“Sometimes the path to salvation requires walking in the shadow of damnation.”

  — Amonvae, in her private journals

  Night pressed heavy on the world—a weight, not an absence. Snow stalked the seams of the cottage, hissing insistence against the warped door, gathering itself in small, ruthless drifts at every crack. Inside, the air was thick—knotted by boil-smoke and a dread that would not clear. Lucy breathed but shallowly, chest trembling through the patched blankets, sweat already chilling at her brow. On the pallet, Eike sat close, knees drawn under his chin, one hand twisted round the remains of the blue-thread amulet.

  He watched her, counting the fluttered pulses at her neck, hearing each false start of a breath as if it might be the last. The fire, bullied into a sullen flicker, gave little warmth—its glow insufficient to drive back the press of winter creeping in at his back. Hunger chewed at his belly, but he ignored it; every muscle trembled with weariness and something colder—a weight that lodged in his chest, thick and unmoving as burial cloth, pressing him until breath itself turned grave-heavy.

  Across the room Amalia busied herself in ritual denial, sorting her dwindled pouch—leaf-ends, nubs of root, one splinter of precious honey hard as resin. Her voice, when it came, slipped quietly between the threads of silence. “If there’s a change,” she whispered, “wake me.” She kept her face turned from the light—too much softness there to risk seeing hope reflected in Eike’s eyes.

  He nodded once, mute. No change would come. He understood now what winter did to patience: stretched it thin until it snapped, leaving only bitter silence and a slow burial beneath the days’ drifting snow. Lucy’s breaths shallowed. Each pause bred panic; each exhale, a flicker of relief scraped raw by its own fragility.

  The words he’d rehearsed—If it grows worse, if she needs me—died unspoken. Better not to name the end aloud. The room’s hush, thickened by Amalia’s warning, pressed back at him, every memory of her tales—bargains that misshaped hope, cures paid in futures and grief—curling tight as Lucy’s fingers on the thread.

  He rose, careful not to jostle the child. The blanket fell back from her collarbones—bones now, not just lines beneath skin. Salt crusted the glass at the sill; lamplight guttered, an eye half-shut. He drew his coat close, boots scraping the packed earth, and paused only to brush his hand across Lucy’s brow.

  “Won’t be long, Luce,” he murmured, voice caught between promise and fear. “Hold on for me.”

  In the corner, Amalia shifted but did not wake.

  The latch turned with brittle protest. Eike slipped out, the dark swallowing him whole.

  

  


  

  The village was silent. Not empty—he could sense, behind every shuttered window, the hush of bodies clustered in uneasy sleep—but muffled, as if the night itself had pressed a hand atop every roof. His boots punched narrow hollows in the snow, each print fading behind him under rills of wind. Above, the sky sprawled—clear, brittle, a scatter of distant cold fires set in blackness so deep he felt himself weightless if he looked too long.

  No lamps burned, not even at Grayna’s porch. Salt ringed every lintel, and the only sound was the whine of ice settling in the eaves and the steady crunch of his steps leading north.

  He passed the storehouse, the moot hall—a memory rising up, sharp and unwanted: his own voice breaking the world’s back, the grain turned to ash, the faces turning from him, marked and measured and already lost. He forced the thought down, knuckles whitening on the lapels of his coat.

  Old Murda’s croft waited at the field’s edge, its shadow fallen long, hunched beneath a pall of snow. The window shone—a small, steady square of light, set against the pallor, stubborn as a knife planted tip-down in a board. The wind hissed, swirled, changed pitch as he neared, as if warning or beckoning—he could not say.

  He reached the gate. Hesitated, breath turning to glass in his lungs. Amalia’s voice clung at the back of his mind—no cure, all bargains are hooks, never what you hope nor what you imagine you can pay. Still, Lucy’s ragged face returned—eyes open but unseeing—the image sharper than any warning.

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  He knocked, only once. The sound landed—hollow. The door opened before his hand fell.

  

  


  

  Amonvae stood just inside. She wore shadow as a second cloak—robes folded dark against the pale of her throat. Her eyes were unreadable, catching the lamplight as ice catches a moon, cool and reflective.

  “You waited,” Eike managed, voice more accusation than statement.

  She stepped back, no smile. “I had reason.” She let him in with a motion of her hand—precise, almost ceremonial. He felt the crackle of warmth from her fire, the air tinged not with woodsmoke but with a sharper, verdant note—herbs burning, or something more arcane.

  Inside the croft, order reigned—tools and books laid out, a larch sprig over the door, windows dusted with salt so fine it might have come from finer tables than Winter Claw could remember. She set a cup near the hearth and pointed to the low stool with a motion clipped and exact, giving nothing away.

  “Lucy?” she asked, the word flat, incurious.

  “Dying.” His answer hung between them, brittle and final.

  Amonvae poured water into the cup, let it steam beside her unmoving hands. “You’re ready, then.”

  He bent forward, elbows to knees, jaw flexed tight. “I never wasn’t. Only wanted to be sure there was no way left but down.”

  She inclined her head. “Few choices remain pure in winter. Most only differ by whose account is paid first.” She reached into her satchel and set, with care, a small pouch on the table—its drawstring gold, the hide stamped with a mark unfamiliar to any villager. Next, a heavier purse, the coins within muffled but unmistakable in their promise.

  “Gold,” she said, “enough for medicines, for the Duke’s ground-tax twice over. Your sister’s comfort. And a writ of passage, should you need it—spells of preserving, introductions to healers north along the ridge, where spirits run weak, and cures run deeper.” She paused, eyeing him for any flicker of understanding. “All this, in exchange for your loyalty.“

  He glanced down at the pouch—could almost feel the weight of it drilling a hole in the table. “What does loyalty mean, to you?”

  Amonvae considered, thumb running the rim of the cup. “You come when called. You learn. You do not turn aside from my teaching, nor squander what I give you in fits of thrift or pride.” Her eyes flashed—gray drifted into cold silver, their gaze suddenly keen. “You will not traffic your gift in secrets nor sell it to another. And you will not break oath in letter or in spirit—I have no patience for traitors, nor need of martyrs.”

  Eike’s lips thinned. “What oath, exactly?”

  She lifted a thin blade from her pouch—a trinket, more ritual than weapon. From a twist of cloth she drew a square of pale leather, pressed it to the tabletop. “A drop of blood—your mark. The old way. Nothing binding as sigils and salt, but respected from here to the King’s back garden. Say the words, take the bargain, be bound to me until I release you, or you prove unworthy.”

  He stared at the objects. For a long moment, only the wind harried the shutters. “And Lucy?”

  A shadow crossed Amonvae’s face—impatience, or a hint of something closer to softness. She met his gaze, eyes filled with a chill to rival any winter night. “I do not trade life for life, nor can I promise what the fever intends. She will have every aid coin and magic can buy. If it is to be, it will be.” She met his gaze, eyes filled with a chill to rival any winter night. “Salvation is not bought by prayer alone, nor is damnation the price of every tool. But the path begins here.”

  He took the blade, pricked his thumb—watched the blood bead, bright as holly against winter’s drab. He pressed it to the scrap, said the words as she intoned them: older than the King’s writ, older than most gods left worshipped in these hills. The syllables stretched, unfamiliar, the cadence heavy as stone.

  When it was done, she nodded—no smile, only satisfaction. She pushed the pouch and purse toward him, then poured a thin ribbon of clear liquor into his cup, handing it across. “For ending, for beginning. This path runs straight once joined.”

  He drank—harsh, burning, nothing of comfort in it. The moment bit hard, then receded, leaving only the truth: the world had changed.

  She took the marked leather, folded it away with grave care. “Return now. I’ll come when the moon wanes next, or sooner, should need press. Watch her. Use the salves and powders sparingly. Keep silent, for a wise tongue holds longer than a blade.”

  Eike rose, the pouch and gold gone leaden in his palm. He paused, hand on the latch, unable to meet her gaze. When he spoke, his voice was flat as a field locked in frost. “If she dies—”

  Amonvae’s answer was a murmur, the words almost lost amid the restless wind: “Then let the gift you bear be for the living, not the dead. The dead already have enough bargains, and enough memory to fill a winter’s worth of nights.”

  He stood long in the threshold, the weight of the snow and the bargain both pressing close. She watched, neither dismissing nor comforting. The croft behind him hummed with secrets, the village ahead as silent and deep as snowdrift over a frozen well.

  He stepped out, the night swallowing boot and thought alike. The pouch—a promise—or a debt. The web was cast, thread unseen, stretching tight behind him with every step. Far above, the stars flickered with the indifference of watchers who had long ago lost the habit of prayer.

  And Eike, walking into the dark, felt the thread coil round his heart—a guide or a garrote, only time would prove which.