They were dragged through the trees until the fire became a smear of orange behind them. The ground turned soft, sucking at their hooves. The poplars closed above, their bare branches catching distant torchlight. Lain tried to count the men – three, four – but every time she twisted for a glimpse, a fist or a flat blade struck her shoulder.

  Sena stumbled beside her, breathing raggedly, still fighting.

  “I’m the one you want,” Lain said. “Let her go –”

  “Quiet,” hissed one of the men. His grip reeked of oil. “The Veinwright decides which one sings.”

  “Sing? Why would I ever –”

  The man dragging her yanked her head to the side by an antler. “I said be quiet, slewfoot.”

  They broke into a clearing rimmed by reeds. The men shoved the girls down to their knees. One drew his knife, a curved, sickle-edged thing, gray and shining. Behind him stood the Tracker, his hood fallen back, rain beading along the scar that split his lip.

  For an instant Lain’s heart seized. He looked so much like the man from the shrine – the same high cheeks, the same pale eyes – but younger, and cruel in a different way. Memory and flesh blurred until she couldn’t tell which tremor belonged to the past and which to the present.

  He crouched in front of the women, his eyes dismissing Sena almost at once. His gaze settled heavy on Lain, his voice soft with mockery. “Sing for me, little Bellborn. Let’s see what you can summon.”

  “I’ll summon nothing.”

  “Oh, yes you will. You’re going to make the river rise again. You’re going to drown the camp behind us, the way you drowned your own people.” She looked away and he took her by the ear, wrenching her head back toward him painfully. “It seems to be your favorite means of killing, so sing, Bellborn.”

  “I’ll never sing for you,” she said.

  He smiled. “Then I’ll settle for a scream.”

  He nodded to the man beside him. He brought his knife to Sena’s throat. Sena tried to throw herself back.

  A sound cracked through the clearing and one of the guards behind Lain cried out in surprise. Steel met steel behind her head in a series of rapid strikes. Then a shadow rolled into view and the man with the knife went down, a crimson streak blooming across his chest. The second barely turned before a blade slid between his ribs. The torch fell from his hand and rolled in the mud, sending shadows spinning.

  Someone was in the trees, moving impossibly fast. Each motion was precise, hard and decisive. The last of the Brighthand lunged into the dark and was answered by three clean cuts that left him folded into the earth.

  At first that command to freeze owned her heart entire, but at Sena’s yelp of dismay she came back to herself, pressed close to Sena, and pulled her to her feet. They turned to run –

  Then the figure straightened, water running from his hair, blade angled down. Even before he turned, she knew the stance, the tilt of the shoulder, the small roll of his wrist as he flicked blood from the blade. The scent reached her next of sword oil and a melange of sweat and leather and chlorophyll, wildly out of season.

  Her breath broke on his name. “Mallow?”

  He wiped his sword on a fallen cloak. “We have to stop meeting like this,” he said, voice rough and panting, edged with the faintest hint of a grin.

  Behind him, a shadow shifted. The Tracker stepped from the trees, unbothered, his eyes frost bright. “You’re not one of Balthir’s,” he said evenly. “So what are you?”

  Mallow lifted his sword again, shoulders lowering in a stance Lain recognized with painful clarity. “Someone having a better night than you,” he said.

  The Tracker’s smile sharpened. “Sunrise is a long way off.”

  Rain hissed against the steel. Mallow chuckled, and only Lain heard the fatigue in it. “Well then, we should probably get started.”

  The Tracker moved first.

  He came in low, a curved longsword flashing bone-pale in the rain. The blow that followed was fast enough to cut the air. Mallow met it, the shock of the impact ringing through the clearing like a bell. The man’s form was flawless, a soldier’s economy married to something inhuman; every motion ended where the next began. Mallow stepped back, mud splashing to his knees.

  They circled each other. The sword in the Tracker’s hand carried faint filigree along its edge, red lines pulsing with each breath, veins of living metal.

  Veinwritten craft.

  When he lunged again, the sound was almost musical. Mallow barely caught it, turning his blade to deflect. The second strike came before the first echo died. He parried, staggered, parried again, each blow driving him back through the mud.

  Lain could only watch: rain hissing on their shoulders, boots sliding, the glint of their weapons weaving arcs like lightning. The Tracker fought with the grace of wind given hands. Mallow matched him in raw instinct, but she saw how the Veinwright was already reading him, how every motion tightened the circle.

  “Run!” Mallow shouted between breaths. His voice broke the rhythm of the fight, ragged but commanding. “Take her and go!”

  Sena grabbed Lain’s arm. “Come on!”

  Freeze.

  The next blow sent Mallow sprawling to one knee, sword knocked half from his grip. “Run!” he barked again, catching the sword’s hilt in the mud.

  Sena pulled her, and they ran.

  The trees blurred. Behind them the fight’s sound followed, a clang, a breath, the grunt of pain. When they reached the river’s edge, the sky opened wider, rain slicking the ground into glass.

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  “Keep going,” Lain said.

  Sena shook her head. “Not without you –”

  “Go,” Lain snapped, the word cracking. “Find Morgan. Bring help.”

  Sena stared at her, chest having, then turned and fled along the bank.

  Lain ran back the way they’d come.

  The clearing pulsed with what remained of the guttering torchfire. Mallow was losing ground fast. The Tracker drove him back with short, controlled cuts, his blade singing each time it met Mallow’s. He wasted no motion, moving with perfect, merciless precision. Mallow was bleeding from a shallow slice across the shoulder, breath coming ragged.

  Freeze.

  The next strike sent his sword flying. It landed in the mud a few paces away.

  Freeze.

  The Tracker leveled his blade at Mallow’s throat, his tone almost gentle. “Good steel,” he said. “Shame it’s wasted on an unbeliever.”

  Freeze.

  She saw Mallow kneeling before her, rubbing snow from her wool with a moth-eaten blanket, firelight gentling his face.

  You always take care of me.

  Someone should.

  She lunged from the edge of the clearing, seizing a fallen weapon. The hilt was cold, heavy, too large for her hands. The Tracker turned at the sound of her hooves in the mud, but she was already there, blade lifted awkwardly, both hands gripping tight.

  Her swing was clumsy but desperate. He caught it on reflex in a parry that should have turned her blade aside, but his stance crumbled under a sudden raw strength and the weight of her momentum. She stumbled into him, antler-first, and the sword edge tore across his side in a flash of red. His footwork saved him as he twisted away and sent her to the ground.

  The Tracker hissed, eyes wide in disbelief. Blood soaked through his cloak and leached further down the fabric in the rain.

  Mallow surged up behind him, catching his recovered sword from the mud and driving its pommel into the man’s temple. The Tracker staggered, slashed once blindly toward Lain, and Mallow struck, the blade plunging into the side of the Tracker’s throat.

  The Tracker’s glassy eyes dimmed. He reached for his neck as if by reflex, then dropped to the wet earth and was still.

  Lain stood, shaking. Blood and rain dripped from the edge of the sword still clutched in her hands. The cut across the Tracker’s side was shallow, but real. Her first.

  Mallow caught her wrist, easing the blade from her hands. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

  “You’d be dead if I hadn’t.”

  He smiled. “We’ll have to get you trained up on that blade.”

  She looked at her palms. “I’d rather not.”

  Somewhere behind them, horns sounded from the camp. The fire’s glow shifted through the rain. Mallow turned toward it. “Are they looking for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go.” He took her arm and pulled her deeper into the woods.

  “No, wait,” she said. She pulled against him. “We have to help the others. We have to go back.”

  “Help them? What do you mean, help them? We have to get you away from them before they use you against the Underserpent.”

  “No, Mallow, you don’t understand – wait, you're bleeding –” she put her hand on the gash on his arm, and the moment she touched him her Tuning fed her all his feelings – his fear, his desperation, his pain, and then, unreal, shocking in its warmth and force and serpent’s sake she’d missed this –

  Love. It was love.

  She gasped, realizing she’d been holding her breath, her lungs hot with the fire of him, and coming back to her task she hummed over his wound.

  Nothing happened.

  He watched her, but already the space below her lungs pressed up into her ribs, suffocating. She tried again, her voice quavering, but this time it wouldn’t come, it wouldn’t come.

  “It’s alright,” he said. “Lain, I’ll be fine. We have to go –”

  Boots pounded in the mud and suddenly they were surrounded by torches.

  Mallow fell to the ground as if he’d thrown himself. He let out a pained rush of air and writhed in the mud for all of a moment before his legs and arms stiffened against the earth.

  “Mallow!” Lain cried. She fell beside him. “Mallow –”

  “Well. If it isn’t Ren.” Morgan stepped from the shadows, flanked by Rhalir and several of his men, his hand out as if holding a sceptre, the way he’d held his hand out to make her sing. “I’d sensed you were nearby, though I’d assumed you’d attempt to infiltrate the city ahead of us.” His voice softened as he put his attention on her. “Come, Lain. Come away from the sellsword.”

  “Let him up,” Lain said. Mallow was struggling to speak, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

  “I will when you’re safely away from him.”

  Lain put a hand to Mallow’s face – just a momentary touch, enough to communicate through her Tuning that she wasn’t abandoning him, and his eyes locked with hers and a flood of his fear made her pause. It wasn’t fear for him. It was fear for her.

  “Lain,” Morgan said again, threatening.

  The grove stilled. The mud soaked her wool and chilled her legs but she couldn’t stand. She couldn’t leave Mallow on the ground.

  Morgan’s eyes darkened. A rush of his fury found her in the bond, and while very little of it showed in his posture or face, she felt it, the command of it, the anger. He would do this to her. He would throw her to the mud if he felt threatened enough, his feelings seemed to say.

  But surely he wouldn’t puppet her now, in front of the others, when it wasn’t life or death.

  They were at a standoff.

  Rhalir broke the tension by stepping into the little clearing. Before Lain could react he brought her to her feet, decisive and firm, his eyes flashing a warning of his own, his concern and reassurance mingling in the Tuning as he held her arm. Lain came away with him and his men rushed forward.

  Morgan released his grip on Mallow. Mallow gasped, reached for his sword, but he was surrounded already, and yanked to his feet.

  “Lain, please listen –”

  One of the men threw a hand over his mouth. He turned his head this way and that, kicking and lunging until one of them drove a fist into his gut. Mallow doubled over.

  “Don’t!” Lain cried.

  Rhalir’s hand tightened ferociously on her shoulder. Adder-quick he bent to her ear and said: “Use your wits, girl.”

  Morgan reached Lain in two strides and she cringed back as if expecting a blow. Instead, he wrapped her in an embrace, bringing her face against his chest. All her muscles grew taut.

  His voice rumbled against her ear as he said: “I am so sorry. I am so sorry I let them take you. This will never happen again, do you hear me?”

  Lain shuddered, because his attempt at comfort was overridden by what the bond shared, by the threat in it.

  “Mallow saved us,” she said, desperate now, certain she would not be able to negotiate his freedom but hoping against hope she could save his life. “He killed the ones that took Sena and I.”

  “Did he?” Morgan said. “Ah. Well. We’ll see what we are to do with the sellsword.” He held her at arm’s length, then glanced up at Rhalir. “Take him back to camp.”

  At the back of the group, Sena caught Lain’s eye. “Lain, praise the wyrm, you’re alright.”

  Morgan held tight to Lain’s hand in a way that would have looked protective to anyone who was watching. He spoke softly. “From now on, you’ll be sharing my quarters. You’ll be well guarded at all times. I’ll not let you out of my sight.”

  She glanced around for the soldiers that had taken Mallow. They veered off with him but he met her eye one last time. He said nothing, and she couldn’t feel him through the Tuning, but it didn’t matter. She knew what that look meant.

  He’d betrayed her to keep her away from Morgan.

  Now she understood why.