The hut smelled of crushed herbs and rain. Lanterns guttered as wind pressed at the shutters, throwing the little room into a huddled, uneasy darkness. Lucien lay on Mara's narrow cot like a shadow bled of strength—pulled taut and fraying at the edges. His chest rose and fell, but each breath seemed a borrowed thing.
Elara sat on the floor beside him, knees drawn up, fingers clenched until her knuckles whitened. The mark at her breast burned beneath fabric; it was a small, hot thing, a pulse she could feel against her ribs as if it had grown its own heart.
Mara moved around them with a practiced urgency, brittle joints bending with the rapidity of long habit. She mixed poultices, crushed roots, and murmured prayers in a language older than the marsh. Every so often she would stop, press a palm to Lucien's wrist, and listen. Each pause tightened the air further.
"His life is not ordinary," Mara said at last, not looking up. "Curses like his do not yield to common remedies. They feed on will and time."
Elara's hands trembled. "He fought a god," she whispered. "He saved the whole village."
Mara's voice, when she answered, had the flat steadiness of someone forced to tell a child a terrible truth. "He did. But power always asks a price."
Elara crouched closer, throat tight. "What does he need? Tell me. I'll do it."
Mara hesitated, then reached for a small, blackened bowl. She cupped Elara's hands around it—warm water infused with mint and nightroot. "Touch him with care. Let the warmth travel. But do not give him what he refuses. If he cannot consent, you cannot take."
Elara nodded. "He can't say yes like that now."
"No," Mara agreed. "But you might call him back… with the bond."
The word hung between them, both sacred and dangerous. Elara forced her knees to uncoil, moved to Lucien's side, and put both hands over his chest. For a breath, the hut felt like it could tilt and fall into the marsh.
"Lucien," she whispered, because words were all she had. "Wake. Listen to me. You promised."
She closed her eyes and let the rhythm of her breath match the faint, irregular rise of his ribs. The mark at her sternum flared — small and fierce — as if waking at her thought, as if it had been waiting for permission.
A warmth crawled from her palms into the skin beneath, a light not like the sun but like a promise. It slid over Lucien's cold flesh, threading into the dark places he possessed. For a few perfect seconds, she felt something shift inside him — a loosening, like the unlocking of an old key.
Then the hut shuddered.
An invisible pressure slammed against the timbers. Shelves rattled. Mojo-scented smoke unfurled from the stove like a warning. Lucien's hand twitched, small and urgent, and his fingers curled around nothing.
"Elara!" Mara caught her by the shoulder. "Don't push too hard."
She pulled back, breathless. The bond had answered, but it had answered like a living thing startled into motion. Power answered power, and the space between them buzzed.
Lucien's eyelids fluttered. He inhaled; his muscles sucked air like someone returned from drowning. His fingers flexed around Elara's palm.
"Elara," he rasped, voice as thin as reed. "Don't… don't let go."
She burst into tears—not the small, polite ones, but a raw, animal sob that filled the room and shook the lantern light. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead because she did not know what else to do.
Mara wiped her own eyes with the back of a hand and went to a shelf. "We need to move him," she said. "He cannot be a target here. The priests sense it—how close you are. They'll use that."
Elara shook her head fiercely. "Not without me."
"You will come," Mara insisted. "But we must go from the marsh. Sanctuary waits on the river—an old place. The Warden knows where. If you both travel by water, the priests cannot track the same way."
Lucien tried to sit up, and pain shot through him like winter lightning. "I will go," he said, voice thin but steady. "But I go to fight."
"No," Elara said immediately. "You're not going back to them."
A shadow crossed Lucien's face: frustration, duty, a hunger to be weapon rather than ward. "They will come," he said. "We leave with a plan."
Mara's fingers fluttered over an old map, then folded faster than anyone would expect. "Tonight," she said, decisively. "We leave under moon. The current will cover tracks. You three.
"Prepare what you can. Take the book," she added, nodding toward the thin volume Elara had first found in Mara's hut—the one with her mother's handwriting. "The answers you need are in there."
Elara nodded and gathered what she could, stuffing herbs and bandages and the book into a satchel. Lucien leaned heavily on her, supporting himself against her shoulder. It felt wrong—reversed—but it felt right, too. For all his age and his power, he was fragile in a way she had never imagined. The bond did not make him less terrifying; it made him human again, in all the dangerous, tender ways that word could mean.
As they stepped out into the night, the marsh opened like a breath. Wind moved through the reeds in a low, watchful song. The village lay behind them: smoke still eddying, shuttered windows dark and full of frightened faces.
They moved fast and low, Mara guiding them to a small boat hidden in reeds. The water took them silently, carrying their small, wobbling craft into a ribbon of black that shone with moonlight. Elara sat between Lucien and Mara, hands clasped over the satchel. Lucien's head rested against the boat's planked side; sleep threatened his lids even as the marsh air tried to stitch him whole.
They drifted under star and reed and the soft watch of ancient trees, and for a while the world outside the boat was only the lapping of water and the rhythm of breath. Then Lucien murmured, voice raw.
"You did well," he said. "Tonight. With the villagers… you—"
"You too," Elara said. "You didn't have to come back."
He looked at her through a shadowed mask. "I promised."
"And you don't break your word," she whispered.
He smiled—small and tired. "I don't keep a lot of promises. I keep that one."
She wanted to say more—a thousand gentle things that would soothe his loneliness and tie their fates together with words. Instead she reached for the book and put it on her lap, opening to a page her fingers somehow remembered. The handwriting was faded but fierce, her mother's voice threaded through each sentence.
Mara's voice—quiet as prayer—drifted from the back of the boat. "There are old rites in that book. Not to free the curse—no wise soul has that answer—but perhaps to teach you to share the weight. To teach you how to draw strength from one another and not be consumed."
Elara pressed the book to her chest. "We'll learn."
Lucien's hand found hers, fingers cool and strong. For a moment, neither spoke. The marsh held them as if cradling something precious—or dangerous. Elara felt the mark hum under her palm, not with anxiety now but with purpose, like a drum gathering soldiers.
A long way ahead, a thin line of dark rose on the horizon—the first edge of morning. They had hours—less than they had needed, and more than they might deserve. They had each other.
The boat creaked forward. The river swallowed their wake.
And the night, for a fragile moment, held its breath.