Voices murmured beyond the door, close enough that Lain could hear them clearly.

  Poe’s voice was practical. “Here.”

  Another voice answered, quieter, edged with a tired humor that made Lain’s stomach drop.

  “Here, yes,” Mallow muttered. “But do I look alright?”

  “You look like you,” Harka said.

  “That’s the problem,” Mallow replied immediately. “Gods. I smell like the road. I can’t meet her when I smell like this. Poe – do you have peppermint?”

  Poe paused. “Peppermint?”

  “Yes,” Mallow snapped, then softened as if he remembered he was whispering outside the door. “Anything that might convince her I’m not a walking stable?”

  Harka said, deadpan, “We do not have peppermint.”

  Malow exhaled. Lain bit back on a grin. “Of course you don’t,” Mallow said. “Of course the one time I need a sweet leaf the universe becomes austere.”

  Harka’s tone shifted, gentler underneath the irritation. “She’s waiting for you.”

  Mallow’s voice came back rough. “Alright. Fine. Push me in, then. If I stand here any longer I’m going to start thinking I’d rather die.”

  Poe’s voice came clipped. “Go.”

  The latch clicked.

  Lain stood so quickly the chair creaked. Her hands rose to her chest as if to hold her ribs together.

  The door opened.

  Mallow stepped inside.

  He paused there in the doorway, wearing the pilgrim’s cloak, though it was stained and rather filthy now. He had a long walking stick whose bark had been peeled with a knife. His hair was a mess, his face hollowed by travel. His eyes found hers, and held.

  For a breath, neither of them moved.

  They just stood, eye to eye, in a small borrowed room above a seaside inn, seeing each other for the first time since the Spire fell.

  Mallow’s mouth parted. His throat worked. His gaze dropped for a fraction of a second at the shape of her ears, the line of her jaw, the way her hands gripped her cloak. Then it returned to her eyes with a fierce and helpless focus.

  “Mallow, I –”

  He crossed the room in two limping steps and took her into his arms.

  The force of it stole her breath. He held her like he’d been carrying the shape of her absence in his chest and needed her weight to prove it had been real. His cloak smelled like road dust and smoke and salt and beneath that, there was still the familiar scent of him, the one her body had catalogued as safety long before she’d had words for it.

  Mallow bowed his head and buried his face in her hair, and his grip tightened as if he could anchor her to the world by sheer stubbornness.

  “Until I saw you standing here,” he murmured, his voice scraped with emotion, “some part of me still thought I’d have to die again to find you.”

  Lain’s arms went around him, hands fisting the filthy cloak. She breathed him in, and felt the new edges to him – the strain in his shoulders, the weight that hadn’t been there before, the way his body held itself like it expected the world to snatch her away if he loosened his hold.

  “I knew you were alive,” she whispered into his chest. “Every future I imagined knew you would come back to me, if I held on.”

  Mallow made a sound low in his throat, that might have been laughter if it hadn’t been so close to breaking.

  “Saint’s sake,” Mallow whispered. “You’re hard to find.”

  His hand slid to the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair with careful familiarity.

  They stayed that way for a handful of breaths, swaying softly, two people remembering how to be in a room together without any impending disaster at their feet.

  When they finally pulled apart, they did it reluctantly. Mallow’s hands stayed on her arms, thumbs braced near her elbows as if he needed a reason to keep touching her. Lain wiped at her cheeks with the back of her wrist and realized her heart was racing.

  Mallow’s mouth twitched, the beginning of that rough humor fighting its way through.

  “You’re thinking,” he said.

  Lain huffed a little laugh. “Always.”

  “Dangerous habit, that.”

  His gaze dropped to the way her fingers gripped her cloak at her throat, knuckles pale. Then it rose again, and whatever he saw there made his expression tighten.

  “Poe said you were here,” he said, quieter now. “I didn’t believe it until he dragged me right to the door.”

  Lain’s throat worked. She glanced to the doorway where Poe and Harka stood, and toward the side of the room where Tanel waited with stillness. Then she looked back at Mallow, eyes landing on the cloak, the peeled walking stick.

  “What,” she asked softly, “possessed you to walk around letting people call you a saint?”

  Mallow’s face pinched. “You know how people don’t listen to me.”

  “So it’s true?” she asked. “They are calling you a saint?”

  “Aye. Scaleborn, as well. I’m surprised word hasn’t reached you out here of the darkly handsome healer anointed in scales.”

  “Saint Mallow, selected by the Serpent itself,” she mused. “Terrible choice, really.”

  The words came out with the faintest edge of her old self, and Mallow stared at her for half a beat, then the twitch in his mouth brought a laugh that moved relief through his face.

  “Oh,” he said. “There you are.”

  Lain’s eyes stung again.

  Mallow lifted one hand as if he meant to touch her cheek, stopped himself, and instead let his fingers hover near her jaw.

  “I didn’t choose it,” he said. “I tried to say no. But people see what they want to see. They want a saint like they want a bell. They want someone to tell them the world isn’t falling apart.”

  He swallowed, his gaze holding hers.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “And they started asking about you,” he said. “So I… I kept walking.”

  Lain’s breath caught. “You were looking for me?”

  Mallow’s eyes stayed on hers. “I’ve been looking. Everywhere. Finding you was the one gift I asked of the Serpent of Vaelun.”

  Lain blinked. “What? What do you mean?”

  He chuckled. “It’s a long story. I promise I’ll tell it all.”

  He glanced down at her hands. When he looked up again, his voice gentled. “But you come first, Little Hooves.”

  Her heart stuttered at the name.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked. There was no humor in it now. “What did he do?”

  The question opened a whole dark room inside her. Lain swallowed hard, and the part of her that wanted to be unbroken in front of Mallow tried to stand upright again.

  But Mallow was right there, close enough to catch her if she fell, and she was so tired of holding herself alone.

  “I don’t know where to start,” she whispered.

  Mallow’s hands tightened at her arms, to remind her he was still there.

  “Start with breathing,” he said. “And then you tell me what you can.”

  She nodded, then glanced at the others, and looked away sheepishly. Mallow’s eyes moved over them all in quick inventory, then came back to Lain as if she were the only thing that mattered.

  “Alright,” he said, voice rough. “I appreciate you getting me here, but now I need a door between us and the rest of the world. Everyone out, Saint’s orders.”

  Harka and Poe left without argument.

  Tanel didn’t move at first. He watched Lain, eyes steady, waiting for her choice.

  Lain met his gaze, and something in her eased. “Go,” she said softly.

  Tanel’s expression shifted with complicated tenderness. He nodded, then came close enough to touch her shoulder in passing, a brief contact that said I’m here. Then he left, pulling the door shut behind him.

  The room went quiet.

  Mallow stood very still for a moment, as if he needed to confirm they were truly alone. Then his shoulders dropped a fraction.

  Lain looked down. “I saw you,” she managed. “In the market.”

  Mallow sighed. “I know.”

  “You knew?”

  “I felt it,” he said, his eyes hardening with anger that wasn’t aimed at her. “Or I felt something. Like the world shifted and I missed the reason by a hair.”

  Lain swallowed. “I couldn’t –”

  “I know,” he repeated, gentler now. “I know.”

  He took a step closer, and gave her every chance to move away. When she didn’t, he reached for her hands and took them, palms to palms, like they were making an agreement.

  “Tell me,” he said quietly. “Start where it hurts most. I’ll help you carry it.”

  Lain tried to find a place to start that would not split her open.

  Mallow held her hands, and waited.

  “I have to tell you one thing first,” she whispered.

  “Alright.”

  Lain stared at their joined hands, then at his face, and saw the fear he tried to hide from her.

  “I’m with child.”

  For a heartbeat Mallow didn’t react at all, his brow furrowing as if he hadn’t understood.

  Then his breath left him, and his face cracked into an expression Lain had not seen since before the spire: Wonder, then grief, then a fierce joy that looked almost like pain.

  “With child,” he repeated, and the way he said it turned it into a naming, or a blessing.

  Lain nodded.

  Mallow’s thumbs slid over her knuckles, slow strokes that steadied his own hands as much as hers. His mouth opened and shut again, failing to find a line that could carry what he felt.

  “Saints preserve me,” he said at last. “A wee life. Of course there is. Of course you did that.”

  Lain forced herself into the next truth before her courage could melt.

  “I don’t know whose,” she said.

  Mallow blinked. His grip did not loosen. His gaze stayed on hers, as if he could keep her anchored by refusing to look away.

  “Of course you do,” he said.

  Lain’s breath caught. “Mallow –”

  “It’s your child,” he said. “You’re the mother. That makes it your baby, far as I’m familiar with the subject.”

  Her eyes stung, and she laughed, and she reached up to wipe her own face, but Mallow beat her to it. He laughed with her, and brushed the tears from her cheek.

  “I leave you alone for – what, a handful of weeks? – and you’ve gone and made a whole person. Well. You always did have ambition.”

  “Saints, I’ve been carrying that like it… like it was a guilty verdict,” she said.

  Mallow shook his head. “Guilty of what? Ah, yes, the terrible sin of creation.” One side of her mouth tugged up and he took it as encouragement. “Anyway, you’re far too pretty to be guilty of anything, even your own sins. I know priests who’d bury their idols to absolve you, and a wise judge would pardon you in an instant if she saw those little spots on your ears.”

  “Spots?” Lain asked. “What do spots have to do with my guilt?”

  “Well, it just shows you’re utterly guileless,” he said. “Like a little fawn. Free of sin.”

  Lain laughed aloud. “You’re insufferable.”

  “Aye, and stubborn, and hard to kill.”

  Lain’s mouth trembled. She hated how quickly tears came. She hated how little control she had over it. The tears kept coming anyway.

  “Tell me the rest,” he said, and his voice steadied into the tone he used when he needed her to put one foot in front of the other. “Tell me what happened after the Spire. Tell me where you went.”

  Lain looked down at their hands. The room had stopped tilting. Her stomach had stopped bracing. Even the ache in her chest had shifted, loosening at the edges.

  “I don’t think I can,” she said. “Not yet.”

  “Alright,” he said quietly. “Then we won’t.”

  He shifted his grip so he could hold both of her hands in one of his, freeing the other to catch her chin with two fingers and tip her face up toward his.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  Lain did.

  Mallow’s expression had gone serious. “You’ve been alone with this. But I’m here now. You can take a breath.”

  Lain tried. But her breath shuddered. “I keep thinking I ought to be better at it,” she admitted. “Talking. Being… brave.”

  Mallow’s mouth twitched. “You’re plenty brave. But if you were better at the rest, I’d be out of a job.” Mallow leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers, a brief contact, close enough to make her vision narrow to him. “You don’t have to tell me tonight,” he said.

  Lain blinked. “I don’t?”

  “No,” Mallow replied. “You can. But you don’t have to. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not a priest, or a council. I’m not here to collect a confession. I’m only here to collect the world’s most precious Kelthi.”

  She laughed.

  “Come now, Lain, you can’t laugh at that,” he said. “That wasn’t even a joke!”

  “I can laugh at anything I want to.”

  “Right,” he said. “Course you can. You Sisters always had a strange sense of humor. Now. Tea?”

  Lain nodded. “Tea,” she echoed.

  “Good. Tea. And you don’t have to speak a word, but I’ll tell you everything that happened to me, until my face is blue, if you like.”

  “I would like that.” Lain pressed her forehead into his chest. His cloak scratched her face. He took a deep breath, and put his arms around her, and for the first time in memory, she felt that the fear no longer had the whole of her.

  “Say my name,” she said softly.

  His grip tightened for all of a moment. She could feel him smiling against her hair. His voice fell to a whisper, and spoke her name into being once more, and it felt to her like coming back to what she was after so many days of being lost.

  “Lhainara.”