Ned didn't look back as he walked.
He didn't have to.
The grove moved with him, small and precise. Moss thickened where his feet would land. Root arches eased a fraction higher without creaking. Spores drifted aside as if they'd been asked to make room.
Khalen followed, palm still open, because it reminded his body not to do anything stupid.
Behind him, Lys stayed close, crossbow low and cradled like a tool she happened to be carrying. Therrin kept his hands visible, empty, and his eyes busy, counting angles without giving the grove a reason.
The corridor narrowed into a tunnel grown from roots, not carved. The walls were warm, not heat exactly, more like living temperature, the way an animal's flank was warm when you leaned against it.
The strands of hanging moss parted cleanly around Khalen's shoulders and closed again behind them, sealing the path without ceremony.
Not a warning.
A fact.
The tunnel opened into a circular clearing where the ground formed a shallow bowl, smooth and packed, like a place used so long the grove had learned the shape of bodies sitting together. Above, the canopy domed into luminous green, not an opening, just a living ceiling that let light in and kept sky out.
A ring of villagers waited.
Not a mob. Not a welcome.
A perimeter.
Hands empty. Posture not.
They stood the way people stood when they'd learned, young, what kinds of noise brought teeth out of the dark.
Ned stepped into the centre of the bowl and turned.
He was bigger up close. Not just tall, but built like something that had learned how to endure. The Root-Tongue Diadem circled his brow, colourful ribs flexing with each measured breath, and the grove's hum shifted with it like the forest took cues from his lungs.
Ned's eyes went to Khalen's open hand, then to his face.
"I don't care what you want," Ned said.
No insult in it. No show.
Just a clean cut.
Khalen kept his palm up. "We came to ask, not to take."
Ned's gaze didn't change. "Asking is cheap."
He tipped his head a fraction, listening to something none of them could hear. The canopy's hum deepened for a beat, as if the grove had leaned closer.
"What I care about," Ned went on, "is regret."
The word sat there, plain and heavy.
"If I ignore what you can do and you harm the grove," Ned said, "I'll carry that."
He nodded, barely, toward the direction of the sleeping ship pinned under spears.
"So I won't ignore you."
A villager stepped forward with a small pot and one cup.
One.
The steam smelled sweet at first, then sharp, then earthy enough to make Khalen's teeth ache.
Ned didn't touch it yet. He let it sit between them like a boundary line.
"It feels good," Ned said. "That's why it works."
Khalen's throat tightened. The simplicity was brutal.
"It puts you in the present," Ned added. "You won't plan. You'll say what hits you."
Khalen glanced once at Lys and Therrin.
Lys sat close, crossbow still low, not aimed, not hidden. Just ready. Her face was calm in the way competent people were calm, because she understood what her job was now.
Therrin's hands stayed visible, empty. Eyes sharp. He wasn't judging the ritual. He was watching Khalen for the moment he stopped being himself.
Khalen looked back at Ned. "If I refuse."
Ned answered immediately. "Then you stay."
Khalen held his gaze. "Alive."
"If you're harmless," Ned said, like stating weather.
Khalen's mouth was dry. "If I drink and you don't like what I say."
Ned's face didn't change. "If you mean harm to the grove," he said, "you're a problem."
A beat.
"Problems get handled."
Khalen's jaw flexed. The part of him that wanted to posture died in his throat when he remembered the Valkyrie asleep above them.
He couldn't burn his way out without burning her, and he couldn't leave her here like a gutted miracle.
Ned's eyes narrowed a fraction, not at Khalen's missing hand, not at the skull, but at what lived under Khalen's skin. Breath channels. Heat. That ocean of fire held behind ribs.
Young, Ned's gaze said, without saying it.
Dangerous, and young.
Ned didn't voice any of that. Praise made people sloppy. Fear made them fast.
"Drink," Ned said.
Khalen reached for the cup with his right hand.
It was warm. The kind of warmth that promised relief before it asked permission.
He lifted it and drank.
Sweet, first. Like honey cut with rainwater.
Then the second note hit, clean and bright, and the present moment snapped into focus like a blade.
Khalen felt his body loosen in places he hadn't known were tight. His shoulders. His jaw. The muscles behind his eyes. The world sharpened and softened at the same time, edges clear but consequences far away.
He drew a deeper breath on instinct, and the air pressed back, gentle but immovable, as if the grove had put an ear to his lungs and decided how loud he was allowed to be.
He should have hated that.
Instead, it felt… intimate.
Like being held.
The canopy glow seemed closer. Spores drifted like slow stars. The grove's hum wasn't sound anymore, it was inside him, in his teeth, in the hollow behind his sternum, like the forest had found the frequency of his bones and started playing him.
He tried to form a plan and couldn't hold it.
The thought broke apart in his hands like wet paper.
He laughed once, small, surprised by it.
Lys shifted closer without touching him. Therrin's eyes stayed on Khalen's face like he was watching for a seizure.
Words wanted out. Not answers. Not strategy.
Just now.
Khalen's mouth opened.
He didn't remember starting to speak.
He remembered Ned's eyes, steady and unblinking, as if he'd seen a thousand men ride this same chemical wave and drown in their own honesty.
Khalen tried to hold onto one anchor.
The Valkyrie.
He pictured her asleep under spears and felt a hot sting of protectiveness sharp enough to cut through the euphoria for half a beat.
Then the warmth surged again and swallowed the cut whole.
The canopy glow turned liquid.
The villagers blurred into silhouettes.
Ned's diadem flexed once, and the grove's hum shifted, and the shift went through Khalen like a hand turning a key.
The world tilted.
The last thing Khalen felt before the dark was relief so complete it terrified him.
Then nothing.
**
Ned watched the tea take him.
It always started the same. Shoulders loosening. Jaw unclenching. Eyes brightening as the mind stopped reaching ahead. Men mistook that feeling for truth.
It was only exposure.
Khalen's voice moved, not careful, not built. Words came out like breath, simple and immediate. Ned listened without leaning forward, without giving anything back.
Then the heat arrived.
Not smoke. Not a flare.
A pressure under skin, as if the boy's bones had been holding a furnace shut and the latch finally slipped.
Light seeped through Khalen's pores, thin at first, a glow along the throat and collarbones, then stronger, threading the seams of his sleeves. The air around him tightened, dry and eager, like it had been waiting for permission.
Ned felt the grove notice.
The Root-Tongue Diadem warmed against his brow, alive with the canopy's attention. The hum shifted half a note, not alarmed, attentive.
Khalen blinked, smiling at something only he could feel, and the fire surged.
It broke through him in lines and bursts, not shaped, not controlled. Flame pushed out of every seam his body offered, licking along his arms and shoulders, blooming around his head in a crown that wasn't pride, it was leakage.
For a heartbeat he looked enormous. A man outlined in hunger-bright light. Too young to know what he carried.
The ring of villagers did not run.
They had lived long enough to learn running made you a target.
Ned lifted one hand.
Not high. Not dramatic.
Just enough.
The grove answered immediately.
Vines rose from the moss like drawn breath, a million thin cords snapping upward in coordinated arcs. They reached for Khalen in layered spirals, not to bind flesh, but to build a barrier around the fire before it could touch root or table or throat.
The first vines vaporized before they got close, burning away into clean white ash.
The second layer burned too.
So did the third.
But each strand that died stole something from the flame. Stole heat. Stole oxygen. Stole space. The fire met resistance it could not understand. It flared harder, angry at being denied, and Ned felt the canopy above tighten, closing its gaps, hoarding its air like a clenched fist.
Spores swelled overhead, fat and luminous, drifting down in slow curtains. They popped when they hit the heat, releasing damp, bitter scent that made Ned's eyes sting. The grove wasn't beating the fire with strength.
It was starving it.
Smothering it.
Listening to it until it ran out of room to scream.
Khalen's mouth opened like he meant to speak, but what came out was heat, a harsh exhale that turned the air into a shimmering sheet.
A pulse rolled outward.
Not loud. Physical.
Bowls rattled on the grown table. Hair lifted. The moss flattened in a ring, then sprang back like it had been pressed by a giant thumb.
Khalen staggered.
For a moment his eyes cleared, and Ned saw the flicker of terror underneath the euphoria, the instant the boy realised what he'd almost done.
Then his knees folded.
He hit the moss with a dull thud, fire collapsing into embers that crawled back into his skin like they'd been called home.
The vines fell away in charred ribbons, smoking softly, sacrificed and satisfied. The canopy's hum steadied. The grove's light dimmed to its earlier patient glow, like it had contained a storm and returned to breathing.
Ned kept his hand where it was for a beat longer.
Boys like this sometimes had a second surge.
None came.
He lowered his hand.
Khalen lay on the moss, chest rising shallow, face slack with drugged peace he hadn't earned.
Ned looked at Lys and Therrin.
They were still. Sober. Watching their captain like guards at a sickbed.
Good, Ned thought. Danger, and restraint.
He didn't congratulate them. Praise made people sloppy.
He only said what was true.
"Enough," Ned said.
The grove agreed. The pressure in the air eased by a fraction, as if the canopy had decided they were allowed to breathe normally again.
"Carry him," Ned said to the ring. "Not gently. Safely."
Then, quieter, to the forest that listened through his brow.
This is why I don't ignore what a thing can do.
**
Khalen woke with smoke in his lungs and a raw scrape down his throat, heat still shivering under his skin like an aftertaste, and the first thing he saw was Lys watching him with eyes that had learned something new about what he could do.
"Back," she said, voice level.
Therrin exhaled once, slow. "You talked."
Khalen's stomach dipped. "What did I say."
Lys's mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Enough."
Therrin added, careful, "And nothing that got us killed."
Khalen stared up at the luminous canopy, at the slow stars of spores, and felt the smallest, humiliating tremor of gratitude that he was alive to be ashamed.
Somewhere beyond the roots, deeper in the grove, a low note sounded, ancient and steady.
Not approval.
Not welcome.
More like a latch turning.
From the corridor ahead, Ned's voice came, plain as ever.
"Up. We're finished."