Morning came soft and silver, the Peaks veiled in mist as though the mountains had drawn curtains around themselves. The glade was still, dew clinging to every blade of grass, the fire a faint bed of embers pulsing in the half-light.
Maude stirred first, blinking against the pale dawn. Her ward shimmered faintly along the perimeter. She pressed her palm against the earth, testing. The weave held. No unraveling, no fractures. Pride sparked in her chest.
She rose stiffly, pulling her coat around her shoulders, and only then realized how close Wesley was. Sometime in the night, they must have drifted together, bodies hunting warmth the way roots seek water. His shoulder brushed hers, his breath a slow fog in the cold air. His face, slack in sleep, looked nothing like the man who needled her in waking hours with endless teasing. His cheeks were flushed red from the chill, his nose pink at the tip, his ash-blond hair a tousled snarl that refused to be tamed. She found herself caught by the stillness of him—the softened mouth, the faint crease at the corner of his eye that hinted at laughter even in rest.
Her gaze lingered a moment longer before she pushed to her feet, pulling her coat close as she turned toward the waiting work.
The horses stood at the edge of the clearing, their breaths steaming white in the cold. Pickles flicked his ears as she approached, nuzzling her hand with a familiarity that made her smile. She busied herself with the practical: checking hooves, rubbing down damp coats, doling out oats from the leather pouch tied to her saddlebag. Wesley’s gelding muscled in for his share, snorting against her palm. Maude shoved his nose back, muttering, “Greedy brute,” even as she measured out an extra handful for him too.
By the time she returned, Wesley was crouched by the fire, coaxing flame from ash. A pan already sat warming, strips of dried meat laid across it. “Breakfast,” he said without looking up.
Maude sank onto her haunches beside him, pulling a small cloth bundle from her satchel. She unwrapped it slowly, revealing a handful of dried figs, their skins wrinkled and dusky, seeds glinting faintly in the firelight. She’d tucked them away more out of habit than intent—a forager’s instinct to hoard small comforts when she found them—and promptly forgotten until now.
She held one out wordlessly.
Wesley glanced over, brow lifting, then took it without hesitation. With a quick twist of his thumb, he split the skin, revealing sticky, seedy flesh. He smeared the dark sweetness over a flatbread warming on the fire, then added a few thin slices of cured meat, pressing them down until the fat began to melt into the heat.
The scent rose immediately—smoke and salt, sweetness and spice—curling through the air until Maude’s stomach tightened in response.
He broke the flatbread in half and held one piece out to her.
She didn’t thank him, just tore a bite with her teeth. The tang of fig hit first, rich and honeyed, followed by the salt of the meat and the soft warmth of the bread. A sound slipped out of her before she could stop it.
Wesley didn’t comment. He didn’t even look at her. He only smiled faintly down at the fire.
When they finished breakfast, Maude brushedthe crumbs from her lap and pulled the map from her satchel. The parchment was creased from years of folding, its ink smudged in places by damp fingers and spilled potions. She traced the ridges and winding trails until she found what she wanted.
“We’ll follow the ridge trail,” she said at last, her voice steady. “If the weather doesn’t turn, we’ll make the ruins by midday.”
“Ruins?”
Maude didn’t look at him. She folded the map along its worn seams and tucked it back into her satchel. “Bailey and I used to gather shadowbell there. They like places that remember what’s been lost. Leavings of death, decay, battles…memory clings to the soil, and shadowbell thrives in it.”
His brow arched higher, but—for once—he didn’t comment. She was almost disappointed.
They broke down the campsite in silence. Wesley doused the fire, scattering the embers with a stick before tipping the last of their water over the coals. Maude gathered the bedrolls, folding hers with neat, exacting corners while his was shoved into a bundle that still somehow looked tidy. She tucked her satchel shut, herbs and vials clinking faintly inside, then tugged her coat back over her shoulders, fastening the clasp at her throat.
Once everything was in order, Maude swung up into the saddle, ignoring the pull in her arm as Wesley fell in just behind, his horse’s hooves crunching steadily against the frost-hardened earth. The sun was pale overhead, weak and washed out. Maude kept the map in her mind, following landmarks burned into memory—old oaks split by lightning, a crooked boulder shaped like a crouching beast, the faint ridge trail winding toward the Peaks.
Pickles’s ears flicked nervously. Wesley’s bay huffed, restless, its muscles bunching under the saddle.
And then Maude felt it.
It wasn’t mist this time—it was memory. The air grew heavy, the way a room feels when someone has just left it forever. Sounddulled around them. The wind stilled. Even the horses’ steps seemed muffled.
Her skin prickled. She knew this place. Knew it in her bones, though she hadn’t been here in years. Bailey’s laugh ghosted through her head, echoing against stones long since fallen. She shoved the thought away before it could lodge too deeply.
The path bent once more, and the ruins came into view.
They were neither grand nor close, just a broken skeleton of a chapel. Moss clung to cracked pillars, and the altar lay in shards, half-buried under ivy. Yet the place throbbed with presence. With sorrow soaked into the stones.
And in the center of the ruin, a shimmer of light congealed into form.
The guardian.
It rose taller than a man, its body a shifting weave of smoke and memory. Its face was featureless, yet Maude felt its gaze pierce her, cold as moonlight. When it spoke, the sound pressed inside her skull, hollow and resonant, like bells tolling under water.
“All bloom is bought in pain. All grief must pay its tithe.
