Night fell before the snow did.

Maeva sat in the nave of the old church and sipped a cup of salted broth that tasted better than any feast she’d eaten in a lifetime. Around her, dozens of men moved among the ruins of the ancient church. They looked relaxed and well-fed as they laid down clean bedrolls on top of fresh straw. A far cry from the haggard, bloody sight of Nath on his knees beside the pool.

Her eyes followed him as he stalked about the house. Someone had found a change of clothes for him, a fetching green jacket and soft breeches to go with a clean shirt. From the way that his companions stuck by him, she guessed that Nath must be of some means to pay back the loan. Idly she wondered whether the one-armed lord hoped to marry Nath off to a daughter — his eyes followed her knight everywhere.

Maeva swirled the broth in her cup and watched the bits of bone and salt dance in the dregs. Women had little else to do in Ammar besides wed. She sat with the young girls who tended to the men of the camp and watched how they flirted with the men in their simple, earnest way. Smiles over they poured, and a dried flower or two tucked in with the hot towels they passed for the men to wash their hands before eating. The cold night seemed warmer with each smile that passed between them.

When all the men were served, the girls returned to the hearth to sit together and chatter. Listening to them almost made Maeve feel as if she sat in the children’s hall of Canyon Manor, where she had dwelt as a little girl.

“The new one came with Lord Gruffydd… have you seen him before?”

“He might be Asterling’s second son… Or maybe he is from Thornhaven? He wears his sides long like an altar boy…”

Maeva smiled, imagining Nath’s face if he could hear himself being talked of. These three had all come there from the same village. Elowyn was a lively girl of about twenty with bright blue eyes and crooked teeth. She traveled with a younger cousin, Keseyla, who shared her shade of dirt-brown hair. They whispered with Seren, an oval-faced teenager who wore dried summer flowers in the braid wound around her head. Seren claimed to be a witch, but Maeva saw no sign of it — she sounded too young and entirely too sure of herself.

The girl had declared herself with an odd mix of friendliness and scorn when she found Maeva out in the courtyard rinsing the Gossip from her ears in the holy font. “Hello, dear — I am Seren, the town witch. I’ve got some simples here. I took my craft from Miss Carys, I did. She says never to let bad water touch your mouth or your eyes!”

Maeva had introduced herself with the name that Nath had given her, and mirrored Seren’s accent as best she could. “I am Eva. I studied herbs once, too. Tell me — do you have feverbane? The knight who brought me here is fighting something.”

With that simple request for herbs, Seren had begun to talk, talk, talk to Maeva as if she knew all that there was to know under the Dome. The girl talked of her village nearby, the snow coming that night, and the plan the men whispered of to ride down to Thornhaven in the morning.

No secrets are safe with girls like these, Maeva thought. Finding Nath’s traitor would be easy enough with three young girls mooning after all the knights.

Maeva pried her eyes from Nath’s back to look at the other men settling themselves in for the night. Once the rolls were out and every belly full of the soup, a cheery glow came into their faces. They diced and jested. One had even taken out a lute to play, heedless of any danger from the Corpse Flowers that might be hunting them.

Seren pressed close to Maeva, her clear brown eyes sparkling. “Aren’t they handsome. Elowyn’s twenty next spring. Maybe she’ll marry one of the king’s knights!”

Elowyn shushed her. “I told you — I will marry Jayemin. No other! You promised to give me pigeon’s blood for a charm…”

Seren kept her fresh-faced smile in place while she argued,“Well, I can’t do that until spring, can I? There are no doves anywhere this time of year.”

Maeva listened with a practiced ear. Seren sounded as though she had never left her village before this very week. If she hadn’t had a bane of Sight or Hearing by now, she likely wasn’t witchborn. Without instruction at the Dome, the most this girl could hope to accomplish was memorizing the shape of poisonous mushrooms. Still, a useful skill, Maeva decided. She took another cup of soup when Seren offered it to her.

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“Thank you, my dear,” she murmured. Maeva pitched her voice low and kept her words few so that her accent would not be clear.

“You look so thin, you might float away, Sister! Were you lost out there? Did the lord-knight over there rescue you?” Seren asked. At the witch’s words, the girl Kesheyla glanced over at Maeva with new interest.

“He did,” Maeva answered. Her eyes returned to Nath across the room. He still stood with Gruffydd and the one-armed man. When she looked at him, he lifted his head and caught her gaze. The single, silent look they shared sent a thrill through Maeva — and for a moment, she was seventeen again and pressed up against the first boy she’d ever kissed.

“Oh look, look,” Kesheyla said. She pointed up at the hole in the roof where wisps of white drifted past the smoke from the campfire.

The laughter in the hall hushed when they noticed the snow. A few small sighs marked the moment, then the laughter returned when a man drunk on his ale tried to catch the flakes in his mouth. The lute’s tune changed to something livelier and a few men stood up from their pallets and began to strip naked. Seren squealed with laughter and Elowyn hurried to throw her hand over Kesheyla’s eyes as the knights ran out into the first snow nude to take the sky’s blessing.

Maeva couldn’t keep herself from laughing. How had Nymaut let this colony become its own country? They could not even be trusted to keep warm when it snowed.

The custom ended when the men got too cold. They returned to the fire to beg for a second cup of soup from Seren, who gave it to them, laughing. When they were warm and dressed again, the lute’s song turned soft and a hush returned to the Ammarish. All at once, they began to sing together — an old song they somehow all knew the words to.

Come light the fire, my love

The daylight is all done

When the dark wood turns

To white winter bone around me

Show me where you have gone

Maeva listened, enraptured by the sound of voices raised in harmony. She felt Nath’s eyes on her from across the room. Now she looked full into his face, not caring if the village girls noticed. He’d taken his ragged braids out and pulled his coal black hair into a tie at the nape of his neck. The light from the fire made his eyes look almost gray. When the second part of the song began, he opened his mouth to join in, and she watched the rise and fall of the knot in his throat. She shrugged the wolf pelt from her shoulders, suddenly too warm.

“He is handsome,” she confessed to Seren. “And honorable. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody like him.”

Seren watched her. “Miss Carys could read your fortune for you, dear. She reads the stars and ashes.” The young witch lowered her voice and leaned close to Maeva. “That’s why I won’t do the charm for Elowyn. Miss Carys says she’s not for marriage.”

Maeva felt a prickle of the Sight in her eye. She almost reached for it to reassure herself. But the warmth from the fire and the drowsy calm that settled over the hall stopped her. Whatever would happen would not happen tonight, she decided.

A few men snored soundly, bundled tightly in their bedrolls. Kesheyla leaned her head on Elowyn’s shoulder and even Seren yawned, ready to go to sleep. Maeva watched Nath where he leaned against the wall outside the room they kept guarded. She knew from the droop in his shoulders that he was tired. From the way his eyes drifted toward her, she understood he kept himself awake to make sure that she was safe.

She smiled at him and got up from the fire. Seren took her arm and she let herself be led into the little room set aside for the women. Maeva fought not to look back over her shoulder at Nath as Elowyn closed the door behind them. The space behind the door was cozy, though not as warm as the hall. The girls had been with the camp long enough to make the space homey with thick blankets laid across the floor and garlands of dried flowers strung on what was left of the shelves that had been built into the walls. A thick blanket across the window kept the cold out, and when Maeva stretched out on the ground beside Seren, she felt a thick pad of wool beneath the blankets.

Even such simple luxury made Maeva’s heart ache. She lay in the dark, listening to Seren and Elowyn whisper about knights. She knew she could not close her eyes. If she did, she would dream of the home she’d lost.

The scars on her back pickled against the wool pad. Maeva felt each line of the curse keenly with every long, slow breath. She listened to the scrape of snow on the roof and listened for the crunch of footsteps outside the window. From the slow, steady pace and the little squeak of a lantern handle, she knew it was the men set to keep watch for the night walking by.

If the Corpse Flowers were sent by the Dome, they would not attack on what had been hallowed ground. Maeva thought of the laws and precepts that governed where a battle should take place and when. The moon was past full, the font still flowed, and the Ammarish had marked the night holy from their observance of the first snow. Nath and his men had every reason to believe that they slept soundly tonight.

Tomorrow, when they left the place, it would be another matter.