She comes every two weeks. Climbs down from her house at the top of the stairs, walks to ours at the bottom, sits in the chair by the fire and drinks the tea Kovren makes. She critiques the tea every time. He's getting better at it. He no longer boils it to the consistency of ditch water, which I consider progress and Mother Sanque considers barely adequate.
She brought a patient last week. A woman from the next valley with a joint disease Mother Sanque couldn't treat alone. We worked on her together, Mother Sanque's knowledge and my hands, and when the woman left with less pain than she'd had in years, Mother Sanque sat in the chair and drank her tea and said nothing.
Which, from her, is the highest compliment.
People come to my door now. Not many, at first. The village remembered the Bogatyr who passed through before and having him here full-time took adjustment. Kovren stays in the back when patients come. Splits wood, mends things, makes himself useful in ways that don't require him to be seen.
But word spread. The healer in Vorneth who can treat anything. Who doesn't turn anyone away. Who has a giant standing guard at her door who looks terrifying and is gentle with children.
The boy from three streets over comes by most days. Four years old, too young to be afraid. He walks straight through the gap between Kovren's legs the way another child did in Gorvani, and Kovren goes perfectly still until the boy is through, and then he exhales, and the boy laughs, and does it again.
Kovren carved him a horse last week. Small, rough, barely recognizable. The boy carries it everywhere.
I am standing at the surgery window, washing instruments, when Kovren comes in from the yard. Sawdust on his arms. The fence is built. It's massive, overbuilt, capable of withstanding a siege. A goat will have no chance.
He crosses the room and puts his hands on my waist from behind. His palms cover my hip bones. He leans down, his jaw settling against my hair.
“The fence is done,” he says.
“Already?”
“Motivated.” His thumbs trace the jut of my hip bones, the same absent motion as the night in Korsmot, the night before the ceremony. “Patient coming?”
“Not today.” I set down the instrument I'm cleaning. Lean back against his chest. “No one until tomorrow.”
His hands tighten on my waist. I feel the shift in him. His breathing changes. His body goes warm against my back.
“Maren.”
“Upstairs.”
We go upstairs.
The bedroom is small, the bed built by Kovren's hands to hold his weight, the frame reinforced three times before it stopped creaking. The window faces the mountain. The afternoon sun comes through at an angle that turns the room gold.
He undresses me slowly. No urgency. No desperation. Six months of learning each other, of mapping this territory in the dark and in daylight, of figuring out what makes the other gasp and what makes them go still.
His hands on my skin are warm and sure and I stopped thinking of them as dangerous a long time ago. They are careful.They have always been careful. But the fear behind the care is gone.
I pull his shirt over his head and press my mouth to the scar I stitched in the ditch. The first one. The wound where it started.
He inhales sharply.
“Maren.”
“Lie down.”
He lies down. I climb over him, settling into the familiar width of him. We have done this enough times now that the logistics are familiar. The oil is on the nightstand. My body knows his. His body knows mine.
I lower myself onto him and his palms lock around my hips and his head tips back against the pillow and the sound he makes is low and warm and mine.
We move together. Slow. No fear of tomorrow, no urgency of tonight-might-be-the-last. Just this. His hands on me, my hands on him, the bond warm and close and ours.
Afterward, I lie on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. One rhythm. Just his. No rage underneath, no second pulse of fury waiting to break free. Just a heart, beating.
“Kovren.”
“Mm.”
