They broke camp in a hush that had nothing to do with discipline and everything to do with fear. Snow squeaked beneath boots. The crate rode the sled like a sullen passenger. Rowan sat where they put him, the chain from his wrists snared to an iron ring in the floor.
By midmorning, the road found the river: a broad, black vein running slow under a skin of ice. A stone bridge arched over it, old work from a better empire. The Wardens fanned out, checking the abutments, the reeds, the treeline. The wind smelled of iron and old leaves.
"Across and through," Maeryn said. "No lingering."
The bridge took them, step by step. In the center, the crate's wood gave a complaining pop, the way wood does when it remembers a different climate. The bell inside answered itself with a single, sickly chime.
The river answered, too.
Cracks spidered out from the pilings. Not in ice—in shadow. The black lines ran like spilled ink, widening, then bulged as if something pushed up from underneath.
"MOVE!" Maeryn shouted.
The first shape rose from the water like a man who had forgotten how many bones a man should have. It came apart as it climbed, ribs unfolding into a cage, spine coiling around itself, skull unhinging to make room for the wrong kind of tongue. River-wights. Bound to bells, if you believed old wives. Bound to debt, if you believed soldiers.
The Wardens formed a wedge. Salt and iron. Words that had to be said exactly or not at all. Rowan braced his boots and pulled the world into focus. The wolf said, Break the chain. The vampire said, Break their will first. He took a breath that split the difference and set his shoulders.
The first wight reached the wagon. It put both hands—too many fingers, too many joints—on the bars and pushed. The iron screamed. The sled shifted. The chain on Rowan's wrists tightened and then, to his surprise, loosened—not by mercy, but because the angle had changed and the pin in the floor had sheared.
"Don't," Maeryn said without looking. She didn't say it like a threat. She said it like a woman who knows exactly how many horses she can drive without losing the carriage.
More wights climbed. The river seemed to remember an army. The wedge faltered. The freckled boy went down, dragged toward the railing. Rowan stepped into the hole the boy left and took the next wight in the chest.
It felt like throwing himself at a coat full of knives. It also felt like coming home. His two hearts found a crooked rhythm—wolf for the drive, vampire for the angle—and he used the loose chain as a flail, the silver a burning star that bit both him and the wight. He looped it around the thing's spine and pulled. Knots of bone gave, reluctantly.
Maeryn slammed her spear through the wight's open ribcage, wood and iron humming. "You're not making this easier," she grunted.
"I'm not trying to make it easier," Rowan said. "I'm trying to make it end."
They fought their way to the far side in a long minute that stole an hour from each of them. When at last the wights sank back, unwilling to cross the last few feet of stone, the Wardens stumbled onto solid ground. The crate on the sled had shifted. A corner of the cloth had burned away to reveal black metal beneath—dull and old, chased with patterns that hurt to look at.
Maeryn threw a blanket over it as if modesty mattered to cursed things. She turned to Rowan. "You felt it. Don't pretend otherwise."
"It sings to the parts of me that don't agree," Rowan said. "It tells them they could."
"Could what?"
"Stop arguing."
She stared a long moment, then nodded to the boy with freckles. "Harrow. Chain him to the wagon loosely. If he runs, he runs. If he doesn't, I prefer him where I can see him."
Harrow swallowed and approached with new respect. The chain he used gave Rowan the gift of his own stride, not the shuffle of a dragged dog. Kindness, or efficiency—it didn't matter.
They marched. Trees thinned. A village's smoke scrawled gray against the sky ahead. Dunclare: a few houses, a tired inn, a chapel shaped like a hand.
The bell in the sled rang once, softly, and every dog in the village began to bark.
They took the inn's common room, backs to the wall, windows salted. The innkeeper served stew with a ladle that had survived better winters. Maeryn sat opposite Rowan, set her helm on the table, and finally asked the question she'd been circling.
"Who made you?"
Rowan tasted thyme and old copper. "Two people in love," he said. "And two nations at war."
Her mouth twitched. "Not good enough."
"Not for either side," Rowan said. "But I'm what you have."
A crash cut off whatever she would have said next. The chapel bell—not the one in the sled—rang a panicked, human note. Shouts. A smell of smoke. Then the inn's door blew inward and a man staggered through, clutching his throat.
On his chest, a fresh brand burned in the shape of a broken moon.
Behind him came cloaks and knives and a voice that did not echo correctly, as if the room were reluctant to host it.
"Give us the bell," the voice said mildly. "Or we will ring your bones instead."
Cliffhanger: The cult has found them, and Rowan's chain is loose.