The Same Cloth

“He wants you inside.”

Darian’s warning ended in a strangled cry.

The dark markings around his throat tightened. His back arched, and the fire beneath his skin brightened until Leo could see the bones of his fingers through the glow.

“Move back,” Tomas ordered.

Leo rose, retreating with Catherine and Celine as flame poured from Darian’s mouth.

It struck the barrier.

Pale light spread across the hillside. The nearest boundary stone gave a low, sustained hum, and Darian collapsed against the scorched earth.

He tried to crawl away from them.

That small movement caught Leo more sharply than the scream.

Whatever else was happening inside him, Darian was still trying to keep them out of reach.

“Can we help him from here?” Leo asked.

Seraphine was already watching the fire.

“Perhaps. But no one touches him.”

Marcus sent two guards down the road for supplies and ordered the others to clear the slope behind them. Tomas moved to the boundary stone, laying his palm against its upper surface.

Catherine stood rigid beside Leo.

He touched her wrist.

“Stay with us.”

“I am.”

Her answer came too quickly.

Edran stepped close and placed the smooth practice stone in her hand.

“What do you feel?”

Catherine closed her fingers.

“Stone. Cold.”

“Under your feet?”

“Grass.”

“Good. Now listen to him.”

Darian dragged in another breath.

There was a rhythm to his suffering.

A few moments of quiet. A tightening of the black lines. Then the fire.

Catherine’s head lifted.

“It happens just before he tries to speak.”

Seraphine glanced toward her.

“The markings?”

“Yes. He reaches for a word, and something catches him.”

Darian’s clawed hand scraped across the ground.

He looked at Leo.

His lips moved.

The lines tightened.

“Don’t,” Leo said quickly. “You don’t have to answer anything.”

Darian shuddered.

“Just breathe.”

For several moments, the only sounds were the wind and Darian’s uneven attempts to obey.

Then the light under his skin dimmed.

They worked around him slowly.

Celine’s mentor arrived with the first returning guards. He examined the barrier, then the ground beyond it, and asked Tomas three brief questions.

Afterward, he drove four narrow stakes into the soil on the safe side.

“We can make a holding enclosure here,” he said. “Separate from the valley wards.”

Leo looked toward Darian.

“And bring him through?”

“Once the enclosure is ready, we can open a passage directly into it. The outer boundary stays intact.”

“Will it hold him?”

The old mage watched a tongue of fire curl from Darian’s shoulder.

“For a time. I will need Seraphine to contain the heat.”

“You’ll have me,” she said.

Celine moved beside her teacher.

“What can I do?”

“Keep the receiving point steady. Seated.”

He pointed toward a folding stool one of the guards had brought.

Celine opened her mouth.

Then she closed it and sat.

Leo knelt near the barrier again.

“Darian. We’re going to move you somewhere we can help.”

The ruined face turned toward him.

Fear passed through it.

Leo could not tell whether Darian feared them, Silas, or the simple prospect of being touched.

“The ward will stay between you and everyone else,” he continued. “You won’t hurt anyone by coming through.”

Darian stared at him.

Then, with visible effort, he lowered his head.

Behind Leo, the guards set down a covered pitcher.

Blessed well water.

He looked at it for a long moment before lifting the lid.

The first time he had prepared that water, he had been desperate to help the women he loved.

He had never imagined bringing it to a man who had stood beside Lance.

Seraphine crouched near him.

“Only a little,” she said. “We need to see how the corruption reacts.”

Leo filled a shallow cup.

Celine opened a passage no wider than her palm.

Its second mouth appeared just above the earth beside Darian.

Leo eased the cup through and withdrew his hand.

Darian looked at it.

“Water,” Leo said.

His clawed fingers could not close around the cup.

He tried twice.

On the third attempt, he knocked it over.

For a moment, no one moved.

Darian stared at the darkening patch of earth.

Then he made a sound Leo wished he had never heard.

Celine’s mouth trembled.

She opened the passage again.

“Give me the pitcher.”

Her teacher shifted beside her, supporting the edges of the opening while she placed a smaller one above Darian’s lips.

“Lift your head,” she said.

Darian obeyed.

She let a thin trickle fall.

He swallowed.

Fire flashed across his chest.

Seraphine raised both hands.

“Stop.”

The passage closed.

Darian bent double, retching smoke.

Leo started forward before he could stop himself.

Catherine caught his sleeve.

“Wait.”

The black markings along Darian’s jaw loosened.

Only slightly.

But enough for him to draw a breath without choking.

Seraphine leaned closer.

“The water is affecting it.”

“Can it remove it?” Leo asked.

“I don’t know.”

Darian’s eyes closed.

For the first time since they had found him, his shoulders lowered.

Getting him inside the enclosure took all of them.

Catherine followed the short, uneven gaps between his spasms.

Celine held the receiving point while her mentor shaped the larger passage.

Seraphine drew the escaping fire upward, keeping it away from the grass and the waiting guards.

Tomas stood ready at the new wards.

Leo waited where Darian could see him.

“Now,” Catherine said.

Space opened.

Darian tried to move.

His left arm folded beneath him.

Leo’s hand twitched.

“Stay,” Celine said through clenched teeth.

He stayed.

Her teacher shifted the passage lower, letting Darian’s weight carry him through.

He landed inside the enclosure with a heavy thud.

Tomas struck the nearest stake with the end of his staff.

Light rose around Darian.

The passage snapped shut.

Celine sagged forward.

Leo caught her before she slipped from the stool.

“I’ve got you.”

“I know.”

She leaned against him for a moment, breathing hard.

Across the enclosure, Darian lifted his head.

His gaze moved from Celine to Leo’s arms around her.

Then he looked away.

His mother arrived shortly before midnight.

Marcus met her at the bend in the road.

Leo watched the conversation from a distance. He saw her stop walking. Saw Marcus gesture toward the pale enclosure and speak again.

She pressed both hands against her mouth.

Then she continued up the slope.

Her youngest son followed.

Darian smelled the familiar shawl before he seemed to recognize her face.

His head jerked toward her.

“Mother?”

She stopped at the edge of the ward.

For a heartbeat, Leo thought her knees would fail.

Marcus stood close enough to catch her.

“Oh, Darian.”

He dragged his misshapen arm across his chest as though he could hide himself behind it.

“Don’t look.”

She sank to her knees.

The guards quietly moved farther away.

“Look at me,” she said.

Darian shook his head.

“Please.”

Slowly, he turned.

She wept without making a sound.

Leo looked down at the cup in his hands.

Beside him, Catherine reached for Celine.

Neither spoke.

“Your brother is here,” Darian’s mother said.

“No.”

The word came sharply enough to startle them.

His younger brother stopped.

Darian’s face twisted.

“Stay back.”

“I am back,” the boy said.

His voice shook, but he did not retreat.

Darian stared at him.

“You’re taller.”

The boy’s chin trembled.

“A little.”

Darian tried to smile.

The effort pulled at the damaged side of his mouth.

His mother laid her hand against the empty air just outside the ward. Light gathered beneath her palm.

“I’m here,” she said. “You don’t have to speak.”

Darian bowed his head.

For several minutes, that was enough.

The attack came while Seraphine was changing the cooling stones.

Darian’s head snapped backward.

Every black line on his body darkened at once.

Catherine felt it a fraction before the others.

“Leo, away from the opening.”

He stepped back.

A narrow spear of fire struck the place where his throat had been.

The enclosure caught it.

One of the stakes split.

Darian’s mother cried out.

Marcus pulled her and her younger son behind him while Tomas drove his staff into the ground.

“Hold the western side!”

Celine’s mentor raised a hand.

The failing corner bent inward, compressing the fire.

Darian stood.

His movements had changed.

There was no awkwardness now. No hesitation from the arm that had failed to support him.

His eyes fixed on Leo.

When he spoke, the voice was calm.

“You always did gather other people’s castoffs.”

Leo went cold.

“Silas.”

Darian’s mouth curved.

His mother made a small, wounded sound behind Marcus.

Leo kept his eyes on the man inside the ward.

“Let him go.”

“You’re welcome to come and collect him properly.”

Tomas shifted closer to Leo.

Silas’s borrowed gaze flicked toward the elder.

“Still teaching Lawrence’s tricks?”

Tomas did not answer.

That seemed to irritate him more than anger would have.

Catherine gripped Edran’s wrist.

“There,” she whispered. “When he speaks. Something pulls from the north.”

“Can you follow it without reaching outward?”

She listened to Darian’s breathing beneath the other voice.

“I think so.”

“Only to the edge of this enclosure.”

Leo heard them.

He kept Silas talking.

“What did you take from my parents?”

Darian’s lips parted.

Then one clawed hand rose slowly toward his own throat.

Silas forced it down.

“Enough.”

Leo saw the struggle.

So did Seraphine.

She moved two cooling stones closer to Darian’s feet.

“And yet you still need me,” Leo said.

The borrowed smile vanished.

The pressure around the enclosure increased.

Catherine turned her face toward its northern corner.

“There.”

Edran lifted his staff.

Celine’s mentor followed her gesture.

For an instant, a dark filament became visible in the air, thin as hair and stretched taut through the ward.

“I can close around it,” the spatial mage said. “I cannot hold it long.”

“Don’t cut it blindly,” Seraphine warned. “It’s rooted in him.”

Darian’s right hand slammed against his left wrist.

He held it there, shaking.

“Do,” he rasped.

Silas’s expression flickered.

Darian forced out one more word.

“It.”

Leo looked at Tomas.

The elder’s eyes moved to the filament.

“A narrow pulse,” he said. “No more than the training disk.”

Leo raised his hand.

Celine was already opening the small passage.

He met her gaze.

She nodded.

Catherine drew a breath.

“Wait.”

Darian shook.

The filament tightened.

“Now.”

Leo released the lightning.

It passed through Celine’s opening and struck the dark thread precisely where her mentor had caught it.

A sharp sound cracked across the hillside.

Darian fell.

The pressure vanished.

For a moment, Leo could hear nothing but his own heartbeat.

Then Darian coughed.

Seraphine knelt at the edge of the enclosure.

“He’s breathing.”

His mother began to cry again.

They did not remove the wards.

The dark markings remained, and Seraphine could offer no assurance that Silas would be unable to reach him again.

But Darian slept.

The fire beneath his skin had settled to a dull, intermittent glow. His mother sat outside the enclosure with a blanket around her shoulders. Her younger son leaned against her, refusing every suggestion that he return to the compound.

Marcus arranged another shift of guards.

A sheltered infirmary room would be prepared at first light, with stone floors and independent wards. Until then, they would keep him where he was.

Celine had gone home with Elara’s second messenger.

Noctis needed her.

She had kissed Leo before leaving, then taken his face between her hands.

“You come back when the next watch arrives.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

Now Catherine sat beside him beneath a hastily raised canvas shelter.

He looked toward her.

“You stopped.”

She knew what he meant.

When the dark thread had snapped, something vast had stirred at the far end of it.

She had felt the temptation to turn toward it.

To learn.

Instead, she had closed her fingers around the stone in her pocket and listened to Leo breathing.

“Edran will be unbearable tomorrow,” she said.

Leo let out a tired laugh.

“He’s earned a little.”

“So has Tomas.”

“My shin disagrees.”

She rested her head against his shoulder.

For a while, they watched over Darian together.

He woke before dawn.

Leo was preparing to leave when his name came from inside the enclosure.

He turned back.

Darian lay on his side, one hand curled beneath his head.

“Celine?”

“She went home.”

His eyes shifted toward Catherine.

She stood beside Leo.

“I’m here,” she said.

Darian swallowed.

The movement looked painful.

“I thought…”

He stopped.

Leo waited.

Darian’s gaze dropped to Catherine’s hand on Leo’s arm.

“I thought if he sent you away, everything would go back.”

Leo’s expression hardened.

Darian did not look away this time.

“He kept saying you were taking things that belonged to us.”

“Your father?”

A faint nod.

Catherine’s fingers tightened.

Darian breathed through another wave of pain.

“I believed him.”

The hillside had begun to lighten around them. Somewhere below, a cart creaked along the road carrying the next watch.

Leo looked at the man on the ground.

He remembered the old clan.

The conversations that stopped when he entered.

The way Celine and Catherine had been discussed as though their futures were goods to be exchanged.

He remembered leaving.

“You have a great deal to answer for,” he said.

Darian closed his eyes.

“I know.”

“We’ll speak when you can.”

After a moment, Darian nodded.

Then his gaze moved past Leo.

His mother slept in the chair outside the ward, her youngest son curled beneath part of her blanket.

Darian watched them for a long time.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Leo could not answer yet.

He rose.

Catherine walked beside him toward the waiting horses.

They had almost reached Marcus when Darian spoke again.

“Leo.”

He turned.

Darian’s eyes were open wide.

“The voice.”

Silence spread among those close enough to hear.

“What about it?” Tomas asked.

Darian stared toward the mountains.

“He was afraid of it.”

“Silas?”

A nod.

Darian’s claws pressed into the blanket beneath him.

“He talks as though it promised him everything.”

Leo waited.

“But when it called his name…”

Darian swallowed.

“He tried to step away.”

Far beneath the northern mountains, Silas stood over a broken circle of black stone.

Blood ran from his nose.

The spell connecting him to Darian had burned through before he could withdraw. His left hand would not stop trembling.

Behind him, Lance watched from the shadows.

Silas kicked a fragment across the cavern.

“He should have died before they severed it.”

No answer came.

He turned toward the Hollow.

For several breaths, there was only darkness.

Then the voice spoke.

“The boy is learning.”

Silas wiped his mouth.

“I can still bring him.”

“Yes.”

The certainty should have comforted him.

Instead, he remembered trying to release Darian at the last instant.

Something had held the connection open.

Silas stared into the gateway.

“Why didn’t you let me withdraw?”

Stone scraped in the darkness.

A hand emerged and settled against the inner edge of the doorway.

It had too many joints.

Silas stepped back.

The voice came again, patient and close.

“I was watching.”

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