Her giddy delight fills me with joy. “And save it for the morning, sweetheart. There’s time enough. For now, you need to relax. It’s been a long day.”
“The longest,” she agrees, sagging against me. Then she pauses. “Do you suppose his name really is Kestrel? Is he like Lark and named after a bird?”
I snort. “No, the archivists take bird names as well.” I lift her chin and kiss her on the mouth, and I think I’m getting better at this with practice. “You can be Sparrow after all.”
“Your Sparrow!” she cries triumphantly. Then she pauses. “Don’t hawks hunt sparrows?”
“They devour them.”
Heat flares in her gaze. “Sounds lovely.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” And I lock the door behind me, then carry my wife back to our quarters. The future will have a lot of changes—there’s an archivist to be inducted into her work, and a guild master who’s going to need fledglings. There are repeaters—Gwenna, Kipp, and the others—to get settled.
There’s a Taurian ring ceremony that needs to happen.
But all of that can wait until the morning.
Tonight—and every night thereafter—Sparrow is mine.
