Ysabet did not pull the flower stems down. When a creature—human or beast—knew the trap it was lying in and clung to the bait anyway, grabbing it by the scruff only made it bite its own tongue.
Beside her knee, the hemp lead went slack.
Pip stepped out of the cut lane on all six feet, shaking a last scatter of golden dust from its cloth-bound antlers.
Through the bond, Ysabet felt a quiet, heavy recognition pass through the creature’s body. Pip did not know what a drowned brother or a winter trapping cabin was. What it knew, with every plate of its hide, was the pull of the fourth stone on the observatory plateau—how warm and complete it had felt inside Azhrak’s remembered vastness, surrounded by thousands of voices that knew exactly what to call it and never left it alone in the dark. Compared to that finished world, the present was small, cold, and full of sore teeth and uncertain roads.
Here was another creature lying in the dirt and choosing an old voice over the cold air outside.
Pip walked around Ysabet’s boot and folded its six legs down in the gravel right alongside Deyun’s uninjured left hip.
