once have tried to make a nest.

Quilts lay folded on the beds, corners turned just so, the kind of neatness left behind by someone who had meant to return. The shelves still held their congregation of lopsided animals—small wooden creatures leaned together like conspirators caught mid-whisper.

But she didn’t go to the beds.

Her gaze slid past them, drawn instead to the hanging blanket in the corner. The edge frayed now, a faint trail of dust outlining its hem like a forgotten footprint. It wasn’t much—just a bit of fabric nailed to the rafters, sagging slightly in the center—but it marked something sacred.

She ducked beneath it.

The air changed.

Inside, the light turned muted and golden-gray, filtered through the weave like sunlight through reeds. The floor bore the polish of countless days spent cross-legged, curled, crouched. Her old pillow still waited—a thin, limp shape more thread than stuffing. On the far wall, a fox and bird were scratched faintly in charcoal. The fox’s tail was only half-drawn, the rest lost to time or indecision. She remembered sketching it in the dim with a stub of burnt wood, after waking from a dream where she could run faster than sound and vanish into leaves.

Meri sank down without ceremony.

Her knees brushed the beam. Her shoulders found the angle of the wall without needing to search. The silence was not empty here—it was thick, quilted. It pressed gently, not to trap, but to keep.

She laid her hand flat against the floorboard.

The grain ran beneath her fingertips like old memory—smooth in places, splintered in others. She didn’t cry. She didn’t need to. The room breathed with her. It remembered her without asking.

No voices rose. No past pressed against the edges demanding shape.

Only the quiet weight of what had once held her. And, for this moment, still did.

Her fingertips found the small wooden box first, tucked beneath the folded corner of an old shawl. The lid stuck—swollen by time, the grain uneven—but she coaxed it open with care. Inside, a jumble of once-precious things: a short dagger, its handle wrapped in twine long faded to straw-blonde, the knots clumsy in places where her fingers had once fumbled. She had painted it too—tiny swirls of green and ochre, worn thin from handling. Not a weapon for war, but for presence. Something to hold, to steady.

She set it gently in her lap.

Beneath it, her handmade book—the one about stars. Pages bound with thread, the cover stiff with old glue and pressed petals browned at the edges. She opened it slowly.

 The rune markings carved lightly into each page caught the morning light—some etched carefully, their strokes steady and clear; others shallow or crooked, the mark of smaller hands still learning their weight. Between them, swaths of painted sky bled across the parchment—indigo and violet, faded with time. Constellations arched across the pages, shaped not from charts but memory, named in ways only she would understand.

Some stars were circled in ochre. Others trailed silver lines toward imagined stories—a wolf with three tails, a girl holding a broken branch, a fox whose eye held the moon. No legends written, only the shapes. She had always meant to finish them. Somehow, the silence between the marks said more.

Fox's Lantern. The River’s Mouth. Tessie’s Gate.

She touched the edge of that one longer than the others.

Another book sat underneath, heavier from the weight of its pressed things. Leaves—maple, ash, fern—flattened and framed in ribbon. Flowers brittle as lace. And her stories… the ones she hadn’t shown anyone. One was about a fox who swallowed the moon to keep it safe. Another told of a girl who turned into a sparrow when her heart grew too full.

She didn’t read them but she set the book in her lap, reaching for the cloth bundle beside the books. When she unwrapped it, a small sewing project fell across her knees—a patch of linen embroidered with half a sunburst, the needle still looped with thread, rusted faintly where it had paused. It hadn’t unraveled. It had only waited.

There were stones too—smooth, weighty ones, the kind only children seem to know how to choose. One had a stripe like a river, another shimmered faintly when the light caught its speckled face. She remembered collecting them along the streambank, mud between her toes and a song in her teeth.

And paintings. Small, vivid, forgotten things—a crow in flight, a curled fern, a cluster of red berries caught in frost. She’d tucked them in the walls as if they were secrets.

The cubby held nothing grand, only the things she’d loved enough to keep hidden.

She sat there with them a while, the dagger laid across her thighs, her fingers idly following the worn grain of its hilt. Not gripping it. Just remembering the way it had felt when her world was simpler. When stories still had endings.

When she rose, she carried the half-finished embroidery and the star-book with her. The rest, she left as they were.

She didn’t need to take everything. Only what called her forward.

.

Meri stepped out of the sleeping room, the old embroidery bundled in her arms. Not cradled, exactly—just held, like something found after forgetting where you'd left it. The morning met her with a chill that hadn't yet burned off, slipping between the shutters and brushing the dust into drifting threads of light.

Outside, the roof gave a low creak. Not startled. Familiar.

Brom shifted above her—boots scuffing, wood giving under his weight. She caught the soft scrape of a shingle eased loose, the hitch of breath as he leaned in to check whatever rot the winter had left behind. He didn’t call down. Just kept at it, the way he did—quiet until there was reason not to be.

She moved barefoot across the threshold. The porch planks cooled her soles, eased the ache in her knees from kneeling too long on the floorboards. She didn’t rush. The step still bore the heel-mark from Eragon’s boots, and the porch rail was scarred with years of knife-edge boredom. Her hand brushed past a faded ochre smudge—the handprint Elida had left the day she’d insisted she was old enough to paint like Meri. Meri had told her not to waste the good color. Elida had pressed her hand flat anyway.

The breeze brought pine and smoke and the faint, peppery sweetness of tulips that had grown wild by the fenceline.

She sat on the lowest step.

The half-sewn cloth lay across her lap, soft with age. Her fingers moved without thinking, tracing the place where the thread had browned and lifted from the weave. She tugged it loose, slow, and the fabric puckered gently under her palm.

On the roof, Brom moved again.

“You found something,” he said—not a question, just a quiet knowing that landed like dew.

Meri didn’t look up. She rolled the new thread around her finger, snug. Let it cut a shallow line, then unwound it.

“There were books,” she said. “Pressed leaves. Stones I thought were pretty. I don’t know why I kept them all.” The words weren’t bitter. Just turned over like soil in spring—heavy, but meant to breathe. “I used to think I had to carry it all. Everything that mattered. Every piece.”

There was a pause overhead. A shingle shifted in his hands. Then: “And now?”

She smoothed the cloth. Her voice stayed low.

“Now I think... I just need to know where they are.”

The roof went still. A breath. Then Brom said, plain and steady, “Knowing’s enough, Flower.”

She nodded once—not in answer, but in understanding. Then leaned back against the rail, her shoulder pressing into the same spot where her younger self had once started carving a spiral. Just the beginning of it. Just the curve.

The sun wasn’t high yet. The air was still cool. The day hadn’t made up its mind what it would become.

And that, for now, was enough.

She leaned back into the rail behind her, shoulder brushing the carved spiral her younger self had once started—barely more than a curve.

The wind rustled the tulips. The roof creaked again as Brom shifted to the next patch of rot.

The sun hadn’t committed to rising. But the day, like her, had begun anyway.

She stayed on the step a while longer, but the quiet began to stretch too thin—not heavy, just waiting. A hush that invited movement.

The thread slipped from her lap as she stood.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t glance upward. Only moved—down the worn path beyond the porch, where the grasses bowed toward the trees and the stones kept the warmth of yesterday’s sun. Her feet found the way without effort. The path had grown narrow with years, but it remembered her shape. The brush leaned in softly, the way old friends lean into shoulder and sleeve without needing to speak.

Toran noticed before she was past the gate. He lifted his head from where he’d sprawled in the grass, gave a small huff, then scrambled up in an untidy gallop. His ears bounced, too large for his still-growing skull, and his nose twitched with the excitement of a trail yet to be claimed. He circled her once, then twice, before falling into a loping rhythm just ahead, his paws kicking up the rich scent of pine loam and last year’s leaves.

The forest greeted them, a breath drawn in deep—damp and green and slow. The air here was different. Older. Moss clung thick to the rocks, and the birch trunks bore scars of frost and time. Birdsong threaded through the high boughs, cautious at first, then steadier, as if sensing she belonged.

She followed the bend of the trail that once, long ago, had been hers alone. This was the way she used to vanish from chores, from quarrels, from herself. A narrow deer path, half-lost now beneath fern and fallen branch, but her steps found it.

Her fingers trailed a low-hanging limb, the bark smooth where the deer had rubbed velvet once. She remembered the tree that marked the halfway point—crooked and bowed, with a knot like a watcher’s eye. She touched it now, briefly, as she passed.

The glade came next. Just a thinning of trees, where sunlight filtered in soft columns and the grass grew longer, lusher. And in its heart, her tree.

An old ash, grown wide at the base, its branches angling outward in long, generous arcs. The bark bore faint notches—her own doing, from the summers she’d climbed it barefoot with a satchel of paper and a lump of charcoal. There’d been no desk, no ink. Just what she could make with her hands and the hush of the leaves overhead.

She stepped to the roots and paused.

Toran sniffed around the base, then flopped onto his side with a grunt, panting softly. He blinked up at her, one ear cocked.

Meri looked up into the branches. They moved faintly, not with wind, but with memory. It was here the elves had come each spring. This was the path they’d taken, soft-footed, bright-eyed. They would appear as if spun from light—then vanish by morning, the scent of mint and starlight left behind.

That was until the year they hadn’t come.

Meri sat in the crook of the roots, knees drawn to her chest.. She let her cheek rest against the bark. It was cool, dry, with that faint green smell that trees keep even in sleep. Her eyes drifted half-closed, not from tiredness, but from the way stillness invited memory.

She never heard them arrive, not truly. One moment the clearing had been hers, the next—woven with other presences. Not loud, never abrupt, but like realizing you were not alone in a dream. As a child, she used to imagine they stepped through the folds of the wind itself.

They spoke little in their time here. But once, one had knelt beside her, where her charcoal sketch had gone crooked. A hand, long-fingered and pale, had reached out—not to correct, but to add. A curl of leaf. A line of wind. The figure she’d drawn, standing beside the ash tree, had taken on breath it hadn’t had before. She hadn’t known what to say. Just watched.

And they had watched her back. Not with pity. Not with awe.

Just... attention. As if she were a creature to be studied for no true explainable reason.

She hadn’t told anyone about that. Not even Mam. She hadn’t known how to explain the way the elf’s eyes had held the weight of rivers, of smoke, of sky before it rained. Or the way her fingers had smelled faintly of thyme and frost and something older than both.

Meri opened her eyes.

Toran had rolled onto his back, paws curled, tail stirring dust. His nose twitched once, then stilled. He was too young to remember the elves. Too new to know who had once stood here with her.

She lowered her hand to the roots, fingertips brushing the moss-soft earth. Once, she’d buried things here. Letters never sent. Bits of colored thread. A stone that had reminded her of Tessie’s laugh. Maybe they were still under there, curled deep beneath seasons of rot and rain.

Maybe not.

She didn’t need to dig them up to know they’d been real.

She exhaled, slow. Not a sigh. Just the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Above, the ash branches swayed. The leaves hadn’t come in yet—just the tight, silver-laced buds waiting for warmth.

They reminded her of herself, in a way; not empty, not dormant just... waiting and still alive.

She sank onto a flat stone nearby, one smoothed by years of her own legs and likely others’ since. Her hand went to her side, drawing out the embroidery. The cloth unfolded easily, warm with the shape of her body where it had been held against her. She didn’t check the pattern first—just threaded the needle Brom had given her and resumed the stitch she'd begun at the porch.

Her fingers worked slowly, the way they had been taught long ago. Each loop catching a breath, a memory, an intention she wasn’t quite ready to name. Not yet.

Toran settled nearby, ears flicking occasionally as birds began to stir overhead. His nose twitched with the scent of old bark and pollen, but he didn’t move. He just watched her. Or maybe the light through the leaves.

The embroidery grew under her hands. Not fast, not perfect. But it grew.

A sunburst she’d started as a child, now with lines not as clean, but more deliberate. The colors didn’t quite match. The fabric had wrinkled unevenly but there was something true in it now. A softness earned.

Meri didn’t speak. But in the rhythm of thread through cloth, in the weight of her breathing and the hush of the woods, something was speaking back.

She didn’t know what the shape would be when it was finished. But it would be hers.

And it would be here.

Like the tree. Like the stones. Like the old path that remembered the way she walked,

The sun had lifted just past the tree line, its light drowsy and diffused—more suggestion than insistence. It slipped through the branches in long, golden filaments, brushing the moss and low bracken as if uncertain whether to wake the world at all. Meri sat cross-legged at the edge of the clearing, knees drawn up, the old embroidery spread across her lap like a faded offering. The cloth, long folded, bore the creases of time—its threads brittle where they'd been left too long untouched.

Once, she'd meant the design to be a sunburst. Wide and clean. A child's vision of hope.

Now, her needle moved in slow, considered loops, undoing the center stitch by stitch. The edges she left—rays still reaching, but no longer flaring outward. Her new thread, the color of pale bark, threaded a shape steadier than light. Not quite a bloom. Not quite a flame. Something more rooted than radiant.

The wind turned.

A hush fell across the canopy—not silence, but a different listening. Branches stilled mid-sway. The sharp scent of pine deepened, laced now with the rich undertone of wet soil and distant water, the kind of smell that curled low to the ground and meant rain before it came. Far above, the crows had gone quiet.

Meri looked up. The leaves moved with care, their underbellies showing silver. The sky behind them wore the color of stone. She passed her thumb gently over the fresh stitches—then folded the cloth with slow, reverent fingers. Slipped the needle into its seam like a promise not quite spoken aloud. Stood.

Toran stirred from where he’d been dozing beneath a yew. He gave a soft huff and rose, stretching his forelegs first, then pacing ahead in a low loop through the ferns. His ears twitched toward the wind as he circled back to her side, brushing her calf with his flank before trotting forward again—not urging, just keeping near.

Meri stepped from the clearing, her bare feet brushing damp leaves and mushroom-capped roots. The old trail curved before her like a whisper remembered. Moss softened the rocks; old spruce needles lined the path in rust-colored hush. Her palm slid against a young beech trunk as she walked, feeling the living coolness of its bark, the quiet pulse within.

A jay called once and then went still. And just ahead—by the bend where wild garlic once grew thick—Brom.

He stood leaning lightly on a birch, her shawl folded over one arm. He didn’t move, didn’t call out, just watched her with a gaze that belonged in these woods. Solid. Present. Unrushed.

She didn’t quicken her pace.

When she reached him, she took the shawl without speaking. It smelled faintly of smoke and his coat. She looped it over her elbow and continued down the trail. Then, a few steps on, she turned slightly—not quite facing him, but enough to catch his outline beneath the trees.

“It’s going to rain,” she said, voice as low as the sky.

Brom’s answer came like the forest answering itself: “Then it’s a good morning to come in.”

She nodded once, the gesture small, but real. Together, they walked the path back—leaves brushing their shoulders, the scent of wet bark curling between them, and the first drops falling—so soft they didn’t break, only deepened what was already there.

The storm didn’t ease. If anything, it settled in deeper—thickening like soup left to simmer, rising in slow-moving folds that blurred the trees into silhouettes and softened the steady knock of rain on wood. Water slid down the windows in braided lines, catching the grey light like glass threads. Outside, the world had vanished behind a veil of shifting silver.

Inside, the cottage had grown small and warm. The kind of hush that belonged to long afternoons with no task urgent enough to chase the quiet out. A hush that made space for the living things that had learned how to wait—dogs, tea, memory.

Brom sat on the floor now, a low crate open before him. The lid, warped slightly at the corners, leaned against the hearth, catching stray ash with the slow dignity of something long-used. One by one, he pulled out bundles—wrapped in oilcloth, knotted with twine, labeled in ways only he would know. Some he unwrapped, checked, then wrapped again tighter. Others he set aside with the deliberate thoughtfulness of someone weighing weight against worth.

“Mule skin’s gone soft,” he said absently, thumbing the worn strap of a saddlebag that had seen too many seasons. “I’ll need to stitch it again. Can’t have the buckle pulling through once the trail steepens.”

Meri didn’t look up from her sewing. “Do we know where we’re going?” Her voice was soft, almost distracted, but it held no trace of doubt.

Brom didn’t answer right away. He placed the strap beside a spool of leather cord and rubbed a calloused thumb over the stitching groove as though reading the past months by touch alone.

“North, for now,” he said at last. “Through the Spine’s edge, past where the old markers fade. There’s a path beyond the pass, near the cairns. Elves won’t follow. Neither will men—not for a while.”

Meri nodded, almost to herself. Her needle paused mid-air. She examined the new shape taking form—no longer the sunburst of a girl who had dreamed in bright declarations, but something lower, more inward. A bloom, yes—but pressed to the earth. A thing that held. Something with weight. Not a statement. A root.

Brom pulled out a pouch next—dried meat, wrapped in waxed paper that had started to curl at the edges. He sniffed. Grimaced. “Taste?”

Without ceremony, she reached over and took a piece, chewed. Her brow furrowed. “Not moldy. But close.”

“Then it goes,” he said, tossing it toward the hearth. It landed with a soft thump against the kindling stack. “We’ll dry more on the road.”

The kettle hissed, catching the moment like punctuation. She leaned forward, topped off his cup. The movement small, unspoken, practiced. He didn’t ask. She didn’t offer.

A rhythm took hold, quiet and sure. Her fingers wove thread in long, thoughtful arcs. His hands sorted tools: flint tucked into felt, a whet-stone dry-wrapped in linen, coils of cord for snares and bandages alike. They moved as if stitching not just supplies, but meaning—into the cloth, the bags, the walls.

“Do you want to keep this?” he asked, holding up a flat tin box—a child’s tin, painted once with stars that had long since chipped into suggestion.

Meri reached for it, opened it carefully. Inside; a handful of mismatched buttons, a bent pin shaped like a leaf, and one tiny fox carved from pinewood. The paint had peeled along the spine. Its eyes were uneven. She stared at it without touching.

“Not for the road,” she said. Then, softer: “But I’m not throwing it away.”

Brom nodded. He rewrapped it, tied it neatly, and set it on the upper shelf—tucked into a hollow above the hearth where the rain couldn’t find it, but memory still might.

Outside, thunder rolled—not sharp, but steady. The kind of sound that fills the bones and makes the roof feel closer. Wind skirted under the door, bringing the faint scent of wet stone and pine sap. Toran snored from his corner, feet twitching now and then, ears flicking in half-sleep.

Meri pulled the thread through again. Her stitches no longer followed the old pattern. She wasn’t mending. She was shaping. Something new, stitched beside what had once been.

“We’ll need to leave the day after tomorrow,” Brom said. “If the weather clears.”

“It will,” she said.

A beat passed. Then: “Your legs ready for mountain country?”

“Are yours?”

His reply came with a sound—half breath, half huff. “We’ll find out.”

They worked on.

Not fast. Not with urgency. But with the care of those who knew the weight of travel wasn’t in the miles, but in what you carried with you—thread, tool, memory. And what you left behind, folded neat, where only the quiet would hold it.

The storm pressed on, not cruel but thorough. Rain tapped the windows like thought, and the room held its own weather: warmth and woodsmoke, wool, and silence thick as bark.

And still they moved—stitch by knot, cup by stone—preparing not just to leave, but to endure.

.

The rest of the day moved the way Meri remembered spring used to—unfolding not in hours, but in small sounds and shifting light. The steady drip from the eaves, the hush of wind weaving through the trees, the soft patter of rain brushing leaves like fingers through hair. Nothing rushed. Even the birds only called once and then fell quiet again.

Inside, the hearth crackled low, more ember than flame. She sewed, then stopped, then let the cloth rest in her lap while she simply listened—head tilted, eyes half-shut, as though waiting for something to speak that hadn’t yet found words.

Outside, Brom worked until the rain made the wood too slick to trust. He wrapped the tools in oilcloth, slow and careful, as if they were blades—not to be rushed, even in retreat. By the time he stepped back inside, dusk had folded itself around the ruin. He said little, only nodded once at her and set water to boil. They ate in quiet—not for lack of words, but because the shape of the day had already spoken for them, steady as breath, unspoken as trust.

That night, the storm loosened its grip. The wind slowed. The fire burned low. And when she finally lay down—back to the wall, blanket drawn to her chin—Meri listened to the sound of rain as she had when she was small. Not as threat, but as lullaby.

.

Morning came veiled in mist.

The light had no edges—only a pewter glow that softened the corners of the cabin and turned the windows into pale sheets of breath. Rain still fell, but gently now, like the forest was exhaling. The scent of damp bark, soaked moss, and leaf-rot stirred beneath the eaves, threaded through with the faint, sweet trace of wet tulips.

Brom was already outside. She heard him near the byre—the low creak of leather, a muffled voice, the soft rustle of hooves shifting in straw. The horses murmured back like they understood.

Inside, the fire had banked low. Toran rose, sniffed the doorframe, then gave a soft whuff and curled again beside the hearth.

Meri sat cross-legged on the ground near her pack and herb satchel- the stitching along the seams had frayed where fingers had pulled it open too many times. She ran her palm along the edge, then began the slow work of unpacking and packing again—ritual more than task, a sorting not just of things, but of self.

Clothes came first—folded tight, worn soft. She set them aside for washing, eyes flicking toward the lean of rain on the windows. The river would run clearer by afternoon and she’d wash them then.

Then came her smaller things, she’d carried from Carvahall, she lifted a bundle of letters—she didn’t open them. Just pressed her thumb lightly along the crease before tucking them deep into her satchel’s inner pocket. Next came a string of glass beads—blue and green, worn smooth with time. Elida had made them for Tessie once, threading them with a stubbornness that made the whole family late to supper. They clinked faintly in her palm before she wrapped them in cloth and slid them into a side pouch.

The knives followed; slim, with handles worn to the curl of her fingers. Not showy things. Just well-used. Familiar. The steel still held its edge. She tied them in place, one beneath her belt, another in her boot. A third she hesitated over—then slid into her satchel’s front flap.

She paused when her fingers brushed the flint kit. Flint and tinder, wrapped in a leather pouch, its edges charred from too many damp mornings. Beside it lay a wooden whistle—rough and crooked, carved the winter she turned ten, when Brom had taught her how to vanish from sound. She held it to her lips but didn’t blow. It wasn’t time for silence, not yet.

Last, she unfolded a small square of cloth, its edges embroidered in a tight, hawk-wing shape. She folded it again, smaller this time, and placed it beneath the letters.

From a deeper corner of the pack, she lifted two books—both hand-bound. The first, wrapped in faded linen, was filled with charcoal sketches and pressed ferns, stars named in runes of her own making. The second was heavier, pages thicker with layered watercolor and the mess of half-finished stories. A pressed fern slipped from the middle—she caught it mid-fall and slid it back between the pages.

She added a bundle of blank paper, a bit of waxed thread, a stump of charcoal. She didn’t pack everything. Not this time. Some things would stay—tucked high on the shelf, where the shadows fell warm.

The embroidery still lay nearby, half-finished, sunburst turned inward. She didn’t pick it up yet. Her hands weren’t ready for brightness.

Outside, the mist curled low over the earth, the hush of the rain never broke. But inside, she packed with quiet precision. Lighter this time. Not because she had less to carry, but because she finally knew what mattered. And when she was done, she set the bags beside the door and stood without a sound.

There was still time but not much.

Chapter Text

The sky had barely begun to pale when Meri slipped through the doorway, not fully inside and not yet gone. The wood beneath her hand was cool, its grain swollen from the long night, and the air held the hush of something not yet stirred.

Mist pooled low, thick as milk around the stones of the garden path. It curled along the roots of the old juniper like forgotten thread, weaving itself between the foxglove stalks and early shoots of bittercress that had braved the frost-soft earth. Beneath the magnolia, the ground was slick with petals fallen too soon, curled like tiny tongues of paper.

The breath of the forest hadn't quickened yet. The birds still slept, or else whispered low between the branches in voices too faint to catch. Somewhere beyond the edge of clearing, a jay stirred its wings in the underbrush—a faint rustle, feather on leaf—but it did not call. Even the wind seemed to hold back, pressing its weight gently against the backs of trees without pushing through.

The garden looked half-dreamed in that light—silvered and still, as if it might vanish if she stepped too loud.

Meri paused just beyond the threshold. Her boots dangled loosely from two fingers, and her bare toes curled slightly against the packed dirt. The cold climbed up through her soles, not harsh, but waking. She breathed through her nose—slowly—and the scent filled her: wet moss, peat-rich soil, the faint iron of old tools rusting along the fence line, and the sharper green of crushed nettle from where she had walked yesterday without noticing.

She crossed the main room barefoot, her boots slung loose from two fingers, laces knotted together like a child's forgotten game. The boards beneath her feet creaked softly, not in protest but as if waking—recognizing her weight, her gait, the quiet way she moved. The floor had been swept a few days before, but already the fine dust of disuse had settled again like sifted flour, clinging to the corners, outlining where no one had stepped.

The air inside the cabin held the scent of dry wood, old smoke, and crushed yarrow from the bundle that had fallen last night and never been rehung. Light slanted in through the eastern shutter, carving a blade of gold across the hearthstones where the ash had gone cold.

Near the edge of that light, something pale had caught. She crouched, boots thudding gently to the ground beside her. Between two darkened stones, a single sprig of lungwort had fallen—its once-blue petals gone gray with time, the speckled bloom dulled like an old bruise fading. It had dried in place, its stem curved like a sleep-heavy neck, its shape still tender in its collapse.

She reached out and brushed it free, careful not to break the stem. Her thumb passed over the surface, where the texture had gone papery-soft, and raised it to her face. It smelled faintly of soil and hearth soot—of mornings spent with her knees in the garden beds, and evenings hunched by the fire while the wind curled beneath the door.

Wordlessly, she opened the mouth of her satchel with one hand and slid the bloom inside, letting it rest against the inner seam where other quiet things lived—a black feather, a folded scrap of cloth, a stone smooth as bone.

She rose slowly, brushing her fingers along the stone's rough edge as she stood. Her gaze drifted—not to the shelf, or the pegs where cloaks had once hung, but to the low wall beside the hearth, where the firewood had been stacked unevenly, the way Brom always did it. A slant in the pile had revealed the corner of something thin and warped—barely visible beneath a splintered slat of birch.

She knelt again, this time slower, tilting her head to see beneath. And there it was. Tucked behind the woodpile, its edges bowed and peeling, half-collapsed on itself as if it had been left standing until time had softened its spine.

She didn't remember placing the daisy painting there. Maybe it had been moved, or maybe it had fallen on its own and no one had thought to pick it up. The frame, made of old fencing wood, had gone gray with age, the corners flaking. One side had warped from water—rain, perhaps, from that spring the shutters refused to close. A fine mold traced the lower edge in pale green lace.

She reached forward and brushed back the loose slats, freeing it with care, as though it might crumble in her hands.

It was smaller than she remembered. Child-sized. The kind of painting made with short brushes and too much water, the colors bleeding slightly at the edges. Once, the petals had been bright—daisy-yellow against a backdrop of soft sky blue. Now the yellow had faded to something closer to flax, and the blue had turned the color of an old bruise. But the shapes were still there. Round faces, uneven stems. Some of the flowers had too many petals; others not enough.

She lifted it only a little, holding it at a slant so the light from the shutter could fall across it. A fleck of leaf dust drifted from its surface, spiraling into the hearth below.

She smiled without smiling. The kind that rose behind the ribs, where no one could see.

Then, with care, she set the painting upright against the wall—not behind the wood this time, but beside it, where the daisies could face the room again. The frame tilted slightly, lopsided from the warping, but it held.

As she stepped back, something caught the edge of her eye—a glint along the floorboards, small and amber and oddly bright in the dusty light. She crouched once more, fingers brushing past a knot in the wood, and plucked it free.

A bead. Amber-colored, still strung on a frayed length of thread, the knot loose at one end where it had likely been tied to a branch, once. Elida's. She would tie them to the trees and call them protection spells, or trail them through the long grass behind her like a line of breadcrumbs no one else could follow. There had been dozens once—strung into necklaces for bark-skinned guardians, fastened onto reeds to become swords, crowns, cloaks. Most had broken or vanished. But this one remained.

She turned it over in her palm, thumb catching on the shallow groove carved clumsily into one side. Elida's knife had slipped. She remembered the yelp, the swear half-borrowed from Brom, the way Elida had pressed her thumb to her mouth and refused to show the cut.

It weighed almost nothing. Just a bit of glass and thread and dust. But her fingers closed around it like it was something living.

She rose slowly, tucked it into the side pouch of her satchel—next to the dried lungwort bloom, nestled there as if it had always belonged.

Behind her, the daisy painting leaned crooked in the morning light, petals faded but unbowed. The paint had cracked in places, but the flowers still faced forward, stemmed in uneven green, as if waiting for someone to kneel beside them again.

She didn't look back at it. Not directly. But she felt the weight of it in the room now, the way a presence settles even after sound has gone.

At the threshold, Toran stood still—his tail lowered but not tucked, his eyes steady on her. He didn't whine. Just watched, the way dogs do when they sense something is ending, or beginning.

Beyond him, the clearing had shifted. Mist moved in threads across the grass, and outside, Brom stood half-turned with a rein in one hand, adjusting the saddle bags with the calmness of ritual. The horses were already saddled, their breath showing faint in the cool. One stamped once, then stilled, as if reminded to wait.

Meri lingered. Not out of indecision, but out of something quieter. She moved through the center of the room one last time, each footfall soft against the boards. The firepit was long cold, its ash scattered into the draft. The hooks where the herb bundles had once hung were bare now, casting thin shadows like spider legs on the wall.

She crossed to the window, but didn't open the shutters. A single leaf had caught in the seam of the sill—curled and crisp, paper-thin, its veins laced like a memory of breath. Browned along the edges, it looked like it had fallen weeks ago and simply never been disturbed. A child's leaf, maybe. One of Eragon's. Or maybe not. She didn't try to know.

She didn't reach for it.

Instead, she stood a moment longer, letting the light from the shutters fall across her face, soft and slanting. Dust drifted in the beam like slow snow. Her features stayed unreadable—quiet as the room itself.

Then she turned, her boots held loose at her side, and stepped through the doorway.

She just let it fall back into place behind her with the weight of a breath held too long.

.

Toran fell in beside her without sound.

The grass, still wet from the night, soaked through the hem of her shift as she crossed the yard. The garden stood behind her now—beds empty but not barren, dotted with the stubborn green of early growth: nettle, chickweed, a single lupine curl already pushing up near the fence. The dew beaded on their leaves like breath left behind.

Brom stood at the packs, tightening a buckle. His hair was damp at the temples. The horses were patient—his tall and dappled, hers smaller, sure-footed, with a pale stripe down its nose like a brushstroke left unfinished.

He didn't turn when she approached, but his voice came low. "You took your time."

"I wasn't ready," she said simply.

He nodded once, as though that was enough. "We'll follow the stream north till it splits. Deer trail starts past the old ash grove."

She stopped beside him, boots still hanging from her fingers. Her breath came lighter here, cooler. "Did you patch the saddle?"

"Last night," he said. "Still creaks, but it'll hold."

She gave a small sound—barely a breath—but it might've been agreement.

For a moment, they both looked toward the line of trees. The mist was beginning to lift there, unraveling in strands, revealing the first slant of sun through the branches. The forest didn't call. It simply waited.

Brom glanced at her sidelong. "You can still turn back."

"No," she said. "It's done."

He studied her face, the way he always did when weighing her words against what went unsaid. Then he nodded again, reaching for the stirrup, and said, as he had when she was a child, "Boots on, then."

She crouched to slip them on, fingers chilled as she worked the laces. The leather was stiff. They'd be uncomfortable the first few hours. She didn't mind- it could be worse.

Toran circled once, then settled near the saddlebag, watching them with ears twitching. The horses shifted, catching the scent of the woods and something beyond.

When Meri rose again, she swung her satchel across her shoulder and stepped toward her mount. Her hand brushed its neck, and the mare flicked an ear but didn't shy.

"Have you named her?" Brom asked, adjusting the strap across the bedroll.

"Not yet."

He grunted. "You'll know when it comes."

She didn't say Mistpine aloud. She didn't need to. The name had come on a morning like this—mist still clinging to bark, breath rising pale from the mare's muzzle. It suited her: quiet-footed, deep-eyed, carrying fog in her silence.

And Brom's horse—the broad, watchful one with the dark flank and silver dapples—he had another name now, too. He'd once been something else, surely, back when Brom still used names like tools. But she'd started calling him Shadowburrow in her thoughts, without meaning to. It fit the way he moved through hollows, steady and unseen.

She didn't tell Brom that. Not yet. Some names were meant to be held in the mouth a while before spoken.

"I think she already knows," Meri murmured.

At that, Brom gave a quiet huff of air— a hal-formed laugh. Not sharp, not loud, but genuine.

They mounted without fanfare. The wind had picked up only slightly, just enough to stir the topmost leaves. The clearing fell away behind them as they turned toward the trees.

The first hoofstep onto the trail made no sound at all.

The trail wound behind the cabin, through a narrow cut in the hillside where the ferns grew thick and the stone lay close beneath the soil. Mistpine moved carefully, her steps deliberate, ears flicking at every shift of light and sound. The mist followed them at first, curling around their boots and hooves as if it were a companion reluctant to let go.

Meri didn't look back.

Not when the roof vanished behind a ridge of pine. Not when the last thread of chimney smoke thinned and dissolved. Not even when they passed the fallen willow, where Tessie had once strung daisy crowns between the branches and called it a palace.

She kept her eyes forward, on the line of trees ahead—where the moss grew thicker, where the light began to slant in quiet beams and the forest deepened into hush.

Brom rode slightly ahead, his shoulders relaxed but his eyes always moving. Shadowburrow took the lead without urging, his hooves finding the softer path between stones. A squirrel darted up a beech tree at their passing, scattering bark in its wake.

The valley narrowed behind them, and the air changed. Cooler. Still. The kind of quiet that lives beneath birdsong—rooted, not empty.

Lungwort spotted the trunks here and there, its speckled leaves climbing toward the faint light like breath rising from stone. The blooms were early this year—blue and violet, flecked with white—like hidden bruises half-healed. Hemlock grew close along the edges, fine-laced and pale, brushing Meri's knees where it leaned into the trail.

She reached out once, fingers trailing a frond. The leaves shivered but didn't break.

Farther on, the stream reappeared—narrow and quick, cutting between stones worn smooth with time. They followed it in silence, the horses drinking where the water pooled in deeper pockets. A deer had crossed here recently; its prints still soft in the mud, filled faintly with melt.

Meri leaned low, brushing a hand across the print's edge. Small. Young.

She glanced at Brom but didn't speak.

They rode on.

By mid-morning, the mist had lifted fully. Sunlight broke through the upper canopy in fractured bars, and the trees changed—more spruce, less birch. Toran loped ahead now, tongue out, pausing only when the trail bent or thickened with bramble.

In one small hollow, where the light pooled gold on last year's leaf fall, a ring of tiny white flowers had bloomed—daisies, their faces open, too early for the season. Meri reined in without meaning to.

Mistpine stopped with her, steady and alert.

Brom turned. "Something?"

She shook her head. "No. Just saw something I didn't expect."

He nodded once, then let his gaze follow hers. When he saw the daisies, he said nothing.

They passed them without picking any but Meri carried the sight of them in her chest, bright and aching and strangely whole.

By the time the sun crested the upper limbs, the forest had begun to thicken—not with danger, but with age. The trees grew closer here, their trunks wide and roots braided deep, moss climbing higher up the bark as though reaching for some remembered warmth. The air was cooler in the hollows, heavy with the scent of damp loam and slow-growing things.

Brom raised a hand, and Shadowburrow stopped beside a fallen log blanketed in lichen. He dismounted with ease, boots landing soft on the leaf bed. Meri followed, sliding from Mistpine's back with less grace, but quiet all the same. She stretched her legs as Toran bounded ahead to sniff along a streambank barely wider than a rabbit's path.

They didn't speak for a while. Brom unpacked a small skin of water, a wrapped bundle of dried fruit and oatcakes. He set it on the log between them, more offering than invitation.

Meri sat across from him, her knees drawn up. She took the water first, sipped slowly. Then a piece of fruit, tart on her tongue.

The hush wasn't tense. Just full. The kind of silence that builds when two people know there's no need to fill it.

Brom chewed quietly, eyes scanning the trees. "You notice the ground?"

She nodded. "It's rising."

"Ridge ahead," he said. "By tomorrow we'll be in foothill forest. Thicker rock, more run-off. We'll want to camp high."

Meri let her gaze drift upward—watching the wind move through the taller pines, scattering light in shifting ribbons. A jay called once, then fell quiet. Across the clearing, the lungwort was more frequent now—growing in half-circles around the trunks, some of it already sun-bleached.

She turned a piece of bark over in her hands. Beneath it, a cluster of mushrooms had begun to bloom, pale and furled like miniature parasols. Life folding out of rot.

"Did you used to come this way?" she asked.

Brom took a moment before answering. "Once or twice. Long ago. Easier roads back then. Or maybe I was younger."

She hummed under her breath, not quite a laugh.

Toran returned and lay at her feet, licking his forepaw. His fur was damp along the belly, mud streaked across one flank.

"He likes it here," Meri murmured.

"Because we're out of sight," Brom said. "And the water smells clean."

He passed her a second piece of oatcake. She took it without looking.

For a while, they just sat like that—Brom rubbing his thumb along the stitching of his glove, Meri watching a beetle drag a bit of leaf across the moss. Somewhere behind them, water trickled. The path waited, but it did not press.

Eventually, Brom stood and stretched. "If we keep pace, we can reach the birch glade before dusk."

Meri rose, brushing crumbs from her palms. She looked once more at the mushrooms under the bark, then let it fall gently back into place.

They mounted again without words.

This time, when they rode forward, the trail was narrower. The bramble grew denser along the edges. Shadows came earlier here, even before the sun began to fall.

The trail narrowed as they moved on, curving between low rises thick with root-knuckled earth and underbrush that snagged at their cloaks. Hemlock grew here in dense clusters, its pale fronds nodding in the light breeze, brushing against Mistpine's flanks like hands too soft to grasp.

They said little. There was no need. The horses knew the rhythm now, and Toran moved just ahead, weaving between shadows like he'd been born to them.

Meri rode with her eyes half-lidded against the sun, her fingers loose on the reins. The air had warmed some, but beneath the trees it still held cool pockets—where water pooled in stone hollows or where the wind threaded down from higher slopes.

The birch glade came sudden, like stepping into a breath held too long. Pale trunks rose all around them, their bark papery and flaking like old vellum, peeling in curls that caught the light. The ground was clearer here, less tangled, covered in a bed of leaves faded to silver-brown. Sunlight poured through the open canopy, soft and golden, and for a moment it felt into a forgotten hall—quiet, holy in its own small way.

They paused without speaking.

Brom dismounted to check the cinch on his saddle, running a hand along Shadowburrow's side.

Meri stayed mounted, letting Mistpine shift beneath her, ears twitching toward unseen things. Her gaze wandered up, tracing the length of the trees to where branches laced like thin fingers overhead.

She remembered something then. Not a moment, not a voice—just the feeling of Elida's hand in hers, long ago, running through trees not unlike these, when their laughter had echoed too loud and a fox had darted past, startling them into silence. It was the silence she remembered most—that shared breathlessness, as if the world had opened for them and then hushed to listen.

She touched the bead in her satchel without drawing it out. The thread had tangled with the sprig of lungwort now, curled together like they'd grown that way.

Brom glanced over then—just a flicker of motion, a question he didn't ask aloud. His hand stilled briefly at his saddle strap, then moved on. Instead, he looked up at the sky through the canopy and said, "We'll make camp soon. Stream bends east just past here."

She nodded.

When they moved again, the sun had begun to lower, and the trees stretched longer across the path. Somewhere in the distance, a thrush called once, then was gone.

They made camp near the bend in the stream, where the roots of an old alder reached down like knotted fingers to drink. The water ran shallow here, but quick—clear enough to see the pebbles beneath, speckled and smoothed by time. Mistpine lowered her head to drink, her ears twitching with the rhythm of it. Shadowburrow stood just beyond, chewing at a strip of bark like it belonged to him.

Brom cleared a space beneath a half-fallen pine, where the needles made a dry bed and the wind couldn't reach. He laid stones in a circle and coaxed a fire from flint and breath, his movements quiet and practiced. The smoke curled slow into the canopy, thin as thread.

Meri didn't speak. She moved along the edge of the glade, collecting a few dry twigs, a strip of moss from the lee side of a rock, a fallen pinecone still sticky with sap. She found a patch of lungwort blooming low along a birch root—darker than the others they'd passed earlier, with streaks of indigo veining the leaves. She picked only one small cluster and pressed it flat between pages torn from her herb journal, then knelt by the stream to rinse her hands.

The cold bit into her skin. It felt clean. Waking.

When she returned, Brom had unpacked a pot, already half-filled with water, set it over the flame. The scent of yarrow and dried onion leaf curled from his satchel.

She sat on the opposite side, near Toran, who had already curled himself into a tight circle against her hip, his breath steady.

From her pouch she withdrew a few things—nothing large. The bead. The flattened lungwort. A feather white at the base, found two days earlier in the brush. And a sliver of bark she had etched a single curve into: a fox's tail, nothing more.

She laid them in a line beside her knee—not as a ritual, exactly, but a way to see them. A kind of keeping.

Brom watched but said nothing.

Later, when the stew simmered and the fire softened into coals, she leaned back against her bedroll and looked up. The trees above were black against the sky now, the stars slow to rise, as if unsure they were welcome in this place.

"They used to come here," she said quietly. She didn't know who they were. Only that the glade remembered more footsteps than their own, and the moss still carried the press of them in ways no one else could see.

Brom didn't ask who.

After a moment, he just nodded and said, "I know."

Meri woke before the sun rose, without knowing why. The fire had died down to a hush of embers, and the cold had crept in at the edges of her blanket, pinching her skin. Toran stirred beside her, but didn't lift his head. Somewhere nearby, a branch cracked—not loud, but sharp. Deliberate.

She sat up slowly.

Mistpine was already alert, head raised, ears angling toward the trees.

Brom was crouched by the fire, feeding it with thin sticks. His posture was easy, but his eyes were on the dark.

"Someone passed near," he said without turning. "Sometime in the night."

Meri reached for her boots, pulling them on with numb fingers. "Who?"

He didn't answer right away. Just nodded toward the streambed, where a patch of mud had been disturbed—stones dislodged, water still cloudy.

"Didn't see them," he said finally. "But someone did."

The woods felt different now. Not hostile, but narrowed. The underbrush was too still. The birds hadn't begun their morning call.

They ate standing up, packs slung quickly, hands moving without wasted motion. Toran paced the clearing once before bounding back to Meri's side, tense and silent.

When they set off, it was with a different rhythm—shorter reins, softer hooves. Even Shadowburrow's gait had changed. Mistpine moved with her head low, nostrils flaring at every bend.

Lungwort grew thicker here, too thick. It trailed up trees like fingers, clung to bark with a dampness that hadn't been there the day before. The hemlock bowed toward the trail, whispering dryly when they brushed past. And the birds—those that had stayed—flew low, wings cutting close to the branches.

After an hour, Brom raised his hand again. They halted.

"What is it?" Meri asked, her voice barely above breath.

He pointed ahead—just beyond the next bend, where the moss had been disturbed. Footprints. Human. Deep-pressed and fresh. Not their own.

"Only one," Brom said. "But careless."

Meri dismounted. Tied Mistpine to a low branch.

"Let's walk a stretch," she said, already moving ahead.

He didn't argue.

Together, they stepped into the undergrowth, the path behind them fading under fern and root. The trees were older here, and the air sharper—as though it knew they were being followed, or perhaps expected.

The fox prints they passed earlier? They'd vanished now.

They followed the tracks for nearly half an hour, weaving upslope through root-knotted rises and narrow ravines where the light barely filtered in. The path was no longer a trail but a thread—a faint line through crushed moss and parted fern, winding with the kind of carelessness that suggested either arrogance or fear.

At a low ridge, they paused. The wind had shifted, threading in from the north. It carried the smell of wet stone and something older—iron-rich, bitter at the edges, like a nail buried in cold soil.

Meri crouched low beside a patch of moss-slick earth where the leaves had been pressed aside. A shallow print lingered—human, but uneven. The heel sat deeper than the ball, as if the step had faltered. The toe dragged forward in a stumble.

She didn't speak. Just brushed her fingers across the rim of the hollow. Damp soil clung to her skin.

Brom stood a few paces back, weight balanced lightly through his feet. One hand hovered near his belt—not drawn, not idle. His gaze moved slow through the trees, deliberate and deep-set, like he was reading not the shape of things but the space between them.

He tipped his chin toward the print. "Not a trained step."

Meri let the words settle, then rose, brushing her palm on her tunic. The forest was still. Not silent, but hushed—the way a room goes quiet when someone holds their breath. No wingbeats. No rustle. Even the stream below had dimmed to a murmur, as if moss had crept over its mouth.

The air thickened. Hemlock draped low from above, brushing her shoulders like old lace left out in rain. Lungwort freckled the bark, soft and dark as bruises.

Then—just for a moment—something stirred. No motion, only a shift in the shape of stillness. Brown. Unclear. A presence more than a figure. Not fleeing. Watching.

Then gone.

Toran's growl wound through the quiet, low and soft, like a warning whispered too late.

Brom didn't draw. He didn't speak. His fingers curled once against his thigh, then eased. He was listening with more than ears now.

"Could be a traveler," he said at last, but the words held too long in his mouth. Like he didn't believe them—or didn't want to.

Meri didn't look at him. Her eyes stayed on the slope. "Could be worse."

She turned, not toward the trail but across it—where the ferns grew thicker and the roots broke through in knotted veins. Her feet moved without asking. Something in her gut had turned. The forest had shifted. Yesterday, it had opened to them like a bowl cupped in green hands. Today, it watched from behind its own eyes.

They moved faster. Not running. Just quiet. The trees grew taller here, older, their trunks furrowed deep. Light thinned into slow, dappled shafts. The moss underfoot swallowed sound.

Behind them—nothing. No twig broke. No wind stirred. But the feeling lingered like a thumb pressed to the base of the neck.

They reached a rise as the sun dipped west, staining the high branches with gold. Below them spread a hollow scattered with fallen limbs and pine-needled ground. Storm-felled branches lay bleached and tangled. The hush here was looser—still cautious, but not tight.

Toran moved ahead, nose to the earth. Then stopped. Tail stiff. Head low.

Brom was the first to follow. His steps were soundless through the carpet of brown. Meri hung back, eyes moving.

Beneath the tangle of branches, something caught the light—a wire loop, frayed and dulled, poorly set. A snare. Crude. Broken. Beside it, a leather waterskin lay tipped on its side, half buried in dirt. The mouth hung open. Empty.

A few bootprints marked the soil nearby—small, light, smeared where frost had lifted. One foot dragged slightly.

Brom crouched beside the snare, pushing aside needles. "Rushed. Whatever it caught fought hard." His tone was quiet. Not pitying. Just sure.

Meri stepped forward but didn't kneel. She looked at the wire, then the flask, then at the space between.

"He didn't know what he was doing," she said. Not cruel. Just noticing. "Tied it in a hurry. Hands shaking."

Brom said nothing. His eyes moved along the trail, toward the slope they'd come from.

"Still close?" she asked.

He gave a small nod. Not yes. Not no. Just caution.

This time she did kneel, one hand grazing the snapped cord. Her fingers didn't close around it.

"He ran," she said. "Hard."

Brom didn't correct her.

She looked toward the woods again. Not for movement. Just... sensing. The air held no threat now, only the thrum of someone else's fear.

"He's not hunting," she murmured. "He's hiding."

Brom stood slowly, mouth drawn in thought. "And out of food."

She didn't answer right away. Just let her hand fall from the wire. She stood, brushing her palms on her thighs, and looked one last time toward the broken trap.

"If he's lucky," she said, "he's gone."

Brom's voice came quieter. "If he's lucky, he learns from it."

She gave a slight nod, but her eyes stayed distant. "Or he doesn't last long enough to."

That was the truth between them.

She stepped away. Left the wire, left the skin. Someone else's silence. Someone else's ache.

Toran fell into step behind her. His paws left no mark.

And the woods closed again. Not hostile. Not welcoming.

Just watching.

.

They kept riding until the light grew thin and the trees blurred together, gold giving way to ash. The tension never quite left, but it changed shape—no longer sharp, but low, woven into the rhythm of hooves and heartbeat.

At one point, Mistpine flicked her ear toward something in the brush, but Meri didn't look. Whoever it was, whatever, was already behind them.

And some paths, she knew, needed to stay walked alone.

They didn't speak again until long after the fire was lit.

The camp they made was smaller this time, pressed beneath the shoulder of a slope where the ground had turned more to stone than soil. Not a clearing, just a space between two twisted firs where the wind could pass without gathering. Moss grew in patches along the rocks, dark and cold to the touch. Hemlock fanned out beneath the tree roots like green lace, brushing Meri's sleeves as she knelt to gather tinder.

They'd passed no more signs. The tracks had faded. But the silence left behind them had followed.

Brom worked in practiced silence, laying out the bedrolls, checking the horses' hooves. Shadowburrow stomped once at a buzzing fly, but otherwise stood still, flanks rising and falling in the dimming light. Mistpine turned a slow circle before settling, her ears still listening to things Meri could not hear.

Toran curled tight beside the fire, head on his paws, but his eyes remained open.

Meri didn't sort her belongings tonight. She didn't lay out the bead or the feather. Instead, she sat with her knees pulled up, elbows resting on them, chin tucked into the crook of one arm. She watched the flames with a blank sort of attention—waking, but somewhere else. She watched the flames, but her eyes stayed unfixed—burned not by heat but by the memory of eyes that hadn't blinked. Stillness was heavier after being watched.

"It wasn't just hunger," she said at last. "He was afraid."

Brom didn't ask how she knew. "Maybe of us."

She shook her head. "It wasn't the way the snare was tied."

He was silent for a time before saying, "Some things know how to make people afraid."

The fire cracked once, sharp as bone under pressure. Toran flinched, but didn't rise.

They ate a little. Not much. A bit of bread, some dried lentils softened in boiled stream water. Meri swallowed without tasting. Her hands stayed near the fire longer than needed, fingers splayed like she wasn't sure if they still felt warmth.

When they finally lay down, it wasn't sleep that claimed them, but weight—something that drew them low and held them there.

Above, the sky had clouded over, heavy with the promise of rain. No stars tonight—only the soft hush of wind threading through the higher branches, and the quiet certainty that the forest had turned.

The next day passed in slow miles and fewer words.

They rose early. Packed without speaking. The fire had left no smoke. Only a faint warmth in the stones, and the ghost of steam rising from the horses' flanks. Toran led them out, nose low to the ground, paws kicking up loam as they followed the stream east before veering into higher country.

The ground continued to rise, not sharply but insistently—shoulders of land pressed upward with moss-slick stone and slicker mud, where old roots jutted like bones from the slope. Brom chose a winding route along the ridgelines where the footing held better, where he could glance back and still see the slope behind them.

By midday, the air thickened. The clouds—so long threatening—broke open with a soft hiss. Not a storm. Not yet. Just rain, steady and soaking, the kind that works its way into the stitching and doesn't let go.

They didn't stop.

The trail became a suggestion more than a path, worn into patches between bramble and shale. Hemlock gathered close to the banks and bowed beneath the weight of water, its fronds trailing across their arms as they passed. Lungwort bloomed higher up the trees now, luminous in the rain, its speckled leaves catching light like breath pressed into bark.

A hare startled from the underbrush sometime after noon. Pale-bellied, slick from the rain, it darted across the path and vanished into the brush. Meri watched it go, something in her chest tightening without name.

Later, near a muddy bank where the trail briefly dipped, she saw fox tracks—small, pointed, clear despite the rain. No others beside them. Just a path crossing theirs and gone. She paused. Not because it meant anything—not yet. But something in her quieted at the sight, as if a thread had brushed against her heel. She said nothing. Brom didn't need to see them to know she had.

They paused only once, beneath the outstretched roots of a fallen spruce. Brom passed her a heel of bread and a strip of dried meat. She chewed slowly, rain streaking the curve of her jaw, soaking into the collar of her cloak. Neither of them mentioned the cold.

That afternoon, Meri began to ride slightly ahead—not far, but enough. Mistpine moved easily now, unbothered by the narrowness, her hooves sure on wet stone. Brom said nothing. He watched, and let her lead.

The forest changed as they traveled. More birch now, paler, bent from wind. The ferns had thickened along the floor, brushing their boots. She passed a tree with runes carved into the bark—a crescent cradled inside a sunburst, worn but intact. She paused, touched it with her gloved fingers. Didn't speak. Brom passed her by, and she followed without comment.

That evening, they didn't make a fire. The rain hadn't let up. They found a dry rise beneath a stone overhang and laid their cloaks over pine boughs. Toran shook himself dry and curled between them. Mistpine and Shadowburrow stood with their heads low, tails flicking the last of the day's gnats.

The birds never sang that night.

Just the rain. Steady. Relentless.

.

The rain held through the night and into the morning. Not hard, but steady—the kind of cold that soaked in slow and left everything aching.

They rose stiffly. Hands red at the knuckles. Packs damp no matter how they'd wrapped them. The firewood Brom had gathered the night before hadn't taken. They ate nothing hot. Just a bit of dried pear and a few swallows of water gone sharp with cold.

Meri didn't speak. Her fingers moved with practiced rhythm as she packed, but her shoulders hunched slightly, as though holding in the warmth she no longer had. Toran looked miserable, tail dragging, coat darkened with water. Still, he kept close to her heel, refusing the shelter of the trees.

By midday the wind began to rise—not harsh, but enough to bend the smaller trees, to comb the branches of hemlock and birch into thin, whispering lines. They moved slower now, the horses tiring, their hooves sinking into the sodden earth. Hemlock draped heavier across the trail, and lungwort had faded into blotches of ghostly blue, dripping with rain. The world smelled of soaked bark and rusted iron, the scent of wet stone and lichen.

Somewhere behind them, a wren sang. Clear and far too bright for the weather. Four notes—quick as flint struck on stone—and then again. The sound broke clean through the mist, threading through rain and branches as if the bird had not noticed the cold, or simply didn't care.

Meri slowed Mistpine with a touch to the reins.

The trail was slick beneath them, water running in fine rivulets through the packed earth. Rain traced lines down her cloak, clung to her lashes. Everything smelled of wet bark and iron—but the bird kept singing.

She looked back once, lifting her head toward the sound, expecting to see it.

A flicker in the underbrush, a flutter of brown wings, something warm and foolish and small.

But there was nothing.

Just gray branches dripping slowly into the silence it had cut through.

The wren was only a voice.

Foolish. Faithful. Unseen.

Still, it sang once more—louder this time—and was gone.

Meri breathed out, slow through her nose. The sound stayed with her longer than it should have, like a thread caught on the edge of a thought.

The rain held through the night and into the morning. Not hard, but steady—the kind of cold that soaked in slow and left everything aching.

They rose stiffly. Hands red at the knuckles. Packs damp no matter how they'd wrapped them. The firewood Brom had gathered the night before hadn't taken. They ate nothing hot. Just a bit of dried pear and a few swallows of water gone sharp with cold.

Meri didn't speak. Her fingers moved with practiced rhythm as she packed, but her shoulders hunched slightly, as though holding in the warmth she no longer had. Toran looked miserable, tail dragging, coat darkened with water. Still, he kept close to her heel, refusing the shelter of the trees.

By midday the wind began to rise—not harsh, but enough to bend the smaller trees, to comb the branches of hemlock and birch into thin, whispering lines. They moved slower now, the horses tiring, their hooves sinking into the sodden earth. Hemlock draped heavier across the trail, and lungwort had faded into blotches of ghostly blue, dripping with rain. The world smelled of soaked bark and rusted iron, the scent of wet stone and lichen.

Somewhere behind them, a wren sang. Clear and far too bright for the weather. Meri paused when she heard it—not because it was rare, but because it kept singing. Four notes, sharp as flint, and again. Over and over. As if the bird didn't know better. Or didn't care.

She looked back once, half-expecting to see it.

But the wren was only a voice. Foolish. Faithful. Unseen.

They didn't speak again until the light began to change.

The ground sloped down—slowly at first, then more sharply. Trees gave way to thickets, then to old fencing, broken in places and swallowed by bramble. The scent changed too. Smoke, faint but real. Not woodsmoke from campfires, but hearths. Hearths and damp wool. The kind of warmth that belonged to other people.

Meri was the first to see it. Through the trees, where the trail curved around a wide-bellied rock, the valley opened like a cupped hand. Crooked roofs. Lines of smoke. A goat tethered near a sagging shed. Children's voices faint on the wind, high and unknowing.

She pulled Mistpine to a stop.

Brom reined in beside her. His voice, when it came, was soft. "We'll go wide."

She nodded, already turning off the path.

Toran slipped ahead into the ferns without being told.

They followed the ridge line down, not into the valley but along its edge—quiet and careful, boots sinking into the softened moss. They didn't need to speak. The rules were old. Learned young. Brom's voice, low beside the market stalls, still echoed in her memory—never stern, just certain.

Don't draw eyes you don't need.

Don't answer questions not asked.

Don't get close unless you're ready to be seen.

She'd heard them before every town, every gathering, every place that smelled like other people. And she'd obeyed them long before she ever understood why.

Meri crouched beside Toran in the bracken. Her knees damp. Her hands still.

She let her breath slow until even the branches above seemed to move without sound. For a moment, the world felt hollowed of danger. Just smoke, and stones, and spring.

They circled farther along the ridge until the trees grew thin and the hill dipped low toward the valley's mouth. From here, the hamlet was clearer: crooked rooflines patched with moss, fence posts leaning into briars, smoke lifting slow from stone chimneys. A goat bleated once. A child's voice echoed faintly, then vanished.

Brom slowed Shadowburrow to a halt beneath a yellowing pine, its limbs bowed low from rain. He dismounted, rolling his shoulders, and turned to her.

"You'll stay here," he said, voice quiet but final. "Just long enough to trade. No need for both of us to be seen."

Meri nodded without question. She was already slipping from Mistpine's back before he finished speaking.

She found cover just off the trail where an old fir had split in a storm years ago, its trunk half-hollowed, roots curled like knuckles above the earth. Ferns grew thick at the base. She knelt between them, cloak pulled close, knees damp from moss. Toran settled beside her without sound, only his ears twitching.

Brom didn't say be still, or don't move, or watch the treeline. He never had to. The rules were older than this moment.

He passed her a glance before turning downhill—nothing long, just the faint flick of his gaze, the way his hand brushed the strap at his shoulder. Then he was gone, steps quiet despite the mud, cloak drawn close.

Meri watched him descend, taking a winding path between thornbush and stone. No one from the hamlet seemed to notice him. Or if they did, they turned their eyes away.

He knew how to move like that. Like a man meant to be overlooked.

From where she crouched, the valley unfolded in scattered, rain-glossed pieces.

A woman beat dust from a rug, her arms moving with the brittle rhythm of habit. Two boys carved wild paths in the muck with crooked sticks, their bare feet smacking softly as they zigzagged. Beside the well, a girl hunched over the stones, her shawl slipping, her fingers worrying at a patch of moss like she was trying to undo the earth.

Farther off, near the reach of trees, a child sat cross-legged in the wet grass. A daisy—thin-stemmed, rain-heavy—trembled in her hand. She tucked it behind her ear, not for beauty, but the way one might tuck a hope somewhere small and out of the wind.

It sagged. Still, she smiled.

Meri lowered herself further into the bracken. Her breath slowed to match the hush of the pine boughs above. Toran shifted closer, warm through the damp. The world narrowed to leaf-drip and the quiet press of moss beneath her.

She didn't look straight at the child. Just let the shape of her blur in the corner of her sight—small, fragile, self-contained.

It wasn't longing that caught in Meri's chest. It was older than that. The kind of ache that lived in muscle and marrow, where old joys had gone to sleep. The kind that stirred only when you saw someone else live without the weight you carried.

She shifted slightly, the wet moss pressing into her palm, grounding her more than hiding ever had. Her breath moved through her ribs like it was borrowed from the rain. Still slow. Still small. Still here.

The child with the daisy vanished behind the grass. The woman with the rug had gone inside. The boys' lines in the mud had already begun to soften. There was no one left to look.

And still, something pulled tight beneath her collarbone. As if she'd wandered too close to warmth and couldn't forget it.

Above her, a pine bough dipped, heavy with water. A droplet struck the back of her hand, cold and sharp. She didn't move.

She had not been seen.

But the ache stayed.

Brom reached the edge of the hamlet without pause.

His steps were even, unhurried. Cloak pulled low, rain sliding from its hem in threads. He passed a goat pen where hooves shifted on wet earth, a half-collapsed fence, and the bones of an old cart softened under moss and mist. A man split kindling nearby but didn't glance up.

No one called out.

From her crouch beneath the pine, Meri watched. The water gathered on her hood, fell in slow, steady taps. Toran's ears twitched. Then—movement.

A figure stood in the shadow of a doorway. Arms crossed. Face unreadable in the dim. The rain blurred edges, but not enough to lose the intent. He didn't shift with the rhythm of the others. Didn't fidget. Didn't blink. Just stood—anchored in shadow like a hinge the day turned on.

Not working. Not waiting. Just watching.

The others moved with the rhythm of a place that knew its hours. But this one had no rhythm. He leaned into the dark as if born from it, and when Brom passed, he didn't flinch. Just tilted his chin the smallest degree.

When the door opened, the figure melted into it without pause. The movement was too smooth to be casual, too quiet to be clumsy. No creak. No closing sound. Just absence—the kind that lingered like a question pressed into the ribs.

Toran exhaled a breath through his nose. Meri felt it more than heard it. Her fingers tightened slightly against the moss.

The village quieted further. The woman with the rug was gone. The boys had scattered. Even the goat stood with its back to the wind.

Still no sign.

Time pulled thin. She counted raindrops against her wrist. She didn't mean to.

One. Two. Three.

Just a trade. Just a coil of thread, a name not spoken.

Just Brom, who knew how to pass unseen.

But the figure clung like damp cloth—heavy with watching. Not threat, not warning, but something that made the space behind her feel narrower. The kind of stillness that listens after the sound has passed.

Meri shifted, slow as roots growing. Her weight leaned forward, boots sinking deeper into the softened ground. The pine above her creaked, dropping a cold line of water down the back of her neck. She didn't flinch.

She was almost upright—not rising, not fleeing, just... reaching for the edge—when a shape moved between the trees.

She froze.

For a breath, her heart jolted—too fast. The watcher? Had he left the hamlet? Had she missed it? Her body braced in that old, practiced way, ribs locked, eyes narrowing.

But it was Brom.

Cloak dark, hood down, one hand loose at the strap of his pack. He was chewing something. He saw her half-risen posture, raised one brow.

"Didn't I say wait?" he asked, voice low, faintly amused.

Meri exhaled through her nose. Sank back down.

Toran huffed beside her, then sat.

Brom didn't scold. Just stepped forward, rain threading slow from his sleeves. He held out the bundle—linen damp, warmth leaking through like breath through cupped hands.

Meri took it. The cloth sagged in her grip. Her fingers curled around it without thought, as if she needed proof of weight, of heat, of something offered without demand.

The trees hadn't moved. The sky hadn't cleared. But something in her spine had loosened, and she couldn't tell if it was relief or grief or both.

Brom crouched beside her, his boots squelching softly in the moss. He looked once across the valley, then up the slope they'd come from. Rain clung to his hair in silver strands.

"No questions," he said. "But we'll ride double past the rise."

His voice didn't press. Just left space.

Then he stood. Same rhythm. Same quiet.

Meri rose slower. Toran brushed against her knee as she stepped into the trail's shadow, the bundle still warm in her hands.

They rode double past the rise. Meri didn't speak. But the watcher's stillness clung like the fog—thin, but not gone. Some silences didn't follow. They waited.

Brom didn't explain further, and Meri didn't ask. She climbed up behind him on Shadowburrow, one hand braced against the saddle, the other gripping the rolled edge of his cloak. Mistpine followed, unled but steady, her reins looped loose around the horn of the empty saddle. Toran loped just ahead, nose low, feet soundless in the pine-thick mud.

The rain softened but didn't stop.

They didn't speak. The trail curved up, slow and sodden, pine needles sticking to their boots, their legs, their cloaks. The scent of the hamlet faded behind them—smoke, wet thatch, the faint breath of animals. Ahead, only forest. Wet leaves. Bent hemlock. And the feeling that they were being allowed to leave, not unnoticed, but unbothered.

By dusk, they'd found a low shelf of stone beneath a rise, just dry enough to make camp.

Brom gathered what wood he could, shook the worst of the rain from his cloak, and coaxed a fire from the smaller branches first. Meri laid out their food without comment—a bit of flatbread, two wild pears he'd brought back in the bundle, and a pouch of lentils.

No ceremony. Just doing.

The fire took, slow and sullen, smoke curling thick before it thinned. Mistpine stood near the trees, tail twitching. Shadowburrow stamped once, then stilled. Toran curled at Meri's feet, his nose tucked into his tail.

They didn't talk about the man in the doorway. They didn't talk about the pause, the silence, the not-quite-vanishing of the girl with the daisy behind her ear.

Brom rubbed a whetstone along the edge of his knife, the scrape rhythmic, clean.

Meri sat with her knees drawn up, one hand tucked beneath her chin. Her eyes stayed on the fire, but not for warmth.

At one point, she unwrapped the bundle he'd given her earlier. Inside: dried hemlock sprigs. A small pouch of salt. A twist of tea leaf. And three wild pears, still damp from the basket, green with a faint blush at the base.

She turned one in her palm for a long while before eating it.

The fire didn't crackle. It breathed.

The fire burned low.

Meri pulled her cloak tighter, the pear core discarded near her boot. Brom had already settled into his bedroll, one arm draped over his pack, the knife still within reach. His breathing had gone slow. Not sleep, but close enough.

She stayed upright longer, listening to the rain drip from the overhang above them, watching the fire's glow paint the undersides of the pine branches in dull amber.

Toran shifted once beside her. Then all was still again.

The woods had quieted. Even the stream below moved softer, as if muffled by moss.

Then, just before she closed her eyes, a sound called out from the trees beyond their camp.

Not near.

But not far.

A fox's cry—sharp and wild, high and low all at once. It cracked through the hush like a thread snapped from a loom.

Meri didn't move.

She didn't answer.

But in the curve of her spine, something softened—something that had been wound tight since the village, since the watcher, since before the fire had caught.

She laid down slow, her hand brushing Toran's fur once before she turned onto her side.

The fire breathed.

And the fox, wherever it was, did not call again.

Chapter Text

The forest did not end so much as withdraw.

Its last trees stood apart, as if unsure of parting—grey-limbed, moss-hung, their roots sunk deep in soil that no longer belonged to them. The hush was not farewell but a kind of pause, like breath held in the back of the throat. Meri stepped past the last of the beeches and looked back once, not to memorize the path but to feel it loosen from her skin.

They did not speak of the leaving.

The silence of the woods had followed them like a veil, clinging to saddle straps and breath. It wove through the slow days of riding, through the narrowing trail, through the thin meals and colder air. The land climbed by degrees. Sometimes the path vanished, swallowed by stonefalls or half-frozen earth, only to emerge again after a bend. Sometimes it bent in strange ways, like it had been shaped long ago by something older than feet or hooves.

Toran ranged ahead, tail low, his shape flickering in and out of sight through the breaks in stone and stunted brush. The horses bore the change without protest, heads down, sure-footed. Brom watched the ridgeline each night as if measuring it against memory. Meri watched the ground. It was simpler.

The second night, they made camp beneath a slanting shelf of rock, where the wind howled low across the open slope and carried dust into their food. Brom coaxed a fire, but it offered no cheer—just enough heat to warm their hands and soften the roots Meri had gathered from a pocket of soil below the last line of trees. They ate without speaking. The horses stood tethered close, their shadows long against the stone. No stories passed between them, no comfort. Just the sound of breath, and the fire crackling like bones under snow.

Sleep came thin and waking came early.

It was on the third day that the path began to fray entirely—no longer a track, just a suggestion of one. The earth sloped unevenly beneath their feet, scattered with broken shale and tufts of stubborn grass that crunched underhoof. A shelf of pale stone jutted ahead, steep and sharp, with a narrowing ledge skirting its base. Above, the mountain leaned in.

Brom halted, the reins loose in his hand. He looked up at the ledge, then back at Meri.

"This part needs to be walked," he said softly, voice worn but certain. "They'll follow."

Meri glanced at Mistpine, who stood quietly behind her, mane tangled from wind and brush, eyes half-lidded but watchful. The gelding had already lowered his head to sniff the ground, picking the line of the trail without waiting.

She swung down without a word, her knees aching slightly from the long ride. The shift in height made the wind feel closer, colder. She pressed her palm once to Mistpine's neck—just a touch, grounding—and then stepped forward.

The mare fell in behind her, no command needed. The gelding, slower, came after. They moved as a thread—Brom at the front, Meri behind, the horses ghosting after them in silence, hooves clicking now and then against bare stone.

.

The land narrowed.

It had been narrowing for some time, though neither of them had said it aloud. First the trees had thinned, then the wind had grown sharper, sweeping up through gaps in the stone. Now, the path itself had turned inward—tightening like a loop pulled slowly through a drawstring. On one side, the rise of the cliff face, pale and brittle-looking, streaked with old waterlines and vein-thin cracks. On the other, the slope fell away into nothingness—bracken-choked shadows, wind-sheared ledges, and far below, the hunched backs of stunted pines, their tops lost in a restless sea of mist.

Sky had replaced forest.

It loomed vast above them, cloudless but bleached by high air, the blue gone thin with altitude. The sun moved slower here, or seemed to. Meri felt the shift in her chest—not fear exactly, but the quiet unease of being seen by too much open sky. There was no canopy to soften the light, no branches to hold back the wind. Just rock and space and the echo of their presence trailing behind them like breath. She clenched her jaw without knowing it. The tension built, not with panic, but with exposure.

Her legs ached. Not sharply, but with the steady pull of cold stone and uneven ground. Her calves burned where her boots rubbed, and her shoulders had begun to knot beneath the straps of her pack. Still, she did not complain. The ache steadied her. Made the silence feel earned.

She didn't look down.

There was no need. The edge made itself known by sound—the scatter of loose pebbles slipping out from under hoof or boot, the hollow hush of air beneath them, the muffled thud when stone struck far below. Once, she thought she heard a bird call rise and vanish in the drop, as if it had been startled into falling.

Brom walked ahead, guiding the gelding with one hand. His shoulders were set but not tense, his steps careful, precise, like someone long familiar with paths that do not forgive distraction. She kept her gaze on the small signs he left behind—flattened grass, a dislodged pebble, a strip of bark rubbed smooth where his hand had steadied against a leaning fir. And though she followed in silence, something in her noted the rhythm of his gait—subtle, seasoned, the way he left just enough sign for someone to read, but never more than needed.

Their horses followed with surprising care, hooves quiet against the stone. Mistpine's breath was audible now, a slow, steady rhythm behind her. It grounded Meri more than she'd admit. She touched the mare's neck once without turning—just to remind them both they were still here, still anchored.

Once, as she stepped over a dip in the path, she saw another violet—its leaves bruised but whole, growing in the cup of a stone as if someone had placed it there and walked away. The color caught her, dusky and defiant, tucked where no softness should last.

There had been others along the way, small and clinging—more than coincidence, but less than sign. Still, something in her took note each time. As if the land were watching too, and quietly remembering them. She didn't speak of it. But when she passed this one, she murmured a wordless sound in her throat—acknowledgment, or something close.

And Brom, though he didn't look back, slowed slightly when she did.

The silence between them shifted. Not into comfort, but into something looser. Like cloth unfastening at the throat, no longer cinched against wind. Not warmth. Not yet. Just… the beginning of room to breathe.

That night, they didn't light a fire.

The slope flattened just enough beneath an outcrop of stone, barely room for two bedrolls and the horses tucked in close. They ate in silence. Toran curled at Meri's feet, nose pressed into her cloak's hem. Brom sat with his back to the rock, eyes half-closed but not sleeping.

The stars came clear.

She counted them not for comfort but for shape. Like threads. Like ways to hold something still. Like remembering where she was in a world that did not leave marks.

Sleep, when it came, was thin and brittle. The kind that cracks at every sound—the shift of stone, the sigh of wind across the ridge, the groan of old trees somewhere far below. Her dreams were silent, weightless things. Mostly she drifted.

They rose before the sun had cleared the mountain's edge. The cold felt sharper than the night before, though frost no longer clung to the brush. Meri's joints ached as she packed her bedroll. Her fingers, stiff with sleep, fumbled the ties. She didn't speak, but Brom offered her a strip of dried meat before they began to walk. She nodded and took it, tucking it into her cloak pocket untouched.

They climbed a while longer. The path rose and dipped, tracing the shoulder of the ridge. The wind was calmer now, but the air still tasted thin—stone and lichen and the dry scent of snow not yet melted. Around midmorning, when the sun stood high enough to cast hard shadows against the cliff face, Brom paused.

Then he turned—abrupt but not sudden—down a narrow path Meri hadn't seen.

It wasn't worn, not truly. The earth here didn't carry the shape of passage. The slope descended steadily, then turned leftward beneath an outcrop, through a stand of wind-bent rowan. Meri followed without asking, though the ground felt unfamiliar beneath her boots—less like trail, more like intention left behind by memory.

The air shifted.

They were still high, but something changed in the way sound moved—less wind, more hush. The trees here were different: not like the tall pines of her childhood or the gentle understory of the elven borderlands. These were older, perhaps, or just stranger. Their trunks grew at slants, bark sheened with silver-green lichen, branches knotted so tightly they tangled the light. Some had split, long ago, and grown new limbs from their wounds. Others leaned together like conspirators. A few bore claw marks—deep, weathered, as if made by things that no longer lived.

It felt less like a forest and more like something remembering how to be one.

Toran stopped at the edge of the trees, nose twitching. Mistpine snorted and stepped closer to Meri's shoulder, ears back—not with fear, but with the wary attention animals show when a place feels too still.

Brom said nothing. He only pressed forward.

And there, between the folds of slope and stone, half-lost beneath the reach of these gnarled trees, the ruin came into view. Not all at once. Just a shadow at first—something squared and unmoving behind branches. Then a corner of shaped stone. A wall, sunk with moss. A curve of collapsed arch, draped in vine and silence.

The trees opened slowly, not all at once. The ruin revealed itself the way stone emerges from earth after a long thaw—quietly, without ceremony. A broken wall first, crusted in lichen. Then a weathered column, split down the middle but still upright. A hollowed arch leaning against the slope like a shoulder too long unburdened. Everything here bore the soft green hush of long abandonment.

Brom didn't pause. He moved with the surety of memory, guiding the horses through the uneven ground, past low stones and thorny growth. His hand brushed aside a veil of vine as they passed beneath the remains of what might once have been a gate—though no gate remained now, only the suggestion of entry.

Meri followed, breath shallow from the climb and the air's shift. The stillness here was heavier than windless air; it had weight, like something coiled but watching. A memory pressed behind her ribs—not a moment, but a sensation: the way Greynsi had taught her to brace for stillness, not settle into it. She shook it loose with her shoulders.

They stepped into a wide clearing where the ground leveled slightly. Stone foundations sank into the earth in crooked outlines, half-swallowed by moss and root. Here and there, pieces of wall jutted upward like broken teeth. A few low trees had grown in the gaps, their trunks twisted where they had fought through stone to reach the light.

Brom stopped near the heart of it—a sunken hearth or courtyard, impossible to tell. He looked around, then to Meri.

"We'll make camp here," he said, voice low, as if anything louder might wake the stones. He let the gelding's reins fall slack and turned to unstrap his pack.

Meri stood still a moment longer. Her breath rose pale in the shaded air. She could smell old bark and dry leaves, the faint iron tang of stone warmed by light. The ruin held no scent of rot, no fresh footprints, no sign of other life. Just the feel of something once lived-in and long left behind.

"Did you come here before?" she asked finally.

Brom's hand paused on the saddle strap. He didn't look at her.

"Aye," he said after a breath. "More than once. When the road turned quiet and I needed a place that wouldn't ask questions." He crouched then, loosening the saddle girth with practiced hands. The leather creaked, familiar. "It holds its own silence," he added, almost to himself. "That's why I remembered it."

Toran padded ahead and paused near a crumbled stair, where sunlight filtered through a break in the trees and turned the moss gold at its edges. He sniffed once, circled, then settled with his head resting on his paws, ears twitching at the forest's distant hush.

Mistpine wandered slowly to the outer rim of the ruin, her hooves clicking faintly against buried stone. She lowered her head and began to graze, tugging gently at tufts of brittle grass that had rooted in the shelter of old walls—grass grown coarse with seasons, thin but stubborn.

Meri moved past the hearth—or what she guessed might once have been one—and stepped down into the sunken foundation. The air there felt cooler, like water just before it touches the skin. She trailed her fingers along a lintel that had fallen sideways, half-buried in soil and moss. Beneath the green growth were faint marks: worn grooves, a spiral, a line broken and rejoined, like waves or wind. She didn't know the language, if it had been one. It felt older than memory and not meant to be spoken.

"I don't think it's empty," she murmured.

Brom looked up from where he'd knelt beside the packs, one hand still on the buckle strap. His eyes flicked across the ruin—not as if to scan, but as if to acknowledge.

"No," he said, voice low. "It remembers."

He stood slowly, stretching his back with a small exhale. "Places like this…" he let the words settle before finishing, "they hold things. Not like people do. Not the same. But it stays—grief, joy, fear. Whatever was strong enough to matter."

Meri nodded, barely, though she didn't know what she agreed with—just that she felt it too. Not haunted. Not sacred. Just… kept.

A hush followed—not empty, but full of things unsaid. The wind shifted and brought the smell of old bark and damp stone, and somewhere in the shadowed timber beyond the ruin, a bird gave one short cry, sharp as flint.

She looked down at the stone beneath her hand, at the faint spiral etched there, the moss tucked into its grooves. Her finger traced it once, then again, slower—like turning a thought she wasn't ready to speak.

"Does it have a name?" she asked, not quite looking at him.

Brom was quiet a moment.

"Not one I ever heard," he said. "But I called it the Hallow."

He didn't explain why, and she didn't press. The word settled around her like a cloak drawn up in wind—not warm, but fitting. She let her hand fall from the stone and stood.

"I'll walk the perimeter," he said, reaching for the bow slung just inside the doorless gap. "Check the ridgelines before the light fades."

He didn't say don't follow or stay near, but she understood. His tone held no caution, only habit. She nodded without lifting her gaze, still crouched near the worn cloth bundle she'd found tucked behind the fallen stones.

He stepped out and was gone with the same quiet he'd entered, Toran slipping after him like a shadow that belonged to neither.

For a moment, Meri remained where she was, hands resting lightly on her knees. The air inside the tower was cool and close, but not unfriendly. She could hear the faint sigh of wind beyond the wall, the murmur of horses shifting in the grass. Somewhere above, a bird flapped sharply from branch to branch, then fell still again.

She rose slowly, stretching the stiffness from her legs, then stepped through the broken arch and out into the open ruin.

It didn't unfold all at once. The Hallow was layered—stone giving way to slope, wall to bramble, path to nothing. Some parts were clearer, as if time had passed over them lightly. Others were half-swallowed, overtaken by creeping vine and root that cracked through mortar like a second language.

Meri walked without direction, one hand trailing the edge of a low wall. Dust clung to her boots, soft as flour. Her breath was steady now, the ache from the climb softened into dull weight across her back and shoulders. She moved like someone not looking for anything, but listening for something she didn't yet know how to name.

The ruin didn't answer.

But neither did it turn her away.

She moved beyond the broken tower with no clear aim, only the steady pull of the place itself. The ruin did not press in on her—it leaned back, as if watching her from beneath its moss-grown eaves and root-choked corners. As if it remembered not people, but presence.

Crumbled stairways led nowhere now, some rising half-formed from the soil before ending in air. Others were buried entirely, the curve of a single stone step visible beneath the nettle and larkspur. Meri paused at one, touching the edge where the moss had begun to lace over it again, as though the land had grown tired of waiting for feet. Her fingers came away green-tipped.

Low walls cut through the slope at strange angles—remnants of structures that had once meant something. A home. A hall. A granary. She didn't guess aloud. But in her mind, the stories gathered like mist—soft shapes without faces. A woman hanging herbs beneath a timbered beam. Children sliding stones down the length of that stair. Someone waiting. Always someone waiting. The images weren't hers, but they felt familiar—as if her breath could stir them into motion.

She bent to gather a cluster of greens near a half-fallen pillar. Wild sorrel, bright and sharp. A bit of creeping thyme growing sun-warmed along the stones. Chickweed, stubborn and fresh. Something to add to their supper, if only to taste spring on the tongue. She moved gently, as if picking from a garden that had once been tended.

She wrapped the bundle in a scrap of linen she carried in her satchel—creased with older folds, stained faintly green. The act steadied her. She liked the feel of it, the grounding motion of gathering, sorting, tucking things away. As if the small order of it could give shape to everything she could not name.

Toran trailed her at intervals, his steps so light she often forgot he was there until the click of his nose against stone broke the silence. Once he vanished entirely into a tangle of underbrush near what might once have been a well. When he returned, it was wordless—just the shift of air and his presence at her side again, like nothing had passed between. He moved like a thought she hadn't noticed forming until it stood beside her.

She found a rusted hinge half-buried in the soil, still bolted to a splinter of wood, and beside it, the curved shard of a bowl—clay, with a ring of blue just inside the rim. She knelt and turned it over in her hand. The glaze had long since begun to flake. She held it a moment, thumb pressing gently into the old curve, then set it back in the grass with quiet care. A gesture, not of mourning, but memory.

Above, the trees swayed without sound. The forest here did not creak or groan. It breathed. Each movement felt older than wind.

She looked up once toward the edge of the clearing. The sun had dipped behind the rise, light turning silver on the upper branches. Brom had not yet returned. She didn't worry. The land was not kind, but it wasn't cruel either. Just old. Just waiting.

She wandered a little farther, up a small rise where the stones thinned and the trees opened just enough to let in the last of the light. There, half-sunk into the slope, stood the remains of what might've been a bench or low wall—flat-topped, its edges smoothed by rain and time. A place to rest, perhaps, or to watch.

Meri brushed it off with the side of her hand, clearing a patch of dirt and lichen. She sat slowly, letting her weight settle into the stone. It was warm still, faintly, from the sun earlier. Beneath her, the ruin breathed its silence—not empty, but patient. Like a room waiting for words to come.

Her hands moved without thinking. She pressed her fingers into the dust at her side, then dragged the tips lightly across the stone's surface, tracing lines. Curves. A leaf-shape. A bird. A stair leading upward and ending nowhere. Not drawings, not really—just impressions. The memory of movement made visible.

The lines crumbled even as she made them. Dust catching at her knuckles, smudging beneath her palm. She didn't mind. There was no intent to keep them. It was the shape of thought, nothing more—how her mind made sense of the place without needing to speak it aloud. A language of gesture.

Toran sat nearby, just at the edge of the clearing, ears pricked. He didn't look at her, but he stayed close, his body turned slightly her way as if keeping the space whole. As if recognizing that something sacred was being remembered, not created.

Her fingers paused. Then she traced one last thing into the dust—a spiral, small and deliberate. Like the one she'd seen on the stone beneath the lintel. She stared at it a long moment. A breath caught in her chest. It was not just a symbol. It was a shape she knew.

She wiped it away with the heel of her hand. The dust lifted and settled again.

Even that small quiet stirred something in her chest. Not ache. Not peace. Something that felt like pause. Like the breath before a name is spoken.

.

When Meri returned, the light had dipped low along the tree line, brushing the upper stones in bronze and leaving the hollows blue with shadow. She stepped back through the tangle of half-fallen walls and thorn and knew the place now—not in full, but enough.

The broken tower still held their things, half in shade. A blanket draped across the stone like an old flag forgotten after war. The packs tucked in the dry corner where the root-thick wall leaned inward. The air felt stilled, not empty. As though the ruin had accepted their presence, if not welcomed it.

She paused just before stepping inside, hand resting against the warm stone where lichen curled like soft scales.

She didn't call it camp nor would she call it home. But something in her shaped a word around the place anyway. A name she didn't say aloud. Not even in her thoughts, not fully. Just a curl of feeling—half memory, half wish.

The Holding.

She moved quietly, unwinding the scrap of linen from her gathered greens. Sorrel, chickweed, thyme. A few violets she hadn't meant to pick but had, their color too soft to leave untouched. She rinsed them in her water skin over a basin she found tucked behind the tower wall—an old one, carved from horn, the rim dulled smooth by use and years. It had likely been Brom's, from another time.

No fire yet. She didn't need one for the greens.

She laid the herbs on the flat of a stone to dry, her fingers working without thought—breaking stems, setting aside bruised leaves, plucking the nettle-veined sorrel into a small pile. It would be bitter, but not unkind.

Toran returned then, ghosting into the broken doorway and sitting just behind her, his breath barely stirring the air. She didn't turn. Just kept working. The silence between them felt familiar—earned.

Brom hadn't returned yet.

But the light was thinning.

And Meri, kneeling beside her small bundle of green, moved with the care of someone preparing more than food. Not a meal. A gesture. A way to say: We are still here. And still ourselves.

She didn't hurry.

There was no need. The air around her held still, like something listening but not pressing. She laid the cleaned sorrel on a flat stone, separating out the leaves without really watching her hands.

Her thoughts moved differently here.

.

Not like they did at the cabin, where every corner had been built by someone's grief, someone's hands. Not like in Carvahall, where every glance had weight. Here, they drifted. Rose. Sank. Touched the surface, then vanished again.

She thought of the violet she'd crushed between her fingers earlier, the way the scent had clung—sharp and green, but with something beneath it. A memory that wasn't fully hers. Or maybe it was.

She thought of the markings on the stone—the spiral, the half-circle like a wave—and wondered if they had meant anything. Or if, like her, someone had once sat with hands stilled by dusk and carved something just to remember the shape of silence.

She gathered the thyme into her palm and smelled it. Crushed it lightly. The scent filled her mouth like breath held too long.

Would they stay here long? She didn't know. Brom hadn't said. But she understood something now—he hadn't brought her here just because it was safe. He'd brought her here because it knew how to hold silence. Because it remembered what weight felt like and didn't try to lift it.

She turned the leaves over once more, setting aside the last of the chickweed. The breeze shifted, cool and low. Her braid slipped forward over her shoulder. She didn't move it back.

Toran stirred slightly behind her, then stilled again. She wondered if he could smell Brom on the wind—if he would know first when he returned.

Meri set aside a handful of the fresh-picked greens, wrapped in cloth, and placed it near the packs. She didn't say why. But she knew.

.

They ate by what little light remained—no fire, only dusk pooling through the ruin's broken wall like smoke. The air had cooled into stillness, the kind that made sound feel too sharp. Their cloaks held the day's warmth, but only just. It clung to their shoulders like something borrowed.

The meal was simple: greens wilted in warm water, a ribbon of wild leek, and a bit of softened bread. Meri chewed without urgency, her eyes on the stone between them. Her limbs ached with the kind of weariness that didn't beg for rest, only recognition. Brom sat across from her, knees drawn up, one forearm resting on his thigh, the bowl steady in his hand. His cloak had slipped from one shoulder, and he didn't adjust it. Toran lay nearby with his nose tucked under his foreleg, unmoving save the twitch of an ear.

It could have ended like that—shared silence, clean and unremarkable. One of those quiet meals built more on presence than conversation.

But Brom set the bowl down with care, his thumb lingering at the rim—not idle, not restless. Just steady, as if grounding himself with the feel of something solid.

"Meri."

She looked up, the motion quiet and bare. Not braced. Just listening.

But something in her spine drew straighter.

"I didn't bring you here only because it's hidden," he said. "It's more than that."

His voice wasn't heavy, but it wasn't distant either. The words carried the sound of a man who had walked a long way without saying them, and had come to the end of it.

She didn't speak. Her gaze held. Her mouth had gone dry, and she was suddenly aware of the way the wind touched the nape of her neck.

"I heard something," he continued, more slowly now, "before I started home. Whispers from the eastern roads. Names. One of them was yours."

A flicker behind her ribs—sharp, and then gone. She said nothing, but the taste of the leeks had soured in her mouth.

He shifted, pressing his hand briefly to the small of his back, where old injuries settled like cold in stone. The gesture wasn't dramatic, just part of him now.

"Not loudly—not from the guards or the courts. The kind of talk that comes wrapped in coin, passed from men who'd rather forget they spoke it."

Meri went still again. The kind of stillness that came from needing not to be seen. Not disappearing, but withdrawing. As if the ruin itself might hold the breath she couldn't.

"I turned south the same day."

She blinked, slow and deliberate. Her eyes didn't leave his.

"I didn't know what it meant. Only that it meant something. So I scried your mother," he said, quieter. "She's safe. The children too. Tired—but whole." He didn't say more for a hearthbeat, and she didn't ask. But the words landed. A thread to hold, even if loosely.

"I knew then," he continued, voice low and firm. "Whatever Morzan was doing—it was more than enough."

Something inside her shifted. Not anger. Not even betrayal. Just a quiet grief, old and tired, rising again like fog. She'd known, deep down, that there had been signs. That the silence around her had not been blind.

And—beneath that—another memory, colder.

The King has requested an audience with you before the year ends.

She had buried those words. Morzan's voice, calm as always, brushing dust from the dragon's hide. Not cruel—just certain. Like someone announcing weather. And when he'd touched her hair, called her improved, she had felt it then too. Like being sharpened for something she did not choose.

Still—hearing it from Brom's mouth now scraped something raw.

She reached for the bowl again, though her stomach had long since tightened. She drank the broth because it gave her something to do with her hands. Something warm to swallow that wasn't the shape of his words.

Then, without heat: "You should've told me sooner."

"I know," Brom said. And he did. She heard it in his voice—not as defense, but as fact. A weight accepted.

She wiped her mouth on the edge of her sleeve and stood, folding the cloth that held the leftover greens with quiet, practiced hands. There was no rush to her movements. Only thought.

She didn't look at him again—not out of avoidance, but because the words were still settling in her chest, heavy and moving slowly. They had been waiting there all along. She had just hoped they wouldn't return.

She set the cloth aside, then crouched by the wall where a shallow crack split the stone floor. Her fingers brushed over it, tracing the ridge, feeling the grit gather beneath her nails. She picked up a small pebble—dull, with a single stripe of white—and set it upright on the edge of her boot, balancing it with slow, deliberate care.

It tipped. She caught it. Tried again. Not to play—just to do. A task that asked nothing of her heart.

Behind her, Brom bent to unroll his blanket. The motion was careful, deliberate, as though he were folding down something larger than bedding—tension, maybe. Memory.

The scrape of fabric over stone sounded louder than it should have.

Meri lingered by the hearth, fingers grazing the edge of the bowl, though it was already empty. Her mouth had gone dry again. She pressed her thumb into her palm once—then stepped back.

The ruin held them both without remark. Outside, the wind shifted low along the broken wall, curling through the stone like breath drawn slow between two people not speaking, but still listening.

Later—when the hush had stretched long and the stars had climbed their highest point—

Brom slept.

Or if not slept, had at least shaped himself into stillness: back to the cold hearth, one arm beneath his head, his blanket drawn up to the collarbone like someone who'd done this too many nights to call it discomfort. He didn't stir. Not even when the wind shifted through the broken stones. Only his brow held a faint line, a crease carved by long roads and longer silences—marks that did not fade, only changed their names.

Toran lay near the doorway, his body curled tight in the dust, chin pressed to the floor. His eyes were closed, but his ears stayed vigilant, twitching with each groan of timber or whisper of dried grass against stone. He didn't lift his head when Meri stirred—only flicked his tail once, a quiet acknowledgment, then stilled again.

She sat up slowly, letting the blanket slide down her arms. The air touched her bare forearms like cold breath drawn from the mouth of a well. She hesitated, fingers wrapped in her sleeves, then reached for her boots without a sound. Her movements were slow—not sleepy, but deliberate, as if each gesture were meant to prove something. That she was still here. That she could move without prompting.

The laces were damp where they'd brushed the ruin floor. Her fingers worked them loose with quiet effort. Her nails were rimmed with garden soil she hadn't yet washed away.

She didn't tie them tight.

When she stood, her knees cracked softly, a living sound in a room grown still. She braced herself on the crumbling stone as she passed beneath the arch—just a brush of fingers, but she held them there a moment longer, as if feeling for something. A memory. A weight. A reason.

Outside, the night had drawn in close and sharp.

The ruin exhaled behind her, breathing its hush into the dark—a hush not made by emptiness, but by what had once been spoken here. By oaths, or prayers, or simply the long settling of time. Wind touched the long grass, making it rustle like parchment turned in cautious hands. Owls called from the deep trees to the west—low, pulsing notes that folded between the trunks and returned unanswered. Farther off, a fox barked once, abrupt and brief. Somewhere beneath her feet, a thin vein of water moved under the stone—steady, secret, unseen.

The stars had no softness tonight. They hung fixed and white above her, sharp as nails. With no canopy to dull them, they felt impossibly near. Cold enough to cut.

She crossed the clearing in silence, arms folded, cloak pulled close at the collarbone. Her sleeves had slipped half over her hands again. She didn't fix them.

The wind met her at the edge—curled up from the slope and licked at the back of her knees. Stones shifted beneath her boots, but she didn't stumble.

She stopped where the outer wall fell away to ledge and light—where moonlight poured onto the grass like milk spilled from a careless hand. Her breath shortened in the thin air, but she didn't try to slow it.

The King has requested an audience with you before the year ends.

The words rose unbidden, not sharp but sodden, like something waterlogged unearthed after rain. She hadn't thought of them in weeks—not directly. She had kept them buried beneath the rhythm of the road, the soft precision of herbwork, the sound of horse hooves muffled by moss. But they had not gone. They had only grown quieter. Rooted deeper.

She remembered how he'd said it—Morzan. Standing beside the Beast, hand moving in slow strokes across its plated hide. Not polishing, not truly. Just touching. Possessing. His voice had been calm that day. Pleased, even. Not a warning. Not a threat. A simple notice.

And when he'd looked at her, it hadn't been with cruelty.

It had been with belief.

Not in her. In something he thought she contained.

Expectation.

She lifted her face, jaw clenched so tightly now it throbbed in her ears. She hadn't noticed she'd been holding it that way. The ache crept from her teeth to her temples.

Brom had spoken plainly tonight. About the whispers. The roads. The scrying. Selena. She believed him. She trusted him.

But the voice that lingered wasn't his.

The King believes I've been squandering your potential.
Sentiment. Hesitation. You were raised too gently.

She breathed in sharply through her nose. The air sliced clean and cold into her lungs. It didn't settle. It just stayed there, sharp as glass between her ribs. Her hands curled tighter into her sleeves. She didn't notice until she felt damp against her palms.

What did the King see? What did Morzan tell him?

What future had they twisted into her shape?

She was not a blade. Not a Rider. Not a vessel.

But they reached for her as if she were all three.

And in that hollow place where his voice had once pressed down like a weight into water, another echo stirred:

You will be summoned.

Not if.

Not when.

Will.

Something inside her flinched—not visibly, but deep and quiet. As if a thread had been pulled somewhere near the center of her chest. Not panic. Not grief. Just that raw, emptied recognition: it had never been over. Even here, where the air smelled of stone and bark and quiet, the shape of that future still curled like smoke beneath her ribs.

She turned her gaze from the stars. Her neck ached from holding still. Her spine was cold where the seam of her tunic had opened to the wind. The ache wasn't pain—it was exposure. A small reminder that even now, out here, she was still seen.

He had touched her hair that day. Tucked it behind her ear like a father might. Gentle. Measured. Proud.

As if she were something just shy of perfect.

As if perfection were a direction—a blade honed by his hand.

And then Brom had come. Had pulled her free.

But the question hadn't let go of her:

Why her?

What did they think they saw?

She pressed the heel of her palm to her sternum, firm and steady. As if pressure could loosen the knot in her chest. It didn't. It only made her more aware of it. How long it had been there. How long it might stay. How much of her still curled around it.

She wanted to spit—to scrub the shape of his words from her skin. But the moment passed without movement. It always did. Even fury had softened to ache.

The owl called again. Farther now. A wing broke leaves. The forest flexed.

She stood until her calves ached, until the stars blurred not from cloud, but from not blinking. And still, she stayed a moment longer—just to see if the dark would answer.

It didn't.

So, slowly, she turned.

The ruin waited—its angles softened by moonlight, its broken crown blurred. A place that did not ask questions, only held them.

She crossed the clearing carefully, her boots skimming the uneven stones. Her hands stayed tucked in her sleeves like a child's. Or a monk's. Or a ghost's.

She ducked beneath the low lintel and stepped inside. The air was still, close. It smelled of dust and bark and sleep.

She lay down again, blanket gathered at her waist. She didn't pull it over her shoulders. She just lay still. Let the stone press against her spine. Let the ache settle.

Across from her, Brom had not moved. His breathing had steadied.

She didn't cry. Didn't speak.

But her eyes stayed open far too long, fixed on the black beams above, as though waiting for some shift—some change in the dark. Some small tear through which a star might press.

She didn't sleep. Not truly.

Not until the owl fell silent, and the wind stilled, and the stars, one by one, disappeared behind the veil.

…

She rose slowly—not from sleep, but from something heavier. Something that had pooled around her through the night like floodwater in a root cellar, cold not in temperature but in depth. Not pain. Not fear. Just weight, constant and indistinct, like the pressure of too many words left unsaid. Her eyes opened to the colorless hush that drifted through the ruin's open edges, sky pressed low. The air hung thick with wet bark, seeped stone, and something older—like ash gone soft with time.

Mist curled from her breath when she exhaled. It was the only movement.

Toran was gone from his place near the doorway. A darker mark in the dust where he'd curled remained, fur-smoothed and still slightly warm if touched. She didn't. She only looked. A jay cried once from somewhere east, thin as a thread through cloth, then silence reclaimed the trees. Brom's bedroll, too, was empty, but not abandoned. The blanket's edge was still folded down, the dent of his shoulder holding its shape. He hadn't gone far.

She didn't call after him.

Instead, she sat, arms tucked tight to her knees—not to guard herself, but to remember the shape of her own body. To feel the lines of it, sharp and quiet. Her tunic had twisted at the hem, pressing creases into her ribs. One leg throbbed faintly from where she'd curled too tight. There was dirt on her sleeve and a single hair tangled in the weave. Small things. Proof that she had stayed.

The King has asked for you before the year's end.

The memory moved beneath her skin like cold water under ice—silent, slow, still changing shape.

She didn't say it aloud. She didn't need to. It was already there, tucked behind her ribs like something she'd swallowed wrong and hadn't dislodged. Her stomach felt hollow, not from hunger but from refusal. And beneath that—shame. Not of what she had done. But what they believed she might become.

She reached for her boots. The laces were stiff, damp where they'd brushed the ruin floor, and one of them had frayed halfway through. She didn't retie them, just tucked the ends in. The weight of them was grounding, solid around her ankles like an old grip. Her breath came low and steady, though her chest felt tight—as if held between two hands that didn't know whether to push or pull.

Outside, the morning air opened around her like cloth wrung clean. No wind. Just mist softening the edges of everything. The kind of quiet that didn't hush—it listened.

She stepped through the arch, one hand grazing the stone as she passed. The wall was damp, and flakes of old lichen clung to her fingers. She brushed them off without looking.

The ruin behind her looked smaller now. Less like a shelter, more like a space waiting to be filled. A lung that had exhaled and never drawn breath again.

She followed the faint path of swept stone—each piece deliberately cleared, as if Brom had knelt and brushed them one by one. She hadn't heard him do it, but she felt it now. The quiet care of it. The way it offered direction without command.

The slope opened before her like a slow bow, trees leaning in under the weight of the morning's hush. Dew clung to the tips of bent hawthorn and wild sage. She spotted him there, crouched near a flat rock pale with lichen, one hand braced on his knee, the other pressed palm-down as if the stone could speak.

He looked up as she approached but said nothing. He didn't need to.

She crouched beside him, her fingers finding the edge of the same stone. Cold, slick from rain. The lichen looked soft but left dust on her fingertips. A living thing made to survive stillness.

He turned his head slightly. "Watch the mist," he murmured. "Not the ground. Where it gathers. Where it breaks."

She followed his gaze.

There, between the brambles—just past the rise—a thinning in the mist curled differently, drawn sideways as though disturbed by a body moving where none could be seen. A shape without a name.

"Movement," he said. "Not yours. The world's."

She didn't speak, but she felt something shift—not thought, not clarity, but attention. Something inside her leaning forward.

Then he stood, joints stiff from the cold, and nodded toward the clearing. "You pick the place."

She hesitated. Then rose.

Her eyes scanned the land the way fingers read thread-count—slow, discerning, trained more by memory than method. Where roots reached like fingers. Where stones had broken the surface and stilled. Where last year's leaves had made a cradle and the frost hadn't yet claimed it.

She moved toward a bent hawthorn at the edge of the clearing and stepped beneath its arms. It wasn't a perfect hollow—but it held her. Her body folded into the space with the ease of something long practiced, like returning to a posture her bones still remembered.

She didn't vanish.

But she didn't need to.

The wind shifted once. A bird trilled and fell silent. Her breath moved through the branches in time with the fog. Her sleeves were damp again. She didn't pull them back.

Behind her, Brom remained still—not silent in the way of waiting, but in the way of knowing this part wasn't his to shape. He said nothing. Offered no praise.

It wasn't a test. Not yet.

It was something older.

Not how to hide.

How to see.

.

The fog never truly lifted, only thinned. By midmorning, the clearing wore it like gauze—threadbare in places, heavy in the dips. Meri moved along its edge with slow steps, not searching, not fleeing, just moving. The earlier stillness hadn't left her; it had only grown more internal, quieter than breath. Each motion she made seemed to echo within her body before it reached the world.

Brom followed at a distance—not behind, but beside at a slant, like shadow. He didn't speak. Not yet. He watched the way she paused when the jay cried overhead, the way her shoulders turned slightly when the wind shifted east, and how her gaze always found the thinnest places in the mist.

They reached the rise by a stand of pine and hawthorn. The slope curved westward there, hiding a low gully veiled by brush and stone. Brom slowed and lifted a hand—not in warning, just to mark the place. "Here," he said. Nothing more.

Meri came to stand beside him. Her breath was steady, but her hands were still curled half into her sleeves. She looked out over the ridge and didn't ask what they were meant to see.

"This is a crossing point," Brom said, his voice low. "Red deer pass here. Sometimes men. The mist pools because of the shape of the land. Look there—" He pointed with two fingers, not out but down, tracing the air. "Watch how it gathers and breaks."

She followed the motion. Below, the fog bowed in slow motion, like breath drawn and held. Then it parted around the shape of a stump—or no, a stone. At this distance, it was hard to tell. But the shape had presence.

He crouched again, hand braced on his knee, and this time Meri mirrored the posture deliberately. "You don't just hide your body. You hide your rhythm. The world has one of its own. If you don't match it, you stand out."

She nodded. Not quickly. The words weren't new, but they felt deeper now—like roots finding old water.

Brom said nothing more for a time. Instead, he reached into the fold of his cloak and withdrew a short-bladed knife, the handle darkened with years of use. He turned a piece of bark over in his hand—a flake shed by the hawthorn, curled like a scrap of old parchment.

As he spoke of rhythm and breath, he carved.

Not elaborate. Just a spiral, rough-edged, notched once at the center. No more than a mark. But he pressed it into her hand without ceremony when he finished, still warm from the shaping.

"You'll carry your own fire," he said, giving her the flint striker then, as if the two objects belonged together. Then he rose, brushing his hands clean on his cloak, and said, "I'll circle wide. You find your way back. Don't rush."

He turned before she could answer, his boots silent on the moss. He didn't look back.

Meri stayed crouched a moment longer, fingers curled around the striker he had given her. The flint felt cool in her hand. In Greynsi, even the fire hadn't belonged to her—lit for others, timed by others, never hers to tend. But this—this she could carry. This she could strike, or not.

She didn't rise right away. The fog was thickest now behind her, softening the way home—but it didn't close. Not yet.

She could wait. Call out. Follow his path like she always had.

But she didn't.

Her fingers brushed along a low branch cloaked in moss, the softness clinging wet and cool to her skin. She felt the damp weight of it, the quiet way it gave without protest. Her wrist turned with the motion—and there, brushing against the moss, was the old thread still looped around her arm. Soft with age, dyed the color of her mother's shawl. Mam had tied it one morning just before the thaw. No explanation. No ceremony. Just hands that trembled slightly and a knot drawn firm.

She had kept it. Not out of faith. Not out of defiance. Just out of not knowing. And something like ache.

She touched it once now, then let her hand fall.

Instead, she turned toward the slope, eased into the gully—not hiding, but reading. Where the hawthorn leaned east, where the stones cupped old rain, where a red fox had passed not long before.

She moved with care, not silence.

In Greynsi, no one had taught her to vanish. Only to be seen. The training there had been exposure—wide courtyards, bare lines, steps shaped for display. Her footing had always belonged to someone else. Her breath had been timed to match another's shadow.

If she learned to disappear, it had been alone. Out of need. Out of fear. A slow, self-taught art made from absence.

She remembered crouching behind cold stone after dark, tracing escape with her eyes alone—paths between torches, moments between footsteps. Listening for the smallest gap. Learning which floorboards betrayed weight, and which shadows stayed still when she passed. No one had shown her. No one had planned for her to survive.

And yet—she had.

Now, with no walls to hem her, no voice tracking her breath, no blade waiting behind silence—she moved softer. Truer. Her body knew the rhythm before her mind gave it name. She breathed with the land again, not against it. The wind threaded the old stones like breath through hollow bone. She didn't flinch. Her own breath matched it—low, even, unhurried."

Her breath fell into rhythm with the mist. She moved not like someone escaping, but like someone unfolding.

Instead, she turned toward the slope, eased into the gully—not hiding, but reading. Where the hawthorn leaned east, where the stones cupped old rain, where a red fox had passed not long before.

There was no command. No schedule. No polished stone underfoot demanding straight lines.

Just the slope. The breath of the land. Her own steps.

And still, a beat of hesitation.

Her limbs knew how to move—how to crouch without drawing breath, how to shift her weight to avoid a snap of twig—but the freedom to choose where to go, when to step, felt stranger than the orders ever had.

In Greynsi, there had always been someone watching. Even when she couldn't see them. She'd learned how to perform stillness, not inhabit it.

But this—this silence—was hers.

It didn't press on her. It waited.

She stood for a moment in that stillness, not afraid, but unfamiliar. Then, with breath low in her chest, she stepped again—less like a soldier, more like a shadow returning to its source.

Ahead, just at the edge where the mist unraveled over stone, a red fox appeared. Not startled. Not curious. It stood with its head turned slightly, ears flicked forward, its breath rising pale in the hush. Then, without urgency, it stepped once—twice—and vanished behind the rise.

She paused.

The space it had left felt fuller than its presence. Like wind passing through the hollow of a flute—sound made from what isn't there.

She didn't follow. She only stood still, her palm brushing the curve of her collarbone.

Once, in Greynsi, she had whispered a line from a story she never finished: "Some vanish to be found. Others vanish to remain."

She hadn't known then which she was. She still didn't.

But she knew which one the fox had been.

The mist closed again around her shoulders. And she walked on, quieter now—not to disappear, but to belong to what could not be held.

And the fog thickened behind her like a gate not closed, but slowly vanishing. Her steps curved with the slope, steady and sure, but something tugged just beneath her ribs—a thread caught on something not yet named.

Mam had never told her. Not about the scrying. Not that she and Brom still spoke across the miles, quietly, in the dark.

Meri didn't know what hurt more—that they had, or that they hadn't said so. The thought settled low in her stomach, not sharp, but dense, like cold pressed into cloth. The fog felt heavier after that, as if it knew something she didn't. Maybe it wasn't secrecy. Maybe it was protection. Maybe it was shame.

But it made her wonder what else had been kept small for her sake. What else had been shaped around her like a shield she hadn't asked for.

She ducked beneath a bent branch, brushing her palm along its mossy spine, grounding herself again in what was real. Bark. Breath. The slow draw of mist. As if, for the first time, she was beginning to understand: not just how to disappear—but how to choose it.

And the fog thickened behind her like a gate not closed, but slowly vanishing.

The slope cradled her steps. Each footfall settled gently in moss or leaf mold, softened by last night's damp. No birds called now. Only the hush of branches settling overhead, and the low breath of wind threading the hollows. She didn't look back toward Brom. She didn't need to. He had folded himself into the trees as surely as a shadow belonged to bark.

Meri paused at a fork where the undergrowth thickened—two narrow ways divided by an old root torn half from the soil. She pressed her palm to it, feeling where the bark had been peeled by weather or claw. The ridges bit gently into her skin. She stood like that for a time, not because she was lost, but because she was not.

Just past the root, a single bloom of sweet violet had pushed up between stone and moss. Small, veined, and damp with the morning's breath. She crouched and touched it lightly, not to pluck, only to feel that it was real.

One of her stories had ended with a line she now remembered without meaning to: When the violet bloomed again, she would return.

She didn't take it. She only remembered. And then she let her hand fall, the ridges of bark still faint on her palm

Behind her, the fog thickened like a gate not closed, but slowly vanishing; only absence, chosen and sharp as flint. She let her hand fall and turned down the left-hand path. Not fleeing. Not returning.

Just moving.

.

The ruin lay somewhere ahead, just beyond the slow bend in the mist.

She set the striker down beside her blanket. Her thumb brushed the carved spiral—still warm, still holding shape. Not an answer. But something to hold.

A fox had passed here. She could smell it now—earthy musk and crushed fern. Her gaze dropped, scanning the print beside a stone where the dew hadn't reformed. Small. Quick. The same path she'd chosen.

She followed.

At the crest where the trees opened briefly to sky, she stopped once more. The ruin's low wall came into view, its lines softened by fog and distance. A smudge of shadow marked where the tower still stood, hunched like a sentry who had forgotten why he watched.

Meri exhaled. The sound felt unfamiliar in her throat—long, and deeper than she meant it. She crossed the clearing without hurry. Not silent, but steady. The rhythm of leaf and foot, of breath and bone.

Inside, the hearth remained cold. A curl of ash still settled in the corner. She stepped across the threshold and crouched to the earth where Brom's blanket had been. Not to claim the space—but to feel its outline again. Her fingers brushed the place where his weight had rested. Still faintly warm.

She did not call out. Didn't need to. He was nearby. She could feel the shape of his distance—not absence, but watchfulness stretched thin across the land.

Meri set the striker beside her own folded blanket and sat, knees drawn loosely to her chest. The fog pressed gently through the open stones. Her shoulders were damp. Her spine ached with the stretch of silence. But her breath came easier now.

Not safety.

Not yet.

But knowing.

She stayed like that a long time, listening—not for danger, but for the sound of herself, quiet in the morning. And somewhere beneath it, the faint pop of moss releasing its damp. A sound she hadn't known she missed—until now.