Two weeks later, the cold stopped chewing through the walls and settled for gnawing them.

  The inn still smelled of smoke and boiled grain, but the air moved again. Brenna could sit propped on pillows now, color back in her lips, breaths long instead of snatched.

  The kitten owned her.

  It slept under her chin, on her stomach, across her ledger when she insisted on updating it from bed. If anyone other than me tried to move it, Brenna’s hand tightened.

  “Leave him,” she muttered one afternoon as Finn reached for the small grey lump on her blanket. “He’s warm.”

  “But I was going to show Jory how he fits in my pocket.”

  “You may bring Jory to him.” Her eyes stayed on the page, quill scratching. “Pocketing him implies ownership.”

  Finn blinked. “He’s the village cat.”

  “He is on loan,” Brenna corrected. “To the village. From me.”

  The kitten punctuated that with a tiny yawn, then burrowed deeper into the crook of her elbow, needle claws flexing.

  Elspeth snorted from the doorway. “Two weeks in my house and the cat has a solicitor.”

  Brenna didn’t look up. “The cat has competence. Which is more than I can say for certain people’s fences before recent events.”

  That earned me a sideways look that somehow held both thanks and an audit.

  The mouse arrived three days later.

  I sat in the common room with a mug of something thin and hot, watching Kael repair a broken chair leg. The room hummed at low volume: cutlery, quiet talk, distant wind.

  A high, sharp squeak sliced through it.

  Finn jerked upright on the bench. “Did you hear—”

  A grey streak shot from under the far table. The kitten skidded on the rushes, regained footing, and pounced. There was a brief, messy scuffle. Silence.

  He strutted into the open with a limp brown mouse in his jaws, tail high as a banner.

  Finn exploded. “He did it! Mam, he did it!”

  Elspeth wiped her hands on her apron and leaned over the counter. The kitten paused in the center of the floor so everyone had a clear view, then dropped the mouse with a wet plop and placed one paw on it, like a knight on a defeated foe.

  I’d seen that pose before. On Beakly, hip-deep in grumbleboar.

  Elspeth folded her arms. “One mouse does not make a mouser.”

  The kitten looked up at her and let out a single, smug mrrp. Pure Beakly energy. The room chuckled.

  Kael pointed with his chisel. “That’s one more than the traps caught this week.”

  Mara leaned out from a corner table. “If you throw him out now, Elspeth, the gods will notice.”

  Elspeth rolled her eyes to the ceiling like she was asking the Architects for patience. “Fine. He stays.”

  Finn punched the air. “Told you he’d earn his keep.”

  Brenna’s voice drifted down the stairs, thin but sharp. “Do not let him chew it on the floor. Parasites.”

  I looked up. She gripped the railing with one hand, the other tucked around her ribs, night-robe hanging loose on a frame that had started to refill.

  “You’re supposed to be in bed.”

  “And miss his first catch? Hardly.” Her gaze dropped to the kitten. “Bring it here. I’ll show you how to inspect for worms.”

  Finn scooped the kitten and its trophy up with the care of a ceremonial offering.

  The little creature lifted its chin higher, mouse dangling, and for a heartbeat I saw Beakly again: feathers puffed, eyes bright, the absolute conviction that the world rotated around his latest conquest.

  “Careful, Count Chocobo,” I murmured under my breath. “You’ve got competition.”

  The thought barely left my mouth before the inn shuddered.

  Not much. Just a thump in the beams, a soft rain of old dust from the rafters, a sudden chill that slipped under my collar like a wet finger.

  Finn’s head snapped toward the door. “Did you feel—”

  Something heavy scraped across the roof. Talon on slate, slow and deliberate.

  My pulse jumped. I was already on my feet.

  Elspeth squinted up at the ceiling. “If that’s snow sliding again, I am not fixing that chimney a third—”

  A low, rolling croak rumbled down through the stone, deep enough to vibrate in my ribs.

  “Beakly,” slipped out on instinct.

  The kitten puffed, fur bristling, and bolted under a chair.

  I didn’t wait for permission. I shoved my mug at Kael, nearly sloshed it over his hand, and headed for the door.

  Cold slammed into me as soon as I cracked it open. The winter air outside had a bite to it anyway, but this was sharper, cleaner, like stepping from a stuffy ward straight into an over-air-conditioned theater.

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  He waited in the lane, black plumage drinking the weak daylight. He’d grown. Not in size—still horse-tall, still broad as a cart—but in presence. Feathers darker, the greens and blues at the tips gone deep enough to be almost oil-slick black. White fog streamed from his beak in steady breaths, thick as if it were twice as cold right where he stood.

  His eyes fixed on me. Old, sardonic, and… distant. A king at court, not the overworked ambulance service who’d once let me drool on his feathers.

  My boots crunched through thin frost as I stepped closer. Heat crawled up my neck.

  Blightcrest. Brenna’s thin voice in my memory, rasped in fever: the Winter Steward, the Eternal King. A god I’d run through dungeons for loot. A god I’d saddled and named Beakly because it made me snort-laugh.

  I stopped an arm’s length away, suddenly aware of every stupid nickname I’d ever thrown at him.

  His head dipped, just a fraction. Waiting.

  “Bea—” I cut myself off. My tongue fumbled on the new shape. “Blightcrest.”

  The name tasted strange. Heavy, like a title murmured in a cathedral.

  He went still.

  Not just quiet. Every line of him locked. The air between us tightened. One bright eye widened, pinning me.

  Then his feathers rustled in a slow cascade, from collar to tail, like a nobleman settling a rich cloak more comfortably around his shoulders. He stepped forward with exaggerated care—talon, talon, talon, talon—until he stood close enough that his breath ghosted against my face.

  He lowered his head.

  Not to my hand, the way he did when he wanted scratches, but to my brow. The hooked tip of his beak hovered above my forehead, close enough that I could see faint nicks along the edge, traces of frozen blood dark against the keratin.

  I held still. My chest felt tight for reasons that had nothing to do with healing ribs.

  The tip of his beak brushed my forehead. Cold, sharp, careful. My lungs forgot their job for a beat. Every stupid nickname I’d ever used lined up in my head like a very unhelpful parade. I should have been furious.

  I’d spent weeks praying into a dead connection, asking why I couldn’t feel anything, why my god felt like bad Wi?Fi, and meanwhile my literal mount—my loot drop—had been one of the big names on Sister Myriam’s wall of Very Important Deities.

  The anger rose fast, hot, like a fever spike. Then his breath washed over my face again, after too long without it, and something in my chest unclenched so hard it hurt. He was back. He was here. Meat-reeking, feather-shedding, skull-cracking menace. Mine.

  Both feelings crashed into each other and turned into a kind of emotional sludge.

  I let out a sound that came out more like a groan than words.

  “You absolute—”

  His eye narrowed.

  Perfect golden circle, no apology in it. Just that cool, assessing look he used on anything that might be food or threat.

  “—jerk,” I finished, which felt weak even to me.

  The inn door creaked behind me. Finn’s whisper floated out.

  “Is he mad? He looks mad.”

  “Stay there,” Elspeth muttered. “If he takes someone’s arm off, it won’t be my boy’s.”

  I ignored them.

  “You couldn’t mention it?” I stared right into his eye. “Little detail like ‘oh, by the way, I’m a Steward God’ never came up?”

  His head tilted. One feathered cheek swung toward me, then back, slow.

  Confusion.

  He blinked once, very deliberate, then looked from my face down to his beak. The expression landed with all the clarity of a slapped chart note.

  I can't talk. Idiot.

  My mouth opened, closed. The anger leaked out through a sigh.

  “Yeah, okay, fair,” I muttered. “But you could have… scratched something in the dirt. Dramatic sky writing. I don’t know.”

  He snorted. A little puff of frost hit my nose.

  “You know what, forget it.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “You’re back. We’ll schedule the godhood argument for later.”

  His feathers settled, just a shade. The air around us still felt knife-cold, but the edges softened.

  Behind me, Finn’s voice piped up again, too loud.

  “Mam, did she call him a god?”

  I winced. Beakly’s gaze slid past me toward the doorway. His shoulders rose, wings rustling once, a low rumble starting somewhere deep in his chest.

  “Inside,” Elspeth snapped. “All of you.”

  The door banged halfway shut, leaving me and Beakly in a wedge of pale light, cold breathing around us. His throat clicked, a short, pleased sound. The faint glow in his eyes brightened, then softened again. He pulled back, one wing-tip flicking across my shoulder in what would have passed for an affectionate cuff, if birds did that.

  I went on, trying for steady. “Been… keeping busy?”

  He answered by turning away from me entirely.

  Rude.

  He stretched to his full height, wings half-opening, and let out a caw that cracked across the lane. Heads popped out of nearby doorways. The inn door creaked wider behind me; I heard Finn’s quick feet skittering, Elspeth’s quieter tread, the mutter of villagers.

  Beak— Blightcrest angled his head toward the village gate.

  “Show-off,” I muttered, but followed.

  The gate stood open just enough to see through. Beyond, in the thin band of snow-packed road between our fence and the treeline, something huge and pale sprawled in the drift.

  For a second my brain supplied “horse,” then rejected it. Wrong shape. Wrong teeth.

  The thing was the size of a cart and all winter: thick gray-white fur crusted with hoarfrost, rime clinging along long muzzle and ridged spine. Its jaws hung open, rows of curved fangs bared. Ice filmed the eyes. Blood—dark, almost black in the cold—mottled its throat in a ragged half-circle of punctures.

  My game brain woke and whispered a name: Frost Howler, northern foothills variant, mid-level pack boss, not supposed to be anywhere near this starter valley.

  The rest of me thought: big, dangerous, very dead.

  Finn squeezed past my elbow, breath steaming. “Whoa.”

  Kael stopped beside him, hammer stuck through his belt, his usual calm rattled enough that it leaked into his voice. “By the Forge…”

  The gate guard—Jeb, the younger one who always watched me like I might sprout extra heads—ran a hand through his hair. “It just… dropped outside the fence. Like the boar. Only bigger. With more teeth.”

  Blightcrest strode forward and took up a position exactly where everyone could see both him and the carcass in one frame. He planted one talon squarely on the wolf’s icy flank.

  He lifted his head. Feathers fluffed. Chest out. If he’d been human he would have been adjusting a crown.

  Finn spun toward me, eyes huge. “Did Beakly do that?”

  Blightcrest’s beak snapped once, sharp, and he gave Finn a look that could only be described as deeply offended.

  I caught his eye. “Blightcrest brought it in,” I corrected, stumbling over the proper name, still unused to it. “From… wherever he’s been terrorising the local wildlife.”

  “Blightcrest,” Harn repeated from behind Kael, brow knitting like he was trying to place it. “But isn't that—.”

  Elspeth didn’t bother with titles. She folded her arms tight, stared at the carcass, then at the bird. “Can we eat it?”

  Mara’s voice floated from somewhere in the crowd. “We can use the hide and bones. The meat’s another matter. I’ll look at the liver.”

  Brenna’s thin face appeared in the nearest upstairs window, wrapped in a shawl. She blinked once, saw the wolf. Blinked twice, eyes tracking down to Blightcrest’s talons. Her mouth tightened. Her hand disappeared, then returned holding a scrap of paper and a stub of charcoal.

  Of course she’d be taking notes.

  The kitten chose that moment to slink out behind Finn’s heel, belly low to the ground. It sniffed the freezing air, spotted the enormous corpse, and froze. You could almost see the calculations in its tiny brain as it glanced from wolf to Blightcrest to the mouse still drying on Brenna’s windowsill.

  “Competition?” I murmured at the bird, lips twitching. “Hardly, huh.”

  He ruffled, pleased, and bent to hook his beak delicately into the wolf’s scruff, dragging the whole huge thing a little closer to the gate with terrifying ease.

  Finn watched, awestruck. “Mam, did you see? The Count got a whole ice-wolf. Snowfang. Frost dog. Whatever that is.”

  Elspeth’s mouth twitched despite herself. “If he drags that carcass through my front door, I’m naming him Stew.”

  Blightcrest paused, one talon suspended, and gave her a look of pure imperial disdain.

  I reached out on impulse, fingers brushing the dense feathers at his shoulder. Cold radiated off him, sharp, clean, but underneath was the familiar iron-and-earth scent of blood and forest.

  “Welcome back,” I murmured, low enough that it got lost under Finn’s excited babble. “Your Majesty.”