Sorina curls against my side afterward. I wrap my arm around her and play with her hair, winding a golden strand around my finger, unwinding it, winding it again.
She came to me. I didn’t have to ask. She crossed the dark living room last night, barefoot and wearing only a bathrobe, knocked on my door, and kissed me because she wanted to. She gave herself to me.
I’m not doomed to the Stillhalls anymore. Sorina saved me from that fate, and she doesn’t even know it. I want to tell her, but I hold back. Our relationship is days old. If I tell her that I was dying and her body is what’s keeping me alive, she’ll feel pressured to give me more of herself, maybe too quickly. She’ll sleep with me out of duty, touch me to keep me from turning to unmoving stone, and the warmth between us will turn intoobligation. I don’t want her in my bed because she’s afraid of losing me. I want her here because she wants to be here.
So, I play with her hair and say nothing.
“I need to wash up.” She rolls onto her back and stretches.
“I’ll run you a bath.”
We go to my bathing room together. The tub is massive, carved from a single block of stone, deep and wide enough for two golems. I fill it with hot water, the pipes groaning as the mountain’s spring water pushes through, and steam fills the room.
We climb in together. Sorina sits between my thighs, her back against my chest, the water up to her collarbone and halfway up my ribs. I take a cloth and run it over her shoulders, down her arms, across her collarbones. She leans into my touch with a satisfied groan.
“I’ve realized I haven’t told you anything about myself,” she says.
“I can be patient.”
“I think it’s time. We’re married, and we’ve also made it official.” Her cheeks turn a lovely shade of pink.
“I’ll take whatever you want to tell me.”
So, she tells me about Tessana, a port town far away from here. She was born there, grew up there, and never thought she’d leave. Her parents and her grandmother still live in Tessana. Her grandmother taught her everything she knows about plants and herbs, knowledge passed down through the women in her family. She has two older brothers who left years ago to make their future in a bigger city.
“I had a garden,” she says. “I grew herbs and prepared medicine to sell at the market. Produce too. It didn’t make much, but it kept me busy.”
I wash her back while she talks, running the cloth in slow circles between her shoulder blades, down the line of her spine.
“I was married before,” she says.
My hands stop. The cloth drips warm water down her arm. I didn’t expect that. I never considered that Sorina might have had another husband before me.
“What happened?” I ask.
“He died. I was a widow before I decided to go to the bride market.”
I’m quiet for a few seconds, turning the cloth over in my hands under the water. Then I ask the question I’ve wanted to ask since I met her.
“Is he the one who left those marks on you?”
“He used to hurt me, but fate took him away and freed me of him.” She pauses. “The bruises you saw on me at the bride market were left by his father. He never liked me.”
My jaw tightens and my fingers close around the cloth until water runs out between my knuckles.
“I’ll make him pay,” I say. “Just tell me where Tessana is.”
Sorina turns to face me. She’s smiling.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I don’t care anymore. The past is in the past. I’m here now, with you, and I feel safe.”
I cup her face, my palm wider than her cheek, and lean down to kiss her.
“I’ll always protect you,” I tell her. “I’ll never harm you. You’re more precious than all the diamonds in the mine to me.”
“Thank you,” she whispers before leaning back against my chest.
Later in the afternoon, I sit in my armchair reading a book while Sorina is at the table, writing a letter to her parents. She bends close to the parchment, her pen moving in quick strokes, and every couple of lines, she pushes her hair back when it falls forward.
