POV: Mara
The medical span smells like iron and boiled cloth. I tie my hair back, wash my hands until they sting, and step into the line. Lanterns flicker overhead, shadows swaying like tired ghosts. The floor is slick with runoff—water, blood, herbs—and my boots stick every time I move. Everyone here breathes too loud.
“Next,” the healer calls. Her voice is raw but sharp. We’ve all forgotten what softness sounds like.
We lift a boy with a split thigh. He’s white-lipped, eyes blown wide, breath shaking in quick bursts like he’s trying not to cry.
“Name?” I ask.
“Tam,” he grits. His fingers claw at my sleeve like he’s drowning on dry land.
“You like stories, Tam?” I ask, pressing clean cloth, counting out loud so the rhythm gives him something to stand on. “I have one that ends with you cursing me for the stitches.”
He laughs once and then chokes on it. “I don’t—”
“You will.” I put my palm above the wound, not touching it, just… there. A warmth rises under my skin.
Rhun’s presence murmurs from far away, from inside Cael, like a compass that learned to speak. “Slow. Left. Not there—there.”
My throat tightens. He shouldn’t be awake enough to help. He is anyway.
“Breathe with me,” I tell Tam. “In… out… that’s it.” My hand is warm without heat. My mouth says numbers.
The healer glances up. “What are you doing?”
“Being boring,” I say. “Keep sewing.”
She snorts. “If this is boring, god help me when you get interesting.”
We do it again. And again. And again. Some I can calm; some I can’t. Some look at me like I’m a miracle; some look at me like I’m a knife. I hate both looks, but I keep going.
Between bodies I hear him. Not words—never words. Impressions. A chair scraping. A window’s ache. Pain like a distant echo. Concern edging sharp. Pride, low and stunned, like a weather front warming: “You. Good.”
My chest tightens. “Don’t talk,” I whisper to the air.
“Who are you whispering to?” Pia mutters, elbow deep in bandage rolls, hair stuck to her forehead.
“My ghost,” I say.
Pia smirks. “You’re haunted by a living man.”
“Shut up,” I mutter, blushing so hard I feel fevered.
Three wounded later, Silvie shoves a cup of broth in my hands. “Drink,” she orders. “You’re turning pale.”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar. Drink.”
I drink. It tastes like herbs and exhaustion. The tent sways as if sharing my breath. The Bond keeps pulsing in the back of my ribs—steady, alive, stubborn.
By dusk, my knees ache and my eyes burn and my hands won’t stop shaking until they’re on skin. The healer sets a bowl in front of me. “Eat.”
I slurp two spoons and almost fall asleep sitting up. The bowl rattles when my hands loosen.
Then a shout cuts the tent.
“Prisoner,” a Shield barks. “Drift officer. Says he wants the healer who hums.”
Everyone looks at me. I set the bowl down carefully, as if spilling it will make everything worse.
They bring him in with wrists bound, nose broken, grin loose. Mud streaks his neck. His clothes are torn. But his eyes—sharp, fever-bright—miss nothing. He looks around the tent once, then drops to his knees in front of me like I’m an altar and he already knows the prayer.
“Oh, no,” I whisper.
He bows his head. “Moon’s Anchor,” he says, voice rough with awe. “We serve the White Gold.”
My stomach turns to water. Someone gasps. Someone else crosses themselves. The tent fills with whispers: White Gold… Moon’s Anchor… prophecy…
“Get up,” I say, taking a step back as if that will stop the words from touching me. “Don’t call me anything.”
He doesn’t move. The air thickens. The Bond flares, uneasy. Tam—stitched and bandaged—starts trembling again. Pia grabs the nearest ladle like she’s ready to fight prophecy with kitchen tools.
“Enough!” I snap. “Take him.”
Two Shields move forward just as—
The Regent herself parts the tent flap like a knife through cloth.
Conversation dies on impact.
She takes in the scene in one glance—me, the kneeling man, the way the room is holding its breath like a net ready to break.
“Quiet,” she says.
The word hits harder than a bell strike. Silence drops.
She motions. Two Shields haul the man up. He laughs once, eyes bright like wildfire that likes being caught. “The White Gold wakes,” he murmurs.
“Shut him up,” the Regent says.
A gag goes on him fast.
She looks at me—not unkind, not kind, but seeing. Too much seeing. And not enough. It makes me feel both exposed and invisible.
“You saw nothing,” she says to the tent. “You heard nothing.”
No one argues. No one even breathes.
She turns to me. “Walk.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, because the words are still ringing inside my bones. “Moon’s Anchor?”
“It means prophecy travels faster than law,” she says. “And we will drown if we let it set the pace.”
The tent behind us erupts in whispers as soon as the flap closes. The Regent keeps walking. I force myself to keep up.
The Bond line trembles. Cael hears. Of course he does. The seal didn’t break. It warns. It listens.
Understanding surges along it like thunder over stone. “Anchor… White Gold… you.”
It isn’t possessive. It isn’t a claim. It’s a man finally seeing the map he’s been walking blind.
My throat closes. I close my eyes.
“Stay in bed,” I whisper to him through the line.
He doesn’t answer.
But the line hums.
And that is worse. And better.
And terrifying.