Morning light slid around the curtain seams and laid pale bands across the floorboards. The room smelled of clean linen and yesterday’s sea on their clothes, salt caught in the wool of Lain’s cloak where it hung from the chair. The bed was warm in the center and cool at the edges, as if the night had tried to keep them and failed.

  Lain woke on her side with Mallow behind her, his arm draped over her waist. He wasn’t sleeping. She could feel him in her Tuning, attentive and driftless.

  For a few seconds she didn’t move. She let herself feel the weight of his forearm, the steady heat of him, the new texture of his scales where his chest met her back when he drew breath. Her legs lay loose beneath the blankets, wool soft against her legs, hooves relaxed instead of braced for the floor.

  Mallow’s mouth brushed her hairline.

  “You’re awake,” he murmured.

  Lain kept her eyes closed. “Mm.”

  His hand shifted at her belly, the lightest stroke of his thumb, more reassurance than touch. She felt the impulse to flinch and let it pass. That alone was a kind of miracle.

  Mallow’s breath warmed her ear. “How do you feel?”

  Lain took inventory the way her body always forced her to now: stomach, throat, the tension at her ribs, the ache in her legs. The answer surprised her.

  “Not.. ruined,” she said.

  A quiet laugh rumbled in Mallow’s chest. “Good.”

  Lain opened her eyes and rolled onto her back to look at him. Mallow followed, propping himself up on one elbow so he could see her face. His hair was flattened on one side, his mouth still rough with sleep, his eyes bright with something tender and fierce.

  He traced a loose curl of hair away from her cheek with his fingertip. Lain stared at the scales at his throat, the dull bronze plates that had turned him into a story, and then looked back at his eyes.

  “This won’t last,” she said before she could stop herself.

  Mallow’s hand paused in her hair.

  Lain hated the sentence as soon as it left her mouth. She hated how her mind kept patrolling for loss even while she lay in the only arms she trusted. She hated how the world had trained her to treat tenderness like a debt that would be collected with interest.

  Mallow studied her for a beat, then nodded once, as if she’d stated the weather.

  “Aye,” he said. “The world’s got a talent for stealing.” His fingers resumed their slow combing through her hair. “But we’ve got a talent, too. We keep finding each other.”

  Lain’s mouth trembled with a laugh. She caught his wrist gently and held it against her cheek, grounding herself in the warmth of his skin.

  The comfort made her want to cry all over again. It meant morning, and breakfast, and the others downstairs. Tanel’s steady eyes, Harka’s watchfulness, that strange Tracker Poe’s silence. The unspoken math of routes north, the egg, Ivath, the wound at the Spire. The Dóthain in her dreams, circling and crying like a lost thing that didn’t know how to die.

  And Mallow.

  Mallow would ask her to go.

  He had carried the egg across the Cloudspine. He had died and returned. He was marked by the Underserpent. He could not pretend this was just a seaside reprieve. His mission pointed north the way the Underveins tugged at her hooves. Lain could feel the moment coming, his voice turning serious, his humor stepping aside, the words that would sound like love and still land like a door closing.

  Come with me.

  She had decided no. She had decided it with Morgan, and she’d decided last night, and again in the dark before dawn. She was not going back to Ivath while her body was carrying a child and her mind was still full of Morgan’s shadow. Not while the Spire’s stones still tasted of blood.

  But now Mallow was here, and the decision no longer belonged only to her fear. It belonged to his hope, too, and that made it harder.

  She watched him, this man who had returned from death and still looked at her as if she were the miracle, and she felt her resolve wobble. She felt the urge to say yes simply to stay close to him, to keep the story from tearing them apart all over again.

  Mallow’s thumb brushed her cheek. “You’re thinking.”

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  Lain huffed a small laugh. “Always.”

  “Dangerous habit, that,” he said.

  Lain swallowed. She could not say it yet, while this bed still held warmth, while his hand in her hair still made her feel like a person.

  So she leaned forward instead and kissed him, soft and slow, a wordless plea before the day asked everything of them.

  Mallow kissed her back, careful, as if he understood exactly what she was buying with that touch.

  When they broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers.

  “Aye,” he murmured. “A few more minutes.”

  Lain kissed him again before her mind could talk her out of it. She kept it slow, mouth soft against his. Mallow answered with the same care he’d used when he cleaned her hooves, hands steady, breath warming her cheek, his attention fixed on her face as if he meant to learn every shift before he moved.

  When she drew back, she kept her mouth near his. “Stay,” she whispered.

  Mallow’s eyes searched hers. “Where?”

  “Here,” she said. She slid her hand under his jaw and drew him into another kiss, deeper now, her body leaning in.

  Mallow’s hand came to her waist and paused there, waiting. His voice came low against her mouth.

  “Is this what you want?”

  Lain nodded. “Yes.”

  Mallow kissed her again, the kiss turning warm and slow, making time stretch for it. His palm settled at her waist with a gentle certainty, his other hand sliding into her hair, fingers spreading at her scalp as if he could hold her together by touch alone. Lain’s hands moved over his shoulders and down his back, tracing the familiar shape of him and the changed parts too, the edges where his new scales met skin.

  The closeness brought the old vigilance up in her, the instinct that always scanned for the moment tenderness would turn into a trap. She held still for a breath, listening to herself, and Mallow caught it immediately.

  He stopped, face close, breath against her lips. “Lain.”

  She met his eyes.

  “We don’t have to,” he told her.

  “I know,” she said. She cupped his cheek and kissed him, small and sure. “I want to.”

  Mallow’s mouth curved, a flash of relief and affection, and he shifted down the bed with her, keeping his weight supported on his arm so she never had to carry it. Lain guided him the way she wanted, pulling him closer, easing him back until she found the angle that let her breathe.

  Their bodies warmed under the blanket. Lain’s hands stayed busy, not frantic, just insistent, mapping his skin, learning where his scales began and ended, letting herself have him without fear of being taken. Mallow kissed her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, and the tenderness in it made her eyes sting.

  She blinked it away and held him tighter, refusing to let the grief steal this from her.

  Mallow’s hand slid down her side and paused again near her belly, his eyes asking the question, and she nodded. He laid his palm there lightly, as if he was greeting the life inside her and also grounding her in her own body. The contact sent a fierce and aching warmth through her chest. She pressed her hand over his, holding him in place.

  They moved together in slow increments, guided by breath and touch and the steady exchange of permission. Lain kept her eyes open more often than not, watching his face, watching how he stayed with her, how he waited when she needed it, how he followed when she pulled him close again. The pleasure built, a slow house where they both resided, growing one brick at a time around them. Beneath it ran a firm foundation of safety, the simple miracle of wanting without bracing for collapse.

  When it crested, Lain clutched him hard, face pressed to his shoulder, Mallow feeling it all through the Tuning. Even so, she let herself break apart for a moment in a way that belonged only to her. Mallow held her and kissed her hairline, his hand still at her belly, his breath roughened as he followed her over the edge. Afterward he stayed close, arms around her, keeping her warm, keeping her present.

  Lain lay with her cheek on his chest and listened to his heartbeat as it settled. She traced one of the scales at his throat with her fingertip, then let her hand rest there, the way she rested a palm on a door she didn’t want to open yet.

  Mallow brushed her hair back from her face. “You alright?”

  Lain exhaled and let the breath turn into a small, shaken laugh. “I don’t know what I am.”

  Mallow smiled. “You’re difficult,” he said. “You’re tenacious. You’re mine to love, if you’ll have it.”

  Lain’s eyes stung again. She nodded, then buried her face against him as if she could hide from the day in his skin.

  Boots moved outside. A door opened. Footsteps crossed the hall. The inn was waking around them.

  Lain’s body tensed on instinct, already reaching for armor.

  Mallow felt it and tightened his hold around her shoulders, then loosened it again so she never had to pry herself free.

  “Breakfast,” he murmured into her hair, and the word carried both tenderness and inevitability.

  Lain swallowed. “Yes.”

  They lay for another minute, letting the warmth of the bed keep them. Then Lain rolled onto her side and reached for her shift. Mallow gathered his clothes, helping her where she needed it, keeping his touch simple and practical so her body could stay calm.

  When they finished dressing, Lain sat on the edge of the bed and tugged her slacks on, hooves settling onto the floor with grounded finality. Mallow crouched and adjusted her cowl, quick and competent, then looked up at her with that steady gaze that made her believe, for a few heartbeats at a time, that she could walk into the next room and stay herself.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Lain drew a breath and nodded.

  She let him take her hand before they went downstairs.