They woke to Pip already being awake, which was never a good sign.

"I've been thinking," she announced, braiding Annabelle's hair with fierce concentration while the girl sat cross-legged in front of her, half-asleep and smiling. "And I've decided Devastator needs a title. He's not just a pony anymore. He's a war pony. Sir Devastator, Bane of Trolls."

"He's never met a troll," Seraphina said, packing the bedrolls.

"He's ready to. That's what matters." Pip tied off the braid with a strip of red cloth. "There. Now you look like a warrior."

Annabelle touched the braid carefully, like it might come apart. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Thank my years of experience." Pip stood, hands on hips. "I once braided a griffin's mane. It went badly. This went much better."

They packed in good order — better than the day before, the way a group does when it's found its rhythm. Maximus watched Pip try to teach Annabelle how to whistle through her fingers, and Annabelle's peals of laughter when she only managed spit, and something in his face softened in a way Lyra hadn't seen since the creek.

"She's good for her," Lyra said quietly, coming up beside him.

"She's good for all of us," Maximus said. "That's what worries me."

Annabelle rode double with Pip on Devastator, the rag doll tucked into her coat. She'd started pointing things out: birds, clouds, a fox that watched them from a ridge and decided they weren't worth the trouble.

"That one's a ship," she told Pip, pointing at a cloud.

"That one's a shipwreck," Pip corrected. "Trust me. I know clouds. I once lived on a cloud. Briefly. It went badly."

Then Pip cleared her throat, struck a pose like a conductor, and sang — loud, off-key, and with total confidence:

"Oh, Sir Devastator, the bravest of steeds,
He eats only apples and does noble deeds!
He's never met a troll, but he's ready to fight 'em —
He'll kick 'em and bite 'em and totally smite 'em!"

Devastator flicked an ear, unimpressed.

"That's terrible," Maximus called from ahead, but he was smiling.

"It's art," Pip said loftily. "You wouldn't understand. You're old."

Annabelle clapped, delighted. "Again! Another one!"

Pip bowed from the saddle, nearly falling off — and then she looked at Annabelle's face, the small brave face under the red-tied braid, and her grin softened into something else.

"Actually," Pip said, quieter. "I made one for you."

And she sang — soft enough that only Annabelle, and the wind, could hear:

"Hush now, Annabelle, the brave and the small,
You stood through the darkness, the bravest of all.
They told you to hide, so you hid yourself tight —
And brave little girls make it through the night."

Annabelle was very quiet for a moment. Then, small: "Is that true? Am I brave?"

"The bravest," Pip said firmly. "I don't write songs about just anybody."

The girl leaned back against Pip's shoulder, and they rode like that for a while, and nobody said anything at all.

By midday the sun was high and the road had narrowed through a stand of pines. Maximus called a halt by a stream — water the horses, rest their legs, eat something.

Pip had Annabelle giggling, doing impressions of Seraphina trying to catch a frog the summer before. ("And then she — oof — right into the pond! Splash like a queen!") Seraphina was protesting, laughing despite herself, her cheeks pink. Lyra sat on a rock, re-braiding her own hair, watching Maximus water the horses with something soft in her face — the look of a woman who had decided, finally, to be happy about something.

It was peaceful. That was the worst part, later — how peaceful it was.

Annabelle stopped laughing first.

It wasn't gradual. One moment she was mid-giggle, Pip's hands frozen in the frog-catching pose — and the next, the girl was perfectly still. Her head turned. Too smoothly. Like something turning it from the inside.

Her eyes were wrong.

"Annabelle?" Pip said.

Maximus was already moving. "Pip. Don't touch her."

The girl stood up. She smoothed her dress — Annabelle's dress, the too-big coat — with small, precise hands. And when she spoke, it was Annabelle's voice, and it wasn't.

"Hello, Maximus."

The stream kept babbling. Nobody else made a sound.

"She's sweet," Morikk said through the child's mouth. "They break so quietly, children. All that light, and it just — folds." The girl's head tilted. "Don't look like that, healer. She's still in here. Listening."

Seraphina made a sound like she'd been struck. "Let her go."

"Soon." A small smile, utterly wrong on that face. "You look tired, Ancient. The road is long, and you are so very old." The girl's eyes found Maximus, and Maximus said nothing, his knuckles white on Abyssalfang's hilt. "I told you to bring them all, Maximus. The queen." The girl's gaze moved to Lyra. "The healer." To Seraphina. "The commander." A pause. "The little storm." To Pip.

Morikk counted. They could see him counting.

"But I count four," he said softly. "And a spare."

Silence.

"Where is the commander, Maximus?"

Maximus didn't answer. His hand had found Abyssalfang's hilt.

"You didn't bring him." The child's smile widened. "You disobeyed me."

"We don't take orders from you," Lyra said, standing, her hand on her sword.

"Don't you?" Morikk laughed — Annabelle's laugh, twisted. "I was going to be quick. A kindness, for old times' sake." The girl took a step toward the treeline. "But disobedience has a price."

"Morikk—" Maximus started.

"I'll take good care of her." The girl turned — that smooth, mechanical turn — and walked into the pines. Not running. Walking. Her small shoes silent on the needles. The rag doll slipped from her coat and fell to the ground, button eyes staring up at the sky.

"Annabelle!" Seraphina screamed, lunging after her.

Maximus caught her arm. "Don't."

"She's a child—"

"I know." His voice was iron, but his grip was shaking. "And she's gone. Look."

The girl was already swallowed by the trees. Only the pines moved, indifferent. Somewhere, a bird resumed singing, oblivious.

Seraphina stared at the doll in the dirt. "We promised," she whispered. "We promised we'd take her to her auntie."

Then she was moving — into the treeline, fast, before grief could become argument.

"Sera—" Lyra started.

They searched. Pip went up above the pines, her light sweeping the forest floor in wide arcs, calling Annabelle's name until her voice cracked. Maximus and Lyra moved through the trees in a widening circle, reading the ground the way hunters do — bent needles, broken twigs, the small disturbances a child's shoes leave behind. Seraphina held the doll against her chest and called, and called, her voice getting thinner every time.

They found the footprints. Small shoes, a hundred paces into the pines.

And then the footprints stopped. Just — stopped. As if the girl had been lifted out of the world.

Pip dropped out of the sky, her light guttering out. "There's nothing," she said. "I went half a mile. There's nothing. It's like she just —"

"She's with him now," Maximus said quietly. "At the Fall. That's where he'll keep her."

"Then we go after her." Seraphina's face was streaked, her voice raw. "We go in there and we—"

"It's what he wants." Maximus turned to face her. "He took her to make us run. To split us, to rush us, to walk blind into whatever he's built down there. If we chase her into those trees, we die — and then nobody saves her."

"So we just leave her?" Pip's voice was very small. "I was right there, Max. I was doing the frog thing, and she was laughing, and then she just —" It broke. "I was right there."

Lyra knelt beside her. "This is not your fault."

"Whose is it, then?" Pip whispered.

Nobody answered. The pines stood indifferent.

Seraphina looked down at the doll in her hands — button eyes, yarn hair. She tucked it carefully into her pack, like it was something that could still be broken.

"We will bring her home," Lyra said. "After. We finish this, and then we bring her home."

It sounded thin, even to her. But it was all they had.

They walked back to the stream in silence. The horses stood where they'd left them, cropping grass, oblivious to everything. Devastator nuzzled Pip's shoulder, and she threw her arms around his neck and stood there, breathing him in.

Maximus was checking Abyssalfang's sheath when the ground shook.

It came through the treeline where Annabelle had vanished — as if it had been waiting behind her, as if she had been the herald and this the procession.

A head. Then a second, bursting through the foliage beside it — slavering, black-furred, jaws lined with serrated iron teeth. Then the third rose above them both, a crown of blackened horns curving from its brow.

The beast stepped onto the road, and its shadow swallowed them whole. Titanic — shoulders higher than the pines. Black smoke poured from its three maws in heavy plumes.

"That," Pip breathed, "is a very big dog."

The monster growled — a tri-toned chord of bass that vibrated in their chests. All three heads opened their jaws at once, and the roar shattered branches and sent birds fleeing for miles.