He should have told her then. The first time he saw it.He should have told her then. The first time he saw it.
Fionn was barely two.
The walk to the well took longer than it used to. Fionn insisted on walking himself; he wouldn't let Torven carry him anymore, not since he'd figured out his legs could hold him even if they wobbled doing it. His small hands balled tight as he toddled forward.
Two steps. Pause for balance. Three more, arms windmilling. A bird passed overhead—Fionn's eyes followed—and Torven caught him before he fell, set him back on his feet. Two more steps and Fionn stopped again, staring at clouds drifting past bone walls.
Torven didn't rush him. Children learned this way, slowly, stumbling, fascinated by things adults walked past. Most children watched the ground. Fionn only watched sky.
Breath hung in the air, cold enough to frost his beard. Torven's burns ached; they always did in Frost-season. The scars striped both forearms, tight and pale, but he'd gotten used to the ache.
The well rose ahead at the settlement's center, the only one that hadn't run dry.
People gathered around it, two wells had failed last Frost-season, their dragon-bone pumps cracking with no materials to repair them. Boneholder families on the north side, their dragon-scale cloaks marking them like flags. Edge-dwellers on the south, leather and iron and wood. Neutral ground in between where the children played.
Five or six children ran through the middle space, laughing as they kicked a leather ball between them. Mostly Edge-dwellers, and one Boneholder boy, Colm, in a dragon-scale vest too valuable to risk but worn anyway. Status, even at four winters old.
The boy didn't care who he played with, too young to know he shouldn't.
Fionn had tired on the walk and now rode on Torven's hip, but his eyes tracked the children. Not just looking, studying the way they moved together, called to each other, his small face serious, body straining forward.
He set the buckets down. "Fionn—"
But Fionn was already squirming free, sliding down before Torven could get a proper grip. He dropped to hands and knees and crawled toward the children—quick, determined—and reached the edge of their game.
One of the Edge-dweller boys—Denn—stopped first, turned to Fionn, and smiled.
Fionn pulled himself up to standing, wobbling, arms out for balance, until his eyes were level with the other boy's.
For one moment, their eyes held.
Then the Boneholder mother saw.
A sharp-eyed woman, cloak worn at the edges, strode over and grabbed Colm's shoulder. "Colm. Away." Her voice cut sharp as she pulled him back.
The other children scattered. Denn's face fell as he backed away toward his mother.
Fionn's arms stayed up. His fingers opened and closed where the boy had been. His mouth still held the shape of a sound he'd been about to make.
Torven crossed the distance and picked him up. Small hands gripped his shirt, heartbeat quick against his chest.
Fionn's face pressed into his shoulder and stayed there, not crying, just hidden, his fingers still opening and closing against the fabric.
"Come on," Torven said. "Let's get water."
An older woman approached, and Torven recognized her, Edge-dweller tanner, just like his wife, older by twenty winters but with the same stained hands.
"He's walking now?" she asked.
"Barely," Torven said. "He's late."
She glanced at Fionn, still pressed against Torven's chest. She reached toward him as if to touch his hair, then stopped, stained fingers curling back. She smiled at the boy before picking up her bucket.
"He's just a child." She walked away.
Torven filled his buckets with Fionn quiet against his chest. The other people at the well found somewhere else to look.
He carried Fionn and the buckets home. Water sloshed with each step, cold spray against his legs, and Fionn's weight settled against his chest, his small body quieting with each stride. Voices carried from behind, children still playing near the well, laughter high and sharp in the cold. Torven turned down a different path.
The buckets bit into his palms, iron handles cold through calluses, and Fionn's fingers still gripped his shirt, even in sleep. A Boneholder house rose ahead, dragon-bone walls radiating warmth even from the path. Inside, a child's voice, a mother's answer, laughter. He kept walking.
The settlement's edge, where dragon bone gave way to leather and wood, where their home waited. Fionn was asleep by the time they reached the door.
Torven sat with him. The image wouldn't leave, small arms outstretched, hands opening and closing where the other boy had been. When Fionn's breathing settled deeper, Torven carried him inside and laid him down on his sleeping mat. The boy didn't stir.
Torven checked once, then slipped out.
Ingram needed his chimney repointed before true frost set in, mortar work, the kind Boneholders hired out to keep their hands soft. An hour's labor for a half-portion of salt, enough to cure what Moira scraped from the hides, just stone and mortar, weight of tools, a rhythm he knew. His burns pulled tight by the end, but they always did.
He was back before Fionn stirred.
The sky had dulled to evening grey. Moira was at the tanning racks, working three hides today, down from the dozen they'd processed last Frost-season. Her hands would smell like the chemicals for days, and the tremor in her right would get worse by evening. The work made it worse, but the work needed doing.
Torven's breath smoked in the air. Boneholder homes stayed warm, their dragon-bone frames leaking warmth he couldn't touch. But theirs was leather and wood and iron. Small flames, rationed fuel. Enough.
The boy's face was still too serious for someone only two winters old.
"Come on," Torven said, kneeling on the floor. "Let's work on walking. To me."
Fionn stood, arms spread wide, lifting onto his toes, straining upward as if the air might hold him. It didn't. He fell.
Torven caught him. "Easy. One step at a time."
But Fionn wasn't trying to step. He was looking up at the ceiling, at the sky beyond the small window, always searching up.
"Look at me." Torven waited. "Watch my face. Walk to me."
Fionn smiled, bright, two-winter joy, took one step forward, then his eyes lifted. He fell.
They tried twice more, the same pattern each time, stand, reach up, fall.
Torven sat back on his heels. Fionn's brow furrowed, jaw set, but he was focused on the wrong thing. Not the ground where his feet needed to land, not Torven's hands waiting to catch him. Not forward, but only upward.
Fionn was two and barely walking. Other children walked by fifteen months, but late didn't have to mean cursed. The settlement healer had said as much when Torven asked, carefully, casually, not mentioning whose child he meant. "Some walk at ten months, some at three winters. Bodies develop at their own pace."
"One more time," Torven said.
Fionn stood, and this time he looked forward instead of up.
He took three steps, then four, wobbling but moving, and then five steps. He made it all the way to Torven's hands.
"Good. Good work."
Fionn laughed, small and bright, and looked up at Torven.
"Da."
Two letters. He couldn't breathe.
He'd said "Mama" for months, had called for Moira when she left, reached for her when she woke. But never this. Never "Da."
Fionn reached for the wooden blocks nearby, and his hand closed around one.
The block warmed in his palm. Immediately. Like wood pulled from fire.
Fionn didn't notice. He turned the block over, humming, as if warmth were simply what happened when he touched things. Then he held it out to Torven. Offering.
Torven didn't move.
Fionn's arm stayed extended. His humming slowed. Stopped.
He set the block down and reached for another. Didn't offer it.
Torven picked up the first block. Heat spread through his palms and into the scarred skin, the dragon-fire burns that never healed. The warmth seeped in, and the scars stopped screaming, falling into the same quiet that had started it all.
Fionn's eyes stayed on the block. His small face showed nothing like surprise, as if of course it was warm.
Moira's footsteps approached, then stopped. Outside, she scrubbed her hands—rough soap, ash and fat, water brown by now. Close but unaware.
He set the block down and pushed it behind the kindling pile, out of sight.
Moira ducked inside as the sun set, bringing cold air, the sharp acrid smell of oak-bark tannin, and hands still brown, a mark of her trade, wanted or not. Her right hand shook as she dried it, the tremor always worse after long days. She flexed her fingers, then turned to Fionn sleeping on his mat.
"How was he today?"
"He walked," Torven said. "Five steps. Made it all the way across."
"Five?" Her whole face changed—something Torven hadn't seen in months. "Really?"
"Really. Fell at the end, but he made it." Torven paused. "Called me Da. First time."
"Da," she repeated, voice thick. "And five steps. That's wonderful."
She knelt beside Fionn's sleeping mat, fingers reaching toward his hair—but he shifted in sleep and she pulled back, hovering close, watching his chest rise and fall. "He's getting so big," she murmured. "Learning so much. Growing strong." Her voice caught. She laughed, quiet, breathless. "I'm glad we have him. After everything. I'm so glad."
Her gaze caught on it—there on the table. The cord, the stone. She picked it up, river-glass, green-grey, smoothed by water and his own hands.
"Is this for me?"
"This would have been the winter." He watched her hold it. "You know?"
Her right hand stilled on the cord.
"I know."
She slipped it over her head, the stone settling against her chest. Moira set out their meal. Ash bread, bitter root. Enough. She talked while she worked—Fionn's progress, teaching him letters when he was older, the future.
She should know.
But that voice—and the words stuck.
Later.