The night was still wrong when they reached the cottage. It was too quiet, the air taut and still.

  Inside the cottage, the hearth stood bck, the ashes untouched since morning. Ewan was clear there to be no fires, not even smoke, and though the command scraped against Ny's instincts, she wouldn't risk the soldiers' return.

  She barred the door, covered the windows and then reached for the air. A faint tremor of light coiled between her fingers, fiments of pale silver that shimmered like webs in frost. With slow, practiced movements, she drew symbols in the air: lines of warding and protection. Each sigil hung briefly before sinking into the wood and vanishing, leaving the faint scent of ozone and rosemary behind.

  "There," Ny said, trying a reassuring smile, "As locked as an Imperial vault."

  Alva shuffled on her feet, unsure what to do, watching every motion. "My stomach hurts..."

  "Let's prepare some dinner, hm?"

  They lit three candles, one on the table, one near the bed, one by the water basin, and set the kettle over a small metal trivet above an ember bowl. Fire magic had never been her strength, but she nudged the embers with a few shaky sparks until they glowed hot enough to heat her pot. No fmes licked, only a faint red glow; it would be enough to heat their dinner without sending smoke through the chimney.

  "It's getting colder," Ny said, "Fetch the extra bnkets would you?"

  Alva nodded, eager to do something to ease the eeriness of the home. She pulled them down from the storage compartment, shaking them out and draping them over their bedding.

  Ny made herself busy cutting bread and thin slices of cheese, stirring the warming pot of leftover soup from the night before. Ny swallowed down the lump in her throat. Just hours ago they had shared their home with Valtor - who said he'd be back by morning.

  Her stomach clenched. He wouldn't have just...left. Would he? Ny had been confident - more than confident - in Valtor's affections. A sickening sinking feeling enveloped her. Did the Princes have something do with his disappearance?

  Ny stirred the soup slowly. She inhaled deeply, feeling a deep rumble within her stomach reminding her that she hadn't eaten anything today but her stomach twisted in pain that wasn't quite hunger.

  The broth was a mix of soft carrots, potato, and spinach, thickened with flour and spices. The scent of warmth filled the cottage, warm and faintly sweet, cutting through the damp that still clung to the walls.

  Alva sat at the table, chin in her hands, watching the steam twist in the air.

  "That smells good."

  "It just needs a little salt," Ny murmured, tasting the spoon. "And then it's done."

  She dled it into two bowls, the color rich and golden in the mplight. Outside, the Hollow slept uneasily, no fires, no light, but here, the small warmth of the ember bowl made it feel as if the world hadn't quite gone dark.

  They ate in quiet, the clink of their spoons the only sound between them.

  After dinner, there wasn't much else to do but start getting ready for bed.

  Alva dressed in warm sleeping clothes and combed her hair. Ny tucked her into her small bed, used the lights to calm her racing mind and pulled the furs up to her chin. "There. Snug as you can be."

  But despite the glowing sparkling stars shimmering above her, Alva didn't smile. Instead her expression was distant, as if thinking too hard. "Will Maris be all right?"

  "She will," Ny said automatically, though her gaze drifted toward the window. "But I still have to get the mushrooms."

  "In the forest?" Alva's eyes widened.

  Ny didn't want to worry her, but needed to be honest. "Yes. So you must stay here. The wards will keep even the mosquitos away."

  Beyond the shutter, the light had changed, not darker, but silvered, as though the moon itself leaned close.

  A full moon.

  And with it, the only night the mushrooms would bloom.

  Maris's baby was due within days, and the st batch had dried too quickly to keep their strength. If Ny missed the moon, she'd have nothing to ease the pain, nothing to keep the blood from running too fast.

  She sat beside Alva until the girl's breathing slowed, her hand resting lightly on her shoulder. The warmth lingered, pulsing faintly through the quilt.

  Ny watched the candlelight flicker over the girl's face, then turned to the door. The wards hummed faintly, safe and sealed. The world outside waited, cold, watchful, and necessary.

  Her eyes found the basket by the wall.

  Ny lingered at the door, fingers resting on the tch. The stillness outside pressed against the walls, too deep, too absolute. Even the air felt watchful.

  She shouldn't go. Every instinct told her to wait until morning, to listen, for once, to Ewan's warnings, to the fear that kept the shutters barred and the fires cold. But her duty tugged at her like a thread around her ribs, steady and unrelenting.

  Maris didn't have days left to wait. The mushrooms wouldn't either.

  Her hand tightened. The sound of her heartbeat filled her ears. She gnced once toward the bed where Alva slept, small and safe beneath the quilt, and whispered, "Stay asleep, love."

  Then, quiet as breath, she lifted the tch.

  The door gave way to a rush of cold that stung her face and filled her lungs. Snow whispered underfoot as she stepped out, every movement deliberate, every sound too loud.

  Bundled in her cloak, Ny stepped into the moonlit night. The air was crisp, patches of snow glowing silver between dirt and stone. Anya huffed softly as Ny fastened the sled to her harness, loyal, stubborn Anya, stamping her hooves impatiently, before the two set off into the stillness of the forest.

  Ny kept Anya to a careful pace, letting the mare's hooves find their own rhythm across the crusted snow. Each step broke the silence with a crisp, deliberate crunch that felt too loud, too exposed. The air stung her cheeks, the kind of cold that bit straight through wool and found the bone beneath.

  Her breath clouded before her, fading like smoke in the moonlight. The trees pressed close on either side, tall, skeletal things with frost along their branches, bowing under the weight of old snow. Somewhere far off, ice cracked like a gunshot, and Anya flicked her ears, snorting once.

  "Easy," Ny murmured, gloved hand brushing the mare's neck. "Almost there."

  She tried not to think about how far she'd come from the safety of the cottage. How Ewan's voice had carried such fear when he'd said no one goes out after dark. Now being out in the open, it felt like a warning she'd ridden straight through.

  The air here had a stillness that wasn't natural. It was too dense, as if the forest itself were listening. Every time the wind shifted, her heart clenched, waiting for the sound of movement that never came.

  But then, ahead, the path began to lighten. Between the trees, she caught a faint silver glow pooling on the snow. The clearing. Relief loosened the knot in her chest.

  "See?" she whispered to herself, more for courage than sense. "In and out. Quick as a breath."

  Anya's hooves crunched onward, carrying them into the pale light.

  Frost glittered on the bark like a thousand small eyes watching her pass. Ny's fingers tightened on the reins. Every shadow felt alive, yet nothing moved. Only the forest's slow, patient breathing.

  When the path widened, the ground began to glow faintly, a scatter of moonlight caught on silver caps. The clearing unfolded ahead, familiar and eerily untouched, its snow brushed with the pale shimmer of blooming mushrooms.

  She slid from the saddle, boots sinking with a muffled sigh into the drift. "Stay," she whispered, and Anya obeyed, head low, tail flicking in quiet irritation.

  The air smelled sharp and damp, full of cold soil and growing things. Kneeling, Ny brushed snow from a cluster, careful not to disturb the delicate stems. Her knife made soft, wet sounds as she cut each one free, the rhythm steadying her pulse.

  One by one she filled the twine bags, the mushrooms faintly luminous in her hands. The stillness pressed close again, thick and waiting. She told herself it was only the wind changing, only her imagination counting heartbeats too loudly.

  She shifted forward to reach a patch further ahead, rger bulbs swelling through the frost. "Can't leave you behind, can I?" she murmured, voice barely a ghost of sound.

  Then something shifted at the edge of her vision, snow colpsing inward, the shape beneath it uneven, heavy, wrong.

  Her knife paused midair. The forest went silent.

  Not wind. Not an animal.

  Something fallen.

  Her breath caught, a cloud of silver in the dark and she slowly rose into an upright position. "Please," her breath fogged in the air as she stared at it, trying to make it out with her eyes, "please let it be a log."

  Her breath came fast and white in the cold, rising and fading as she squinted through the pale gloom. The shape didn't move, just a dark mound beneath the snow, uneven, wrong. She blinked hard, heart thudding in her throat.

  Then the moon slipped from behind a cloud, and she saw it. The red.

  Blood - thin, bck in the light - spread in a faint halo around the drift. And beneath it, half-buried in ice, was a man.

  "Oh gods..." The words slipped out as a shudder, fogging in front of her face.

  Every instinct screamed go back. She could pretend she hadn't seen, that it was just the shadow of a tree, that no one would ever know. But her feet wouldn't move.

  Ny swallowed hard and scanned the trees. Nothing stirred.

  She stooped, fumbling for a fallen branch, half-frozen, brittle and crept forward, each step a whisper against the crusted snow. Her pulse was a drumbeat in her ears. When she was close enough to see the dark spill of his hair against the white, she stopped and reached out, the stick trembling in her grip.

  "Please be dead," she muttered under her breath, though she wasn't sure which answer she feared more.

  The tip of the branch brushed his shoulder. The fabric beneath was stiff, frozen with blood. No response. She prodded again, a little harder this time, and the man's arm shifted, heavy, lifeless, but not entirely still.

  Ny flinched back, breath catching. Divines preserve me, she thought, gripping the stick tighter. She closed her eyes and let a bloom of light form into a sphere above her, illuminating the area. Then, forcing herself to move, she crouched low beside him. The healer in her had already taken over. Her hand moved to his face, sweeping away a crust of ice. For a moment, her heart stopped. A man's features emerged - sharp, still, streaked red where a gash carved near his eye.

  Not Valtor.

  Relief hit her so sharply it made her dizzy, then, just as quickly, something heavier settled in its pce. Fear. Responsibility. The grim knowledge that whoever this was, she couldn't walk away now.

  The body y in bckened armor, the metal dulled by frost and half-veiled in snow. An insignia showed through where her glove brushed the ice, a fragment of silver, a sunburst, or maybe a serpent.

  Ny's stomach turned. That mark didn't belong here.

  Her mind flicked through every whispered tale she'd ever heard in the tavern, the ones Ewan always cut short with a gre. Royal crest. Military. The kind of man who came with orders written in blood.

  She took an instinctive step back, pulse hammering. A guard? One of the Prince's own?

  The man was no vilger. That much was clear even before she saw his face.

  He wasn't old, but the years had left their mark and a certain gravity in his features, the shadow of exhaustion beneath closed eyes. His skin was pale as moonlight, lips edged with blue, shes dark against the faint stubble along his jaw. There was a strange serenity to him, as if he'd fallen asleep mid-battle and simply never woken.

  Ny's fingers shook as she touched his throat. For a breathless second there was nothing - and then, beneath her fingertips, the faintest flutter. Alive. Barely.

  Her gaze swept the snow around him, searching for steel, for danger. If he woke suddenly, confused or armed.

  Her hand brushed metal.

  She pulled it free: a sword, long and finely wrought, its weight out of pce in a common soldier's hand. The scabbard gleamed with bck and silver in the moonlight. She turned it, easing the bde an inch from its sheath.

  Letters glimmered faintly along the steel - old script, regal and deliberate. And above the guard, the mark she knew too well: twin serpents beneath a rising sun.

  The sword dropped from her hands like it burned her and struck the snow with a dull thud.

  Not a guard. Not a common soldier.

  The heir himself y bleeding at her feet.

  She could walk away. The snow would cover him soon enough, and no one would ever know she'd found him. A fitting end, perhaps - the realm's cruelty repaid in silence.

  Her fingers tightened around the handle of her basket as she turned and hurried toward Anya, each step faster than the st. She set her foot in the stirrup, ready to swing up, to leave him to the cold and the gods.

  But she hesitated.

  The sight of him - still, broken, human - rooted her where she stood. The healer's vow pressed against her chest like a hand she couldn't ignore.

  A growl tore from her throat before reason could stop it. A half curse, half surrender. Ny swung down from the saddle and turned back toward the fallen man.

  She threw down her basket and trudged through the snow, the cold biting through her boots as she hauled the sled closer. The runners hissed against the ice, leaving a sharp groove that glittered under the moonlight.

  "Divines, grant me your strength," she muttered, crouching beside him. Up close he seemed impossibly heavy, solid with muscle and armor both. She wedged her arms beneath his shoulders, heaving with all the strength she had. Her boots slid, snow caving beneath her heels, but she didn't stop. Inch by inch, she pulled him over, the dead weight dragging at her spine until he finally thudded onto the sled.

  Her breath came in ragged bursts, steam rising from her lips. She covered him with the thick furs she'd brought for the mushrooms, tucking them around his shoulders, his hands, anything that still looked too pale. The sword she wrapped separately in a strip of linen, tying it down so it wouldn't rattle or gleam.

  For a moment she just stood there, chest heaving, staring down at what she'd done. The trees loomed close and silent, their shadows long as bdes.

  "Fool," she whispered to herself. Then louder, to Anya, "Come on, girl. Easy now."

  The mare tossed her head but obeyed for once, hooves crunching through the snow as the sled began to move. The weight of the man dragged heavily behind them, leaving a long, uneven trail that the falling frost would soon erase