My body is nimble and my heart is full. The stone moves the way it used to, my breath comes easy, and my fingers turn the pages without catching.
She probably believes I saved her, that I’m the reason she’s here instead of back in Tessana with a dead husband and a father-in-law who’d take his rage out on her.
She doesn’t know that she’s the one who saved me.
Chapter Seventeen
Sorina
Korr and I spend a whole week inside his bedroom, cocooned in our own world.
I lose track of which day it is somewhere around the third morning, when he brings me bread, cheese, and cold milk, and I eat with my back against his chest and his arms loose around my waist.
We make love in the pale light that comes through the window, again in the afternoon when the room goes dim, and sometimes late at night. Whenever I reach for him, I find him ready, hard and throbbing.
He brings food, and we eat in bed, crumbs in the furs, wine in heavy cups that I can barely hold. I wash his back in the bath, and he washes mine; we stay in the water until it cools and the steam fades.
We talk for hours. He tells me about the mine, about shafts that go so deep the air becomes suffocating, about diamonds pulled from veins that have been locked in the rock for thousands of years. I tell him about my grandmother’s garden and the rows of herbs I had to learn by touch and smell before she’d tell me their names. We listen to each other and memorize every detail. I want to know him as much as he wants to know me.
I leave our nest twice. The first time, I take the lift to the Narrowhalls and find Julie at the apothecary counter. I tell her I won’t be around for a while, and she grins and waves me off with a dried sprig of lavender.
“Enjoy your honeymoon. When you’re done being obscenely happy, come back. You’ve got a job here, if you want it. No more volunteering.”
The second time, I visit Vicky. She opens the door, and inside the house, the curtains are pulled back and daylight fills every room.
“I’m getting a divorce,” she informs me.
I hold her hands and tell her I’m proud of her.
After those two visits, I move into Korr’s room for good. My old bedroom sits empty down the hall, the bed made, and the fireplace cold. I sleep on his chest with his heartbeat under my ear and his hand spread across my back, and the days bleed together in a way that makes me forget there’s a world outside our chambers.
Until there’s a knock on the door, at seven in the morning.
Korr is out of bed and pulling on trousers before I’ve sat up. I hear him cross the living room, hear the heavy door open, then his voice drop low. I get up, pull my robe on, and go to see what’s gotten him so grave and worried.
A golem guard stands in the corridor.
“Is everything okay?” I step around Korr’s arm. “Is Vicky all right?”
“This isn’t about Victoria, ma’am.” The guard looks at me. “This is about you.”
My chest tightens, because I haven’t left the Highhalls in days, and I haven’t done anything.
Korr moves between me and the guard. The guard takes a step back and holds both hands up, palms out.
“She’s not under arrest,” he says. “The Council of Five is requesting her presence. I’ve been sent to escort her. You’re also welcome to attend.”
“What does the council want with my wife?” Korr asks.
“I don’t have the details. I was told to bring her, and that she isn’t in trouble.”
“Wait outside,” Korr says.
The guard nods, and Korr closes the door in his face.
I look up at him. My voice holds steady, but my hands are shaking.
“I don’t know what this is. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
