“The rage. The noise. The constant...” He stops. Starts again. “The constant awareness that something is wrong with me. When you touch me, that goes quiet. Not gone. But manageable.”
I think about what Mother Sanque said. The bond is incomplete. Unstable. The quieting will weaken and eventually fail.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “The stone formalizes it. Makes it permanent.”
“If it reads us true.”
“It will.”
“You sound certain.”
“I am certain.”
“Time to sleep,” I tell him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He almost smiles. I see it in the shift around his eyes, the softening that barely touches his mouth.
We arrange ourselves on the floor. The bed is too narrow and too fragile for him, and I've gotten used to sleeping against his side. He stretches out with his back to the wall, and I curl into the space he makes for me, my spine against his chest, his arm settling around my waist. His hand rests against my stomach, heavy and warm. My shirt has ridden up and his palm is on bare skin and the contact hums through both of us, low and constant.
His thumb moves against my stomach. Slow, half-asleep, tracing a line just above my hip bone. I don't think he knows he's doing it.
He could pull me closer. I could let him. But tomorrow the stone reads what we are to each other, and I want to walk into that temple with nothing unfinished between us. I want it to find something clean.
“Tomorrow,” I say, half to myself.
Tomorrow.
I close my eyes.
KOVREN
They take her from me at midday.
Not right away. First we wait in the preparation room, side by side on a wooden bench, while the auction hall fills above us. The room is small. I take up too much of it. Maren sits with her knees drawn up and her back against the wall, watching the door.
“Stop staring at me.”
“I'm not staring.”
“You haven't looked away in ten minutes.”
I force my eyes to the wall opposite. There's a crack in the plaster that runs from floor to ceiling, branching twice. I memorize its shape. It doesn't help.
“What if you change your mind?”
I say it before I mean to. She turns to look at me, and I hate the way my voice sounds. Small. Uncertain. Nothing like the warrior I'm supposed to be.
“Change my mind about what?”
“This. Me.” I can't meet her eyes. “You could choose someone else. Someone normal. Someone who doesn't?—”
“Kovren.”
I stop.
“Look at me.”
I make myself look. She's watching me with that fierce, steady certainty that I'm starting to depend on.
