By late afternoon, the Forgewall Highlands had worn the day thin.

  Stone and heather rolled away on either side of the narrow track, the hills layered like old shields stacked along the horizon. Wind came down from the higher ridges with a dry bite that smelled of iron and dwarf-smoke, scraping the sweat from skin but leaving the ache in legs and backs untouched. Brynna Kael walked ahead of the two heirs with her weight under her hips and her eyes never still. A week of skirting main roads had left dust crusted on her boots and shadows pressed under her eyes.

  Behind her, Corin counted steps in his head because numbers made distances behave. He kept one hand on the strap of his satchel and the other near his belt knife, not because he expected the knife to save him but because that touch steadied his breathing. Lyra came last, the hem of her cloak frayed from thorn and scree, her golden hair braided into a coronet that had begun the week earnest and neat and now listed slightly to one side. She picked her way around loose stones and ruts with quick, practical care, one palm resting often on the lumps under her cloak where her few possessions hung in pockets and pouches.

  The Highlands looked empty, but Brynna knew better than to trust the look of a place. Somewhere to their right, beyond the slope, the main caravan road ran toward Bramblecross in a pale, steady line. She had chosen not to be seen upon it. Instead they had taken shepherd tracks and half-forgotten paths that hugged the folds of land, trusting Corin’s sense of angles and the goblin matron’s reed-tally hints about watch posts and patrol habits.

  “Two more ridges,” Corin said quietly, squinting toward the lowering sun. “Then the land falls toward the Amberveil side. Pineglen should be just past the dip. Bramblecross is… one day’s march from there if we don’t waste daylight.”

  “We’re already wasting daylight,” Lyra muttered, though there was no real bite to it. “Daylight doesn’t like us much these days.”

  “It likes us enough not to show our silhouettes on the main road,” Brynna said. Her voice came back flat from the rocks. “We keep under the brow as long as we can. Then we rest. Bramblecross is one day more. If we press now and break in the dark, we don’t get there at all.”

  Lyra did not argue; she rolled one sore shoulder and nodded. “Rest sounds… adequate,” she said. “I can be grateful for adequacy.”

  Corin’s feet ached in a way he could describe precisely—two sharp complaints near old blisters, a dull throb at the left ankle where he had misjudged a rock two days ago—but he only said, “If we stop, we risk being predictable. But if we don’t, the risk is that we’ll make mistakes. I know which ledger balances worse.”

  Brynna glanced back at them, measuring how they carried themselves: Corin’s upright tension, Lyra’s determination pushed down into her jaw. She lifted her chin toward the horizon ahead.

  “Pineglen is our compromise,” she said. “Small village, north-west of Bramblecross, off the main caravan line. It’s on one of your maps, Corin. Grain and goats, not garrisons. We rest there. We keep our eyes open. We leave at first light.”

  Lyra shaded her face with one hand and peered along the slope. The Highland ridge fell away ahead into gentler land. “Do they have a proper inn there?” she asked. “With walls that don’t sway and beds that don’t dangle over fen water?” Grimfen’s stilt-houses still haunted the muscles of her legs when she closed her eyes.

  “Maybe,” Corin said. “It’s a crossroad village. They usually do.”

  “Maybe,” Brynna echoed, and there was the faintest rasp of unease under the word. “We’ll see what’s waiting before we decide what we call it.”

  They took the last ridge at an angle that kept their silhouettes below the sky-line. When they finally crested, the land opened out into a shallow bowl of fields and hedges. Pineglen sat in the center like a handful of stone scattered and left where it lay. Low houses crouched close to the earth, timber walls washed gray by weather, thatched roofs pinned down with stones against the wind. A ribbon of smoke leaked from two chimneys. Chickens moved in a hesitant cluster by one fence. Beyond the far hedgerow, a thin creek reflected the sky in jagged, bright fragments.

  From a distance, it was as ordinary as a village could be.

  It was only when they drew nearer that Brynna’s shoulders began to tighten.

  The lane into Pineglen lay empty. No children darted between houses, no dogs ran barking ahead of them. The few villagers in sight walked with slow, unhurried steps, as if they had all the time in the world and no need to spend it on strangers. A woman carrying a basket of kindling paused to watch them approach, but her face did not change. A man mending a fence turned his head and then stopped halfway, his eyes fastening on Brynna like hooks.

  The square in the village’s center took shape as they reached the first houses: a wide, beaten-earth space ringed with low buildings—a smithy with cold forge, a shuttered workshop, what might be a small shrine. And in its heart, raised slightly above the ground, lay a circle of laid stone. A waist-high lip marked its boundary, notched at four points like shallow steps or altars. Dark stains traced arcs across the inner flagstones. A single standing pole rose at one edge of the circle, with a crossbeam nailed near the top and rope wound around it in loose coils.

  Lyra’s eyes went straight to it. “That looks like—”

  “Like something I don’t want you walking toward,” Brynna cut in. Her gaze roved over the circle, measuring the distance to the houses and the lanes leading away. It looked like a communal stage in the way a butcher’s slab looked like an ordinary table.

  Corin followed her look, noting angles, exits, clear lines of fire. “If they hold any kind of festival there, it’s not the dancing sort,” he said under his breath.

  Brynna half turned toward them without fully taking her attention off the square. “Bramblecross is one day’s march from here,” she said in a voice pitched for them alone. “If we rest, we’ll reach it without limping, and we’ll be able to think when we get there. If we don’t rest, we’ll stagger into it at dusk blind with fatigue. I know which scenario I prefer, but I also don’t walk children into places that make my teeth itch. So we stay on the edge of the village. No wandering. No splitting up beyond my sight. Understood?”

  Lyra nodded. “Understood.”

  Corin nodded as well, muscles in his neck tight. “We’re too far from Grimfen now for the reed-braids to speak for us. We’re on our own pattern until we find Hamond or anyone else who counts. Resting increases the chance they can catch up, if they’re even looking in this direction.”

  Brynna’s mouth made a small line at the mention of Hamond. She pushed the thought aside. Planning for rescues was how people died waiting for them. “First we find a roof,” she said. “Then we decide how long it’s good for.”

  A man stood a little apart from the houses at the corner of the square, hands hanging at his sides. His clothes were the plain linen and wool of any Amberveil farmer, patched at knees and elbows, clean enough. His hair lay flat to his head, the color of churned soil. It was his eyes that bothered Brynna even before she reached him. They were fixed, too steady, like a portrait’s eyes painted to follow a viewer around the room.

  She stopped two paces away. “Good afternoon,” she said. “We’re looking for lodging. Does Pineglen have an inn?”

  The man stared at her. Up close, Brynna could see that his pupils barely shifted. A muscle in his cheek ticked once. For three slow heartbeats he said nothing. His chest rose and fell, but there was no other sign of life.

  Lyra’s fingers brushed against Corin’s cloak. Corin swallowed and lifted his chin a fraction.

  Brynna repeated herself, not yet changing her tone. “An inn. A house that takes coin from travelers. Does Pineglen have one?”

  The man blinked. It was like watching a switch flip. His whole face altered at the blink’s end: his mouth curling into an eager smile, the set of his shoulders easing into what an amateur actor might think hospitality looked like.

  “Visitors!” he exclaimed. His voice came out too loud, too bright. “Blessings on you, travelers. Pineglen doesn’t often see strangers, no, no. We’re only a little place. No inn, I’m afraid. No call for one, you see. We make do with our own beds.”

  The words tumbled out as if pulled from a script. His eyes, wide and oddly gleaming, did not match the smile at all. They had that same glazed depth, as if the smile were a mask held up in front of someone standing far behind.

  Brynna’s hand had drifted without conscious decision to rest near the hilt of her short sword. “No inn,” she said. “Strange, for a crossroads village.”

  He shrugged. The motion was jerky, like a puppet checked mid-swing. “Trade goes to Bramblecross,” he said, cheer undiminished. “We’re only a place between fields and sleep. But we’ll find you beds, never fear. Pineglen takes care of its guests.”

  His smile strained wider. Brynna let it sit a moment, then pointed with her chin toward the stone circle in the square.

  “And that?” she asked. “What do you call that?”

  The man’s gaze flicked to the circle and back. It was the first time his eyes had shifted since they’d approached. “Our festival stage,” he said, the answer ready. “We’re preparing for a… for a celebration. Yes. Games and songs and stew.” He laughed. It was the wrong sound for laughter: hollow, clipped off too early. The cheer in his words had all the life of paint on plaster.

  Lyra’s skin prickled under her cloak. The air in the square felt thick, as if someone had hung damp cloth just out of sight.

  “We won’t trouble your festival,” Brynna said. “But we do need beds, and my charges need food. Is there someone we can ask? A widow with a spare room for coin?”

  The man nodded enthusiastically. “Ask, yes. Ask. The doors will open. We all help. Pineglen is a helpful place.” He gestured down one of the lanes. “Try there. Or there. Or that house. Knock, and someone will answer. We always answer. Always.”

  His words tumbled over each other, eager and strangely empty. Brynna held his gaze for a breath longer, waiting to see if anything of a person peered back. Whatever lived behind those eyes was muffled.

  “Thank you,” she said. It cost her nothing to be polite. “Come on,” she added quietly to Corin and Lyra. “We stay within each other’s pockets. Call if anything feels wrong. That includes gut feelings, not just blades.”

  Lyra nodded sharply. “If I scream, I’ll make it worth the breath,” she muttered.

  They moved down the nearest lane, keeping close enough that Brynna could reach either heir in three strides. House after house answered their knock with the same pattern: the door opening on a face that took a moment too long to arrange itself, then lighting up in overly warm welcome. Voices that spilled over with friendliness—“Oh, how rare, visitors!” “Such a treat for Pineglen!” “We’re honored you stopped!”—followed almost immediately by regret.

  “No room, I’m afraid. All the beds full. Sacks of grain where I’d put you.” A woman shook her head so hard her headscarf slipped. “If only we’d known you were coming.”

  “Family visiting from Bramblecross,” a man explained, smile fixed. “Every pallet taken. If only we had a proper inn. We keep saying so.”

  Through it all, their eyes remained just off, pupils slow to track, focus drifting and jerking back as if on invisible strings. Their bodies moved with a stiffness that did not match the enthusiasm in their words.

  “They move like they’re underwater,” Lyra said under her breath as one door closed.

  “Or like someone’s holding their shoulders from behind,” Brynna murmured.

  “What if there is?” Corin asked. His gaze flicked reflexively to the roofs, the eaves, the spaces where archers would hide. There was nothing there but pigeons and the shifting gray of the sky.

  “We assume there is and act accordingly,” Brynna said. “But for now, we still need somewhere to sit down that isn’t a ditch.”

  They reached a modest house near the edge of the village, slightly apart from its neighbors. Its walls leaned a little, but the door hung properly. Smoke curled from a small chimney. Brynna could smell something like onions and bone broth.

  Corin stepped forward to knock but paused, hand hovering. “Last attempt?” he asked.

  “Last attempt,” Brynna agreed. “If this is no good, we sleep outside the hedgerow.”

  Corin knocked. The door opened a crack, then widened. An older woman stood framed in the doorway, wiping her hands on a plain apron. Her hair, gone mostly gray, lay coiled at her neck. Lines marked the corners of her eyes and mouth in a way that looked earned rather than carved. She took them in with one look, her eyes sharp but not fixed.

  “Well,” she said, and her voice had texture, unlike the smooth, overbright tones they’d heard before. “That’s a sight. Children on the road and a guard to match. Come in, before the wind decides to blow you into the ditch.”

  “We don’t want to impose,” Brynna began.

  “Too late.” The woman stepped back, holding the door open. “I’ve a pot on and more beds than I care to admit to. Sit, eat, sleep. You’ll pay me by telling me where you’ve come from and where you’re headed. Old women live on stories. Come on.”

  Lyra exchanged a quick glance with Corin. The woman’s manner was not free of oddness—there was an eagerness in her that felt a little forced—but compared to the lacquered cheer in the other faces, she felt almost normal. Brynna still hesitated, a quiet knot below her ribs insisting that something was wrong in Pineglen from roof to root. But she weighed that knot against the tremor in Lyra’s hands and the way Corin’s steps had started to drag, and against the fact that any further walk would push them into full dark with no shelter at all.

  “Very well,” she said. “We’ll accept your kindness for tonight.”

  The woman’s smile deepened, creasing her whole face. “There’s sense,” she said. “Shoes off by the step, if you please. I won’t have Highland mud on my floor.”

  Inside, the main room was plain and neat: a table scrubbed nearly white with use, three chairs and a bench, a hearth where a blackened pot hung over a low fire. Herbs dried from the rafters in bundled bunches, filling the air with rosemary, sage, and something more bitter beneath. A narrow stair led up to what promised to be a sleeping loft. An open doorway on the far side showed a glimpse of another room, darker, the edge of a wooden cage and a heap of discarded cloth just visible.

  The woman clucked at them until they sat. She ladled stew into earthen bowls—thick with barley and root vegetables, shreds of meat swirling among the pieces. The smell made Corin’s stomach cramp with sudden want. Lyra wrapped her hands around her bowl like it was a small fire.

  “Thank you,” Brynna said. She reached instinctively for the purse at her belt. “We can pay—”

  The woman waved a hand without turning from the hearth. “Put that away. If I charged coin every time I fed someone thin as a sapling in a drought, I’d die rich and miserable. You’re neither bandits nor tax collectors. That makes you good enough for my table.”

  Lyra’s mouth quirked. “That’s a low bar, but I’ll take it,” she said. “Thank you, truly. We’ve been living on dried fish and stubbornness for a week.”

  “Stubbornness is good for journeys,” the woman said. “Not much for flavor.” She set a basket of coarse bread on the table. “Eat. I’ll hear your tale after, when your tongues aren’t sticking to the roofs of your mouths.”

  Corin spooned stew into his mouth and almost choked on how good it was. The meat tasted of actual fat rather than smoke; the broth carried the memory of bones boiled long. He saw Brynna taking small, measured bites, watching their host as she moved around the room, noting the way she stepped, where she glanced. Lyra relaxed by slow degrees, the first lines easing from her forehead as warmth and food worked their small, practical magic.

  The quiet felt fragile, but it was quiet.

  It lasted until something small and quick dropped from the shadowed doorway opposite the hearth.

  The creature landed on the table with a soft thump, claws scraping the wood. It was about the size of a housecat, but no one would mistake it for anything so harmless. Leathery wings folded tight against a wiry body; a barbed tail flicked behind it like an impatient question mark. Its skin had the hard, oiled sheen of cured leather, tinged faintly red in the hearthlight. Tiny horns curled back from its brow. Its eyes were bright and sharp and full of a delighted malice that had nothing to do with hunger.

  It clutched a dead rat in both hands. Without hesitation, it sank needle teeth into the rat’s neck and tore, chewing with evident relish.

  Lyra jerked back, her bowl nearly tipping. Corin’s spoon froze halfway to his mouth.

  Brynna was on her feet in a heartbeat, one hand dropping to her sword. The bench scraped loud against the floor. “Don’t move,” she said, not to the imp but to the children. Her gaze locked on the little creature with the same steady focus she’d used on rebel captains and siege-breakers.

  The older woman whirled. “You wicked thing,” she snapped, crossing the space with surprising speed. “I told you to stay in your room!” She smacked the imp lightly on the shoulder. “Look at you, frightening guests. Back, back.”

  The imp chirruped, an unpleasant, high-pitched sound, and cast Brynna a sideways glance that left a smear of rat blood on its lips. It did not seem frightened. It seemed entertained.

  Brynna’s fingers curled around the hilt of her sword until her knuckles blanched. “That is an imp,” she said, each word clipped. “Demonic breed. You keep that thing in your house?”

  The woman scooped the imp up with both hands. It wriggled and sprawled across her forearms, tail looping contentedly. “He’s hardly a demon,” she said. “More like a naughty child. He came scratching at my threshold one night, half-starved and shivering. What was I to do? Leave him in the cold? He’s more pet than pest.”

  “Imps are never ‘more pet than pest,’” Brynna said. She did not draw her sword fully, but the steel whispered in its sheath as she eased it a thumb’s width free. “They are spies and saboteurs. They turn campfires inside out and taint food and lead bigger things to your door. They don’t stay where they’re told.”

  The imp kicked its hind legs in the air and giggled soundlessly, barbed tail twitching. It licked its claws clean with exaggerated care, watching Brynna from under its lids.

  “Oh, listen to you,” the woman said, cradling the little monster against her chest. She stroked its back as if it were a kitten. “Talking like a chaplain’s brochure. He’s done no harm in my house. He keeps the rats down. Don’t you, dear heart?”

  The imp burped delicately. Lyra’s stomach flipped. Corin swallowed hard, his earlier hunger now at war with disgust.

  Brynna’s eyes did not leave the imp. “Be that as it may,” she said. “We won’t sleep under the same roof as it. We’ll finish the meal, thank you, and be on our way.”

  “Nonsense,” the woman said at once. The word came out with the same brightness the villagers had used earlier, and Brynna’s scalp prickled. “It’s nearly dark. Wolves on the road, bandits in the hedges. You’ll be safe here. He won’t bother you.” She kissed the imp’s forehead. “Will you, my little claw?”

  The imp snickered, a nasty, delighted sound.

  Brynna pushed her bowl aside. “Pack your things,” she told Corin and Lyra. “Cloaks, satchels, everything. We’re leaving. Now.”

  Lyra opened her mouth to argue, then closed it when she saw Brynna’s face. She slid off the bench and reached for her cloak. Corin wiped his spoon mechanically and tucked it away, his movements jerky.

  The older woman’s mouth pinched. “You’re making a fuss over nothing,” she said. “He’s never hurt anyone.”

  “Not yet,” Brynna said. “And I intend to keep it that way, where my charges are concerned.”

  She stepped toward the door, cloak over one arm, sword hand free. The house felt smaller than it had a moment before, the corners darker, the hearthfire suddenly inadequate against the feeling of being watched by more than two eyes.

  Brynna reached for the latch.

  The door slammed before her fingers touched it.

  It shut with a clap that did not belong to wood and iron alone. The sound had a tooth to it, a bite that drove a cold line up Brynna’s spine. The latch jerked in its bracket and settled of its own accord. The room’s air thickened as if someone had laid a wet blanket over their shoulders.

  Lyra flinched. Corin’s hand jolted toward his belt.

  “Well now,” the older woman said, and her voice had changed. The warmth in it folded inside out, turning into something slick and mocking. “There’s gratitude for you. I feed you, I open my home, and you try to walk out on me before I’ve even shown you the beds.”

  Brynna turned back slowly. The woman’s face wore a smile that hadn’t been there a breath before, stretched too wide, teeth bared in a parody of welcome. The color had drained from her skin, the healthy weathered tone of a village elder leeching away to a purplish gray. Fine, dark veins crawled up from under her collar like a bruising tide. Her eyes went flat and bright at once, like oil over deep water.

  “My mistake,” Brynna said softly. Her sword came all the way out of its sheath with a hiss. She leveled the point at the woman’s chest. “I thought you were a fool who kept bad company. You’re worse.”

  The imp wriggled out of the woman’s arms and fluttered to perch on the back of a chair. It hooked its claws over the wood, folding its wings tight, tail swishing with eager excitement. Its little chest rose and fell faster, as if watching a favorite game begin.

  “Come now,” the woman cooed, her voice sticky-sweet and entirely false. “No need for sharp things. You’re tired. You’re fed. What’s left but sleep?” Her eyes flicked to the imp. “Isn’t that right, sweet one? Why don’t you give our dear guests a bedtime story.”

  The imp’s grin widened to show all its needle teeth. It plunged a hand into the deep pocket of the woman’s apron and came up with a small cloth packet. Brynna saw a puff of fine, silvery dust leak between its fingers.

  She moved.

  Her arm snapped forward, sword cutting through air toward the imp. For a moment she thought she had the measure of it. Then the air itself seemed to tug at her limbs, a resistance like invisible hands pulling her back. Her muscles flooded with sudden heaviness.

  The imp giggled. It leaped into the air, wings beating in a blur, and as Brynna’s blade passed through the space where it had been, it snapped the packet open with a sharp twist and blew.

  The dust billowed in a sudden cloud, glittering dully in the hearthlight. Brynna turned her head away, tried to hold her breath. Corin clamped his mouth shut. Lyra flung an arm up over her nose.

  The powder had its own intention. It clung to air and skin alike, sliding under lids and into lungs with a cool, invasive slide. Brynna’s eyes burned; a sweet, numbing taste flooded the back of her throat. The floor rocked once under her feet, though she knew the stone had not moved.

  “Hold—” she managed, meaning to say hold your breath, meaning to say run, meaning to say something that would matter.

  Her knees buckled. The sword’s weight doubled, trebled, dragging her arm down. Corin staggered, caught at the table, missed, and went down hard onto one hip. Lyra took half a step toward Brynna and then crumpled around herself like a dropped shawl.

  The last thing Brynna saw before the dark took her was the witch’s face bending over her, that awful smile softening into something almost tender.

  “Sleep,” the witch murmured. “We’ll have such a feast when you wake.”

  The world narrowed to a pinprick, then winked out.

  —

  Sound came back first.

  A roar of voices, layered with drum and pipe and clap, rolled over Brynna in a wave that made no sense until she remembered the word festival and wanted, distantly, to laugh. The noise had that hammered, too-even quality of something forced, like a song being pushed through a rusted flute.

  She pried her eyes open.

  Cold bit into her back. She lay on packed earth, rough under her shoulder blades. Her arms wouldn’t move at first. When she tried again, something heavy pulled at her wrists. Metal bit into skin.

  She was in the square. The night had closed in fully; sky above showed a scatter of hard little stars. Torches ringed the stone circle, their flames whipped by the wind. The circle itself was no longer empty. A cauldron big enough to bathe an ox hung from an iron gallows over a roaring fire in its center. Shadows from the flames threw jagged, leaping shapes across faces and walls.

  Brynna lay chained to a stout post near the circle’s edge. Thick iron cuffs circled her wrists, linked by chain to a ring set into the post. A collar of iron sat cold against her throat, another chain running from it to the same anchoring ring. The metal tasted of rust and old sweat. Her feet were free, but the chains at her neck and hands kept her from moving more than a pace in any direction.

  To her left, Corin slumped against a second post, his head lolling until he forced it up. His wrists were bound behind him, a chain running from his cuffs around the post. To her right, Lyra knelt with her hands shackled in front of her, chain bolted to the ground. A collar circled her neck as well. Her hair had fallen mostly loose from its braid and hung in tangled strands around her face. A smear of drying blood streaked her cheek where it had brushed the ground. Her eyes darted wildly, pupils huge.

  “Brynna?” Lyra’s voice came out as a croak. “Corin?”

  “I’m here,” Brynna said. Her throat felt raw. “Try not to move too fast. Find your breath first.”

  Corin blinked hard, as if trying to clear fog. When his gaze found the cauldron, he swallowed. The smell coming from it was thick and wrong—grease and herbs and something else, something that rode on the nostrils like rot under spices.

  The villagers of Pineglen were all there. They milled around the circle, bowls in hand, mouths opening and closing. They laughed and shouted and clapped their hands, but their eyes were all wrong. Vacant, unfocused, they slid over the captives without seeing them. Bodies swayed to the thin, repetitive music of a pipe played somewhere behind the crowd. The villagers’ motions matched each other too closely, not in the messy way of genuine revelry but in the synchronized sway of puppets tugged by the same string.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Their smiles were wide and unchanging. Their feet stamped the same rhythm, over and over again, as if their muscles had forgotten how to do anything else.

  Lyra stared. “They look…” She couldn’t find the word.

  “Enchanted,” Corin managed. “Like their faces forgot what the rest of them is doing.”

  Brynna followed the lines of their bodies, the too-smooth way they turned when the music shifted, the way none of them ever let their gaze linger on the captives or the cauldron. “They’re under something,” she said. “A compulsion. Witches do that. They make joy a chain.”

  As if the thought had summoned her, the witch appeared at the circle’s far side. She moved with an easy, prowling gait, hands on her hips. Gone was any pretense of village ordinariness. Her skin, under the torchlight, showed the sickly, bruised hue of a corpse left too long in cold water. Gusts of wind tugged at her plain dress, revealing lines of old scars running along her forearms and up her throat, like whips burned into flesh. Her teeth, when she smiled, gleamed too uniform, too sharp, a crooked row of iron.

  She held a hand axe big enough to fell a sapling. A moment later, Brynna realized it wasn’t wood the witch was chopping.

  On a low, sturdy table beside the cauldron lay the body of a dwarf.

  He had been stocky in life; in death, he was diminished. His beard, once ornate, now clung in clotted strands to his jaw, half hacked away. His clothes had been ripped, the cloth crusted with blood. One arm had already been severed at the elbow and tossed into the cauldron; Brynna could see the stump of bone through the ragged meat.

  The witch brought the axe down in a practiced rhythm. Chop. Crack. Flesh and bone parted. She hummed under her breath as she worked, a tuneless sound that nonetheless fit the beat of the villagers’ swaying.

  “Dwarves,” she said conversationally, raising her voice so it carried across the square. “Always take more work than they’re worth. Tough meat. All sinew and stubbornness. And once they’ve been under the mountain too long…” She wrinkled her nose theatrically as she hacked through a leg. “It gets into the flavor. Rot in the marrow. Spoils the broth. You lot are lucky I thinned it with better stock last week.”

  Some of the villagers laughed, high and bright and empty.

  Brynna’s stomach clenched. Corin turned his head away for a moment, jaw tight. Lyra made a small sound that was not quite a sob and not quite a gag. The stench from the cauldron had become a physical thing—thick, greasy steam that clung to hair and skin, smelling of boiled flesh and overused spices.

  Around the circle, villagers dipped wooden ladles into the cauldron and filled their bowls. They shoveled the contents into their mouths with frantic enthusiasm, broth and bits of meat running down their chins. They chewed and swallowed and laughed, but their eyes remained dull, as if some other part of them recoiled even as their bodies obeyed.

  Something small scuttled across Brynna’s field of vision. The imp flitted through the air and dropped to the ground before them, its wings rustling. It strutted along the line of captives, tail flicking. Its eyes shone with delight.

  “Poor little lambs,” it squeaked in a voice like splintered glass. “Sheep in chains. Don’t they look pretty? Are the collars snug? Are the wrists sore?”

  It tossed a pinch of grit into Corin’s face. Corin flinched and spat. The imp clapped its hands and cackled, then did the same to Lyra, sprinkling sand into her hair, her eyes.

  “Stop it,” Lyra hissed, blinking tears. She tried to swipe the sand away, but the chain on her wrists jerked her hands short.

  The imp danced in front of Brynna and made a mock bow, tail swishing. It flung a handful of coarse dirt at her. A few grains made it past her lashes; they scratched like tiny knives.

  “Enough,” the witch called without looking up from her work. “Don’t get carried away, dear heart. No one wants grit between their teeth, do they?” She chuckled. “Spoils the texture.”

  The implication slid into place with horrible neatness. Brynna’s fingers clenched on her chains until the skin burned.

  The imp slunk back to the witch’s side, shoulders hunched in pretend contrition. It darted to catch the next chunk of dwarf meat she flung toward the cauldron, gnawing a strip as it landed.

  Brynna forced her breathing to slow. Panic was a luxury she could not afford. She scanned the scene again, this time with the ruthless practicality she’d learned in alleys and siege corridors. Chains. Posts. The distance between her and Lyra. The number of villagers within arm’s reach of the witch. The angle of the dwarven corpse on the table.

  Acid rose behind her teeth. They could not break the chains by strength alone. There was no cover to work with. No loose stones near enough to reach.

  Words, then.

  She lifted her chin, pitching her voice to cut through the music and the laughter. “Is this it, then?” she called. “This is the grand working of a witch? Butchering travelers like pigs and pouring them into a pot? I’ve seen hedge-butcher apprentices with more imagination.”

  The axe paused mid-swing. The witch’s head turned slowly toward her. The villagers’ hollow cheer faltered, then died. The pipe’s thin tune petered out in a strangled squeak. One by one, the villagers’ heads swiveled to face the prisoners, movements weirdly synchronized.

  “Well, well,” the witch said. “Look who’s awake with opinions.” She set the axe down with exaggerated care, its haft leaning against the table. Blood dripped from the blade in slow, thick beats. “You missed your first course. Dwarf stew. A shame. It’s dull fare, but filling. Still, you’re just in time for the main dish.”

  She smoothed her apron with bloody hands and walked toward them, the crowd parting in front of her like water. Her smile had acquired a new edge.

  “Welcome, honored guests,” she said with mock courtesy. “To the feast at Pineglen.”

  “You call this a feast?” Brynna said. “You drug travelers, you chain them, and you feed villagers their betters’ bones. That’s not a feast. That’s a thief pretending to be a host.”

  The witch laughed. It was genuine, for once, and all the more unpleasant for it. “Oh, my dear,” she said. “Such bite. No wonder they trust you with these sweet morsels.” Her gaze slid to Corin and Lyra. It lingered there with a hungry appreciation that made Corin’s skin crawl.

  “Leave them alone,” Brynna snapped. “Take me. Leave the children out of it.”

  “Oh, don’t be tedious,” the witch said. “Dwarves keep well underground, but their meat doesn’t. Grown meat is full of old habits and gristle.” She lifted one of Lyra’s curls with a blood-slick finger. Lyra flinched, but the chain on her neck drew tight, holding her in place. “Young flesh is tender. It nourishes so much better. It binds the spell tighter. My poor darlings have worked so hard to be obedient. They deserve the best.”

  She swept an arm toward the villagers. “Look at them. So happy. So docile. They till and mend and fetch what I ask, and they never complain. They needed structure. Purpose. And a full belly. I gave them all three. You can’t argue with the results.”

  A man near the front stood with stew smeared across his chin, bowl clutched in both hands. Tears tracked silently down his cheeks, cutting pale lines through the grime. His eyes stared at nothing. His mouth smiled.

  Brynna’s jaw clenched. “They’re not obedient. They’re enslaved. There’s a difference.”

  The witch sighed theatrically. “Semantics.” She flicked her fingers. “Speaking of structure—” She raised her voice. “You two there. Yes. Come.”

  Two villagers stepped forward at once, a middle-aged woman and a lanky youth. Their eyes remained dull; their faces retained that stiff grin. At a small gesture from the witch, they reached for Lyra.

  Lyra jerked back on her knees, chains clattering. “No,” she breathed. “No, no—”

  Brynna lunged. She threw her weight against the chains, muscles straining. The iron bit into her wrists; skin split, hot blood slicking the metal. Something in the post’s anchoring gave with a groaning crack. She felt it shift, half an inch, then another.

  For a moment she thought she had it. She surged forward, dragging the post with her. It tore from the ground in a shower of dirt. The chain at her neck yanked tight; iron dug into her throat, choking her. She had just enough momentum to slam into the woman reaching for Lyra.

  The woman toppled, bowl flying from her hands. Stew splattered across the ground, across Lyra’s legs. The youth staggered. Brynna hit her knees, gasping, the chain dragging her back again.

  Hands seized her from behind. Villagers swarmed her with the mindless efficiency of ants, pulling at the chain, shoving her back against the loosened post. Rough hands forced her arms behind the wood. Someone looped rope around her torso, pinning her to the timber. She kicked, caught a man in the shin hard enough to make him grunt. Another blow to her shoulder numbed her arm.

  “Take me instead!” Brynna shouted, voice ragged. “You want a sacrifice, take someone who can at least give you indigestion.”

  The witch watched, expression coolly amused. “Tempting,” she said. “But I’m not just cooking dinner. I’m investing. Young meat feeds stronger magic. And your little princess here—” She touched a bloody finger to Lyra’s cheek, leaving a smear. “—has such lovely bones. You can feel the line of them. Royal marrow. That’s worth months of strength.”

  Lyra shook, breath tearing in and out of her chest. She fought the villagers’ hands as they seized her under the arms, chain rattling, feet sliding in the slick stew. They dragged her toward the table. Her boots skidded in the dwarf’s spilled blood. She made a sound that scraped Brynna’s spine raw.

  “Corin,” she gasped. “Corin, don’t let them—”

  Corin tore at his bindings, trying to force his hands apart. The iron cuffs bit; his skin tore. The post behind him did not budge. Panic surged up, white and blank. He forced it down with the habits he’d trained into himself on Grimfen’s terrace, with Skrab’s voice telling him to keep his weight under him, to move. There was nowhere to move. It didn’t matter. He had to try.

  “You can’t,” he choked. “She’s—she’s not—”

  “Not yours to take,” Brynna finished for him, teeth bared.

  The villagers hoisted Lyra up. They shoved the dwarf’s half-dismembered corpse off the table. It thudded to the ground with a heavy, wet sound. Blood smeared across the wood and pooled below. Lyra’s back hit the sticky planks. The cold seeped into her shoulders, through tunic and cloak.

  She thrashed. Hands pinned her wrists above her head, then bound them to iron rings set in the table’s edge. More rope lashed her ankles. She kicked once, twice, catching someone in the ribs. They grunted but did not cry out. Their smiles did not change. The rope pulled tight. She could barely twist now, only brace against the horrid wetness under her.

  The witch stepped into Lyra’s field of vision. The torchlight turned her iron teeth into glints of green and gold. She lifted the hand axe again, almost lazily.

  “In case you’re interested in the details,” she said conversationally, “this batch will feed them for two months. Three, if I thicken it properly. They’ll be stronger. Less hungry. They won’t remember why they were ever afraid of doing as they’re told. I do them a kindness, really.”

  Lyra stared up at the face bending over her. Her world narrowed to the edge of the axe, to the gleam along its blade. The night wind licked at her exposed wrists. The smell of blood and stew pressed on her from all sides.

  “Please,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure who she addressed. Brynna. Corin. The witch. Anyone. “Please.”

  Brynna refused to shut her eyes. If this was the last thing Lyra saw, she would not see that Brynna had looked away.

  Somewhere at the edge of hearing, a sound cut through the held breath of the square.

  A horn.

  Not the shrill reed of village pipes, not the crude bellow of a hunting horn. A cavalry horn, sharp and clear, its call knifing through the night air with the precision of drilled signal.

  The note sounded again, nearer. Hooves drummed against packed earth. The witch’s hand stilled, axe halted above Lyra’s chest.

  “What—” she began.

  The first horse crashed into the square.

  It burst from the lane in a spray of dirt, iron-shod hooves striking sparks as it slid to a controlled halt. Its rider bore a half-helm and plain, functional armor darkened for night. A cloak snapped behind him. Two more horses thundered in behind, then half a dozen, then the rest of the troop, spreading out to form a triangle of steel and discipline pushing into the chaos.

  “Form!” a voice bellowed. “Shields up! Watch your flanks!”

  Brynna knew that voice.

  Hamond.

  Commander Hamond of the king’s cavalry rode at the point, broad-shouldered in his saddle, his presence cutting through the witch’s twisted festival like a blade through rotten rope. His face, worn and weather-beaten, tightened as he took in the scene—the cauldron, the bound girl on the blood-soaked table, the villagers with their bowls and their empty eyes.

  Under the witch’s compulsion, the villagers reacted not like the shocked witnesses they could have been, but like weapons. A murmur went through them, then a growl. They surged toward the riders, bowls and spoons and ladles dropped, replaced with whatever might serve as a club or a spear—pitchforks, axes, even lengths of firewood yanked from the nearest torch sconce.

  Hamond swore under his breath. “Dismount!” he shouted. “Now!”

  His riders swung from their saddles in smooth, practiced motions, landing with blades already drawn. They formed a rough line between the villagers and the captives, shields coming up, backs to the ritual circle.

  “Hold them,” Hamond barked. “Non-lethal. These are not the enemy. The one with the iron teeth—she is. Bring her down.”

  Brynna dragged in air. “Hamond!” she shouted, voice ragged with blood and smoke. “They’re under a ritual. Enchanted. Don’t cut them down!”

  “I see it,” Hamond called back without taking his eyes off the charging villagers. “We’ll try not to gut your future taxpayers.”

  Villagers slammed into shields. Hamond’s men met them with the blunt sides of weapons, with hilts and pommels and shield edges, doing what damage they had to but pulling cuts where they could. A young woman in an apron swung a cleaver with terrifying force at a soldier’s head. He ducked, knocked the cleaver from her hand with his shield, and clipped her temple with the pommel of his sword. She dropped like a sack, limbs loose. Another man lunged with a pitchfork; Hamond twisted aside, took the blow on his armor, and swept his opponent’s legs out from under him with a booted foot.

  “Eyes!” he shouted to his men. “Strike for eyes and joints. Drop them. Don’t open bellies if you can help it.”

  A soldier near the back of the line dropped to one knee, bow already in hand. He nocked an arrow, drew, and aimed past the melee at the witch.

  The witch hissed, the sound like steam escaping a cracked pot. She lifted her free hand and flicked her fingers. For a moment, the air shimmered around her, a faint, oily sheen that suggested a barrier. The archer loosed anyway.

  The arrow flew true. It punched through the shimmer with a noise like tearing cloth and buried itself deep in the witch’s left shoulder.

  She screamed. The sound was sharp and high, more anger than pain. Blood, darker than it should have been, oozed around the shaft. Her hand spasmed; the axe dipped dangerously close to Lyra’s chest before clattering out of her grip and falling to the ground.

  Across the square, the villagers staggered as if struck. Their synchronized movement wobbled. The forced smiles faltered. One man dropped his club and clutched his head, groaning.

  The witch’s control had not broken, but it had frayed.

  “Again!” Hamond shouted. “Keep pressure on her!”

  He fought his way toward the circle, using his shield as much to push bodies aside as to block blows. Two soldiers flanked him, one with a short spear used more like a staff, the other with a sword kept mostly low, slapping legs out from under oncoming villagers. They took hits—scratches along arms, a dent in a shield rim, a club thudding into ribs—but they kept their feet.

  They reached Brynna first. Hamond spared her a swift glance. “You look terrible,” he said, even as he raised his sword and brought it down on the chain connecting her wrists to the post. The blow rang along the metal. On the second strike, the weakened link snapped.

  “Nice timing,” Brynna rasped, dragging her hands forward. Her wrists burned; blood slicked her palms. Hamond’s other soldier knelt, knife flashing as he sawed through the rope at her torso. The loosened post toppled back into the dirt.

  The spear-bearer moved to Corin, turning his back briefly on the crowd with the kind of trust that only came from drilled formations. He wedged the spearshaft through the chain around Corin’s wrists and twisted hard. Iron groaned and bent. Corin clenched his teeth against the pain as the metal bit deeper, then gave. The cuffs sprang open enough for him to wrench his hands free.

  “Stay low,” the soldier said. “If they rush, under the swings, not back.”

  Corin nodded, breath tearing in his chest. His eyes were already on Lyra.

  “Lyra,” he called. “Hold on. We’re here. Hold on.”

  She had not dared to move while the axe hovered. Now, freed from the immediate threat, her bonds chafed as she strained against them, desperate to get off the blood-slick table. The rope held.

  “Get her free,” Brynna snapped, already reaching for her short sword where it lay half-buried in dirt ten paces away. “I’ll help push our way out.”

  Hamond shook his head once, curt. “If we all rush her, she’ll slit the girl’s throat before we reach the table,” he said. His gaze locked on the witch. She had staggered back, clutching her wounded shoulder, but she had not fled. Her eyes burned with furious calculation. “We move, she moves. We need something she doesn’t see coming.”

  “What we need,” Brynna said, “is someone who’s not where she thinks he is.”

  Corin followed their line of sight to the witch and then to Lyra. The world narrowed, the noise of the fight receding until all he could hear was the drumbeat of his own heart and Lyra’s ragged breathing.

  The witch, bleeding and furious, stepped toward the table again. She stooped to seize the fallen hand axe. Her good hand shook slightly, but she raised the weapon with grim determination.

  “Step back!” she shrieked at the soldiers. “All of you. Step back, or I split her open like a summer melon.”

  Her voice still carried weight. The nearest villagers, those who had not yet been knocked senseless or disarmed, jerked at the sound. They turned sluggishly toward the soldiers again, a few lifting their makeshift weapons. The compulsion, weakened, still dragged at them.

  Hamond raised a hand. His men stilled, though their weapons did not lower. They formed a rough ring around the circle, bows at the ready, swords half-lifted.

  “Listen to me,” Hamond called to the witch, keeping his tone level. “You put the axe down and step away from the girl, and I’ll see to it you get a quick death.”

  The witch laughed, a raw, cracked sound. “You think you frighten me, little man? I’ve lived through fires hotter than your torches. I’ve eaten better children than this.”

  Lyra flinched, tears spilling over at last. She tried to make herself small against the table, but the ropes held her spread.

  “I will count to three,” Hamond said. “If you haven’t moved, I’ll order every archer here to put shafts through you so fast you won’t have time to twitch.”

  “Do it,” the witch said, pressing the blade closer to Lyra’s throat. “And see if their hands can be quicker than mine. I liked you better when you were still outside my village, commander.”

  She said his title like an insult. Hamond’s jaw tightened.

  Brynna shifted to one side, trying to draw the witch’s focus. “You’re bleeding,” she said. “You’ve overreached. It happens. Let her go. Take a horse, ride for the Shademarches. You might get another village before someone else finds you. Or you can die here, now, with your toy imp and your pot of filth. Choose.”

  The witch’s lips peeled back from her iron teeth. Fear flickered in her eyes now, thin and sharp. The wound in her shoulder pulsed, blood dripping from her fingers. The arrow shaft bobbed with each breath. Her grip on the axe had grown less steady. She knew she was losing control. The villagers swayed uncertainly, some collapsing where they stood, others looking around with the dawning confusion of dreamers waking.

  “I said back,” she snarled. “Or she dies.”

  Most of the eyes in the square fixed on her. On the axe. On Lyra. On Hamond.

  Corin saw the narrow space that left.

  No one was looking at him.

  He had slipped away from the post as soon as his hands were free, staying low behind the line of soldiers. Now, as the standoff tightened, he edged sideways along the outer curve of the circle, keeping his profile small, his movement slow. Every step felt like walking along the edge of a slate roof with no eaves. His heart hammered so hard he was sure the witch must hear it.

  He had frozen once before, in the palace corridor at Everhall, when men with knives had rushed him. Brynna had come. Lyra had broken a vase on a skull to save him. That memory sat like a stone in his gut. He had called that cowardice by its right name in the nights since and had sworn, quietly, that he would not let it own him twice.

  He reached the back of the table. From here, he could see Lyra’s face in profile, turned toward Hamond and Brynna. Her eyes were huge, pupils swallowing color. Tears streaked tracks down her cheeks, cutting through dust and dried blood. Her throat worked as she tried not to sob.

  The witch stood at the head of the table, one foot planted, axe raised, her wounded shoulder hunched. Her attention remained locked on Hamond, on the archers with their taut bowstrings. Her back was a crooked line in front of Corin.

  He was close enough now to see the coarse weave of her dress, the dried blood on the fabric, the faint pattern of scars climbing up the nape of her neck.

  He set his feet the way Skrab had drilled into him. Weight under him. Knees soft. No wasted motion.

  He breathed.

  Then he moved.

  Corin lunged forward with every ounce of strength in his legs. He threw his shoulder into the witch’s back, just below the wounded shoulder, driving forward like a battering ram. Surprise gave him more force than weight.

  The witch shrieked, stumbling. The axe flew from her hand, spinning end over end. It hit the table with its flat, bounced, and crashed to the ground beside Lyra, edge buried in the dirt.

  Lyra screamed. Brynna surged forward. Hamond’s hand snapped up.

  “Now!” he shouted.

  The archer who had wounded the witch earlier did not hesitate. His second arrow sang through the air and buried itself between the witch’s shoulders, just below the first. She jerked as if yanked by an invisible rope, arms flailing.

  Corin stumbled with her momentum, almost falling onto the table. He caught himself on the edge, palms slapping down in dwarf blood. The smell rose around him like a physical blow. He gagged, swallowed it down, and scrambled sideways out of the witch’s reach.

  She spun, eyes wild, iron teeth bared. Her gaze locked on Corin. For a moment, she looked less like a predator and more like a cornered animal.

  “You little—” she began.

  Brynna hit her.

  She drove into the witch’s side, shoulder first. The impact knocked the breath from both of them. They crashed to the ground together, Brynna rolling clear on instinct. The witch, hampered by her injuries, did not roll as well. She ended up on hands and knees, then dropped to one elbow, panting.

  The imp shrieked, a high, keening sound. It launched itself from the back of a nearby chair, wings a blur, and darted toward its mistress, claws outstretched. It looked suddenly less like a mischief-maker and more like a desperate child, trying to shield its mother.

  “Protect me!” the witch snarled. Her fingers scrabbled in the dirt, reaching for the fallen axe.

  Another archer, already watching the imp’s frantic flight, lifted his bow. He drew and loosed in one smooth motion. The arrow caught the imp mid-air, punching through its narrow chest.

  The imp’s shriek cut off in a wet, shocked sound. Its wings jerked once, twice. Then it dropped like a stone, hitting the ground in a loose, horrible sprawl, its tail coiling once and then going still.

  The witch froze. Something in her face cracked when she saw the imp lying motionless, arrow shaft protruding. For an instant, the iron teeth, the scars, the twisted skin all made her look less monstrous and more pathetically human. Then her features hardened again.

  She lurched to her feet, arrows in her shoulder and back quivering. Her movement had lost all grace; her steps were a drunken stagger. She turned and bolted toward the edge of the square, weaving through villagers and soldiers alike.

  “Take her!” Hamond roared.

  Two soldiers lunged. One caught her by the arm; she wrenched free, leaving a smear of blood on his gauntlet. Another snatched for her hair and closed on empty air. She crashed through the ring of villagers, some too dazed to catch her, others still moving under the remnants of her spell and unconsciously parting for her.

  Brynna took a step after her, then stopped. “Lyra,” she gasped. She spun back to the table, sword already rising to slash the ropes.

  “I’ve got her,” one of Hamond’s men said, jumping forward to help. Between them, they cut Lyra free. Lyra sat up with a sob, hands flying to her wrists, her ankles. Rope burns ringed both. She swung her legs over the side of the table, boots landing in the sticky mud of blood and broth. She swayed as if she might fall. Brynna’s arm was there, solid around her shoulders, pulling her away from the stench.

  “It’s over,” Brynna said into Lyra’s hair. “It’s over, little fox. I have you.”

  Lyra clung to her so hard her knuckles went white. She didn’t trust her voice enough to speak.

  Hamond, meanwhile, did not waste the opening. One of his men thrust a burning torch into his hand. The commander broke into a run, boots pounding. He followed the trail of blood and witch-prints out of the square, past the last houses of Pineglen, onto the rough ground beyond.

  The witch’s pace had faltered to a limping, desperate scramble. She stumbled over a stone, fell to one knee, pushed herself up again with a ragged cry. The weight of the arrows in her, the pain, the loss of her familiar—all of it dragged at her limbs. Her bare feet left dark smears on the path.

  Hamond closed the distance in a dozen strides. He did not call a warning. He had given her one chance. She had made her choice.

  He thrust the torch forward, jamming the burning end into the back of her dress.

  The fabric caught with horrifying eagerness. Flames licked up dry wool, then found whatever oils and unguents she had smeared on herself in her workings. Green tinged the fire almost at once, unnatural hues leaping up like tongues. The witch screamed, high and shrill, batting at the flames with her hands, only spreading them further.

  Hamond stepped back, shielding his face from the sudden heat. He watched, jaw clenched, as the woman who had enslaved a village and butchered travelers staggered a few more steps, fire crawling up her hair, across her arms. For a moment her silhouette reared against the night sky—a crooked, burning figure, ringed in lurid green. Then she collapsed, thrashing once, twice. The flames devoured her clothing and then her flesh, burning hotter than could be accounted for by simple wool and fat.

  Back in the square, a green flash pulsed across the ring of light, washing over the torches, the faces, the cauldron. The air throbbed like a plucked string. For a heartbeat, every villager froze in place.

  Then the spell broke.

  The forced smiles fell off faces as if cut away. Wide, confused eyes blinked and focused for the first time in weeks. Bowls dropped from numb fingers. A woman looked down at the stew dripping from her hand and screamed, flinging the bowl away as if it burned. A man staggered back from the cauldron, staring at the dwarf’s hacked remains and then at his own grease-slicked hands.

  “What—” he choked. “What have we—”

  Another villager, the man who had spoken to Brynna on their arrival, fell to his knees so abruptly his legs barely had time to fold. He pressed his hands to his face and sobbed, deep, tearing sounds, the kind of crying that comes from somewhere older than speech.

  All around the circle, the people of Pineglen woke into horror.

  Some fell to their knees, clutching at their hair, their clothes, weeping. Others staggered away from the cauldron to vomit into the dirt, retching until nothing remained. A woman backed away from the table, then saw the dwarf’s body on the ground and collapsed beside it, hands hovering as if to touch and not daring.

  Children, who had been lurking in doorways and behind barrels, crept forward with wide eyes, then ran to seize their parents’ hands, seeking comfort and finding shaking grips.

  Hamond returned to the square with the torch still in hand, the green-tinged flames on it now dulling back to ordinary orange. His jaw was set hard.

  “She’s done,” he said. “Whatever she was. It’s over.”

  Brynna stood with Lyra still clinging to her, Corin at their side. She looked at Hamond and let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

  For a moment, the discipline she wrapped around herself like armor loosened. She stepped forward and caught Hamond in a brief, fierce embrace, careful of his armor, not caring if the soldiers saw. He smelled of horse and sweat and smoke.

  “You took your time,” she said into his shoulder.

  “I had to ride all the way from Grimfen,” he said. His voice, usually gravelly and wry, carried a warmth that had nothing to do with the torch. “The Forgewall doesn’t move aside just because I ask.”

  He stepped back, eyes flicking over her face, taking in the bruises, the rope burns, the way her hands hovered protectively near the heirs. “You’re alive. That’s what matters.”

  Lyra released Brynna enough to look at him. “You burned her,” she said, voice small and raw.

  Hamond nodded once. “Some things don’t leave until they’re ash,” he said. “Better that way.”

  Behind them, a low wail rose from the villagers as someone finally found words to put to the tableau around them. “We did this,” a woman sobbed, staring at the cauldron. “Oh gods. We—”

  “You were under a spell,” Brynna said sharply, turning toward her. “Your hands were used. There’s blame, but not all of it belongs here. Some of it just died screaming on the hillside.”

  The woman’s shoulders shook. She nodded without seeming to understand.

  Hamond’s attention shifted back to Corin and Lyra. They stood side by side now, both streaked with grime and blood. Lyra held her arms close, as if cold had finally found room between her bones. Corin’s face had gone pale in a way that did not come from blood loss. His eyes were too bright, too clear.

  “How did you find us?” Brynna asked.

  Hamond lifted his free hand. A braid of reeds dangled between his fingers, knotted in a complex pattern.

  “Your goblin matron in Grimfen is more far-sighted than she lets on,” he said. “She sent word. Fen-tally knots on ferry poles, reeds braided in ways only people who know how to read them would notice. East at first when you left. Then north toward the Forgewall. I followed the braids. A reed tied in a figure-eight by a ford. A knot at the third tree with the split bark.” He smiled wryly. “I had to pay three different fen boatmen to translate, and one of them tried to cheat me. But I got the gist.”

  Brynna’s mouth twitched. “She said she’d leave hints,” she murmured. “I wasn’t sure if she’d bother.”

  “She likes you,” Hamond said. “Or she likes making trouble for Everhall’s new councils. Hard to tell the difference.”

  Lyra scrubbed at her face with the heel of her hand, smearing dirt. “You came all this way for us,” she said.

  Hamond looked at her as if the answer were too obvious to remark on. “Your father saved my life twice,” he said. “Once in a skirmish near Petalmarsh when I got myself pinned against a wall like a rookie, once in council when he took the weight of a bad decision so the men who’d advised him could keep their heads. He did that sort of thing often.” He shrugged. “Coming when his children needed me was a simple matter of balancing that ledger.”

  Corin swallowed. The mention of his father still scraped an open place inside him. He met Hamond’s gaze and saw no pity there, only that steady, measuring regard the commander had always had. It steadied him and unnerved him in equal measure.

  Around them, Hamond’s soldiers moved through the square, checking on fallen villagers, binding the worst cuts, nudging those who were only unconscious into safe positions. They kept the cauldron well clear, faces hard whenever they had to glance at it. One man took a spade and began to push dirt over the dwarf’s scattered remains as gently as he could, murmuring something under his breath that might have been a prayer.

  “Commander,” one of the soldiers called. “We’ve got injured, but no dead on our side. A few concussions, broken arms, that sort of thing. Villagers are worse off. Exhaustion. Some bruises from our… restraint.”

  “Nobody chose to be here,” Hamond said. “See they have water. When there’s light, they can decide what to do with the… ruins.” He did not look at the cauldron as he said it.

  He turned back to the heirs. The torch in his hand had burned low, its light guttering. Another soldier stepped forward silently and took it, quenching the flame in a bucket.

  “All right,” Hamond said quietly. “We’ve put out one fire. There are others waiting. But before we start running again, there’s something that needs doing.”

  Brynna watched him, brow furrowing. “Hamond—”

  He ignored her for the moment. He stepped forward and dropped to one knee in the churned earth of Pineglen’s square.

  Corin stared. “What—”

  Hamond bowed his head. He removed his half-helm with his free hand and let it hang at his side. His hair, cropped short for a helmet’s convenience, gleamed with sweat.

  “My king,” he said.

  The words fell into the space between them like a stone into still water.

  Corin’s first, absurd thought was that Hamond had misspoken. He looked around, as if there might be someone else in the square the commander addressed. There was only Lyra, Brynna, the villagers, the soldiers.

  Hamond raised his eyes. “Corin of Amberveil,” he said, voice steady. “Son of Aldren. By blood and by right, you are King of the Fallen Kingdom. I have failed to keep your city, but I will not fail to keep you. If you’ll have me, I offer you my sword, my riders, and what honor I have left.”

  One by one, as if the gesture had been rehearsed—which it had not—Hamond’s soldiers followed suit. Helmets came off, swords were grounded, knees bent. A ring of armored men and women knelt in the blood-streaked dirt of Pineglen, heads bowed.

  “My king,” they said, not in unison, but close.

  Lyra’s breath hitched. She looked at Corin, eyes wide and wet. Brynna stood very still. Her face did not change, but something in her shoulders shifted, some unspoken tension finding a new alignment.

  Corin’s tongue felt too big for his mouth. He had known, in his bones, that this was coming. Skrab had spoken of kingship, the goblin matron had hinted, Brynna had deferred to him in ways that went beyond simple maps and routes. He carried his father’s profile in the line of his nose, his mother’s calculation in his gaze.

  But knowing and hearing were different.

  He swallowed. His hands, still sticky with drying blood, hung at his sides. He was standing, not in a throne room with polished stone and tapestries, but in a village square that stank of spoiled stew and fear. The supposed stage at its center was a ritual circle. The table beside him was still crusted with a dwarf’s blood. Villagers wept and retched and clung to each other around him.

  This was his coronation.

  He thought of his father in the siege, blood soaking his tunic, still holding the line. Of his mother’s steady hand on a ledger, the tightness around her mouth when she spoke of rationing. Of Lyra smashing a vase over a man’s head to save him. Of Brynna in the corridor, tearing the tapestry aside and hauling them into the dark.

  He thought of the witch’s words about obedience and full bellies, of the way the villagers’ faces had been stolen and then returned to them, raw and horrified.

  Someone had to stand between people like that and people like her.

  Corin drew breath. It shook, but he steadied it partway down.

  “Stand up,” he said quietly.

  Hamond’s brows rose. “My king—”

  “Stand up,” Corin repeated, louder this time. His voice carried in a way he had not heard from himself before. “If I’m to be king, I’ll need you on your feet, not in the dirt. There’s enough of that already.”

  Hamond’s mouth twitched at the corner, the hint of a smile under the gravity. He rose. So did his soldiers, helmets tucked under arms, swords sheathed.

  Corin met their gazes one by one. Men and women who had ridden under his father’s banner, who had fought on the Marble Road and the palace steps, who had followed Hamond across the Forgewall and into a bewitched village. They looked back at him not as at a boy to be protected, but as at someone whose word would shape where they went next.

  The weight of it settled on his shoulders like a cloak. It was far heavier than his satchel.

  He did not shrug it off.

  Behind him, Brynna stood close enough that he could feel her presence like a wall at his back. To his right, Lyra’s hand brushed his, small and sticky. Around them, Pineglen’s villagers wept in their broken square, freed from one nightmare and stumbling into the next day’s uncertain light.

  Corin lifted his head and looked out over them all—the soldiers, the villagers, the scorched stones of the witch’s circle.

  The Crownless Lands waited, and he, whether he had chosen it or not, waited back.

  Episode 23 continues in Episode 29.