They followed Eamon down a lane that smelled of smoke and fish and wet jute, and for the first time in days the bond between Lain and Morgan didn’t feel like a chain. It felt, briefly, like a hand offered palm-up.

  The road bent away from the harbor and into a tighter knot of houses, stone pressed close as if the village was huddled against the wind. The air changed as they left the open salt behind; smoke and baking grain took its place, the kind of smell that made the body remember hunger even when the stomach wanted to revolt.

  Eamon walked a half-step ahead, talking over his shoulder without slowing. “I’m serious,” he was saying. “If you’d kept sailing with me, you’d have learned the value of eating before your bones start showing.”

  Morgan made a soft sound that might have been agreement or might have been offense. The bond carried his familiarity with this man like an old scar one rubbed without thinking: tender at the edges, sometimes aching, but owned.

  “I ate,” Morgan said. “You just ate more loudly.”

  “That’s because I was doing it correctly.”

  They reached a house with a low lintel and a door painted a bright, weather-faded blue. Windchimes made of shells clicked from the eaves. Eamon shoved the door open, calling, “Grainne! I’ve brought home trouble!”

  A voice answered from somewhere deeper in the house. “If you’ve brought home trouble again, you can sleep with the nets.”

  Eamon grinned like a boy and led them through a small front room where a rag rug had been patched so many times the pattern was mostly mended fabric. A fire burned in the hearth, a pot hanging over it. A child’s wooden horse lay on its side beside the stool, one wheel missing.

  A woman came out of the back room wiping her hands on her apron. She was younger than Eamon by a few years, her hair dark and thick, pinned back with a bone comb. Her eyes went to Morgan first, and the expression that crossed her face was shock.

  “Morgan,” she said, as if she was tasting the name and deciding whether it belonged in her mouth. Then she looked him up and down with brisk, domestic judgement. “You look terrible.”

  Morgan smiled. “Grainne.”

  Her gaze slid to Lain. The pause was brief, but Lain felt it anyway, the way people recalibrated when something unfamiliar stood in their doorway. Grainne’s attention moved over Lain’s ears, the line of her cloak, the flick of her tail.

  “And you,” Grainne said, softer than she’d spoken to Morgan. “You look like you haven’t had a decent meal in a long while.”

  Lain made herself nod. She didn’t trust her voice yet. The bond between her and Morgan warmed, steady; his worry for her was a constant pressure behind his ribs, and now there was something else under it too, something tender and hopeful that made her feel suddenly exposed.

  Eamon clapped his hands together. “Lunch,” he declared, as though announcing a feast. “We’re eating now, while the daylight still belongs to us.”

  Grainne gave him a look. “We’re eating now anyway.”

  “That’s what I said,” he replied, shameless.

  She turned her head and called, “Finn. Orla. Wash your hands. We have guests.”

  The answer was immediate thundering from upstairs, followed by a high squeal and a deeper, stubborn protest.

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  Eamon looked pleased with himself. “They’ll descend like wolves.”

  Morgan’s posture shifted in something close to anticipation. It startled Lain, the way he seemed to know the shape of this household, as though his body remembered a door he hadn’t walked through in years.

  Grainne moved toward the table, already pulling out bowls. “Sit,” she said, to Lain in particular. “Before you fall over.”

  Morgan’s hand hovered at Lain’s elbow, and she could feel him restraining the instinct to guide her too much. She sat anyway, grateful for the chair, the wood solid beneath her. The nausea was a dull tide today, receding and returning without warning.

  Morgan remained standing for a moment, as if unsure where to put himself. Then Grainne pointed at the chair opposite Lain.

  “Sit,” she told him too, like she was giving an order to an unruly dog. “You can’t loom in my kitchen like a ghost.”

  Morgan obeyed. The bond gave Lain a brief flare of something oddly boyish, relief at being told what to do by someone who didn’t fear him.

  Two children barreled into the room: a boy of maybe six with hair like sun-bleached straw and knees permanently scabbed, and a girl of four or five with dark curls and a look of wild suspicion. They skidded to a stop when they saw strangers, eyes wide and sharp.

  Finn – Lain guessed it was Finn – stared openly at Morgan. Then his face split into joy. “Morgan!” he yelled, as if Morgan had never been anything but a story that had come alive.

  Orla, less trusting, took one look at Lain’s ears and hid behind Grainne’s skirts, peering out like a cautious animal.

  Morgan’s whole face changed. Lain felt it first, the shift in him like a door opening. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, lowering himself to the children’s height.

  “Well,” he said, voice warm in a way Lain had only heard from him in bed, long ago, when he’d been trying to make her laugh. “Look at you.”

  Finn launched himself at Morgan with no warning. Morgan caught him easily, lifting him onto his knee as though the movement were familiar. Finn laughed, and tried immediately to wrestle free again, as if the embrace was only a checkpoint in a larger game.

  Orla watched, still half-hidden, eyes fixed on the scene.

  Morgan looked past Finn’s squirming body to Grainne. “You made two,” he said, softly, with something like awe tucked into his words.

  Grainne snorted as she ladled stew into bowls. “As you can see.”

  Finn tugged on Morgan’s hair. “Tell her the story,” he demanded. “Tell her about the shark.”

  “That wasn’t a shark,” Eamon said loudly. “That was a grouper with delusions of grandeur.”

  “It tried to eat you,” Finn insisted.

  “It tried to eat the boat,” Morgan corrected with grave seriousness, eyes wide as if he too believed the fish had malice. “Which is worse, because the boat didn’t deserve it.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Finn giggled so hard he nearly fell off Morgan’s knee.

  Orla made a small sound behind Grainne’s skirt, as if laughing was an act she did not want to be caught doing. Morgan looked toward her.

  “And you,” he said, gentle. “Are you always this fierce?”

  Orla didn’t answer. She clutched Grainne’s apron tighter.

  Lain watched Morgan, watched the way he didn’t push, didn’t demand, didn’t coax with false sweetness. He held his attention there, steady as a hand offered palm-up.

  Grainne set a bowl in front of Lain. “Eat,” she said. “It’s kelp and barley. There’s butter in it. If you don’t like it, lie.”

  Lain managed a small smile. The stew smelled rich enough to make her stomach leap with want.

  Morgan’s bowl was placed next. Eamon slid into his chair with theatrical satisfaction, as if he’d accomplished something great by getting them all in one room. They ate, and for several minutes the only sounds were spoons, Finn’s constant chatter, and the wind pressing at the shutters.

  Lain took her first bite and felt her body accept it like it had been waiting, grateful and ravenous beneath the nausea. The kelp soothed something in her belly. She ate again. Again.

  Across from her, Morgan watched her eat with a focus that would have embarrassed her if she wasn’t too tired to care. The bond carried his relief in soft waves. He reached for his own spoon only after she’d taken several bites, as though her eating mattered more than his.

  Eamon noticed. He didn’t comment on it directly. He simply said, too casually, “So. You’ve been gone a while.”

  Morgan’s gaze flicked up. “I have.”

  Grainne’s spoon clinked against her bowl. “We heard things,” she said, and the simplicity of it drew tension to the room.

  Morgan didn’t deny it. He took another bite, chewed, swallowed.

  “We’ve heard about Ivath,” Eamon added. His eyes were not on Morgan’s face now, but on his hands, the way they moved. “And the Spire.”

  Morgan’s hand paused around his spoon. The bond went quieter, the joy from moments ago folding into something more guarded.

  Lain felt her own body stiffen. She hated the way the past could pour into any room and rot it from the corners.

  Grainne, without looking at Morgan, reached under the table and kicked Eamon’s shin.

  He hissed and tried to look offended. “What? I’m allowed to ask.”

  “Later,” Grainne said, flatly. Then she looked at Lain again, and her voice gentled without losing its bluntness. “How are you feeling? Really.”

  Lain hesitated.

  Morgan’s attention shifted at once, full and steady. He didn’t speak, or try to rescue her, but he waited, and in the bond there was an ache of wanting to know that didn’t become pressure.

  “I’m…” Lain began, and then stopped. The truth felt enormous in her mouth, still too new and dangerous. She’d told Morgan because she couldn’t hide it. Telling other people was different. It made it real in a way she wasn’t sure she could bear.

  Grainne watched her, and her gaze flicked just once to Lain’s hand, where it had drifted again to her belly.

  Understanding arrived quietly in Grainne’s face. It was as if she’d added a piece to a puzzle she’d been assembling since Lain walked in the door. She didn’t say anything, but she reached over and set a second piece of bread on Lain’s plate.

  “Eat that too,” she said. “You’re thin.”

  Across from her, Morgan had gone utterly still. The bond flared with his hope – bright, almost giddy – and something that might have been fear at being seen.

  Grainne’s eyes met his for a heartbeat. If she judged him, she did it silently.

  Then Finn leaned back in his chair and announced, mouth full, “Morgan’s gonna stay here.”

  Eamon barked a laugh. “Is he?”

  Finn nodded fiercely. “Yes. Because he told me he’d teach me how to tie knots and he never lies.”

  Morgan’s brow raised. “Did I tell you that?”

  Finn grinned. “You did just now. In my head.”

  Morgan looked at him for a long moment, then sighed as though accepting fate. “Well, then. I suppose I’m trapped.”

  Orla made a soft giggle in her chair, then froze as if she’d betrayed herself.

  Morgan turned his head toward her. “Ah,” he said, warmly triumphant. “There you are. I knew you were in the room somewhere.”

  Lain stared at him, spoon halfway to her mouth.

  She could feel what he felt with the children: uncomplicated affection, an ease that didn’t require him to sharpen himself into danger. She could feel his longing too, threaded through it, the old grief of Siobhan and the boys he kept buried under arrogance and blood.

  And she could feel something new, frightening in its gentleness: a vision of himself here, in a room like this, where no one feared him and he wasn’t hunting, and he could be a man with flour on his hands and a child on his knee.

  It did something to her. It made her want to reach for him in a way that wasn’t survival. It made her want to share in what he was offering, even knowing the cost.

  The realization arrived with shame. Because she remembered the cage. She remembered the cold precision of his voice when he’d called her property. She remembered him forcing his way inside her, and the nightmarish moment of waking to him hovering over her in hunger, the animal terror of it.

  Her body remembered too. It lived in her nerves, not just her mind.

  Yet here he was, catching a child without thinking, laughing under his breath, looking at Grainne’s hands as if in wonder. Here he was, holding himself back from touching Lain until she leaned toward him first.

  It didn’t erase what he’d done. It only complicated it.

  Lunch went on, the stew dwindling, Finn demanding stories, Eamon pretending he didn’t enjoy it when Morgan obliged. Grainne asked Lain quiet practical questions between bites – what foods she could keep down, whether she’d been sleeping, if she had any cramping. Lain answered as best she could, and the answering made her feel oddly… held. In fact, it reminded her of her aunt Atheri, in Vaelun, and when that thought occurred to her she had to choke down tears.

  When the bowls were empty and the children were sent out to the back room with a stern warning not to break anything important, Grainne poured tea that smelled sharply of mint and something more savory.

  Eamon leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowing toward Morgan again. “So,” he said, less casually now. “Ivath.”

  Morgan’s shoulders tightened, but he didn’t retreat. He glanced at Lain, and she felt the question: Do you want this? Do you want to hear it?

  Lain looked at Grainne, at Eamon, at the warm house and the children’s laughter muffled behind the door.

  She did not want the past in this room.

  “Another time,” she said quietly.

  Eamon opened his mouth to protest, then caught Grainne’s look and thought better of it. “Fine,” he muttered. “Another time.”

  Morgan’s relief slid through the bond like a warm cloth.

  They stayed late, talking of other things, late enough that Grainne passed a round of oat cakes and herbal tea, all delicious and fortifying. And while Lain had to politely decline the crisped fish skins, she gratefully accepted several pieces of crisp pan-fried potatoes.

  When they finally rose to leave, Grainne wrapped extra bread in a cloth and shoved it into Morgan’s hands.

  “For her,” she said, and nodded once toward Lain. “And if you keep her walking until she drops, I’ll come find you and put you in the sea.”

  Morgan smiled. “Noted.”

  Outside, the wind hit them again, bright and cold. Lain’s body was heavy now with food and the strange exhausted calm that followed it. Morgan walked beside her, quieter than he’d been all day.

  They reached the inn before he spoke. “You were kind,” he said, the words oddly careful.

  Lain glanced at him. “I ate soup.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  She didn’t answer him at first. The truth sat in her chest, stinging and uncertain.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” she said finally.

  Morgan nodded, as though he’d expected nothing else. But beneath that, through the bond, his gratitude still burned, quiet and fierce and almost devout.