An officiant stands to the side, speaking words I can't quite hear from the gallery. The ceremony is quiet. No music, no pageantry. Just the two of them and the stone and the officiant's low voice.
The woman reaches out and places her palm against the stone.
Nothing visible happens. No flash, no sound, no dramatic shift. But I see her body change. A tension leaves her shoulders. Her weight settles differently, forward instead of back, and the hand she's not using to touch the stone reaches for the creature beside her and finds his arm.
He puts his hand on the stone beside hers.
I'm watching their faces. The woman's expression goes still, concentrated, and then her mouth softens. Not surprise. Not relief. The expression of someone finding a thing exactly where she expected it to be.
The creature's face is harder to read. His free hand comes up and covers hers on the stone, and they stand like that for a long time. The officiant has stopped speaking. No one in the gallery moves.
When they step back, the woman is smiling. Not a big smile. The small, private kind that isn't meant for an audience. The creature beside her is looking at her with an expression I've seen before. On a different face, in a different room, when he thought I wasn't paying attention.
They walk out together. Her hand stays on his arm.
Kovren hasn't moved. I glance up at him. He's gripping the gallery railing. His knuckles have gone white.
“That's tomorrow,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Are you all right?”
He's quiet for a moment. “I'm afraid of what it will find.”
“In you?”
“In me.”
“I'm not,” I say.
He looks down at me.
“We should eat,” I say. “And sleep. Tomorrow is going to be long.”
We find an inn near the market. Small room, too-small bed, the usual problem. The innkeeper charges double when she sees Kovren, which I'm too tired to argue about. He pays without comment. The room has a window overlooking the courtyard, a washstand and a door that locks.
I wash my face and hands. The road dust and portal grime come off in gray streaks. Behind me, Kovren strips off his travel shirt and shakes it out, and I watch him in the small mirror above the washstand without meaning to. The scars I stitched in the ditch have healed to rough silver lines across his chest. The muscles underneath shift when he moves, his body doingits work, and I know the feel of that skin under my palms better than I know most things about myself.
He catches me watching. I don't look away.
He folds himself down to the floor by the wall, his back against the stone, knees drawn up. The same position he takes in every room, the one that makes him smallest. It never works. He still fills the space.
We eat bread and dried meat from the pack Mother Sanque sent with us. The bread is good. The meat is salty and tough and I chew it without tasting it because my mind is still in the temple.
The stone. The look on that woman's face when she touched it. The way she reached for the creature beside her, automatic, certain.
“Kovren.”
“Mm.”
“What does the bond feel like? Right now. From your side.”
He's quiet for a while. Chewing. Thinking.
“Your pulse,” he says. “Underneath mine. I've felt it since the ditch. A second rhythm, not quite in sync. When you're close, it's louder. When you touch me, it drowns everything else out.”
“Everything?”
