The Part He Had Hidden

By morning, the shepherd’s shelter had acquired a second roof of canvas, six more ward stones, and a guard who snored whenever he sat down.

Lance discovered the last of these shortly after dawn.

He had spent most of the night listening to footsteps outside his door. Each time the guards changed, he woke fully, one hand pressed against his chest.

The mark remained closed.

That did not reassure him.

When the snoring began, he sat upright.

“Guard.”

The sound stopped.

A young man appeared in the doorway, beyond the pale shimmer of the enclosure.

“What is it?”

“You were asleep.”

“I closed my eyes.”

“You were snoring.”

The guard looked embarrassed.

Before he could answer, another voice spoke from outside.

“He’s been relieved.”

Tomas entered carrying a covered bowl and a bundle of papers. He set both on the table beyond the ward.

Lance watched the young man leave.

“You entrust my life to that?”

“He stayed after his watch ended because you were having difficulty breathing.”

Lance said nothing.

Tomas uncovered the bowl.

Porridge.

There was honey in it.

The old man opened a narrow gap in the ward and passed the bowl through with a wooden tray.

Lance looked at the food.

Then at the papers.

“What do you want to know?”

Tomas pulled up a chair.

“Start with the things you hoped we wouldn’t ask.”

Leo’s first lesson that morning involved two candles and a piece of wire.

He disliked it immediately.

The candles stood an arm’s length apart. Between them, the wire hung from a wooden frame.

Seraphine pointed to the left candle.

“Light it.”

He did.

“Now send a current through the wire.”

A white spark jumped from his finger.

The candle flame brightened.

Seraphine extinguished it.

“Again.”

Celine sat nearby with a slate across her knees. She was drawing the enclosure from the shepherd’s shelter, trying to identify where the strain had gathered.

Catherine listened from the bench beside her.

“How many is that?” she asked.

“Seven,” Celine replied.

“Six,” Leo said.

“The one that scorched the frame counts.”

“That was barely an attempt.”

Seraphine handed him a fresh candle.

“Then you should have plenty of energy left.”

Leo looked at the candle, then at the wire.

Yesterday, he had held the two powers apart because Lance’s life depended on it.

This morning, without the fear to narrow his attention, they kept finding each other.

He drew a slow breath.

Flame in one hand.

Lightning in the other.

The heat stirred toward the current.

He stopped forcing both outward and let the flame shrink.

For a moment, the wire glowed without either candle changing.

Seraphine leaned forward.

“Hold.”

His shoulders tightened.

“Breathe.”

He obeyed.

The current remained steady for three more breaths.

Then it broke.

Leo lowered his hands.

Across the yard, Celine tapped her slate.

“That one counts too.”

He looked at her.

She was smiling.

Marcus arrived before they could begin again.

“Tomas sent word.”

Leo rose.

“What happened?”

“Nothing at the wards. Lance has started talking.”

Celine’s smile faded.

Marcus looked at his daughters.

“There is something he needs to say in front of you. You do not have to hear it today.”

Catherine’s hand closed around her staff.

“The dungeon?”

Marcus nodded.

For a moment, Leo could hear the candle wick burning.

Celine set the slate aside.

“I want to hear him.”

“So do I,” Catherine said.

Leo looked at Seraphine.

She extinguished both candles.

Lance stood when they entered the shelter.

The movement seemed to surprise even him.

Then his eyes found Marcus, and something of his old manner returned.

“You brought everyone.”

Marcus placed a chair beside Celine.

“You said you had information about what happened to my daughters.”

Lance looked toward the open door.

Two guards waited outside. Tomas sat beside the grounding rods, a clean sheet of paper before him.

Catherine took the chair nearest Celine.

Leo remained standing behind them until Celine reached back and caught his hand.

He sat.

For a long time, Lance said nothing.

Then he looked at Marcus.

“Silas proposed weakening the girls.”

Celine’s grip tightened.

Lance continued quickly.

“He said their affinities were binding Leo too closely to your household. That if their advancement stopped, the marriage could be reconsidered.”

Marcus did not move.

“What did you agree to?”

Lance glanced at Tomas’s pen.

“A disruption to the dungeon.”

“What sort?”

“The guiding markers. The safe route.”

“And what were you told would happen?”

Lance’s mouth tightened.

“That they would be injured.”

The word hung in the room.

Catherine’s expression had gone still.

Celine stared at him.

“How badly?” she asked.

He looked at her.

“Silas said it could be repaired.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Lance’s gaze fell.

“I didn’t ask him how badly.”

Leo felt the first stir of heat beneath his skin.

He rested both hands against his knees.

Marcus leaned forward.

“You sent them in.”

Lance nodded once.

“You knew the route had been changed.”

“Yes.”

“And when we came back carrying them?”

Lance swallowed.

No one rescued him from the silence.

Celine spoke again.

“You let Mother sell her jewelry.”

His head lifted.

“The physicians,” she said. “The medicines. You watched us pay for them.”

“I authorized funds from—”

“You let her sell it.”

The answer died in his mouth.

Catherine turned slightly toward her sister.

Leo could feel Celine’s hand shaking.

Tomas’s pen moved across the paper.

Lance stared at it as though the sound hurt him.

Marcus stood.

He walked to the doorway and remained there for several breaths.

Outside, the wind lifted the edge of the canvas roof.

When he turned back, his face was pale.

“Who else knew?”

“The keeper responsible for the southern entry. Silas dealt with him.”

“His name.”

Lance gave it.

Tomas wrote it down.

“Where are the records?” Marcus asked.

“There may be an entry in the private accounts. The payment was listed as repairs.”

“Where?”

“In the old residence. The small room behind my study. Beneath the lowest shelf.”

Marcus nodded.

Leo knew that nod.

It meant names would be checked. Rooms searched. Every surviving piece of the lie would be pulled apart.

Lance looked at his wife’s empty place near the door.

“Does she have to hear this?”

“Yes,” Celine said.

He turned toward her.

“She spent months blaming herself for not finding the right healer.”

Lance’s face changed.

For the first time, he seemed to understand a consequence that had happened in a room he had never entered.

Catherine rose.

Leo stood with her.

Lance took a step toward the ward.

“I didn’t know Silas would leave you like that.”

Catherine stopped.

“You knew enough to keep quiet.”

She held out her hand.

Celine took it.

They left together.

Leo followed them without looking back.

They did not speak on the ride home.

At the gate, Celine asked to walk.

Marcus took the horses.

Leo stayed beside the twins as they crossed the courtyard.

Elara saw their faces through the open kitchen door.

She wiped her hands and came out.

“What happened?”

Celine tried to answer.

Instead, she reached for her mother.

Elara held her immediately.

Catherine moved into the embrace a moment later.

Leo stood close enough to hear Celine say, “You couldn’t have known.”

Elara looked over her daughter’s shoulder at Marcus.

He nodded toward the house.

They would tell her.

Not in the courtyard.

Not while the children coming back from their lessons passed within earshot.

Leo fetched Noctis from the nurse who had been watching him and carried him upstairs.

The baby studied his face.

Then he caught Leo’s finger and pulled it toward his mouth.

Leo sat beside the window.

For a little while, he let that be the only thing required of him.

The second message from Tomas arrived after midday.

Leo nearly refused it.

Then he saw the word binding on the folded note.

He read it twice.

Marcus watched from the other side of the table.

“What is it?”

“Lance remembers something from the transformation.”

“Useful?”

“Possibly.”

Leo folded the note carefully.

Celine stood in the doorway.

“Go.”

He turned.

“You don’t have to come.”

“I know.”

She crossed the room and placed a hand against his chest.

“I’m staying with Catherine and Mother. Find out what he knows.”

Leo covered her hand.

For a moment, neither moved.

Then she rose onto her toes and kissed him.

“Come back before you’re too tired to speak to us.”

“I will.”

Lance had not touched the rest of his porridge.

Tomas stood beside a rough drawing.

Three circles.

Two smaller ones joined to a larger ring.

Leo stopped near the table.

“What am I looking at?”

“The floor beneath the chairs where Silas bound them,” Tomas said.

Lance sat on the edge of the bed.

“There was a metal ring in the center. Black iron, or something like it. He made us place our hands over it before he began.”

“Both of you?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the ring?”

“Silas took it into the mountain.”

Leo looked at the drawing.

“Why didn’t you tell us this yesterday?”

Lance’s jaw tightened.

“I remembered it last night.”

Tomas glanced at him.

Lance looked away.

After a moment, he said, “I knew he still had it. I thought it might be something I could bargain with.”

Leo stared.

“You nearly opened a passage into the valley.”

“I know.”

“And you were still keeping something back.”

Lance said nothing.

Leo stepped away from the table before the heat in his hands could reach the paper.

He looked through the doorway at the guards.

One was repairing a strap.

The other watched the hillside.

Ordinary men, sitting within reach of something that might tear open because Lance still wanted to own the last useful fact in the room.

When Leo turned back, his voice was quiet.

“Tell Tomas everything. Even the parts that make you look foolish. Especially those.”

Lance bowed his head.

This time, he did not argue.

By evening, the elders had filled two slates.

Seraphine arrived from Darian’s infirmary with another drawing.

“He remembers the ring,” she said. “He also remembers Silas wrapping two pieces of wire around it. One white. One red.”

Tomas placed the drawings together.

“The bindings may share a fixed anchor.”

Celine’s mentor traced the larger circle.

“That would explain how the opening found Lance after we severed the command thread to Darian. Different workings, attached to the same object.”

Leo looked toward the north.

“So we need the ring.”

“Perhaps,” Seraphine said. “But we should first find out whether we can loosen the attachment from this end.”

“How?”

She set a small glass dish on the table.

Inside lay the blackened growth that had broken from Darian’s finger during his first treatment.

Leo recognized it.

“You kept that?”

“I keep most things I don’t understand.”

Tomas gave her a sidelong look.

“That explains your friends.”

She ignored him.

“If the binding follows the imposed shape of the body, this fragment may still carry enough of it for us to examine. We can test it without touching Darian.”

Celine’s mentor drew a small empty chamber around the dish.

“No path beyond this table,” he said.

Edran took the opposite chair.

“And no one follows whatever answers.”

Catherine, who had come in with Celine a few minutes earlier, sat beside him.

“I heard you.”

“I was speaking to everyone.”

“Of course.”

Leo looked at his wives.

Celine settled into her chair.

“We wanted to know what you found.”

He pulled another chair close enough for their knees to touch.

Then they began.

The fragment responded to blessed water with a faint hiss.

A gray line appeared along its broken edge.

Seraphine held a lamp close while Leo worked the settling rite around it.

The line loosened.

For a moment, Catherine sensed the same pull she had felt at the boundary.

North.

Deep beneath stone.

She kept her attention on the dish.

“There.”

Celine’s mentor closed the outer chamber.

The pull stopped extending, caught within the small space he had prepared.

A thread no thicker than a hair hung above the fragment.

Leo’s pulse quickened.

They had seen something like it before.

Tomas raised one hand.

“No lightning yet.”

Leo lowered his fingers.

Seraphine added another drop of water.

The thread trembled.

Then it slipped free.

It did not snap.

It curled inward and vanished.

Everyone remained still.

Catherine pressed her palm against the table.

Nothing pulled at her awareness.

Celine’s mentor checked the chamber.

“No opening.”

Seraphine touched the fragment with a probe.

It crumbled into gray dust.

Leo looked at her.

“Did we do it?”

“To a dead piece no larger than a fingernail,” she said.

But her voice had changed.

Tomas leaned closer.

“The attachment released before the material broke down.”

Celine stared at the dish.

“So it can be undone.”

“We have one result,” her teacher said.

She looked at him.

He let out a quiet breath.

“Yes. It appears that it can.”

Leo sat back.

For days, every answer had seemed to uncover another danger.

Now a glass dish held something they had finished.

Small.

Repeatable, perhaps.

Enough to begin.

They did not try it on Darian that night.

Seraphine insisted on testing the other fragments first.

Leo agreed before she finished explaining.

Tomas looked faintly suspicious.

“I do learn,” Leo told him.

“Occasionally.”

Celine rested her head against Leo’s shoulder.

Catherine reached across the table and found the empty edge of the dish.

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Seraphine said.

Outside, the lamps along the courtyard had been lit.

Elara arrived carrying Noctis and stopped when she saw the group gathered around the table.

“Has anyone eaten?”

No one answered quickly enough.

She sighed.

“I thought so.”

Noctis made a delighted sound at the sight of his mother.

Celine took him.

The baby reached toward the glass dish.

Six adults moved at once.

Elara looked around at them.

“What is in that bowl?”

“Dust,” Leo said.

“Then why does everyone look as though he nearly swallowed the mountain?”

Catherine laughed first.

Celine followed, holding Noctis against her while he objected to being denied something interesting.

Leo found himself laughing too.

Elara still looked unconvinced, but she began directing them toward the kitchen.

Far beneath the mountains, Silas woke with his hand burning.

The iron ring lay on the table beside him.

One of the red filaments wound around it had come loose.

He stared at the dangling end.

Then he reached for his notes.

“Impossible.”

The Hollow remained silent.

Silas pressed the filament back against the ring.

It would not hold.

He tried again.

From the darkness came the soft scrape of something moving closer.

“What have you lost?” the voice asked.

Silas closed his hand over the ring.

“Nothing.”

The silence lasted long enough for sweat to gather beneath his collar.

Then the voice spoke again.

“Show me.”

At home, Leo paused beside the bedroom door.

Celine had settled Noctis in his cradle. Catherine stood near the window, one hand resting against the curtain.

Both turned toward him.

He had been rehearsing an apology for leaving them after the morning at the shelter.

Before he could speak, Catherine crossed the room and took his hand.

“Sit with us.”

So he did.

Celine leaned against one side of him and Catherine against the other.

No one mentioned Lance.

After a while, Celine asked, “Do you think it will work on the rest of Darian?”

“I think we have something worth trying.”

She nodded.

Catherine’s fingers moved over his knuckles.

“And after that?”

Leo looked toward the cradle.

There would be more work. More questions. Somewhere beneath the mountains, Silas still held the ring.

“After that,” he said, “we see what he can do with a hand that belongs to him again.”

Celine closed her eyes.

For the first time that day, her shoulders relaxed.