Two days passed, and the fang of bone-white stone remained unconquered.

  By the second dawn, the knights’ hands were raw, their tempers thin, and their pride wearing blisters. The best any of them managed was a heartbeat’s hold—that strange, fleeting grip where the world seemed to say yes before taking it back. Each time, the Art slipped like water through fingers.

  Zak swore it was the stone’s fault. Reece blamed the wind. Toby blamed himself.

  The mornings bled into afternoons of dust and sweat, the air shimmering gold, and by the third sunrise even the horses had grown bored of watching their failures. Oak chewed the reeds with the patience of a saint. Piper flicked his tail at flies. Daisy dozed standing up. Flint kept trying to eat Zak’s cloak.

  By midmorning, Maxwell rose from where he’d been sitting cross-legged in the shade of the stone. He watched the three of them try, once more, to defy gravity and lose. His expression was unreadable—somewhere between approval and pity.

  “That’s enough,” he called, crossing his arms. “The Art doesn’t answer hunger. And we’re close to hearing our stomachs complain louder than the wind.”

  Zak groaned, staring up at the sky. “So we’re giving up?”

  “Only for today,” Maxwell said. “Not on eating. We’ll hunt before the road decides to starve us.”

  He gave a sharp whistle, and Piper tossed his head from where he was tethered. The destrier’s deep, rolling snort seemed to agree. “Saddle up. You’ve earned a change of work.”

  Reece eyed their meager supplies as he pulled himself to his feet. “We’re running that low?”

  Maxwell nodded once. “Only one sack of oats left and we’re out of dried meat. Better to hunt while we’ve still the strength to chase.”

  Toby wiped the sweat from his brow. The air wavered above the plain, thick with light and dust in endless gold. “What’s even out here to hunt?”

  “Things that prefer to be left alone,” Maxwell said. “Which means they’ll make us work for it.”

  Zak groaned again but grabbed his pack. “Wonderful. From falling off rocks to chasing ghosts. Truly, Ser, this is the knightly life I dreamed of.”

  Maxwell’s mouth twitched. “Dreams improve with hunger.”

  They readied themselves with the practiced economy of men who’d done it a hundred times. The camp stayed standing—tent pitched, fire pit cold but waiting, gear stacked neatly beneath the shade of the great stone. They tidied what they could, checked the ropes, covered what would catch the sun. Within minutes, the place looked less abandoned, as though it expected their return. The white fang loomed above it all, sentinel and witness both.

  The plains stretched wide and wind-scoured as they mounted up. The reeds brushed the horses’ knees, whispering against leather and stirrup. Piper led the way, black hide glinting like oiled iron beneath the sun. Oak followed, steady and loyal. Flint and Daisy brought up the rear, their tails flicking lazily as though unimpressed by the whole affair.

  They rode east. The southern wind came warm and steady, carrying the scent of dry earth. Far ahead on the endless horizon, the air shimmered where heat bent the world into waves. Maxwell rode slightly ahead, his gaze sweeping the distance with the deliberate watchfulness of a man who knew how quickly quiet ground could turn treacherous.

  No one spoke for a long while. The sound of hooves filled the world—steady, rhythmic, the pulse of movement across an unending sea of gold.

  At last, Zak broke the silence. “You think we’ll find anything bigger than a rabbit?”

  Reece smirked. “At this point, I’d take a rabbit.”

  “Then you’ll get a dragon,” Maxwell said, deadpan. “The world has a sense of humor.”

  Toby laughed softly, though his eyes stayed on the horizon. Somewhere beyond it, the wild waited—and whatever lay ahead, he meant to be ready for it.

  The heat came on slow and heavy, like a blanket someone kept layering over Toby’s shoulders.

  By mid-afternoon, the light had gone from kind to cruel. The sky was a hard, polished blue; the reed-grass stood waist-high in long, whispering swells, gold running to the horizon in every direction. Sweat glued Toby’s shirt to his back beneath the mail. Oak’s flanks were darkened, his breath deep but steady, ears twitching as the stalks brushed his knees.

  Toby squinted out over the plains and couldn’t help thinking that if he dropped Brindle Hollow into the middle of this, the village would have thought it had died and gone to the saints.

  Back home, good earth had been something you wrestled out of the ground one inch at a time—roots, rocks, stubborn clay that held onto water like a miser hoarding coin. Here, the land gave itself away. Reed-grass grew thick and tall in the teeth of high summer, the heads heavy with seed, the stalks still green at the base. You didn’t get that without water.

  “There’s a river under us,” he murmured, more to Oak than to anyone else. “Has to be. Or a dozen little ones. All this doesn’t grow on thanks and sun.”

  He pictured wells sunk every few hundred paces, stone rings rising from the gold. Cottages tucked into the shallow hollows where the wind didn’t bite as hard. Fields cut in sensible squares. Families. Laughter. The kind of small, ordinary troubles that came with planting and harvest and broken cart wheels—not elves and scouts and dead villages.

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  With soil like this, Brindle Hollow would’ve never worried about a lean year.

  So why hasn’t anyone taken it?

  The answer sat in his chest before the thought finished forming.

  Elves.

  He shifted in the saddle and scanned the endless, rippling gold. The plains looked as empty as a thrown-away plate. No banners. No smoke. No ruins. No movement but the wind.

  For days now they’d ridden through land that looked more generous than anything he’d known, and nothing had tried to kill them. No arrows from the long grass, no strange tracks, no distant shapes moving where they shouldn’t.

  It was wrong in a way he couldn’t name. A story told for years about monsters in the dark—and when you finally stepped into the dark, no monsters. Just quiet.

  The quiet was worse.

  He licked dry lips and let the question slip out before he decided if he wanted to hear himself ask it. “Where are these elves?”

  The words came out rougher than he meant. They hung on the hot air a moment, turning to dust with the reed-grass whisper.

  Zak, riding on his left, lifted his head. Sweat had plastered his hair to his temples, dark curls clinging. “Hiding behind the next hill, obviously,” he said. “Waiting until I’ve run out of good jokes.”

  Reece snorted from the right. “So never, then.”

  Daisy flicked an ear as if agreeing.

  Toby almost smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “We’ve crossed the marsh, the border nobody marks, and days of nothing but this. We’ve eaten more dust than porridge. If the wild is theirs, why does it feel like no one’s home?”

  Maxwell rode a length ahead on Piper, back straight as a spear haft. He didn’t answer at once. The old knight let the question walk beside them for a dozen strides before he spoke.

  “Because you’re looking for the wrong signs,” he said. “Men mark land with walls, banners, graves. Elves mark it with absences.”

  Toby frowned. “Absences?”

  Maxwell lifted a hand, letting Piper slow. “No roads. No bridges. No fences. No smoke where it shouldn’t be. You’re waiting for what you know. They’re the parts you don’t.”

  Zak made a face. “Well that’s comforting.”

  “Comfort’s for feasts,” Maxwell said.

  “But haven’t you seen them out here before?” Toby asked. The heat had stripped his patience thin.

  Maxwell’s shoulders moved—not quite a shrug, not quite a nod. “No, I didn’t know this existed beyond the marshes. Patience. That’s what we’re here to trade. Our time, for their secrets. The land’s listening. It answers when it’s ready.”

  Zak groaned softly. “The land, the rocks, the Art. Everything out here’s got better manners than people.”

  “Especially you,” Reece said.

  “Saints, even my friends agree with the wild.” Zak threw his hands up and nearly unbalanced Flint, who tossed his head in protest. “This is what I get for leaving a nice, sensible marsh full of frogs.”

  They rode on. The sun slid further west, turning the reed-grass heads to sheets of copper. Heat wavered above the ground, bending the horizon until it looked like the world was breathing.

  “Feels endless,” Reece said after a while, squinting ahead. “Like the plains go on until they fall off the edge of the world.”

  “Good,” Zak said. “Maybe if we ride far enough, we’ll come back up behind Highmarsh and surprise ourselves.”

  “First time you’ve ever surprised anyone,” Reece murmured.

  “Keep talking,” Zak replied. “When we starve, I’m eating you first. Less riding, more chewing.”

  Toby let their bickering wash over him, mind still half on wells and fields. All this space. All this potential. And because of the elves, it sat empty.

  Maxwell’s arm went up.

  “Hold,” he called.

  The word slid across the heat like a stone over ice. Four horses slowed without being told. Dust rose around their hooves and hung in the still air.

  Toby nudged Oak up beside Piper. “What is it?”

  Maxwell didn’t answer immediately. He was staring past them, toward the far right of their path. Toby followed his gaze and saw nothing at first—just more gold, more shimmer, more sky. Then his eyes adjusted, and he noticed it.

  A patch of brown in the endless field. Not earth—the shape was wrong for that. A low, undulating mass, darker than the reed-grass, sitting where the ground dipped ever so slightly.

  Reece leaned forward in his saddle, shading his eyes with a hand. “Dead ground?” he asked.

  Maxwell shook his head once. “No. Not land.” He clicked his tongue softly. “A herd.”

  Now that he’d said it, the shape made sense. It wasn’t a patch of color so much as dozens of smaller ones, pressed together in one shifting whole.

  Zak’s brows shot up. “What in all the saints’ names is that? A pile of hairy rocks?”

  “Bison,” Maxwell said.

  “What? I’m not your son,” Zak said automatically.

  Reece huffed a laugh. “It’s an animal, idiot.”

  Zak squinted harder. As they watched, one of the shapes moved—a slow toss of a massive head, horns catching the light for a heartbeat before dipping again.

  “What,” Zak said slowly, “is a herd of hairy cows doing out in this heat?”

  “Trying not to get eaten,” Maxwell said. “Same as us.”

  The impression of size hit Toby’s gut a breath later. Those weren’t cows. Cows didn’t make the ground look that small.

  As they rode closer, the land’s slight dip became clearer—a broad, shallow basin where the reed-grass was shorter, trampled down. Near its center lay a depression filled with water, maybe half the size of Highmarsh’s inner yard. The surface shone dull and muddy, ringed by wet earth and dark prints.

  “There,” Reece said, nodding toward it. “Oasis.”

  “Not big enough for a lake,” Zak said. “Not small enough to drink in one go.”

  “Big enough to keep a herd here through summer,” Toby said quietly.

  He could see them properly now. Dozens of hulking shapes, shaggy coats in shades of dark brown and faded tan, shoulders humped, horns sweeping outward and up. Flies swarmed their flanks. Calves nudged between larger bodies, tails flicking. Some wallowed knee-deep in the mud at the water’s edge, rolling to coat their sides.

  The sight stirred something old in him—the memory of autumn markets, of farmers driving thinner, smaller cattle through Brindle Hollow, hooves clopping on baked earth. These made those look like children.

  “Hunt,” Maxwell said, drawing Piper to a halt on the rim of the shallow basin. “We’ll take one.”