Morning found me on one knee beside the front door, holding the latch in place with my thumb while I tried to persuade a stubborn screw into rotten wood.
The screw turned half a finger’s breadth, then stopped. I leaned closer, put my shoulder behind the effort, and felt the old scar high on my right thigh draw tight. The leg had been tender since yesterday’s training, though I’d denied it so confidently that my body had apparently decided to keep the argument private.
Behind me, Maren moved pans across the hearth. Fat hissed. Something sweet and sharp filled the cottage, cinnamon warmed by butter, with the darker smell of sausages browning in their own grease. My stomach made a noise loud enough to embarrass us both.
“If you’re trying to frighten the latch into obedience,” she said, “you’ll need a larger hammer.”
“I’m using patience.”
“You’ve been using patience since dawn.”
“Then it’s nearly ready to surrender.”
She tutted. I heard the scrape of a spoon against the iron pan, followed by the soft clatter of eggs being beaten in a bowl. I’d been putting off the latch for six days, which had earned mentions at breakfast, supper, and once while I was halfway through a bath. I meant to finish it before she could make me do it twice.
The wood around the hinge had split where the grain ran crooked. I shaved away the loose edge with my knife, packed the gap with a sliver of kindling, and drove the screw home. This time it bit.
“Try it,” I called.
“I’m cooking.”
“You’re the official judge of latch quality.”
“I’m the person who uses the door when you’re away.”
That landed more cleanly than the screw had. I glanced toward the table, where she was folding flour into a pan of sliced apples. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and a dusting of white marked one cheek. I could’ve told her about yesterday, about the bathhouse and Lysa’s mouth nearly finding mine, about how I’d gone to sleep with that almost-kiss caught beneath my ribs like a fishhook.
Instead, I tightened the hinge.
The house settled with a wooden knock from somewhere overhead. A little flour sifted from the shelf, and one of the cups rattled against its neighbor.
Maren looked up. “Soft spring ground,” she said.
“The cottage is practicing its dramatic entrances.”
“It learned from you.”
Neither of us moved to investigate. The cottage had been making sounds since before I could remember, and old timber had never needed a better reason than age.
I tested the latch. It caught with a firm wooden click and held when I pulled.
“There,” I said. “A triumph of craftsmanship.”
“A triumph of finally doing what you were told.”
“You make it sound less heroic.”
“That’s because I’ve known you since you tried to eat a candle.”
“I was testing whether it was beeswax.”
“You were four.”
“A rigorous age for research.”
She carried breakfast to the table. The eggs were folded around chopped chives and cheese, the edges browned where they met the pan. Sausages sat beside them under a gloss of fat, and the apples had softened into a thick amber heap with crisp pastry laid over the top. Maren cut the first piece before sitting, because she claimed a man with my appetite could ruin a whole dish by attacking it too soon.
I waited three breaths.
“You’re learning,” she said.
“I’m suffering.”
She gave me the larger portion anyway.
The first bite burned my tongue. I ate it too quickly, because the cheese stretched and the sausage had cracked its casing, spilling pepper and juice over the eggs. Maren poured cider into the blue cup painted with the lopsided bird, then pushed the apple pastry toward me with two fingers.
“Leave some for later.”
“Later is a distant and uncertain country.”
“You’ll be home for supper.”
It was said as a fact, though she watched me over the rim of her cup afterward. I reached for another sausage before answering.
“I will.”
“Good. I’ve got beans soaking, and if you bring in the kindling before midday, I’ll make the stew with the smoked ham instead of the turnip ends.”
“Bribery.”
“Management.”
“A noble distinction.”
“You can distinguish it while carrying wood.”
I finished the eggs, then wiped apple syrup from my thumb with the heel of bread. My leg complained when I stood, a hot line running from the scar into my knee. I kept my face still. Maren’s eyes went to my boot anyway.
“Still pulling?”
“Only when I stand, walk, or perform any other dangerous activity.”
“So, constantly.”
“You’ve been listening to Kade too much.”
“Kade has the advantage of being right more often than you.”
“That’s a low bar.”
She rose and began gathering the plates. This time I took the cups before she could object. Her hand hovered near one of them, then withdrew. She straightened the cloth beside my elbow instead.
“We’re nearly out of lamp oil,” she said. “The small jug, not the dear kind. Bring back the week’s worth. A twist of salt too, and dried beans if they look fit to eat.”
“I know where she keeps all three.”
“Then you’re already halfway useful.”
“A stirring endorsement.”
She pointed a wet finger at me. “And don’t let him give you the cloudy bottle.”
“I’ll threaten him with my reputation.”
“Your reputation is why he’ll try.”
I took my jerkin from its peg and shrugged into it, careful when the fabric brushed the sore place in my leg. The morning waited beyond the repaired door, along with Bram, the market, and a question I had no wish to carry through the streets.
Maren passed me the empty oil jug, then wrapped the heel of bread in a square of cloth and pushed it into my jerkin.
“Home before supper.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“You often do.”
I tucked the jug beneath my arm, opened the latch, and stepped into the fresh spring air before I could say anything about Lysa.
The millrace ran beside the common in a narrow brown rush, carrying the wheel’s steady thunder toward the lower fields. I’d made it past the first stand of alders when Sera stepped onto the path and stopped me.
She wore her practical braid over one shoulder, and the loose end had caught a few pale seeds from the roadside grass. Her warm brown eyes fixed on me with such directness that my easy greeting died before it reached my mouth.
“Morning,” I said anyway.
“You went to Marta’s bathhouse with Lysa.”
There were clever answers available. I could have mentioned that half of Brookhaven had gone to Marta’s bathhouse at one time or another, or asked whether Sera had taken up watching the road as a profession. Her stillness warned me against using any of them.
“I did.”
“I saw you go in.”
“That must’ve been difficult to miss. I’m not exactly built for sneaking.”
Her mouth tightened. Below us the wheel took another slow bite out of the water.
“I saw you come out separately, too,” she said.
“Nothing happened.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
The path seemed suddenly too narrow for my shoulders. Water struck the wheel below with patient force, and somewhere across the common a cartwheel squealed. I shifted the empty oil jug beneath my arm, though it hadn’t become any easier to carry.
“What are you asking?”
Sera came closer. She stopped short of touching me, close enough that I could see the small freckle near her left eyebrow, the one I’d noticed a hundred times and never had the courage to mention. Her fingers curled against her skirt.
“Did you want something to happen?”
Lysa’s face rose in my memory, bright with heat and laughter, her mouth an inch from mine in the steam.
“Yes,” I said.
Sera flinched as if I’d struck the path between us. Then she looked away toward the water.
“Of course you did.”
“Sera.”
“No, it’s fine.” She said it too quickly. “You’ve always liked her. Everyone knows. She’s beautiful, and she laughs at everything you say, even when it isn’t funny.”
“Some of it’s funny.”
Her eyes flashed back to mine. “That’s what you heard?”
“No.”
I set the oil jug down beside the path. It felt like surrendering a shield, though a clay jug was a poor defense against Sera Vance.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to stop pretending you don’t know.”
Her voice had gone low. Sera usually leaned into every conversation as if it might contain good news, bouncing on her feet when something pleased her. Now she held herself so carefully that I missed the restless version of her at once.
“I don’t want to stand there and watch you choose Lysa because I was too proud to speak,” she said. “I don’t want to smile and tell you it’s fine while you decide she’s the one worth wanting. I don’t want to lose you because I kept waiting for you to notice me.”
My heart gave one hard, stupid knock.
“You think I haven’t noticed you?”
“I think you notice everyone.”
That landed closer to truth than I liked. Sera had been beside me through every season of my life. Somehow that had made it easier for me to hide, not harder.
“Sera, I’ve always noticed you.”
“Then what am I to you?”
I could hear the answer I wanted to give, warm and simple and free of consequences. I could also hear the question beneath hers, sharper than the first.
“Do you want me to yourself?”
She drew in a breath. For a moment, I thought pride might save us both from the answer.
“Yes,” she said. “I want you for myself.”
The words left no room for a grin. I’d spent years imagining Sera close to me, her hand in mine, kissing her until neither of us knew what to say. The imagining had always been safer than the wanting. Now she stood within reach, braid brushing her chest, eyes bright with anger and something I hoped I had the right to call fear.
“Then you should’ve said so sooner,” I murmured.
“Don’t make this my fault.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m trying not to look terrified.”
That startled a small breath from her, almost a laugh. It loosened something in me. I reached for her slowly enough that she could step away. My fingers touched her cheek. Her skin was warm from the morning, and the contact sent a ridiculous heat down my neck.
Sera caught the front of my jerkin and pulled me down.
Her mouth met mine hard. I’d expected hesitation, some careful brush that would leave us wondering whether it’d truly happened. Instead she kissed me as though she’d been holding the moment behind her teeth for years and had finally grown tired of bleeding from it.
I dropped one hand to her waist. The other stayed against her cheek while she pressed herself close, her braid sliding between us, her breath breaking against my mouth. The millrace thundered on. I tasted cider, spring air, and the faint sweetness of whatever she’d eaten. My leg began to ache from standing strangely, and I ignored it with the wholehearted dedication of a fool.
When she pulled back, her fingers remained twisted in my jerkin. Her lips were reddened. Mine felt swollen, and I had no sensible explanation for why that pleased me so much.
“That,” she said, breathing unevenly, “wasn’t an answer.”
“It was a very enthusiastic beginning.”
“Edrin.”
My smile faded. I could still see Lysa in the steam. Sera watched me realize it.
“I know,” I said.
“Give me a real answer tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes. I’m not letting you kiss me until you can’t think of anything else to say.”
“That seems unfair. I can think of several things.”
“Then choose one that matters.”
She released my jerkin, smoothing the wrinkled fabric with a quick, embarrassed hand. I caught at her fingers. She let them brush mine, then pulled away.
“We’ll finish this tonight,” I said.
“We will.”
Sera stepped off the path toward the common. After three paces she glanced back, and the softness in her face was gone before I could decide whether I’d truly seen it.
I retrieved the oil jug. My mouth still tingled. The market waited beyond the alders, and supper had become a much more dangerous appointment than any meal had a right to be.
By midday, Brookhaven common had swallowed the quiet of the morning. Carts crowded the edges of the square, their wheels grinding over packed earth. Someone shouted the price of onions. Someone else shouted louder. A pair of children chased one another between the stalls until a woman caught one by the collar and hauled him back toward a basket of turnips.
I kept Maren’s oil jug tucked against my hip and tried not to touch my mouth.
That became difficult whenever I remembered Sera’s fingers in my jerkin.
The oil seller filled the jug to the painted line, corked it, and named a price that made me glance at the small purse in my hand.
“For that much, it ought to light the house and cook supper.”
“Then use less supper,” the woman said.
“Maren will hear you say that and come after you with a spoon.”
She gave me back two coins. “Your mother’s spoon is the frightening one?”
“The wooden one. The iron one only leaves bruises.”
She laughed, and I carried the jug away before she could decide I’d earned another complaint. Maren had asked for lamp oil, a twist of salt, and enough dried beans to stretch the stew. Nothing heroic. Nothing that required a sword, a horse, or the kind of answer Sera had demanded beside the millrace.
I stopped at the salt stall and caught myself staring at a heap of white crystals as though they might arrange my thoughts. They didn’t. Sera’s kiss remained more useful at ruining my concentration than any battlefield feint Kade had ever taught me.
I tucked the salt and beans into my satchel and turned from the stall.
Lysa stood in my way.
Her loose braid had half escaped again, and the green of her bodice made her hazel eyes seem brighter in the midday sun. I remembered damp hair against her shoulder and her mouth waiting an inch from mine.
My appetite arrived before my good sense. Guilt followed close behind, wearing Sera’s voice.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Lysa said when she reached me.
“I’m conserving my finest remarks.”
“Careful. You might strain something.”
“A risk I bear for the town.”
She leaned nearer instead of stepping around me, bringing apples, clean linen, and the faint trace of wildflower soap with her. Her blouse opened softly at the throat beneath the fitted bodice. I looked at her face, then at the beans, then back at her face with the discipline of a man trying to hold a door shut against a very charming wind.
“You’re looking at the wrong person,” she said.
Heat climbed my neck. “There are six people here.”
“Seven, if you count yourself.”
“I rarely count myself. It encourages vanity.”
“You’ve never needed encouragement.”
She smiled, but her gaze stayed on me. I couldn't tell what she'd noticed, only that she'd noticed something.
“Did you sleep at all?” she asked.
“Some.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It was the answer I’d prepared.”
Lysa’s fingers brushed the handle of the jug. “Maren sent you shopping?”
“She threatened to make supper without oil.”
“Cruel woman.”
“You see what I endure.”
Her hand lingered a moment before falling away. Sera’s mouth returned to me at once.
“You’re strange today,” Lysa said.
“I’m always strange. Today you’ve paid attention.”
“Maybe I have.”
There it was, light as a thrown apple and nearly as difficult to catch. I could’ve asked what she meant. I could’ve drawn her closer, made the market disappear around us, and postponed Sera again with a prettier excuse.
Instead I shifted the jug beneath my arm.
“I need to get this home before Maren sends a search party.”
Lysa studied me, then gave a small bow. “Run along, then.”
“Almost like permission, that.”
“Don’t grow accustomed to it.”
I left before my courage changed shape.
Near the fountain, Sera stood with one hand on the shoulder of a boy carrying a sack too large for him. She looked across the market and found me at once. I touched my mouth without meaning to.
The market heaved beneath me.
One moment I was touching my mouth and watching Sera across the common. The next, the ground struck upward hard enough to bite my teeth together, and every stall around me dropped.
Not tipped. Not slid. Dropped.
The fountain sank first, stone basin and green water plunging straight down as if the earth had opened its hand. The paving around it broke into great plates. A fruit seller disappeared with her cart. The awning above the spice stand folded inward, dragging its poles and baskets after it. People fell screaming through gaps that widened faster than I could understand.
I stood frozen for half a heartbeat, my mind reaching for a smaller explanation. A cellar collapse. A burst watercourse. Some accident beneath the common that would stop at the next row of houses.
Then the baker’s shop went down.
Its front wall dropped out of sight, shelves and shutters tumbling with it. The roof sagged, tore loose, and vanished into the opening. The houses beside it followed, whole rooms descending in a roar of cracking timber and falling stone.
“Move!” Kade shouted.
His voice cut through the screaming. I found him near the edge of the market, one hand braced against a post while the other pointed toward the road leading west. His bad knee had nearly folded beneath him, but he dragged a fallen man upright and shoved him toward open ground.
“Away from the buildings! Get to the gardens! Don’t stop for carts!”
A horse reared beside me. Its harness snapped. The animal plunged sideways, hooves striking sparks from the stones, and a child stood directly in its path with both hands clapped over his ears.
I reached him before I decided to move.
My shoulder hit his chest. We went down together as the horse crashed past, close enough that its iron shoe clipped my boot. I rolled, seized the boy under the arms, and hauled him toward the one stretch of paving that still held.
“Run,” I said.
He stared at me.
“Run now.”
That reached him. He scrambled away on hands and knees, clutching a torn cap against his chest. I pushed up after him, my palms full of grit, and the market gave another long groan beneath us. Not a second blow. The first ruin was still moving. An entire section of Brookhaven continued to sink, dragging streets and buildings down into the space below.
The common had become a jagged rim around a widening absence.
People surged in every direction. Some fled toward the eastern road. Others crowded west, colliding at the narrow alleys. A woman dragged two children by their wrists. A man stood shouting for his brother beside a shop that no longer had a lower floor. Dalla had climbed onto an overturned table, her patched wool coat gray with dust, and was waving both arms.
“Those who can walk, keep moving! If you’re hurt, call out! Don’t lie beneath the walls!”
She jumped down before the table could shift and caught an old woman by the elbow. Her hands immediately went to straighten the woman’s shawl, an absurdly familiar gesture in a world coming apart.
Across the broken common, Lysa was pulling a market girl away from a collapsing stall. Her loose braid had come half undone, and her green bodice was powdered gray. She shoved the girl ahead of her, then turned back for someone else.
“Lysa!”
She looked toward me. For one instant I saw her clearly through the moving crowd, hazel eyes wide, mouth open around my name or a warning. Then a wagon lurched between us as the street beneath it slanted toward the gap.
“West!” she called. “Edrin, west!”
I started toward her, but Kade seized the back of my jerkin.
“Leave her route,” he said. “She’s moving people. You’ll jam it.”
“I can get her.”
“You can get yourself killed and take three others with you. West, kid.”
His grip released me. I hated him for being right before I’d even proved him wrong.
The wagon cleared. Lysa had gone back for the market girl’s little brother. She caught his wrist and flung him toward the surviving road just as the stone lintel above the stall tore loose. It struck her across the shoulders and drove her flat. Her body went still beneath the stone. Then the paving opened and took the stall, the lintel, and Lysa with it.
I made a sound I’d never heard from myself.
Kade caught my shoulder and turned me west. “You can’t reach her.”
A roof collapsed at the edge of the common. Dust rolled over us. I bent low, coughing, and felt the old scar along my right leg pull tight beneath my trousers. The pain was small and familiar. I held to it for one breath while the common vanished around me.
“Follow Kade!” I shouted, though I had no idea how many could hear me. “Keep to the open ground!”
Kade was already steering people away from a row of leaning houses, catching shoulders and correcting feet before they reached the crumbling edge. His commands stayed plain and hard.
“Take the child. Keep moving.”
The ground beneath the western side of the common split in a crooked line. It ran beneath the stalls, beneath the road, and toward the homes beyond. I watched a familiar elm tilt as the earth around its roots fell away. Its branches scraped across the upper windows of the nearest houses. One window remained lit in the midday glare, a little square of gold that stayed upright for a breath before the whole building dropped out of sight.
My stomach turned over.
Hale Cottage lay beyond that road.
Maren was there.
The jug beneath my arm slipped. It struck the stones and shattered, oil spreading in a bright slick between the cracks. I stared at it, stupidly, thinking of supper. Bread, beans, the pan Maren would complain about if I left it soaking too long. The things that had mattered ten minutes ago hadn’t become foolish.
“Edrin!” Kade barked.
I looked back.
He stood with Dalla and a knot of villagers near the surviving edge of the common. Behind him, more of Brookhaven was collapsing. The mill road dropped in a long rolling break, houses descending one after another as their foundations failed. Dust hid the lower streets. Timber rose and vanished. A bell rang somewhere beneath it all, struck by falling stone, then stopped.
“Get them toward the western gardens,” Kade called. “I’ll bring the rest.”
“Maren’s home is west.”
His face changed when I said it. Not much. His mouth tightened, and his eyes went past me toward the road.
“Then don’t waste time telling me.”
I ran across broken paving and spilled grain.
Behind me, Kade kept calling people forward. His voice followed through the dust, battered but steady.
“West! Keep west!”
I reached the mouth of the road and saw the road ahead buckle, the ground opening across the path to Hale Cottage.
Maren was on the other side.
I ran harder.
The gap widened as I reached it. The far side of the road sagged toward the buried streets, stones sliding into the opening with a dry, endless rattle. I searched for a crossing and found none. The cottage stood beyond it, crooked but still upright, its whitewashed walls visible between the apple trees.
Then Maren stepped out through the front door.
She had one hand braced against the frame and the other clutched the red shawl she wore when the morning turned cool. Her hair had come loose around her face. Even at that distance, I knew the way she held herself when she was about to scold me.
“Maren!”
Her head snapped toward me.
For one clean instant, the whole ruined road narrowed to her. The broken fence. The tilted chimney. The strip of garden where she grew onions and complained that I trampled them. Her mouth opened, but the earth cracked beneath the cottage before any word reached me.
The front step dropped.
Maren lurched forward. The doorframe tore loose behind her, and half the wall folded outward in a roar of stone and timber. She vanished under it.
“No!”
I jumped for the gap.
My boot struck the edge of the road. The ground crumbled beneath it, dragging gravel and broken paving into the hollow. I threw myself flat and caught a root with my left hand. My shoulder screamed as my weight swung over the drop. Dust filled my mouth. Below, the cottage was coming apart as it fell, roof beams tumbling through a gray veil.
There. A red scrap among the wreckage.
“Maren!”
I hauled myself forward. My fingers clawed through loose soil, finding splintered wood, then the corner of a fallen beam. I seized it with both hands and pulled. The beam shifted just enough to show what lay beneath.
Maren was dead beneath the broken wall. Stone had pinned her from the chest down, and the angle of her neck left nothing in me willing to call it anything else. One of her hands rested palm-up in the dirt. The fingers were still.
I stopped breathing.
A thought came, stupid and bright as a kitchen flame. I hadn't told her about the kiss. Not Sera's kiss, not the confusion afterward, not even the way Lysa had looked at me before we left the bathhouse. I hadn't told her that her bread was better than the baker's and always had been. The beans were still soaking on the hearth for a stew I’d never eat.
None of it could cross the stones.
The beam groaned under my hands. The ground shifted again. I dug my heels into the road and pulled until my teeth cracked together. My shoulder gave a wet, hot protest. The beam moved a finger's breadth, then sank deeper as the cottage slid toward the opening.
“Edrin!”
Sera's voice came from behind me, close and raw.
I reached farther. The red shawl tore beneath my fingers. A ragged strip wound around my wrist as the rest vanished under stone.
“Edrin, leave it!”
She seized the back of my jerkin. I twisted and struck at her hand without meaning to. She didn't let go. Her braid had come undone, and dust streaked one side of her face. She planted both feet against a surviving patch of road and dragged backward with everything she had.
“Get up!” she shouted. “The road's going!”
“She's there.”
“I know.”
Another crack split the earth between us and the wreckage. The sound punched through my ribs. A section of garden dropped, carrying the apple trees with it. Roots tore free in long black ropes. The cottage tipped toward the void, its remaining wall sliding over Maren and the stones that held her.
For half a breath, I wanted to follow the house down.
Sera pulled again.
I let go.
The beam slid after the cottage. I grabbed for it once more, missed, and struck my palm against the road. Sera hauled me backward as the ground fell away where my chest had been. We rolled together across the road, her shoulder hitting mine. Pain flared through my injured side, and I bit down hard enough to taste blood.
“Move!” she said.
“Maren's gone.”
The words came out thin. I heard them and didn't recognize the voice.
Sera's hand closed around mine. Her grip shook, but she held on.
“I know.”
Behind us, Kade shouted from somewhere beyond the dust.
“Keep west! Don't crowd the road! Gardens and the old quarry road, now!”
His voice sounded impossibly far away, then suddenly nearer as the air shifted. People were running along the surviving road, stumbling over fallen baskets and fence posts. A woman dragged a boy by the wrist. Two men carried an old man between them. Nobody looked toward the cottage for long. The ground kept falling, and every pause became a wager against the next break.
I pushed to my feet.
My legs wanted to fold. I made them stand. The place where Hale Cottage had been was now a sloping wound of soil, roof tiles, and shattered beams. The little herb bed had disappeared. The blue cup Maren kept on the sill lay broken near my boot, its painted bird split down the middle.
I bent toward it.
Sera yanked me upright before I could touch it.
“Not that.”
“It was hers.”
“And the road is falling.”
She pointed. A broad section of the western road sank in connected failures, paving stones dipping and vanishing while the old mill wall leaned over the widening hollow.
Kade appeared through the dust on the far side of the buckling road. “Edrin! Take the garden track! The orchard’s going!”
The high path cracked before he finished. Sera pointed toward the narrow track behind the cottages, where fleeing families were already moving toward the fields.
“That's the way,” she said.
Our eyes met.
Her brown eyes were wide. My mouth still remembered her kiss from that morning, a fact my mind rejected even as my body kept it.
“Go,” I said.
“With you.”
The ground heaved beneath us. Not upward. The whole road sank, carrying the two of us toward different slopes as the foundations failed below. Sera was thrown toward the narrow garden track. I slid toward the higher path, boots scraping uselessly against loose stone.
Her fingers caught mine.
For one breath we held there, stretched between the two routes, while Brookhaven broke beneath our feet.
Then the road split wider, and the earth forced us apart.
My fingers tore free of Sera’s.
She slid down the slanted road, caught herself against a garden wall, and shoved a stumbling woman toward the narrow track. Loose stones streamed past her boots. Sera kept moving, one hand out for the next person, her braid whipping across her shoulder.
“Go!” she called. “Keep going! Don’t stop for anything!”
I tried to reach her.
The path beneath me dropped another arm’s length. My knee struck the paving, and the shock drove my teeth together. I grabbed a jutting root, felt it tear loose, and rolled toward the high road as a section of garden wall folded into the earth.
“Edrin!”
Kade stood beyond the break, balanced on a strip of road no wider than a bench. Dust whitened his hair and filled the creases around his eyes. He’d lost the man he’d been hauling, but three children and an old woman clustered behind him, pressed against the garden wall. Kade kept himself between them and the falling road, checking the stones, the slope, the people, always checking what would fail next.
“Kade!”
He pointed past me.
A cart came down the road sideways, one wheel spinning. Bram ran behind it with both hands on the rail while the familiar child from the common clung to the empty bed.
The cart struck a post. Bram threw his shoulder into it, turned the wheels onto the garden track, and hauled the child out by the back of the shirt.
“Down the path!” he roared.
The child locked both arms around his neck. Bram carried them toward the fields while Sera drove people along the same outward route.
Kade turned his head toward me. His bad knee buckled. He caught himself on a splintered post, shoved away, and raised his voice until it cut through the grinding earth.
“Edrin!”
I looked at him.
“Protect what’s behind you.”
The words struck harder than the falling road. They were an order, not comfort, and Kade had never wasted an order on something he didn’t expect me to do.
I turned toward the people climbing behind me. A young mother had fallen beside the high path, her child pinned beneath a length of timber. I lunged, seized the timber with both hands, and lifted. It was heavier than it looked. My shoulders screamed. The mother dragged the child free, and someone behind her pulled them both up the slope.
Then the strip of road beneath Kade gave way.
He dropped to one knee. The garden wall behind him leaned, stones cascading over his boots. Kade threw himself sideways, away from the cluster of children, and caught the edge of a broken paving slab. His fingers locked around it.
“Kade!”
He looked up. His face was clear for one instant, the dust gone from his eyes. He pointed toward the garden track, toward Bram and Sera and the living stream of people.
“Move!” he shouted.
The slab tore free.
Kade fell with it, down through a widening gap between the road and the buried streets. I saw his hand vanish below the broken edge. Then a roof beam plunged across the opening and hid him from me. The beam shattered against something below, but I couldn’t see what. I didn’t know whether he’d caught another ledge, whether the rubble had carried him onto a lower shelf, whether he was still falling.
I ran anyway. The high path bucked beneath my boots, and a chimney burst across it in a shower of red brick. I ducked beneath the fragments and came up looking for Sera.
Sera appeared on the far side of the road, perhaps twenty paces away, hauling an old man over a low wall. Her hands shook on his arm. I took that for fear; she still put herself between him and the widening crack.
“Sera!”
Her head snapped toward me.
“Keep going!” I shouted.
She pointed at me, furious even through the dust. “You too!”
The ground broke between us.
The crack didn’t open like a wound. It simply became a missing piece of road, swallowing paving stones, fence posts, and half a shed. Sera jumped back as the edge collapsed beneath her boots. The old man fell against her. She caught him, turned, and drove him toward the garden track.
“Edrin!”
I took one step after her.
The high path fell away.
My stomach rose into my throat. My sword belt snapped tight against my hip as the ground vanished, and then there was nothing beneath either foot. I flung myself forward, hands clawing for the lip of the road. My fingers struck packed soil, slid across roots, and closed around a strip of cloth torn from someone’s cloak.
The cloth ripped.
I dropped.
For a heartbeat I fell beside the side of a house. Its upper windows flashed past close enough that I saw curtains lifting in the rush of air. A table came out after them. A chair spun end over end. Someone’s basket burst open, sending onions and folded clothes tumbling through the space between us.
I reached for a beam.
My palms struck it. The timber rolled beneath my hands and kicked me away.
Brookhaven wheeled above me.
The western road had become a broken rim around a vast descending hollow. Garden walls slid inward. Roofs tipped and went down, some whole, some breaking apart as they fell. The common was no longer a place I knew. The market awnings streamed across the air like torn sails, and the mill roof dropped beyond them, its great wooden wheel spinning loose in the middle of the collapse.
Sera was a small figure on the garden path. I could see her clearly enough to know she still moved. She had one hand on the old man’s arm and the other lifted, waving people onward. Bram and the child were farther out, near the fields, the cart lurching behind them. I couldn’t tell whether they’d reached solid ground or whether the open route ahead was beginning to sink too.
“Sera!”
My voice vanished in the roar.
I tried again. Her head turned, or perhaps the dust made it seem so. I couldn’t hear an answer. I couldn’t know if she’d heard me at all.
A roof swept between us.
It’d belonged to a house near the common. I knew the blue shutters, the cracked beam above the door, the rain barrel that had always leaned to one side. Now the whole house rotated through the air, shedding tiles. One struck my shoulder and spun me hard. Pain flashed down my arm. I tucked my chin and wrapped myself around the sword as another timber passed close enough to scrape my boot.
There was no ground to aim for, no hand reaching down, no practiced landing waiting below. A door spun past with its latch still fastened. My body searched for something to brace against and found only falling pieces of home.
Above, the last pieces of Brookhaven kept descending.
The garden track buckled toward the hollow. Earth and broken timber cut Sera from view. When the dust thinned, people were still moving along the far end of the path, but I couldn’t find her among them. Bram and the child had vanished from sight as well.
Kade had vanished below on another line of falling earth. I pictured his hand closing around stone. The next breath stopped halfway in.
The hollow widened beneath me. The strip of Maren’s shawl still clung around my wrist. I closed my fist over it as my injured leg kicked uselessly in open air and the sword dragged at my belt, spinning me again.
Above me, the last high ground gave way.
The western road, the garden walls, the cottages, the common, all of it dropped together in a vast breaking sweep. The town shrank as it fell, but the sound grew larger, a deep rolling violence that shook my ribs. Sera, Bram, the child, Kade, Maren, the cottage with its stubborn latch, every face and doorway I’d known was swallowed by dust and distance.
I kept calling their names, though no answer could reach me.
Then the final ground above me broke apart, and I fell among Brookhaven’s roofs, trees, tools, stones, and scattered belongings, still falling, still reaching for anything that might hold.
Brookhaven was gone.