Dawn came slowly.
The light crept through the trees in thin gray fingers, touching the leaves, the fallen branches, the bodies of the people who had spent the night on the ground. Grog woke first, though he didn't remember sleeping. One moment he was watching the stars blur above him, the next he was blinking at a sky that was turning pale.
His arm was still there. That was something. He could move his fingers, could feel them, could feel the pain that ran from his shoulder to his wrist like a wire pulled too tight. His side was worse—every breath sent a spike through his ribs, something that might have been broken or might have been the flesh the beast had torn open when it threw him against the tree.
He sat up slowly. The world tilted. He waited for it to settle.
Lira was awake. She was sitting against the fallen log where she'd spent the night, her bow across her knees, her eyes on the place where the beast had died. There was nothing there now but bare earth and scattered leaves. The bones had crumbled sometime before dawn, leaving only a dark stain on the ground and the smell of something that didn't belong.
She didn't look at him when he moved.
"You should have woken me," he said. His voice came out rough, scraped.
"You needed to sleep."
"We all needed to sleep."
She shrugged. It was a small movement, tired. "Someone had to watch."
He looked at the others. Aldric was on his back, his face white, his chest barely moving. William was curled beside him, one hand still clutching the sword he'd used to block the beast's claws. Mirena lay apart from them, her staff beside her, her burned arm wrapped in a strip torn from her shirt.
No one was dead. That was something.
---
He checked his wounds properly in the daylight.
The gash on his shoulder was deep—he could see the muscle beneath when he moved the bandage, could see the places where the beast's claws had scraped against bone. It would need stitching. It would need healing. But it wasn't bleeding through anymore, and that was enough for now.
His side was worse. The claws had caught him as he drove his sword into the beast's chest, had torn through armor and flesh and something deeper that made him light-headed when he looked at it. He pressed the bandage back down, held it there until the nausea passed.
Aldric was worse than him.
He could see it from across the clearing—the way his leg was twisted, the way his arm lay too still, the way his face was the color of old paper. He'd lost blood. Too much blood. And the wounds were deep, the kind that didn't close on their own.
He made his way over, leaning on trees when his legs wobbled. William looked up when he approached, his eyes red, his face smeared with dirt and dried blood that wasn't his.
"Is he—"
"He's alive." William's voice was hoarse. "He hasn't woken up."
Grog knelt beside Aldric. Felt for a pulse. It was there, weak, thready, but there. The leg was bad—he could see where the bone had shifted, where the flesh had been laid open. The arm was swollen, the skin purple where the beast's teeth had caught it.
He'd seen wounds like this before. In the old timeline. On the border. In the cavern at the end.
He pulled the bandages tighter, ignoring the pain in his own arm, his own side, the darkness that kept trying to push at the edges of his vision.
"He needs a healer," he said. "Now."
---
Mirena was already on her feet.
She moved stiffly, her burned arm held against her chest, her face set against the pain. Her staff was in her good hand, the crystal dim, the power inside it used up. She stopped beside Aldric, looked at the leg, the arm, the pale face.
"I can't—" She stopped. Swallowed. "I used everything. Against the beast. There's nothing left."
Grog looked at the forest. The path they'd come from. The hills behind them, the palace somewhere ahead. Miles. Too many miles.
"We carry him," he said.
---
The walk took the rest of the day.
They moved in stages—a hundred yards, then a rest. Fifty yards, then a rest. Aldric was a dead weight between them, his arms around their shoulders, his feet dragging. Grog's arm was bleeding again by the end of the first mile, the bandages soaked through, the pain settling into something that didn't spike so much as pulse.
Lira took the lead, her bow out, her eyes scanning the trees. There were no more beasts. There was nothing. The forest had gone back to being a forest, quiet and ordinary and full of things that didn't want to kill them.
William didn't speak. He'd been silent since they started moving, his face blank, his hands steady on Aldric's arm. He was stronger than he looked, Grog noticed. Or maybe he was running on something that wasn't strength.
Mirena walked behind them, her good hand pressed against Aldric's back, keeping him upright when he started to fall. She'd stopped asking if he was alive. She just watched his chest move and kept walking.
---
They found the horses at midday.
They were standing by a stream, their reins tangled in the branches of a fallen tree, their eyes wild. They'd run far—farther than Grog had thought possible—but they hadn't run all the way back to the palace. They'd stopped here, in this clearing, waiting for something that knew how to find them.
Lira approached them slowly, her voice low, her hands out. The horses were nervous, skittish, their nostrils flaring at the smell of blood. But they knew her. They'd carried her before. One of them let her take its reins, then another, then another.
Mirena helped Grog lift Aldric onto the largest horse. It was difficult—more difficult than it should have been, with his leg and his arm and the way his body kept trying to slide off. William held him steady while Grog tied him in place with strips torn from his own shirt.
"Can he ride?" Mirena asked.
Grog looked at Aldric's face. Still white. Still too still. But his chest was still moving.
"He can hold on."
---
The palace appeared at sunset.
It rose from the hills like something that had been waiting for them—the walls gold in the fading light, the towers dark against the sky, the gates open. There were people on the walls, watching. There were people in the courtyard, running toward them before they were through the gates.
William was shouting something, but Grog couldn't hear him. The world was getting soft at the edges again, the sounds fading, the light dimming. He was still on his horse. That was something. He was still holding the reins. That was something.
Someone was pulling him down. Hands on his arm, his side, his face. Voices, too many voices. He tried to tell them about Aldric, about his leg, about the blood, but the words wouldn't come.
He was on the ground. The stones were cold against his back. He could see the sky, the last light, the first stars.
Then nothing.
---
He woke in a bed.
It was a familiar ceiling—the same one he'd woken to for weeks, the same beams, the same cracks in the plaster. His arm was bandaged, his side was bandaged, his shoulder was a mass of pain that made him want to close his eyes again. He didn't.
Lira was there. She was sitting in a chair by the window, her bow across her knees, her eyes on the courtyard below. She looked like she hadn't slept.
"Aldric?" he asked.
She turned. "Alive. The healers are with him."
He let himself breathe.
"William?"
She almost smiled. "The prince is fine. Bruised. Shaken. His brother's been with him since we got back."
Grog absorbed this. "Mirena?"
"Her arm is burned. She's resting. She's been asking about you."
He tried to sit up. His body protested. He sat up anyway.
"How long?"
"A day. Almost two." She watched him struggle with the pillows, with the bandages, with the things that were keeping him in the bed. "The Duke came by. He wanted to talk to you. About what happened. About what you found."
He looked at her. "What did you tell him?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"I told him we found something in the hills. Something that shouldn't be there. Something that followed us back."
He waited.
"He wants to know what it was. He wants to know if there are more." She met his eyes. "He wants to know if we're safe."
Grog lay back against the pillows. The ceiling was still there. The cracks were still there. The world was still there, waiting.
"We're not," he said.
She didn't argue.
---
A knock came at the door.
It opened before Grog could answer. The Duke stepped inside, his clothes plain, his face drawn. He looked at Grog, at Lira, at the bandages, the bloodstains, the evidence of what they'd brought back with them.
He didn't ask how they were. He didn't ask what happened. He just stood there, his hands behind his back, his eyes on Grog's face.
"My son tells me you saved his life."
Grog shook his head. "Aldric saved his life."
The Duke was quiet for a moment. "William says you put yourself between him and the creature. That you were already wounded. That you did it anyway."
Grog didn't answer.
The Duke moved to the window, looked out at the courtyard below. "He's been asking to see you. To thank you. I told him to wait until you were awake."
Grog watched him. The Duke's hands were clasped behind his back, his shoulders straight, his face calm. But there was something in his voice that hadn't been there before. Something that might have been fear.
"The thing you found," the Duke said. "The thing that followed you. Was it—" He stopped.
Grog waited.
"Was it like the others? The ones you fought at the border?"
Grog thought about the beast. Its eyes. Its claws. The thing that had poured out of it when it died.
"It was different," he said.
The Duke turned. "Different how?"
Grog was quiet for a moment. "It wasn't from here. You could see it. In the way it moved. In the way it was made. It didn't belong."
The Duke's face didn't change. But his hands tightened behind his back.
"Are there more?"
Grog met his eyes.
"I don't know."
---
William came that evening.
He knocked once, then opened the door before anyone could answer. His face was still pale, his hands still raw, his eyes still too bright. But he was standing. He was walking. He was here.
"You're awake," he said.
Grog nodded.
William stood in the doorway, not moving closer. "They told me you were awake. I wanted to—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I wanted to thank you. For what you did. For saving—" He stopped again.
Grog watched him. The prince who had wanted to be a soldier. Who had learned to fall, to stand, to hold a sword without dropping it. Who had put himself between Aldric and a thing that should have killed him.
"You saved him," Grog said. "You were there. You held."
William's face crumpled. Just for a moment. Then he straightened, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, stood up the way a prince was supposed to stand.
"He's going to be okay," he said. "The healers say he'll walk. That he'll fight again." He looked at Grog. "He saved us. All of us."
Grog nodded.
"He did."