Lance Roan's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Two days after the vial, Lance was splitting wood when a rider came hard down the lane and shouted for help before sliding from the saddle. A stranger had been found near the old stone marker, bleeding, marked with something none of them wanted to name. The village elder needed the healer. Now. Lance was the closest hand with a horse already saddled. He loaded the wounded man across the broad bay mare tied at the post. The horse was dark-maned and steady, built for weight, and she did not flinch at the smell of blood. Lance checked the strap twice. He did not trust himself to check it only once. Half a league on, the man slipped sideways in the grass when Lance stopped to adjust the ropes. His shirt fell open. Beneath the blood, a faint sigil glowed on his chest — slow, pulsing, wrong. Lance stared one breath longer than he meant to. Then he hauled the man back up and rode harder. He reached the ivy-wrapped cabin at dusk and did not wait at the gate. He carried the man through it and laid him on the worked ground beside her table. "Millhaven needs you," he said. "This came from the road in. There may be more." Genevieve looked at the sigil. She looked at Lance. She did not ask if he was sure. She knelt, opened her satchel, and set her hands on the man's chest. "Stay," she said. "I'll need the ride back." Lance stayed. The warning had landed. She had trusted it without a second question, and she had asked him to remain — not as a stranger in the yard, but as the one who would carry her home.