The warmth from the stone fades. The colors beneath the surface slow, deepen, go still.
The officiant speaks. I don't hear the words. I'm looking at Maren.
She pulls her hands from the stone and turns to me, and her eyes are bright, and her face is open in a way I haven't seen before. Not guarded. Not practical. Not clinical.
She reaches up and fists the leather at my collar and pulls. I bend to her. She presses her forehead against mine.
“I felt it,” she says. “The bond. It's different now.”
“Yes.”
“Heavier. More. Settled.”
“Yes.”
“And the beast?”
I close my eyes. Search for it. The rage is there, it will always be there, but the door between me and it is thick and solid, held shut by something that has nothing to do with my own white-knuckled control.
“Still,” I say. “Settled. I can barely feel it.”
Her hands tighten on my shirt. “Good.”
The officiant clears her throat.
We step apart. Documents are signed, seals pressed into hot wax. My hand shakes on the pen and the signature is barely legible, but the officiant doesn't comment. She stamps the final page and hands copies to each of us and it's done.
Married.
Bonded.
Hers.
Maren folds her copy and tucks it inside her shirt against her skin. The gesture is small, practical. She's protecting thedocument from weather and damage. She's also keeping it close to her heart.
I don't think she notices she's done both.
Outside the temple, the afternoon light has gone golden, and the market crowds have thinned. We stand in the narrow courtyard between the temple and the auction halls, and I am married, and the world looks different in a way I cannot explain and do not want to.
“The inn,” Maren says. “I want to go back to the inn.”
Her voice is steady. Her hands are steady. But when she looks up at me, her eyes say the rest.
“Yes,” I say.
Her hand finds mine. We go.
MAREN
The door closes behind us.
He locks it. The click of the bolt is loud in the small room, and then we're standing in the dim light from the window, the sounds of Korsmot muffled by stone walls, and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him and neither of us moves.
“Kovren.”
“I know what I need.” His voice is low and rough. “I know what I want. I just don't know if I can do it without hurting you.”
Not touching. Not intimacy. We've had that. What he means is the rest of it. The part we haven't done. The part where he's three times my size and made of muscle and barely contained violence and he has to fit inside me.
