They walked.

There was no discussion about it. The horses were gone — bolted into the treeline, and none of them had the heart to go after them. Maximus picked up the packs, distributed the weight without a word, and started north along the road. The others fell in behind him.

Pip walked.

That was the thing Lyra kept coming back to, mile after mile. Pip — who flew everywhere, who treated walking as a personal insult — walked. Her wings drooped behind her, brushing the dust. She'd tried flying once, an hour in, gotten ten feet up, and come back down like a stone. She hadn't tried again.

Her feet hurt. She'd never walked this far in her life — fairies don't, as a rule — and by the second mile her boots were rubbing, and by the fifth she was limping. Seraphina offered to carry her. Pip looked at her like she'd suggested amputation.

"I'm fine," Pip said, and kept limping.

The cairn fell behind them. Then the treeline. Then the stream. The road unrolled north, climbing gently toward the mountains, and they walked it the way you walk away from a grave — steady, because stopping would be worse.

Nobody sang. The silence had a weight to it, like wet cloth. Every so often the wind would move through the grass, and it sounded — for just a second — like small hooves on the road behind them. Pip would turn. Nothing there. She stopped turning after the fourth time.

By afternoon, the silence had developed textures. Seraphina walked with the rag doll tucked into her belt, one button eye peeking out. Every so often her hand would drift to it, touch it, fall away — and once, when she thought no one was looking, Lyra saw her straighten the doll's yarn hair with infinite care, the way you'd tend a patient.

Maximus walked point, his right hand curled into a fist at his side — the tremor was worse when he was tired, and he was tired. He walked like a man counting his steps, the way old soldiers do when the march is longer than the body wants. Lyra watched the fist the way she'd watch a storm on the horizon.

They crossed a stream at a ford, the water cold around their ankles. Pip stumbled on a slick stone, and Maximus caught her without looking — one arm shooting back, steadying her, never breaking stride.

"Thanks," Pip said. It was the first word she'd spoken in hours.

He nodded. Kept walking.

At the top of a rise, Lyra called a halt. They drank from the waterskins, ate bread and cheese without tasting it. Pip sat on a rock and stared at her feet.

"How far?" Seraphina asked quietly.

Maximus looked north. The mountains rose ahead, dark against the sky, and somewhere in their shadow — the Fall. "Two days. Maybe less, if we push."

"Don't push," Lyra said. "Not today."

He didn't argue.

They made camp in a hollow off the road as the light failed — a dip in the land with a ring of stones some other traveler had left, years ago. Maximus built the fire with the efficiency of a man who'd built ten thousand fires: the tinder nested just so, the first flame coaxed, the logs laid like a puzzle. Seraphina unpacked the food. Lyra unrolled the bedrolls, four now — she'd almost laid out five, and had to stop herself, her hands freezing mid-motion. Pip sat by the stones and watched, her knees drawn up.

The fire caught. The practicalities asserted themselves — water boiled, stew heated, the small rituals of keeping bodies alive. Maximus cleaned Abyssalfang with methodical strokes, the way other men might pray. They ate. Nobody was hungry. They ate anyway, because the body doesn't care about grief.

"We should talk about tomorrow," Lyra said at last. She was in queen mode — the voice that held rooms. "The Fall. What we know."

"Nothing," Maximus said. "We know nothing. That's the problem."

"We know he wants us there," Seraphina said quietly. "All of us. He said so."

"And we know he's got Annabelle." Pip's voice was flat. She poked the fire with a stick. "So we go. That's it. That's the whole plan. We go, and we get her back."

"Pip—" Lyra started.

"What? That's why we're walking, isn't it?" Pip looked up, and her eyes were bright with something that wasn't light. "We're not walking to have a nice chat with him. We're walking to take her back."

Silence. The fire crackled.

"Yes," Maximus said. "That's why we're walking."

Pip nodded, satisfied, and went back to poking the fire.

Later, when the stew was gone and the stars were coming out, Seraphina sat down behind Pip and began undoing her tangled hair.

Pip went very still. "What are you doing?"

"Braiding." Seraphina's fingers were gentle, working through the knots. "You did Annabelle's this morning. Turnabout."

"I don't need—" Pip started, and then stopped. Her shoulders came up around her ears. She didn't pull away.

Seraphina braided in silence, her hands steady — the healer's hands, that knew how to be gentle with broken things. When she finished, she tied it off with a strip of cloth torn from her own sleeve.

"There," she said softly. "Now you look like a warrior."

Pip touched the braid. Her lip trembled. "That's what I told her."

"I know."

Pip leaned back — just slightly — against Seraphina's knees. Seraphina put a hand on her shoulder and left it there. Above them, the stars came out one by one, indifferent and beautiful.

Across the fire, Lyra watched, and felt something in her chest crack open and settle.

Maximus took first watch. He sat with Abyssalfang across his knees, the sword quiet for once — sated, or waiting. The runes pulsed slow, like a sleeping heartbeat.

Lyra brought him tea. She sat beside him without asking, the way she'd started doing, and for a while they just watched the fire burn low.

"Your hand," she said.

He uncurled the fist. The tremor was there — fine, constant, like a plucked string. "It's fine."

"Don't." Her voice was soft. "Not with me."

He looked at her. Then he let the hand shake, undisguised, in the firelight. "It'll pass. It always passes."

"Until it doesn't." She said it without accusation. Just truth.

"Until it doesn't," he agreed.

She took his hand — the shaking one — and held it between both of hers. His fingers were cold. She breathed on them, absently, the way you'd warm a child's hands.

"Veyloria," she said. "Kael. Do you think—"

"I think Kael's holding the walls," Maximus said. "I think he's got Maelik and the Vanguard, and I think anyone who comes for that city is going to regret it." He paused. "I think we'll see him again."

Lyra nodded. She didn't believe it — not entirely — but she let herself borrow his certainty for a while. That was something she'd learned: you could borrow another person's strength until your own came back.

"Sleep," he told her. "I'll wake you at moonset."

She didn't move. "Max."

"Yeah."

"Thank you. For —" She gestured at the camp, the sleeping forms, the fire. "For carrying it. All of it."

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he lifted her hand — the way he had at the creek — and kissed her knuckles. "Go to sleep, Queen."

She went.

In the dark before dawn, Pip woke from a dream she didn't remember and found she was crying. She wiped her face angrily and looked at the sky.

She'd dreamed about hooves. She was almost sure of it — the sound of them, steady, coming up the road. And a voice, small and far away, singing about apples.

Hush now, Annabelle, she thought, pressing her face into her knees. The brave and the small.

You hold on, she told the stars. We're coming. Both of you — just hold on.

She fell asleep with the braid Seraphina had made coming undone, and didn't dream again.

They broke camp at first light. The fire was buried, the packs shouldered, the road waiting.

Two days to the Fall. Maybe less.

They walked.