Begin at the first page, or continue from where you last stopped.
Book One — Chapter One (REWRITE)
The merchant had promised Luvztospoon three things when they struck their bargain two days earlier: a sound bridge, an honest price, and a hot meal waiting on the other side of the mountains. The bridge had just collapsed beneath the wagon, the price had doubled before noon, and something beneath the splintered axle was eating the horse.
Luvztospoon was beginning to suspect the meal would be disappointing.
The remaining stretch of road ended a few paces ahead of him in a ragged shelf of stone. Beyond it, the bridge sagged into a ravine choked with snow and broken timber. One wheel still spun in the air, turning with a faint, stubborn squeal while the rest of the wagon hung crookedly below. The horse had gone down with it. Luvztospoon could no longer see the animal, but the wet, tearing sounds rising from beneath the wreckage left little doubt as to what had found it.
A small hand clamped around his armored forearm.
“Don’t just stand there!” the goblin shouted. His boots scrabbled against the icy edge, finding nothing to hold. “Pull!”
Luvztospoon caught the back of the merchant’s coat and hauled him up onto the road. The goblin landed on his stomach, slid a handspan through the snow, and remained there, panting hard enough to make his shoulders shake.
“I assume,” Luvztospoon said, looking down at him, “the meal is still included.”
The merchant rolled over, opened his mouth, and produced a thin, terrified shriek.
“We can discuss the menu later.”
Something struck the underside of the broken bridge. A sharp crack followed, and the dangling wagon dropped another foot. From the ravine came the scrape of claws against stone.
Luvztospoon stepped between the merchant and the edge. His greatsword left its sheath with a heavy whisper of steel, blue runes stirring to life along the blade. Their light washed across the snow and caught the narrow fingers that had just appeared over the lip of the road.
The first ghoul dragged itself into view, gray skin stretched tight over its ribs. Its jaw opened far too wide as it climbed. Another came scrambling over its back before the first had found its footing. More claws scratched below them.
“Stay behind me,” Luvztospoon said.
“Wasn’t planning on leading the charge!”
The first creature lunged. Luvztospoon turned his shoulder into the blow and swept his sword across its chest, driving it backward over the ruined edge. It vanished with a shriek that broke off somewhere in the ravine. The second sprang at him before he could recover his full stance, reaching with both hands for his throat.
He caught it by the neck.
Its nails rasped against his armor as he drove it down into the snow. The thing writhed, snarling into his gauntlet, until his hoof came down hard enough to silence it. He released the corpse and turned toward the bridge again.
A third ghoul had taken advantage of the struggle. It was already on the road, low to the ground, with its attention fixed on the goblin. The merchant stumbled backward, hit the wheel rut, and fell.
Luvztospoon thrust out his empty hand.
Dark magic seized the ghoul as surely as a chain around its spine. The creature flew backward through a cloud of disturbed snow, its claws scraping furrows across the frozen road, and struck the waiting edge of his sword. He stepped aside as it collapsed.
For several moments, he listened.
There was the wind across the ravine, the creak of the broken wagon, and the slow, lonely turning of its wheel. Nothing else climbed. Whatever remained below seemed in no hurry to follow.
The merchant stared at the bodies, then at the sword.
“You could’ve done that before the horse died.”
Luvztospoon glanced toward the ravine. For a little while, he had felt the animal fighting against the harness as the bridge went out. He had been busy keeping the merchant from following it down. There were only so many things one pair of hands could hold.
“The horse could have mentioned the ghouls.”
The goblin opened his mouth to object, apparently decided that arguing with the person who had just pulled him away from the edge would be unwise, and settled for glaring at the snow instead.
Luvztospoon wiped his blade clean, returned it to its sheath, and offered his hand. The merchant looked at the gauntlet as if it might bite. They had traveled together for two days, sharing a road, a fire, and a growing list of grievances. Not once in that time had the goblin willingly come close enough to touch him.
At last, the merchant grasped his hand.
“Berrik,” he said as Luvztospoon lifted him upright.
“I know your name.”
“You keep calling me Merchant.”
“You keep calling me a walking expense.”
“That’s different. I say it affectionately.”
Luvztospoon waited while Berrik brushed the snow from his coat and checked the pockets for anything broken. A few coins had escaped, and the goblin scooped them from the icy rut with a determination he had not shown while the bridge was falling.
“Then,” Luvztospoon said, “I’ve been calling you Merchant affectionately.”
Berrik paused with his last coin between two fingers. A reluctant smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. He tucked the coin away before the expression could grow into anything more generous.
They continued on foot, leaving the ruined bridge to the snow and whatever still lurked beneath it.
By the time the watchtower appeared against the darkening sky, Berrik had stopped complaining about the loss of his wagon and started complaining about his feet. The change was almost welcome.
The tower stood a little way back from the road, an old stone outpost whose roof had given up on one corner. Snow lay against its lower walls, and the door hung crookedly from a single hinge. Someone had once tried to barricade the entrance with a table; the table had long since been smashed for firewood or spite.
Luvztospoon searched the place before allowing the merchant to settle. The cellar was empty except for damp straw and a broken barrel. Above, the upper floor had lost enough planks that a careless step would send a man through to the stones below. He checked the arrow slits, the narrow landing, and the drifted ground outside. The only tracks approaching the door were their own.
When he returned, Berrik had dragged a broken chair beside a small fire. The chair was losing pieces faster than the flames could take them. Two dented cups waited near the hearth.
“Tea?” Berrik asked.
Luvztospoon accepted a cup and lowered himself onto a stone step. The heat passed faintly through his gauntlet. He held it there a moment longer than he needed to.
He remembered a time when hot tea had burned his tongue and the cold could be driven out of his fingers by wrapping both hands around a mug. He remembered seven other ordinary irritations of being alive, though he had learned not to count them. The dead made poor company when they spent every hour mourning the little things.
Berrik settled across the fire with his own cup. Light flickered over his sharp face, catching the exhaustion beneath his eyes. He had talked nearly without stopping during the journey, yet now he seemed content to stare into the flames.
Luvztospoon had not come this far to admire a fire.
“You said there was a blood elf.”
The goblin looked up. “At the camp north of here. That’s where I saw her.”
“When?”
“Nine days ago. Could’ve been ten.”
“And you waited until we crossed half this frozen wasteland to tell me?”
“I told you when you asked if I’d seen any blood elves.”
“You said you’d seen travelers.”
“She was traveling, wasn’t she?”
Luvztospoon shifted on the step. Stone cracked beneath his weight, and a narrow piece broke away, clattering across the floor.
Berrik winced. “That was the last decent seat.”
“Add it to my bill.”
“You haven’t paid the bill you’ve already got.”
“I was counting on the honest price.”
The goblin’s lips twitched, but the joke faded quickly. He turned his cup between his palms, studying the dents rather than the Tauren across from him.
“Look,” Berrik said, “there are plenty of blood elves in the north. More every month, if you believe the caravans. I’m not telling you she’s yours.”
“Tell me what you remember.”
“Light hair. Carried a sword. Didn’t talk much. Kept to herself when the others were eating.”
It was barely a description.
Luvztospoon looked down at his tea. The fire reflected along the cup’s uneven rim, trembling each time the flames shifted. He had heard a dozen reports like this one, perhaps more. There had been a woman in a southern village who turned out to be older than Sevenofknine by thirty years. A prisoner supposedly taken north who had never existed. A traveler whose name sounded so much like hers that he had followed the rumor for days, only to find a frightened stranger who wanted him gone.
Each disappointment had taught him to ask better questions.
None had taught him how to stop searching.
He had imagined finding her in too many places. At a roadside inn, leaning against the door with her arms folded because he was late. Among a company of soldiers, pretending not to be relieved when she recognized him. Once, after a particularly miserable night, he had pictured her standing at the end of a sunlit lane, turning at the sound of his voice.
He no longer allowed himself the sunlit lane.
Berrik cleared his throat. “There was one other thing.”
Luvztospoon raised his eyes.
“She had a bit of cloth tied around her wrist. Red. Looked old. I remember because it didn’t match anything she was wearing.”
The room seemed to narrow around those words. Luvztospoon could hear the chair collapsing softly into Berrik’s fire, and somewhere outside the wind was worrying at a loose shutter. Neither sound seemed particularly close.
“Red cloth?” he asked.
“A ribbon, maybe. Why?”
He knew the answer before he could bring himself to speak it.
A summer stream came back to him with a clarity the frozen tower had denied everything else. Water ran over flat stones, bright where the sun reached it, and Sevenofknine sat on the bank with her boots beside her. She had pulled her feet from the water after declaring it too cold, although only moments earlier she had insisted that he was being ridiculous for complaining about the same thing.
He had been showing her how to tie a fishing line.
It was not going well.
“The loop goes through here,” he explained, holding the line between his fingers, “and then you bring it around before you pull it tight.”
Sevenofknine leaned closer, studied his work with great seriousness, and reached toward his head.
He had just opened his mouth to tell her she was watching the wrong knot when her fingers slipped beneath his horn and tugged loose the narrow strip of red cloth he wore there.
“You weren’t listening,” he said.
“You’ve been explaining one knot for twelve minutes.”
“It’s a very important knot.”
“So is this one.”
She wound the ribbon around her wrist and tied it with an exaggerated flourish. The bow came out crooked. She held up her arm as though she had accomplished something magnificent.
“There. Now it’s an important knot.”
“You stole that.”
“I borrowed it.”
“You tied it to yourself.”
“That’s how I know I won’t lose it.”
He reached for her wrist. She slipped away along the bank, laughing at the offended look he gave her, and planted one bare foot on a stone slick with moss. Her balance vanished. For an instant her arms pinwheeled over the water, and then Luvztospoon caught her around the waist and drew her safely back.
She stayed against him, breathless with laughter, her hands resting over his.
“You’ll want this back,” she said when she had caught her breath.
“Probably. It was a perfectly good ribbon before you attacked it.”
“You’ll have to find me, then.”
“That shouldn’t be hard. I’m told you talk through fishing lessons.”
She tipped her head back to look at him. Her smile softened, and for a little while they stood listening to the stream moving past the stones.
“Promise anyway,” she said.
The words had been playful, but the way she watched him was not.
He rested his forehead against hers. “I’ll find you.”
There had been no reason to believe that promise would ever be tested. He made it because she had asked, because the sun was warm, because her hands were warm, and because he could not imagine a world in which finding her would become difficult.
Metal creaked in his fist.
Luvztospoon came back to the watchtower to find the cup bent nearly flat in his gauntlet. Tea spilled between his fingers, streaked the stone step, and hissed where it reached the hearth.
“Easy!” Berrik leaned away from him. “Those are my cups.”
Luvztospoon set the ruined thing down carefully. It rocked once on its crushed base and fell onto its side.
“Which road?”
Berrik blinked. “What?”
“The camp. How do I reach it?”
“North, past the old quarry. There’s a ridge beyond it. You can’t miss—” He stopped as Luvztospoon rose. “You’re going now?”
Luvztospoon lifted his sword from where it rested against the wall and checked the fastening across his back.
“It’s dark,” Berrik said.
“I noticed.”
“Then notice this, too. There are worse things out there than those ghouls at the bridge.”
“Bolt the door after I leave.”
Berrik stood so quickly that he nearly kicked over the fire. “Listen to me. The woman I saw might not be the one you’re looking for. And even if she is, she could be gone. Nine days is a long time for anyone to stay in one place.”
Luvztospoon stopped with his hand on the latch. Cold air pushed through the gaps around the door, carrying a little snow onto the floor.
The goblin hesitated. When he spoke again, the usual sharpness had gone from his voice.
“And even if you find her,” he said, “people change.”
Luvztospoon looked down at himself. Frost had gathered along the joints of his black armor. The runes etched into his sword rested dark against the leather of its sheath, ready to wake at a thought. Earlier, he had caught a ghoul in his hand without fear or hesitation, and a sword thrust had ended it as easily as cutting rope. There were days when he forgot how strange such things would once have seemed.
He never forgot what they might look like to her.
In his memories, Sevenofknine still laughed with her head tilted back, still complained when he tracked mud through a doorway, still reached for his hand without thinking. He had spent months wondering whether she had survived. Until now, he had managed not to dwell too long on what would happen if she had—and saw what he had become.
“I know,” he said.
He opened the door. The night wind struck the hearth hard enough to scatter sparks, and Berrik swore behind him.
“Your meal!” the merchant called.
Luvztospoon glanced back.
“I promised you a meal on the other side,” Berrik said. “You still owe me for the wagon, but I haven't forgotten the bargain.”
For the first time that evening, Luvztospoon almost smiled.
“Keep it warm.”
Then he stepped out into the snow and headed north.
The road grew less distinct beyond the watchtower. Drifts filled its wheel ruts, and low banks of stone emerged only when moonlight caught their frozen edges. Luvztospoon followed what remained of the old track, moving steadily through the dark while the wind swept loose snow across his path.
He had traveled far enough north to know that hope could become a dangerous sort of compass. It drew him toward every half-remembered face, every story told for the price of an ale, every scrap of news that sounded like a life he used to know. Usually he could keep his thoughts on the road, the weather, and what might be waiting ahead.
Tonight he kept seeing red cloth tied around a slender wrist.
He reached the quarry near the deepest part of the night. Its old cuts lay black beneath the snow, and heaps of broken stone rose out of the ground like the ruins of an abandoned fort. Once, men had carved blocks from the hillside here. Now the tracks vanished into a broad hollow, and the wind made a low, hollow sound as it passed through the deserted workings.
Beyond the quarry, where Berrik had said it would be, a row of shelters huddled against a ridge.
The camp had been abandoned in a hurry.
Two tents sagged under the weight of the snow. A third was no more than a collapsed frame and strips of charred canvas. In the pale light, Luvztospoon could make out the marks of feet and something heavier dragged across the hard ground. The snowfall had softened their edges but not erased them.
He approached without calling out. At the first tent, he lifted the torn flap with his sword and found empty blankets, a kettle on its side, and a wooden bowl frozen into the dirt. In the second lay a loose boot, its sole peeling away, and a pack someone had emptied in haste. Nothing in either shelter told him who had slept there or how long ago they had gone.
He made himself search properly.
He had come too far to mistake haste for certainty.
Outside the largest tent, cuts scarred a wooden support post. Luvztospoon crouched beside it. A sword had struck here, more than once, from different angles. The splinters were sharp where the blade had bitten through them. Whoever had fought had been close enough to use the post for cover, and strong enough to keep swinging after the first blows.
A little farther out, several shapes lay half buried beneath a shallow drift. He brushed the snow from the nearest one and exposed the ruined features of a ghoul. Another lay beside it, its arms twisted beneath its body.
The dead had been moved away from the tents.
He could picture part of what had happened: a camp surprised, weapons drawn, canvas torn open in the scramble. Someone had survived long enough to drag the bodies aside. There was no way to know whether that someone had been the woman with the ribbon.
Luvztospoon stood and looked toward the last shelter, a small lean-to built against the rock of the ridge. Its entrance was hidden from the main camp. Snow clung to a low roof, but the ground immediately before it had been disturbed.
He took a step.
“Take your hand off the sword.”
He stopped.
The voice came from behind him. It was lower than he remembered, with an unfamiliar resonance beneath the words. Yet it carried the same slight impatience he had once heard over burnt dinners, tangled fishing lines, and boots left in the middle of a room. For a heartbeat, the years between then and now seemed thin enough to tear.
His fingers loosened on the hilt.
“Seven?”
No answer came. The wind moved loose canvas against a tent pole with a soft, irregular tapping.
Luvztospoon turned.
She stood at the edge of the camp with a runeblade held in both hands. Her pale hair had escaped its braid, and the long strands stirred around a face he knew better than his own. Scars marked her armor. One shoulder plate had been repaired with a rough web of leather straps, and there was dried blood along the edge of her gauntlet.
For a moment he saw only her face.
Then he saw her eyes.
They burned with the same cold blue light he had seen reflected in his own blade. The sword in her hands was marked with runes. She held herself very still, and there was no rise and fall of breath beneath the scarred breastplate.
He knew what those things meant. He knew them before his mind would allow him to put them together.
He had searched for a woman he might never see again. It had not occurred to him, not fully, that when he finally found her she might be looking back at him from the same terrible place.
Her gaze flicked across his armor, his sword, and the pale light behind his eyes. The point of her blade dipped.
“Luvz?”
He tried to answer. The words tangled somewhere between the memory of her laughter and the sight of the runeblade in her hands.
She took one step toward him, then stopped. Her eyes dropped to her gauntlet as if she had suddenly become uncertain what to do with her own hands.
“Luvz, I—”
A narrow strip of faded red cloth showed beneath the edge of her armor.
The ribbon was worn almost thin in places. The knot was different from the crooked one she had tied beside the stream, but he would have known that color anywhere.
“You kept my ribbon,” he said.
She looked down at it. When she lifted her eyes again, something in her face had begun to give way.
“You said you’d want it back.”
He wanted to tell her how long he had looked, how often he had mistaken strangers for her, how many roads had ended without an answer. He wanted to ask what had been done to her and whether she had been alone. There were more questions than he could have spoken in a night.
Instead, he heard himself say, “Terrible color on you.”
A laugh escaped her, small and broken and so familiar that he could not bear another step of distance between them.
He crossed the camp. She lowered her sword and let it fall to the snow just before he reached her. Her arms went around him with a sudden, desperate strength, fingers catching in the edges of his armor as though she expected him to disappear if she loosened her grip.
Luvztospoon held her carefully at first. The plates along his chest and shoulders were built for battle, not embraces. He was conscious of every hard edge between them, every place where his armor might hurt her.
Then she whispered his name against him.
He pulled her close.
They stood among the abandoned tents while snow gathered on their shoulders and the wind moved over the ridge. Her cheek was cold against his hand. He rested his forehead against hers and found no warmth there, no living pulse beneath the skin of her wrist. He had known that before touching her. Knowing did nothing to prepare him for it.
“I looked everywhere,” he said.
“I know.”
He drew back enough to see her face. She kept one hand on his armor, as if letting go of that much would be a mistake. Up close he could see the exhaustion in her expression, though neither of them required sleep the way they once had. He wondered how long she had been carrying it.
“How?” he asked.
Sevenofknine's fingers tightened. She glanced toward the quarry, then back at him.
“Someone told me you were coming.”
The words sat uneasily between them. Luvztospoon was still trying to make sense of them when a horn sounded from the road beyond the tents.
Sevenofknine went rigid.
The horn sounded once more, its note carrying across the quarry's empty cuts. Shapes were appearing between the snow-covered stones, too distant for him to make out clearly. There were several of them, moving together toward the camp.
Sevenofknine stooped for her sword. She had not let go of him because she wanted to, he realized. She had let go because she believed she had to.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I could get away before you found me.”
Luvztospoon turned toward the road. A moment earlier he had been wondering whether she would still recognize him, whether either of them could find something of the life they had lost. Whatever approached from the quarry had not come to give them time to find out.
He drew his greatsword. Blue runes kindled along its length, throwing pale light across the drifted ground. Sevenofknine moved to his side with her own blade raised.
He had promised he would find her.
He had never promised he would leave her to face what came next alone.
“Tell me who they are.”