Lark hadn’t expected the night to be so quiet this far north.

  The wind had teeth, dry and brittle, stirring dust and pebbles off the worn road. His breath fogged faintly in the chill, and Banjo’s hooves clipped along with lazy unevenness, ears twitching at every branch that groaned in the dusk.

  It had been a full day since he’d left Kelor’s Valley behind—its stone walls, its guarded gates, and the lie-heavy air of military control. Now the roads sloped into lower lands, where taverns and old trade posts were scattered like dropped coins. The kind of places where cults and uncivil folk came to spill secrets into tankards and nobody batted an eye.

  Which is why the flickering torchlight and drunken music spilling out of the crooked tavern ahead set every nerve in Lark’s body on edge.

  He tugged Banjo’s reins, stopping just shy of the wagon wheel ruts that marked a supply caravan’s resting point. A single cart—large, well-made, with iron-rimmed wheels—sat parked off the road, hitched to a team of four weary horses. Their heads hung low with sweat-matted manes. The scent of ale, sweat, and damp hay wafted faintly through the breeze.

  Lark slid off Banjo’s back and approached quietly, boots making no sound across the flattened grass. He stayed low, creeping alongside the edge of the wagon, trying not to let the tavern’s yellow windows catch his silhouette.

  Her deep bay coat was dulled with road dust, a new white scar curling around her flank. She stood at the front of the team, head bowed, but her ears twitched the moment he was near. Her great eyes—dark, proud, furious—lifted to him. Recognition flared like a spark in a drought.

  “Gus,” he whispered, throat tightening.

  She didn’t nicker, didn’t stomp. She just stared. Still. Waiting. Lark stepped around the front of the cart, laid an eager hand on her sloped muzzle. Her skin twitched beneath his fingers like a storm-wary hound, but she didn’t pull away.

  “Gods,” he muttered, “You look like shit, girl…You miss me?”

  There was no time for much sentiment. He scaled the cart in a crouch, searching for anything he could barter with. Near the driver’s bench sat an oiled pouch, heavy and jingling with coin next to a short axe. Lark hesitated only briefly before snatching the coin and slipping it into his coat.

  “Consider it overdue interest,” he whispered.

  He moved to the harness, fingers nimble, breath shallow. Gus was suited in a tangle of tack and rope that looked thrown together by impatient hands. He’d just gotten one of the lead lines unbuckled when—CRASH.

  The tavern door slammed open behind him, spilling golden light and slurred laughter into the night. A man staggered out, red-faced and wobbling, his coat slipping from one shoulder. He squinted into the dark, then bellowed:

  “Hey! Hey! That’s—that’s my horse!”

  Lark froze.

  The man stumbled forward, feet dragging like broken wheels. “Oi! You little thief—get your hands off her! She’s mine—paid good coin for ‘er!”

  “She was sold illegally!” Lark shot back, hands still on the harness. “I don’t want any trouble—”

  The man didn’t listen. His bloodshot eyes bulged wide, and he reached up into the driver’s seat, rummaging with angry, muttering curses. Lark couldn’t see what he was grabbing—but the clink of iron said enough.

  Something ugly in Lark snapped.

  “Don’t—just—don’t.” He vaulted forward before he could think, grabbed the man’s collar, and slammed a fist into his jaw.

  Pain screeched up his knuckles like fire.

  “Agh—shit!” he yelped, immediately doubling over and shaking out his hand. “Gods, why is your face made of rock?!”

  The man slumped into the dirt with a wet grunt.

  Lark stood over him, cradling his own hand and panting. “I hate this part,” he hissed, then scurried back to Gus. “Alright, princess, let’s get you out of here before I have to punch another brick in the dark.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  He unbuckled the last of the reins. Gus stepped free with a grunt, flaring her nostrils as if she’d been waiting for this moment the entire four months she’d been gone. Lark grabbed her bridle and led her off into the brush, whistling sharply for Banjo—who, bless him, was still exactly where Lark had left him, head lowered in flimsy rest.

  “Banjo,” Lark clicked his tongue, “Come on.”

  The mule blinked once, then trotted after them with lazy obedience.

  They didn’t stop moving until the tavern was a distant smudge behind them and the torchlight had faded from view.

  The road east curved into low hills, shadowed by the first fingers of pine and wild thorn. Gus’s hooves struck solid ground with rhythm, her breath steady and warm beside him. She didn’t limp. She didn’t stagger. Whatever had been taken from her, she still had her strength.

  Lark reached out and touched her again—her shoulder, her neck, her mane. He swallowed hard.

  “Good girl,” he murmured. “Knew you had some fight still in you.”

  Banjo brayed softly from behind, tired and curious. Gus pinned her ears, and chuckled—breathless. “Yeah, yeah, you too.”

  And with the stolen coin clinking in his pocket and the stars wheeling overhead like cold eyes, he led his horses toward the Velmorien border—toward war, toward the truth Mara sent him to deliver. and whatever strange fate lay waiting just beyond the line.

  The Velmorien city gates opened for Lark like the yawning jaws of a great beast—grand, ancient, and teeming with so much movement it nearly drowned out his thoughts. It was a city of borderlines: land and sea, wealth and desperation, war and retreat. By the time he made it there, his boots were stained in dust, his coat clung to his back with sweat, and Banjo had chewed the same length of rope into a frayed, unusable mess.

  Gus walked beside him in calm contrast, every inch the war-hardened mare she’d always been. Lighter now, ribs visible under her summer coat, but her ears perked at the smell of brine and bread. Her gait was steady, deliberate, and just a little indignant—as if to say, You took your sweet time, bard.

  Lark couldn’t argue with that.

  He brought Banjo to a small homestead on the edge of the harbor district, where an old friend of a friend—“Call me Auntie Marn,” she’d said—still kept goats and grudges on her crooked patch of land. After enough coin and a promise to write, Banjo was given a lopsided stall and a patch of hay. Gus, meanwhile, was arranged with the dockmaster for inclusion in the horse shipment manifest—a two-day voyage across the strait to the eastern continent. Nothing too grueling, and Lark, though uneasy, trusted her legs to handle the waves better than most of the people he’d seen board.

  He’d stayed close to the dock until the last harness was fastened, the last crate locked. He touched Gus’s brow and muttered something half-heartedly poetic before boarding the passenger ship with his pack and a mind that wouldn’t sit still.

  By sundown, the ship was deep in the horizon’s cradle, rocking through waves and the briny weight of the world.

  Lark stood near the railing, arms braced as he leaned over the sea, eyes scanning water that never seemed to end. The salt bit into his throat, but it was a familiar sting, one he knew better now. Around him, travelers filled the deck—soldiers in half-armor trying to look casual, families clinging to thin wool blankets and thinner hopes, a wide-eyed child being taught how to tie a sailor’s knot with a rope twice her size.

  He made small talk here and there—a mother heading east to find her brother, a tradesman looking for work, a man who claimed to have once kissed a goddess and lived to tell about it.

  Lark had brushed it off with a scoff, rolling his eyes as out of the corner of his vision, he saw a woman—one of the shipmates, gruff, broad-shouldered and half orc—grabbing a girl by the arm. Not a child, not yet a woman. The girl stumbled, her shoulder wrenching back as the woman snapped something about potatoes—how she’d forgotten to buy them before they left the city, how stupid she was.

  Lark straightened.

  The girl had wild, medium-length black hair, dense and tangled from wind. Her left cheek was a mess of scar tissue, twisting from her jaw up toward the hollow of her eye, and her eyes—

  One of each held a different color. Lark beamed with curiosity, never seeing such a thing. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  His hand tightened on the railing instead, nails pressing into the old wood. He took a breath through his nose. Not now. Don’t get involved. You’re being watched. You need to stay clean. Azalea said—

  He glanced down, reminding himself of the times they were in. Not everything was sunshine and rainbows. Here, people were harsh, families were crammed in and complaining, men were overworked. Everyone was trying to survive.

  The shipmate let go, pushing the girl away with a muttered curse. The girl stumbled toward the storage crates and crouched down, rubbing her wrist with a stoic expression far too old for her age.

  Lark exhaled. He turned away and made for the lower decks, letting the shadows swallow him. He had to be patient, just a few more days. Then he could ask questions.

  He hoped Gus was handling the waves better than he was.

  The ship creaked like an old man in the fog. Salt hung thick in the air, clinging to every surface and soaking into Lark’s coat, his boots, the lining of his throat. The day was long, the night longer, filled with the distant thrum of waves and the occasional startled yell from the upper deck. He slept in a narrow bunk, the wall just inches from his nose, and tried to convince his body that the constant sway of the sea wasn’t something to be fought.

  He shared the space with five others, a mishmash of the desperate and the unfortunate. The worst among them, by far, was the man in the topmost bunk—middle-aged, pale as lard, with greasy hair and a trembling hand that never stopped twitching. He introduced himself on the first day, voice strained between dry heaves.

  “J—Joppe,” he gasped, clutching the edge of the bunk. “Travel—don’t sit right with me.”

  That was the last coherent sentence Lark heard from him.

  Joppe had spent nearly every hour of the voyage gagging, retching, or groaning in the pitch-dark hours. Sometimes, he mumbled strange things between breaths—nonsense about cows, his sister, a bakery that might have been real. The others had learned quickly to tune it out.

  By the middle of the night, no one even looked up when he started gagging. A sad, wheezing sound. As expected as the tide.

  Lark lay back on his cot, one hand behind his head, trying to imagine the smell of pine or dry earth instead of the heavy reek of bile and fish oil that clung to everything below deck. He hadn’t removed his coat in hours. The moment he did, he knew he’d feel the damp creep of sweat and seawater soaked through the linen underneath. It was easier to stay armored. Even now.

  Above him, one of the twin boys was muttering in his sleep. Something about a cat. Lark smirked faintly, eyes closed.

  On deck, there was more motion, more space—but less peace. Every other hour someone was tripping over the ropes or being shouted at by a sailor with a voice like gravel. They passed the time quietly, mostly. Strangers exchanging nods, sharing tins of dried food without names, while others slept.

  Lark leaned against the railing the second day, letting the wind numb the parts of him that hadn’t thawed in weeks. He watched the clouds roll, the waves press in slow and endless rhythm. Sometimes, a gull would cry above and vanish over the horizon. Sometimes, it was a speck on the water, a shadow beneath the surface that made him straighten and stare. But nothing ever rose.

  His bunk, damp and claustrophobic, awaited him again that night last. Joppe was already at it, coughing weakly into a scrap of linen. The twins whispered. Someone else shuffled in their sleep.