They lead us through a corridor that connects the auction hall to the temple. The gray-robed woman walks ahead. Behind us, a second officiant carries documents and a seal and a pot of wax. The walk is short but my legs feel wrong, too loose, and my hands haven't stopped shaking.
Maren walks beside me. Her shoulder brushes my hip with every step. She doesn't speak. Neither do I.
The temple is different from below. From the gallery, the space looked open and bright. From the floor, it's close. Overhead, the walls curve inward and the high windows throw angled light across the stone floor, and the binding stone at the center is not eight feet tall, it is taller than me.
I stop.
The stone is warm. I can feel it from ten feet away, a low heat that presses against my skin and makes the bond in my chest pull tight. The colors I saw moving beneath the surface are clearer at this distance. Slow, deep, nothing I can name. The stone is old. Older than the building around it. Older than anything I've encountered, and I have encountered old things.
The officiant takes her place to the side. She's tall, gray-haired, with a face that gives nothing away.
“The binding stone reads intent,” she says. Her voice echoes against the curved walls. “It cannot be deceived. It cannot be coerced. When you place your hands against it, it will look for the truth of your choosing. If the choosing is genuine and freely given, the bond will formalize. If it is not, you will know. And so will the stone.”
She looks between us.
“The bride approaches first.”
Maren steps forward.
I watch her walk toward the stone, small against the dark mass of it, her boots quiet on the temple floor. She doesn't hesitate. Doesn't slow. She walks up to the stone and places both palms flat against its surface.
Nothing happens.
Then her shoulders drop.
Not in defeat. In release. A tension I hadn't noticed leaves her body, and she leans forward slightly, her weight settling against the stone, her forehead nearly touching the dark surface between her hands.
The officiant nods. “The bidder approaches.”
I walk forward. Each step is harder than the last. Not because of fear. Because I can feel the stone reaching, and what it's reaching into is the part of me I've spent eight years trying to contain.
I place my hand on the stone beside hers.
The surface is warm. Warmer than stone should be, warmer than skin. My palm presses flat against it and the warmth spreads up my arm and into my chest.
The bond between us tightens.
Not painfully. The slack between us pulling out until everything is taut and alive. I feel her pulse against my palm, through the stone. Not faint, not the way it's been since the ditch. Clear. Strong. Her heartbeat and mine, not in sync but close, closer than they've ever been, and between them the stone is listening.
It reads me.
I don't know how else to describe it. The warmth reaches into the places I keep locked down. The rage. The guilt. The eight years of hunting and failing and waking up not knowing what I've done. The berserker behind its door, pressing, always pressing.
The stone finds all of it. Holds it. Doesn't flinch.
And underneath, it finds what I feel for her.
Not a word. Not love, not devotion, not any of the things I've heard people say at ceremonies. Bigger than that. Less formed. More encompassing.
The stone reads it. I feel the moment it decides.
The old oath shifts.
I gasp. My hand presses harder against the stone and my knees nearly buckle because I can feel it moving, the old oath, the one that's been grinding against my bones for eight years. It doesn't break. Doesn't dissolve. It moves. Steps back. Makes room.
The bond with Maren fills the space it leaves.
Not tentative. Not the unstable, decaying thing Mother Sanque described. Solid. Settled. Permanent. I can feel her pulse in my chest and it's not going anywhere. The beast stirs behind its door and finds it heavier than before, the lock deeper, theanchor holding it closed stronger than anything I've built on my own.
