"How long?" she rasps, forcing her eyes open. It's disorienting, here, in this Reach. Eir Glanfath. The trees are so thick that on nights with a dim moon, there's hardly a difference in light with one's eyes open or shut. Her head swims.

"'Least ten minutes," says Sagani's voice. She's ahead of Raina somewhere, across where the campfire was, and somehow just knowing that makes everything a little less dizzyingly dreamy. "Edér's got him."

"Why didn't you wake me?" Raina is only glad after she speaks that her voice is too rough with sleep to be loud. They all know there are beasts in this forest.

Edér speaks from her left, from past the empty bedroll. "You usually wake on yer own," he says. "If you didn't this time, take it as a sign y'really needed the sleep."

"Still." Raina reaches for her bag and pulls out a sword. A shortsword, not one she fights with, but one with enough magic in it to glow, just a bit.

The first thing the light catches on is Ciro's eyes. Wide-open and glassy, jeweled things in the head of a doll left to rot on some spoiled heirling's shelves. It turns Raina's stomach as she pushes out of the bedroll and climbs to Ciro's side. The way Edér is holding him, too, tight and fearful, reminds her of that awful thought about the doll, and for a second, she wants to rip Ciro out of his arms. Free him.

Instead, she feels her heart quietly stutter as Ciro suddenly goes limp, his eyes still open, and suddenly Edér's grip isn't a chain but puppet strings, keeping him from falling into a heap.

"Give him to me," she says, dropping the sword into the dirt. Edér passes him to her, sitting back on his heels. Ciro's weight in her arms is light—always light, to her, despite how fast his legs can carry him and how sturdy his shoulders are, fighting the kickback of his firearms. Even so, Edér settles like he's just put down Abydon's hammer.

She gets it. Her fingers still trace under Ciro's jaw, searching for a pulse, because his head is lolling against her chest and his eyes are unseeing. There's more than the weight of a folk body in her arms right now, but the heaviest part is that she can't carry a single bit of it for him. Sure, in a fight, they all do what they can, and every one of the companions they've gathered has done something to aid them in tracking down the Thaos and dragging the Key's poison kicking and screaming from the Dyrwood's veins. In a fight, Raina can keep their foes at bay, take the hits so Ciro never needs to suffer them.

But this isn't an enemy she can fend off, or a sickness she can demand a healer fix, or a problem their allies can come together and solve. It's just this:

Either Ciro will wake up in her arms, lost and confused and a little more battered by Rymrgand than the last night, or he won't.

Raina squeezes his shoulders as she maneuvers them back to their bedrolls, and lays Ciro down. She keeps a hand on his wrist even as she pulls away, until her tired brain conjures the nightmare of her hand turning to iron, chaining him down. She pulls her hand back to her thigh.

Off to one side, she can hear Edér and Sagani bickering in low tones. Something about tea, and the firelight, and watch, but Raina only has ears for Ciro's breathing. It's quiet, and unsteady. Whistling, a heartsick songbird in a cage.

"Please." It's barely even a word, since she won't relax her jaw to shape it right, but it's all she can manage. Her teeth squeak. Please, we're so close. Please, just a little more time. Please, come back.

There's a pain at the back of Raina's skull so sudden and blinding that she reaches up to her neck and half-thinks she'll feel blood and an arrow shaft, or maybe the sear of acid. But her hand doesn't move. It lies there on her thigh, visible in the weak sword-light against the pale linen of her sleep pants, and Raina tries again to lift it. She thinks as hard as she can, flexes the muscles in her bicep, then forearm, then wrist…

Nothing.

Anchor.

"Ciro," Raina mutters. It didn't sound like his voice, which is terrifying, but it feels like him.

"He back with us?" asks Edér, and Raina finds she can move just fine when she looks over and shakes her head.

"No. But he's doing something. I can't move my arm," she says.

Edér hums. "Well, that ain't good."

"He's been worried he could turn on us in a vision for a while," says Sagani, sounding so resigned than Raina wants to scream.

She doesn't. She takes a slow, deep breath, and tries again to lift her hand. It doesn't move.

This time, when the pain hits, it's not just Raina's neck, but her whole head that burns. There's smoke, everywhere, and the pain of a blade, and the blackness of a heart someone hoped could be a diamond if they burned and crushed it hard enough and just one more, one more life, a hand on someone's wrist, a ball and chain, a rush through bramble and wet mud and the planks of a dungeon, no, a ship, a whip, and eyes like death and adra, and adra, and adra, so much emerald you could drown in it, and a forest, and a dark hand around an arm and please, don't send me back, and please, don't do this, again and again in so many lives—

No, Raina can't save Ciro from this. She can't even save herself. She's drowning in the shallows of it, and whatever anchor Ciro is tied to is pulling him deeper and deeper.

—a hand around an arm, a ball and chain—

Ciro told her once, when they barely knew each other, how glad he was that Raina had chosen to be something else. She thinks it's a miracle he ever forgave her, let alone likes her, when her grip felt like that at first.

—a hand around an arm, solid, unbreakable, binding—

"Don't touch him," Raina gasps, pushing Edér's hand away where he'd reached out to Ciro. Her head is pouding, and she licks her lips and tastes blood.

"Raina, he's hurtin' you—"

"I said, don't!" Raina says, shouting as loud as she can through a whisper. It still makes her head ache.

—a hand around an arm, steady, strong, moored—

Raina's eyes flick to Ciro's, and they're still wide and empty, but then Sagani gets the fire to catch, and the shine in those pale eyes isn't just glass and death, it's tears.

—a hand around an arm, warm and dark, safe, unmoving in the storm.

An anchor.

Raina tries to push her hand forward, prepared to fight whatever Ciro's doing that's cutting her thoughts off from her limbs, but there's no resistance at all. Her hand flies forward so fast that she hits him in the thigh first, before landing on his wrist again. She feels the tendons under her grip shift, just a little.

"Awful possessive," Sagani says, and somehow Raina can hear that she's got an eyebrow raised.

"I promise I was tryin' to help," says Edér.

Raina shakes her head. "No, I—I had it wrong, okay; he was doing something with his powers. Felt like a storm in my head." She squeezes a little tighter and looks up at Edér. "It's fine."

Edér looks skeptically between her and Ciro, and then ever-so-slowly pats the folk on the shoulder, like he's testing a kitten to see if it'll lash out. Raina doesn't, and Ciro is still deathly still.

"Right," says Edér. "I'm gonna make that tea, now." He squeezes Ciro's shoulder and gets up.

The pain in Raina's neck eases up a little, by the time Sagani brings her a cup of tea, but nothing else. It'll have to be enough, Raina tells herself. She can't fight or carry that storm, but her strength has been Ciro's to mold and direct since she broke from the Order. He knows the weight of chains better than anyone, so if Ciro needs her to hold him fast to himself until he wakes up, she'll do it. Only because he asked. She can't stand the thought of weighing him down, but holding him safe?

She can do that. For as long as it takes, she can do that.

Raina slips her hand down Ciro's wrist until she can take his hand.

He closes the distance and takes one of Tai Lon's hands in his, pushing it back to her side before she can manage to undo the laces of the dress. The fabric of it is full, layered, and yet he has to look down to make sure he's not treading on it by mistake because it's so light as to go unnoticed through his own pants.

"This was made for you," he reminds her. "And it's not a mistake. Wanting to look the part for the first function you host as Roadwarden back from the dead...to be honest, Tai Lon, only natural. Society is a looks-first business, after all."

Tai Lon tries to pull her hand away, but Aloth doesn't let her. She has stood by him too many times, against tides far more crushing than sapphire silks, for him not to return the favor. It's something he's proud to do now.

Still, Tai Lon's scoff is like acid, like that will scare him when her escape failed. "Well, I'm not one of them. Something about pigs and pearls, up here, isn't it? That saying? I can't wear the dress and be something I'm not--"

"So be what you are," Aloth says, pulling on her hand again until she turns in his arms. On the little stage before the dressing room mirror, she's much taller than him, but something about her eyes makes her look small. "You are the Watcher of Caed Nua. You are the mercenary who saved this land when all its protectors failed. You are the one who stood up to the gods themselves not once, but twice, and lived to tell the tale. You are a huntress of the White that Wends, and a rogue with a heart more pure than the finest gold offerings." Aloth smiles slightly. "And if you want to wear a beautiful dress at your own party, ástin mín...then wear the damn dress."

Tai Lon swallows hard, but Aloth sees the way her lips twitch at the corners, hearing her tongue in his voice. Aloth reaches up to cup her face. She catches his hand--but guides it to her cheek anyway.

His smile widens. "You look beautiful, you know," he says simply.

"A kiss--" Tai Lon answers, clumsily dodging the compliment. "For luck. That I won't make a fool of myself."

Aloth obediently pushes up on his toes until he can meet her lips. She's not wearing any sort of powders or color, which will set her apart from the other nobility, but Aloth thinks it's much nicer not to have to worry that he'll undo hours of work with a single show of affection. Her lips are softer than they have been in months, but she tastes exactly the same, moves exactly the same.

Aloth's breath runs out long before Tai Lon's, and he pulls back. "Will that do?" he asks, settling back on his heels.

Tai Lon steps down from the podium and rests her hands on his shoulders. "It's a start," she says. "But I could always use a little more luck when it comes to the nobility."

Aloth rolls his eyes--truer words have hardly been spoken, and they both know it. He meets her smile with his own and squeezes her waist. The ball gown is cool and smooth, broken on one side by some truly gorgeous beading and metallic threads. But underneath, the shape of her muscles fits perfectly into his palms. A scar rests under the embroidery near his thumb, and he knows without even checking that she must have at least two knives within all the fabric.

Behind her resting eyelids, there was a path.  At first made of gravel and dirt that crunched beneath her greaves.  The sound was too hollow, and it ached in her very core.  Between one blink and the next, Pallegina found that she had turned with the wind.  The suns lay behind her, and her shadow stretched like a river of spilt paint into the distance.  There was birdsong, thudding against her chest like icy rain.

She spit on the ground and turned her back, facing into the sun.  The silhouettes of ancient elms, with branches like claws, were at least a certainty.  There was no freedom to be found with the wind.  Only free falling.

Her throat burned, somewhere else, but Pallegina swallowed it down, as always, as ever, when there was a mission underfoot.

Despite it all, as she approached those trees, the chirping did not fade. If she listened closely, sometimes the sounds spelled her own name.  It made her stomach tangle like yarn at a cat’s mercy.  The wind around her changed, brushing her cheek.  Had the ice of the White March somehow followed them back to Caed Nua?  Was that why she was so cold?  Or was it the absence of her feathers, the down a bird ought to have—another punishment for refusing to play to Hylea’s tune?

(“—got it, but if I end up run through for tryin’a help, it’ll be on you t’ explain.”

“I’d do it myself, but I don’t wear…”

“’S a miracle it ain’t you who’s sick, bein’ honest…”)

The icy wind washed deeper and deeper under Pallegina’s skin, and when she looked down again, she found no earth, no gravel, no stone or brick, but a current of air that swept her aside.  She retched, but—of course.  There was nothing.

Pallegina refused to feel sad.  No visions, no nightmares, no divine guilt trips could make her regret her choice to turn away from the curse of her birth.  Her only regret was that she could not divorce from it more.

Despite the wind, as she let her tongue sweep out to her lips, she found them wet.  There was plenty of sustenance without that damned chime.

(“Don’t know where you found it…”

“—peared out of thin air.  But it’s real enough I’d use it for the kids; checked myself.”

“Should…Maneha?”

“Let her sleep.  Wake up to good news.”)

The wind in the Dyrwood smelled ripe.  Pallegina preferred the metal tang of the Republics.

She walked, or flew, or drifted, or just was there, until she could swear the bells should be ringing to wake her any second.  But there was no sound, besides the wind, and a distant creaking of wood.  Was she late to her post?

The utter shame of the thought had her shooting up, throwing the covers off with a clumsiness that barely befit a child, much less a paladin of the Brotherhood.  The room was—newly constructed, but foreign, and Pallegina did not remember falling asleep in it.  Much less in a bed, and certainly not tucked in so tightly that she was practically swaddled.  The curtains of the room were closed, but the light that spilled under them was pale and dim.  Moonlight.

There was a knot in her throat, and swallowing around it felt like choking on broken glass.  A hacking cough forced its way out as her body tried in vain to scratch out the obstruction.

“Oh!  Oh, that sounds awful!”  A hand landed squarely in the middle of her back, which Pallegina had not meant to expose but did, curled forward as she had to cough.  She batted the hand away as fast as it had come, and despite the arm she touched being much thicker than her own, it smartly obeyed and pulled away. 

In the throes of—well, that, Pallegina had failed even to register someone in the room.  But the large body and deep, painfully cheery voice left her unsurprised to see Kana’s face furrowed in confusion.  It only made sense, of course.  She was in Caed Nua, not the Republics.  Twenty-six, not nineteen.

“Here,” said Kana, somehow still smiling despite the furrow of his brow.  It made for a very odd expression, which Pallegina thought very unflattering.

It took her far too long to notice that he was offering a mug to her.  Water.

“’gracima,” she croaked, voice cracking over the first vowel.  The water was cold enough to make her shiver, but Pallegina could feel through the ceramic that it was not actually cold.  A fever, then.  But how had Kana known?  And, more importantly— “How did you get in here, aimico?”

Kana smiled, the way he often did at bandits unfortunate enough to try and rob them.  “Maneha let me in.  She was so worried when she found you, you know…”

He kept talking.  Pallegina knew he did.  She could feel the bass of his voice, ever a little too loud, vibrate the back of her skull.  Grating, and yet comfortably familiar.  So much so that she could not make out the words.  There was a rhythm to the way the chanter spoke, perhaps as much a habit as her own posture, and it was…heavy, against her sore chest.  But gentle.

Pallegina did not remember closing her eyes, but she did remember waking to an argument that sounded far away.  Two rough voices, but one that was warm like mulled wine, that rose and fell like the waves, and another that was hoarse as if half-scorched away by smoke. 

The room was still dark, and Pallegina was too tired even to feel shame at admitting to the fatigue.  She sighed, coughed, and slept, and this time, there was no wind in the darkness.

(“—no healer.  Pained though I am to admit it, your—our—best option is D—”

“Even if he would help, Aloth, she wouldn’t…”

“…y need th’ coxfither!  I, ah.  Suppose not.  …not be magic, but Edér swears it’ll help.”

“Next time she’s up…”)

Somewhere, someone must have put up a wind chime.  Pallegina was glad it sounded nothing like her dreams from childhood, but it still made her skin prickle unpleasantly.

Or maybe that was the fever.

There was that brush of wind against her cheek again, but this time, Pallegina managed to open her eyes to spy it.  Blue, and beads, and an arm pulling away.  Sharp brown eyes, crinkled with stress at the corners.

“Morning, sunshine,” said Maneha.

Pallegina scowled.  She looked to the window, where there was still no sunlight.  “A funny idea you have of morning,” she rasped.

“Well, you’re awake.  That’s good enough.”  Maneha reached for something on the bedside table.  “The farmboy and the wizard made you some broth.  Feel up to trying it?”

Pallegina tried to push herself up, shoulders tense as stone to hide the tremors she felt at just moving her own body.  She swore under her breath.  “How do they know I am sick?  I left dinner before…”  A cough interrupted her, but she didn’t turn her face away from Maneha fast enough to miss the look of shock.

The aumaua was much more composed when Pallegina finally cleared her throat to the point that she could breathe.  So relaxed that Pallegina felt her next words like a knife in the back.  “That was almost five days ago.”

“Five—canc—”  Pallegina sat up straighter, and held her breath until her cheeks hurt to keep from coughing again.

Maneha continued as if she was talking about the weather, and passed the bowl of broth.  “Got a bit hairy those first few nights, we think.  Sagani finally managed to get your fever down, though even she’s not sure how she did it.  You remember anything?”

Pallegina racked her memory, but all that came to mind was the haze of her dream, and the wind.  And…ah.  She recalled Kana, faintly, having been in this room.  “Nothing clearly,” she said, and took the bowl.

The broth was lukewarm, but it was…pleasant.  Pallegina was hardly the type to notice flavors on a good day, but this seemed particularly bland, and yet it was easy to drink.  As it settled in her stomach, there was a faint burning feeling inside her, akin to washing out a wound.  Or stepping inside after being out in the cold.

“Has the Watcher made it to Eir Glanfath yet, then?” Pallegina asked when she was done.  Her voice sounded a bit less like a stranger’s now, and she straightened her shoulders to match.

Maneha only laughed.  “No one’s made it anywhere, sunshine.  Not with you sick as a dog.”

Pallegina blinked.  “You joke.  That is no reason to wait.”

“Good enough for us around here, it seems.”  Maneha tapped her cheek with the backs of two knuckles, with the same sort of lov—gentle reproach that one might use to scold a beloved pet.

That faint burning sensation from the broth had settled in her chest, now.  Persistent.

“Tell them I am sorry, then,” she ordered, looking away.

Maneha chuckled, taking the empty bowl.  “I’ll tell them tomorrow,” she said.  “Or you’ll have a swarm of worried friends in here, midnight be damned.”

“Per complanca.  Then, I have not recovered.  I will be ill and keep my peace,” Pallegina said, rolling her eyes and ignoring the way it still made her stomach roll.

“Until morning, at least,” said Maneha.  “But…maybe not this morning, hm?”