Dawn came soft and suspicious, as if the sky itself were holding its breath. The hearth smelled of last night's smoke and the wet tang of the marsh; children ran between legs with bread and morning laughter, trying to convince the world that life would be ordinary whether or not it chose to be heroic.
Ordinary had become a shape Lira no longer trusted. She woke with the pebble warm in her palm, as if it carried its own small sun. The mark at her nape had cooled to a steady ember; she could feel it under her collar like a heart that had learned a new rhythm. Across the room, Kellan slept sitting up—rare, because sleep with him was usually a closed, private thing. He blinked once, and when his eyes found hers there was no question about why he had stayed.
"Runners came before dawn," he said without preamble. "The nearest hold sends a company by dusk. They feared the horn as well."
"Good," Aric answered from where he was sharpening a blade. His voice kept to the edges of politeness, but there was a map in it—routes, timings, flanks. "We asked for allies; we received caution. Both will be useful."
The day fell into work: mending nets, teaching the younger wolves to set traps that would not scare off game when the hunters passed, pulling the temple's simplest reliquaries into the hearth's guarded room. Lira learned to wrap a coil of rope with the same patience a woman might use to bind a book. Hands that had scrubbed floors now primed defenses. Each mundane task was a stitch in the net they were weaving.
It was Vale who changed the morning's direction. He came to the hearth at mid-morning with a small leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He moved like a shadow with purpose—no swagger, no need to fill space. He found Lira at the edge of the yard, where the reed-smell cut into the village.
"You walked the marsh at dusk," he said without greeting. "Do you see the way it hides and gives itself up when it wants to?"
"I know its tricks," she said. "Why?"
He unfastened the satchel and took out a folded scrap of cloth and a single strip of metal stamped with a sigil Lira had seen before—the mark from the hunter's camp. Vale's fingers moved over it like a man reading a palm. "This sigil ties to more than contract-lords," he said. "It's a merchant's brand for those who deal in rare things—wolf pelts, cures, charms. There are houses that hoard superstition and sell the fragments of it at a price."
Rook wandered up at that moment, throwing a glance at the strip of metal, then grinned. "So the hunters aren't just mean boys with knives. Someone's bought an interest in what you are. Good to know. Who has coin enough to buy a legend?"
Vale's eyes grazed the horizon and did not smile. "Coin travels where rumor leads. But not all coin comes from men who count it. Some comes braided with vows or old debts. Beads and contracts that remember the old prices. Those are the dangerous ones."
Aric's hand tightened on the blade. "Then we must find who underwrites them. Send runners to the trading roads; trace who sold the band to that hunting crew. If there is a broker, cut the line."
Darren, who had been listening with folded attention, shook his head. "Tracing trade requires more than runners. You will need record-keepers, merchants who will admit a sale, and—most importantly—proof. Contracts are not given to gossip."
"You'll have proof," Vale said flatly. "If you watch the right houses, you will find them offer things that cannot be counted in coin—old favors, oaths taken in blood. Those cannot be folded into law, but they bind the men who keep them."
The conversation slid toward plans, and Lira felt herself pulled along like a thread in a loom. She volunteered for a reconnaissance—small, close, a presence at the trading square where merchants haggled and secrets changed hands like poultry for soil. Aric argued. Kellan argued softer. Rook applauded the danger. Vale looked at her appraisingly.
"You must not go alone," he said finally. "You are a beacon. You walked the road once and the wind learned your steps. The road will remember you. Take two who can vanish if lines close."
She chose Kellan and Rook, not because they were the best spies but because of the way they balanced one another: Kellan's stillness and Rook's noise. Vale watched them leave and then, as if unwilling to be left out of the thread, he crossed the yard and placed something small in Lira's palm—an obsidian bead etched with a mark she did not know.
"For the road," he said. "And if you cannot trust the law, trust this: watch the men who do not look at you like a prize but like a ledger. Their eyes will tell you what their mouths hide."
They moved at noon, slipping from the marsh into the rough road that led to the trading square. The sun burned high, and the market was a spill of color and language. Merchants hawked drums, salted fish, wool. A traveling apothecary had jars of things that caught light and made it strange. Lira felt a hundred eyes brush her—not all of them curious. Some used look as a question: how much for the thing I cannot own?
They threaded through the crowds. Kellan's presence was a border; people stepped aside with a gesture that did not read rudeness. Rook fed the group small jokes and barbs so the two of them could watch for the quiet trades. The apothecary's stall offered potions in vials like teeth, and a trader in a mud-brown coat sold furs from lands Lira had never seen.
The broker was not obvious. He did not wear a badge. He wore an extra collar of beads and the look of a man who had taught his face to be empty. He moved like a merchant and listened like a judge. Lira felt him before she saw him: a coldness in the air, a thin absence where warmth should have been.
Kellan pointed him out with one tiny tilt of his head. He stood at the corner of a stall, watching a fur-trader wrap a pelt with the kind of care men used for things that would be worth more tomorrow. He accepted a coin, a nod, and then his fingers brushed the pelt as if naming it. The exchange was small, but Lira knew a small exchange could be a door.
Rook drifted close, playful and smiling, and asked to sniff the pelt theatrically. The broker's head turned like a hinge. For an instant his eyes locked on Lira. Something cold and patient passed through them—no awe, no heat. Just calculation.
The broker vanished before they could follow. Kellan swore softly. Lira's jaw tightened. She realized the truth the marsh had hinted at: they were not dealing with simple hunters but with men who saw value in the idea of her.
They returned to the hearth with half-answers and goods to show. The trader's name for the house was known: House Therin—merchant-lords who dealt in rarities. Vale frowned when the name was spoken.
"They keep catalogs of oddities," he said. "They will not stop at marginals. If they move, they move with lots more than coin. They move with alliances."
Late that night, as the pack slept uneasy and runners moved between villages, a horn sounded far off—a single, answering note that did not belong to the hunters' band but to something older and higher. The night answered with a long note from the reed line. Lira stood at the hearth's edge and watched the stars like watchmen.
"You'll draw them," she said softly into the dark, not sure whether she spoke to the pebble in her hand or to the moon above. "You'll keep drawing them until there's nothing left to draw."
Kellan's hand closed over hers. "Then we will be the ones who choose how to meet them."
From the shadowed edge of the yard, Vale inclined his head once—an acknowledgment that was both warning and promise. The bead he had given her warmed under her palm like a tiny, patient ember. It was not magic she could count on. It was a tether to things she did not yet name.
Beyond the marsh, the trading roads stirred, and somewhere in the west, a carriage traced its wheels over a road toward their hold. The game had widened. The pack would have to learn how to play.