Fionn's grip had grown stronger. Still fit inside Torven's palm, but not like before. Warm despite the morning cold. He kept pulling ahead, then catching himself, humming the tune Moira had sung last night, a small smile on his lips.Fionn's grip had grown stronger. Still fit inside Torven's palm, but not like before. Warm despite the morning cold. He kept pulling ahead, then catching himself, humming the tune Moira had sung last night, a small smile on his lips.
"Will we shoot at the targets today?" Fionn asked, looking up. "The big ones? Like you told me about?"
"Maybe. Depends on Osric."
"I practiced the hold. Mama showed me with the broom handle." He demonstrated with his free hand, fingers curling. "Like this?"
"Close enough. You'll see when you get there."
Fionn's smile widened. He hummed again, pulling ahead, eager.
They passed Old Kerra's workshop where ash bread baked in the morning hearth. Heat rose from the open doorway. The smell: bitter, acrid, coating the back of the throat like smoke you could eat. A woman passing turned her head away from it, pulled her scarf across her nose.
Fionn breathed it in, deep, and his face eased.
Voices carried from ahead, boys at the training circle already, shouting, boots on dirt.
The watchtower rose beyond against grey sky, built from dragon vertebrae, highest point in their quarter, perched where edge dweller territory ended. Wind moved through the bones, a low whistle. After training the other boys scattered toward the center, but Fionn climbed there instead, alone, toward sky instead of ground.
He looked up at it now. His steps slowed, hand pulling against Torven's palm.
Torven kept walking. The hand came forward again.
Their breath hung visible, small white puffs keeping time with Fionn's steps.
The training circle lay ahead, packed earth worn smooth by generations, smelling of dust and old sweat, leather and iron. Old chains hung bolted to stone posts at the edges, rusted now, too thick to be useful for anything left. He had learned here, his father before him. Now Fionn, in the green shirt Moira had made for his birthday yesterday, too big still, with room to grow.
Six winters old now. Ten more to go.
Torven let the thought pass, focusing on the hand in his, that smile.
At the circle's edge, Torven held on. Just for a moment. Then he let go.
Fionn looked back. "Da?"
Then he walked toward the other boys alone.
Eight boys waited in the circle, shoving each other, kicking dust. One stared past the circle, face slack.
Fionn stopped a few paces away. "Hi."
Most of them didn't look back. One boy—Colm, in his dragon-scale vest, too tight to button now—raised his hand in a small wave.
Fionn's face brightened. "I'm Fionn. It's my first—"
"We know who you are," another Boneholder boy muttered. Niels. He stepped between them, turned his back. The others followed, blocking Colm from view.
Fionn stood straight, face open, smile gone.
Dust drifted where the boys had been kicking. Cold crept deeper: past cloak, past skin.
Parents clustered at the edges: Boneholders to the north side, Edge-dwellers to the south, silence between them.
Osric stood at the circle's center, grey-bearded and thick through the shoulders, arms crossed. Beside him stood Renn, younger, leaner, demonstrating the hold on a practice crossbow. Twenty now, the boy Torven had pulled from dragon fire, serving as assistant instructor.
Torven watched Fionn. The other boys. Osric. Anywhere but Renn.
Renn found him anyway. Held his gaze for a moment, then looked away.
"Formation!" Osric called. "Dragon line. You know it."
The boys shuffled into a V-shape—or tried to. Boots scuffing dirt, breaths coming faster. Fionn moved toward the front, toward the point.
A shoulder caught him. One of the Boneholder boys—not Colm—shoving past without looking.
Fionn stumbled back. Found himself at one edge, shoulders drawing in.
Torven's weight shifted forward. He stopped himself.
"Weight forward. You're stopping a charge. Plant your feet. Brace."
Fionn among them, trying to copy the others. His feet too close together, shoulders hunched.
"When I call hold, you hold. When I call loose, you loose together. Discipline keeps you alive."
A boy near the front—Denn, maybe seven—raised his hand. "When do we learn deer?"
"Yeah, deer!" Another voice, eager.
The eagerness died. Osric looked at the boy.
"We are dragon hunters." The words echoed off stone. "Practice crossbows. Line up."
"Hold!" Osric's fist rose.
Eight boys froze, some better than others, Fionn half a beat late.
Renn handed out the weapons, wood and iron, lighter than the real thing. Fionn took his, small fingers closing around the stock, cold iron pressing against his palms.
Fionn's grip tightened. Released. Tightened again. His shoulders drew up toward his ears. He glanced at the boy beside him, adjusted his hands to match, then shifted them when he moved.
Osric walked the line, correcting holds, adjusting stances. He reached Fionn, paused. Fionn's hands white-knuckled, tension through his arms.
He moved on without comment.
Three places down, Colm lifted his crossbow. Boneholder family, friendlier than his parents once were. He raised the weapon smoothly, no hesitation, no strain, sighted down the bolt groove and released the mechanism with a clean snap.
The practice bolt struck the target dead center.
"Good." Osric nodded. "Again."
Colm reloaded. Easy movements, certain. Two winters at the crossbow already, and it showed in every motion.
Fionn was still trying to steady his hold.
Torven stood among the other parents. His fingers had found each other, interlaced, squeezing. He made himself loosen them.
"Loose!" Osric called.
Mechanisms snapped and bolts flew. Most hit somewhere on the targets, mounted high where the chains once stopped, angled down like something diving, out of habit now. Colm's struck center.
Fionn's bolt wobbled off the groove, struck dirt three paces short. Dust puffed where it landed.
No one said anything. Osric was already calling for reload.
Torven's hands hung at his sides. Chill through his cloak now that he'd stopped moving. He could cross to Fionn. Steady his hands. Show him how.
He stayed where he was.
Colm stopped moving, head toward Fionn.
His eyes tracked Fionn's hands. The way they couldn't settle. The way Fionn kept shifting his weight. While the other boys reloaded, Colm set down his practice weapon and crossed the circle.
He was carrying something else now—his real crossbow, dragon bone pale as old snow, smooth where the practice weapons were rough. Just that, and Fionn.
Colm stopped beside Fionn, held out the weapon. "Try mine."
Fionn's face lit up. "Really?"
"It's easier," Colm said. "Better balance. You'll see."
Niels's lip curled. Denn stepped back.
Torven could cross the circle. Could call out. Could stop this before—
He didn't move.
Four years of not asking. Not testing. Not wanting to know.
Now you'll know.
Not like this. Not in front of everyone. But his feet wouldn't move.
Waiting.
Fionn's hand hovered over the crossbow. His fingers curled, then opened. He looked to the circle's edge, toward the parents, toward Torven.
Torven gave nothing.
Fionn took it.
His breath caught.
His hands blanched around the stock. Color drained from his face, not slowly but all at once. His shoulders locked. A shudder ran through him. His arms shook.
But he didn't let go.
Ten seconds. His knuckles white as the bone beneath them. Steam rising where flesh met bone. Sweat beading on his forehead.
Twenty seconds. Arms trembling now, the weapon dipping, rising, dipping again. Jaw clenched so tight the muscles jumped.
Thirty seconds.
His fingers sprang open.
The crossbow fell. Hit the ground with a heavy thud, dragon bone on dirt.
Silence fell through the old chains and Fionn dropped to his knees in the dirt. His new green shirt—Moira's shirt—pressed into the ground. Stained.
No one moved.
His son, trembling in the dirt.
Last night's smile came back to him. Fionn by candlelight.
He buried it. Made himself still.
Then Renn did.
He crossed the circle, putting himself between Fionn and the other boys. His back to Fionn now. "Back to positions." His voice cut through. "Formation drill. Now."
The boys scattered toward the targets.
Renn glanced at Fionn once, brief, then away.
He didn't look at Torven.
Niels opened his mouth—
"Shut up." Colm. Still standing beside Fionn, picking up his crossbow.
Torven looked anywhere but his son. His hands wouldn't unclench.
Fionn was standing now. Unsteady. His voice wobbled: "I tried to hold it. I did."
He looked to Torven.
Nothing.
He looked down, blinking fast. "My wrists hurt."
Colm tilted his head. He followed the glance—found Torven standing apart from the other parents.
Then back to Fionn.
"Does that happen a lot?"
Fionn shook his head. "Just today."
The moment stretched. Osric calling formations again, Renn demonstrating something, the other boys falling back into drill. Mechanisms clicking, boots on earth, voices layering. Cold seeping into his bones now.
Colm shifted his crossbow. "See you tomorrow?"
Fionn's face brightened, just a little. "Yeah. Tomorrow, I'll—"
Three horn blasts. From the gates.
The sound was the same—his hands remembered what he'd carried through those gates, what the horns meant.
The boys broke toward them, toward the hunters. Colm hesitated, then followed.
Fionn walked alone.
Torven followed. Behind. Apart.
Afternoon light slanted through the open gates. Dragon-skull jaw wide, frost gathered in the empty eye sockets like the settlement itself watching. Cold despite the sun, the air grey and still.
Hunters moved through in V-shape formation, the dragon formation, the point-and-wings they'd drilled into boys this morning for creatures that no longer flew.
Varn at the apex, dragon-scale pauldron catching light, crossbow across his back, each step measured.
Behind him: Ferne, Grey-beard, five others spreading wide to form the wings. Synchronized, rehearsed, the same formation their fathers had used and their fathers before that.
Behind the Boneholder hunters, four iron knives pulled the sleds—twice as many as last season. Shoulders slumped, faces weathered, clothes stained. Carrying knives that had seen too much.
The Boneholders walked in formation. Dragon-scale bright, cloaks unstained, crossbows unused.
The boys pressed forward, watching. Fionn among them now, swept up in the movement toward the gates.
Behind the hunters: sleds built for dragon weight. Iron runners scarred, frames reinforced to carry tons, centers hollowed and blood-dark from severed dragon heads where deer and boar now lay—too small for the space, ribs showing through hide on some, blood dried brown and crusted. One boar festering green at the shoulder. Rabbits in clusters, hanging from the rails. Flies gathered anyway. The smell hit: rot beginning, meat already spoiling.
The crowd was gathering. Filling the square. Moving toward the gates. Boneholders to one side, Edge-dwellers the other, the space between them careful and maintained.
Varn raised his fist.
"Hold!"
The formation stopped. Perfectly synchronized. Boots hit stone together.
Fionn's weight shifted. Forward. Onto the balls of his feet, shoulders dropping, body remembering what it had learned this morning. Stopping a charge. He caught himself. Straightened. But his hands had moved, rising slightly, fingers curling, reaching for the stock that wasn't there.
Twenty paces back, the moment froze. His son in the hunter's stance: feet planted, shoulders dropped, palms open.
The crowd kept coming: sixty, eighty, a hundred people flowing from doorways and alleys. Boneholders and Edge-dwellers together now, the divide forgotten when portions hung in the balance.
"Present!" Varn called.
Eight crossbows lifted as one. Military precision for deer that hadn't fought back.
The crowd slowed. Eyes on the weapons. Then on the sleds.
Someone near the front stopped counting.
"Honor the fallen!" Varn's voice carried across stone.
No response.
The hunters held position. One beat. Two.
Then Orm—thick through the chest, dragon-bone bracers on his forearms—beat his fist against his chest plate twice. Dragon-scale ringing hollow.
Another hunter whooped. The formation broke, grinning, clapping shoulders, triumph for seven deer.
Seven deer. Two boar. A week-long hunt in the frozen north for this.
And they were celebrating.
The crowd didn't cheer.
Just the sound of boots on stone, the hunters moving through the gates, the sleds scraping behind them.
Seven deer. Two boar. Three hundred mouths.
A child's voice, small: "Is that all?"
Hushed immediately. But the question hung there.
The crowd pressed forward anyway. Not toward the hunters—toward the meat. Bodies packed tight, breath and sweat mixing with dust. Positioning. Angling for the distribution that would come. Boneholder families first. Then Edge-dwellers. The strong near the front, the old falling back, the weak pressed to the edges. An old woman stumbled. Two men shoved past her. Someone's elbow caught a child's face. No apology.
The boys scattered, eager for the front. Fionn didn't follow.
Someone at the back turned away. Didn't stay to watch.
Fionn stood at the crowd's edge. He looked down at his palms. Empty. Then up at the hunters, at Varn's fist still raised, at the shapes on the sleds that were too small, wrong, deer where dragon heads should have been.
He didn't clap.
The crowd pushed closer. Fionn got jostled—an elbow in his back, sharp and careless—small, easy to miss in the press of bodies. He stumbled, caught himself.
No one noticed. No one reached out.
He couldn't cross to him. Wind cut through the square.
Visible in the crowd: Fionn's face tight. He stood small, unmoving.
The crowd blurred. Only Fionn stayed sharp.
She'd come for him. She always came.
He let her handle it.
The crowd thickened between them. More people, more bodies, more distance. Sound dimmed, the crowd's noise muffled, like hearing through water.
Then movement from the south side, someone pushing through the press, moving against the current toward where Fionn stood alone.
Moira.
She crossed the square. Hands stained from morning work, hair coming loose. People stepped aside without thinking and made space for the tanner's wife, for Fionn's mother.
She reached Fionn. His face turned up to her, relief breaking through the blankness.
"Come help me with the hides," she said. Quiet. Just to him.
Her fingers closed around his small ones. The tension left him.
She didn't look back, just walked—unhurried, certain—leading him away from all of it.
Fionn followed. His free hand brushed his shirt, checking the stains, maybe, or just needing something to hold. He glanced back once—toward the sleds, the formations, the hunters—then forward again. Following his mother.
They disappeared into the paths between buildings. Gone.
Torven stood at the crowd's edge. Alone.
While she led their son away.
The world came back slowly: sound first, the noise of distribution and complaint and bargaining. Then color, the dirt and grey and dried blood. Then cold—he'd been standing too long, hadn't he?
The crowd surged toward the sleds. Distribution starting. Voices rising. Someone shouting about portions, about fairness, about not enough.
He should find them. Moira had Fionn now—safe, away from this.
Instead, he watched.
Watched the crowd fight over deer and rotting boar. Watched the hunters separate, their celebration fading now that the performance was done and the reality remained: a week-long hunt for this. For meat that would last days, not weeks. For portions measured in ounces while the settlement starved slowly.
The sleds stood empty now, iron frames built for weight they'd never carry again. The afternoon tasted like ash.
The distribution ended in the usual scatter, families carrying portions home. Torven stood where he always stood—apart, not in line.
Ferne passed without slowing. Cloth pressed into his palm, quick and familiar. Bones through the fabric. Gristle.
He held the bundle close.
He walked the long way—past the storage houses with their dragon-spine frames, past the well where water pooled in cracks between stones. The sun hung low, casting everything in brass and shadow. His boots knew the way to her.
The tanning racks came into view first: stretched hides catching the slant light like sails, some pale and new, others dark with oak-bark stain. Then the smell, sharp and chemical, the kind that settled in your throat and stayed. Tannin. Wet leather. Something earthy underneath, like turned soil after rain.
Moira stood at the largest rack, blade in hand, working a hide with long steady strokes. The green shirt beside her stopped him cold.
Fionn sat cross-legged in the dirt, sorting leather scraps into piles. His hands careful, holding each piece up to the fading light, turning it, deciding. The shirt Moira had made him yesterday, darker now where sweat and dirt had pressed through the wool.
Torven stepped into the shadow of the storage house. Stopped.
Moira's blade in rhythm—pull, lift, pull—peeling membrane from hide in translucent strips. Her shoulders rolled with the motion. Her right hand trembled slightly when she lifted the blade for the next stroke, but the blade itself never wavered.
Fionn held up a piece of leather, palm-sized, edges curled, surface cracked in a web pattern.
Moira glanced at it. Tilted her hand toward the scrap pile.
He set it down without question. Reached for the next piece.
The evening pressed close around them: the chemical smell, the last warmth bleeding from the sky, the quiet scrape of blade on hide. Torven's portion grew heavy in his hands. He should go home. Put the meat away. Start a fire against the coming cold.
He didn't move.
Fionn finished sorting the last piece, the salvage pile, and sat back on his heels. No tightness in his face now. Shoulders loose. Hands sure on the leather scraps.
Moira wiped the blade on her apron and studied the hide. Nearly clean now, pale and supple where the membrane had been, ready for the next stage. She reached into her work satchel and pulled out a small clay pot. The hide glue inside would be cold by now, thick as mud.
She held it out to Fionn.
Fionn closed both hands around the clay without hesitation, the pot disappearing between his palms.
The meat portion slipped in Torven's grip. He caught it. His knuckles had gone white around the cloth.
Moira returned to the hide, checking edges, finding spots she'd missed, working them clean. The blade scraped, lifted, scraped again. Thirty seconds passed. Forty. Fionn's hands stayed closed around the pot, still and quiet. No fever-flush on his cheeks. No trembling. No wrongness at all.
Just warmth—constant, like the sun had concentrated itself in his small palms.
Moira set down the blade and held out her hand. Fionn returned the pot to her. She pried off the lid. The glue inside had softened, no longer solid, moving when she tilted the clay. She tested it with her finger, nodded once, set it beside the hide, and went back to work.
The ground tilted under Torven's feet.
Moira hummed low and tuneless. The sound drifted across the racks, barely more than breath.
Fionn eased. The last of this morning's tension bled out of him. The small smile from before training—gone all day—was back.
Moira set down the scraping blade and picked up a smaller one, the finishing knife, its edge worn bright from years of use. She held it out to Fionn.
His eyes widened. Shoulders lifting. She dipped her chin.
Fionn scrambled up, taking the blade with both hands like it mattered. Like she'd given him something more than steel.
She shifted to make room beside her at the rack.
The shadow had grown colder. His legs ached with stillness.
She guided his grip: fingers here, thumb there, wrist straight not bent. Spoke close to his ear as she angled the blade against the hide's surface.
Fionn's first stroke bunched the membrane instead of cutting it. It skipped across the surface.
Moira leaned close. Her hand covered his, gentle on the adjustment.
The second stroke caught. Peeled a clean strip from the hide, thin and translucent, curling away from the blade like old skin. Fionn's hands stilled. Then moved again, surer.
She touched his shoulder once, then handed him another section of hide. Let him work it himself.
Fionn bent close to the leather, tongue caught between his teeth in concentration. Steel worked, careful and slow. Strip by strip, the membrane came free. Some strokes clean, some bunched, but each one better than the last.
Moira returned to her own section. They worked in parallel, her strokes long and practiced, his short and careful. The scraping sounds layered over each other. Her humming resumed, weaving between the blade-work like a third voice.
The last heat bled from the air. Torven's fingers had gone numb around the cloth.
She reached for the next hide. Her fingers brushed Fionn's as he handed her the glue pot. She squeezed once, brief and deliberate, her hand around his small one. Then she let go and returned to the work.
The humming held, his strokes even now, and the evening deepened around them.
Fionn's hands around that pot. Thirty seconds. Forty. Moira taking it back. The glue inside softened.
How many times?
He'd lost feeling in his hands. He couldn't remember when.
How many pots, how many hides, how many evenings while he stood in training circles watching for wrongness he refused to name?
The chemical smell on the air intensified as Moira spread glue into a fresh hide, pressing it thin with practiced strokes. Fionn sneezed—small and sudden—and she reached over without looking to turn his face from the fumes.
He went back to scraping.
Torven's skin felt too tight over his ribs, his shoulders, like he'd grown since morning.
Moira's rhythm broke—subtle, a fraction slower, the blade lifting higher before the next stroke—and then she stilled, set down the knife, straightened.
The shadow had turned cold and damp against Torven's back. He hadn't moved. Couldn't remember deciding not to.
Her eyes found him anyway.
She didn't say anything. Didn't acknowledge him. Just looked at Fionn working beside her, his small hands careful on the knife, his face serious with concentration.
"Fionn. Take the usable pile inside. Stack it by the door."
Fionn looked up. His eyes tracked toward the shadows, then back to his mother.
"Okay."
He set down the blade with care, laying it on the rack's edge exactly where she'd want it, and gathered the sorted leather into his arms. The pile came up to his chin. He walked toward home without looking back, the green shirt visible in the failing light until the storage house walls swallowed him.
Moira picked up her blade. Turned back to the hide.
Waited.
Torven stepped out of the shadow.
The chemical smell thickened as he approached. Tannin, wet leather, the iron tang of scraped membrane. Her territory. Her rules.
Moira didn't turn around. Her blade moved against the hide in long even strokes, unchanged. She'd sensed him watching. Had sent Fionn away.
He stopped three paces behind her. Close enough to see the tension in her shoulders, the stiffness that hadn't been there when Fionn worked beside her.
The scraping continued. Once. Twice.
"You were watching."
Not a question.
"Yes."
"How long?"
He didn't answer.
The blade stopped. She set it down and turned to face him.
Evening light caught the tannin stains on her fingers, deep in the creases. Her right hand trembled the way it always did after long hours, but her eyes didn't waver.
"The shirt I made him. It's stained."
"He fell."
"Don't."
The word landed clean.
She studied him. The same look she gave hides before the blade.
"I've watched you pull away from him."
He couldn't meet her eyes.
"I know he's different. I've known since you carried him through those gates." She picked up the blade, turned it in her hands. "The warmth in him. The way he watches the sky. All of it."
The blade caught the last of the light.
Cold seeping through his cloak. The portion heavy in his hands.
"He's my son." She said it like settling a debt.
She was waiting.
He couldn't hold her eyes. That first night. The Council. What they'd decided.
He set the portion down on the rack's edge.
"Today at training. Colm offered Fionn a crossbow. Dragon bone."
Moira's hands stilled.
"He couldn't hold it. Thirty seconds before his hands gave out. He dropped it in front of everyone."
She set the blade down. Carefully.
"All these years." She looked at him. "And this is what you were afraid of?"
He should tell her no.
"Yes."
True enough.
Moira searched his face. The same way she'd searched it that first night.
"Is that all?"
He looked at her face.
"That's all."
Her eyes held his. Three heartbeats. Four.
She turned back to the hide.
"Alright." The blade found the leather again. "We'll figure it out."
He stood there. Watching her work. The way her shoulders had drawn in. The scraping even, patient, the same sound that had filled the evening when Fionn worked beside her.
He should tell her now.
But he looked at her back—still bent over the hide, still working, still believing she had years ahead of her, that she could figure it out—and the words stuck.
He picked up the portion. Walked toward home.
Behind him, the scraping continued.
Later.