Not the living gold of his veins. Molten. The gold of a thing being given, not the gold of a thing being spilled. He let it pool in the cup of his palm for a count, and then he tipped his hand over the foot of the page, and the molten gold ran down into theparchment beside my name, and over the pool of it he wrote, with the bone-and-gold stylus, in his own long measured hand—
A word.
A long word, the long characters of a name in an unknown language I had never been meant to read, the true name of him, the name he had not used in any hall in any age, the name that had been waiting for the woman who was his opposite to be the first one to see it written.
It was on us.
Up my right wrist where the old sigils had been, the new ones braided in white-gold and deep wine red, the two of them threaded as blood and gold had braided at the foot of the page. Up his right wrist, in the same braid, the deep red of me threading through the cracked gold of him.
He inhaled.
He said my name.
I leaned in.
I leaned to take him back in my mouth, because the want had been climbing the whole length of the signing and the want had hit its ceiling and the ceiling was, as far as I could tell, the only thing left in the room—
He stopped me.
The long fingers at the back of my neck came up, gentle, firm, the sovereign restraint of one bound, in the first clause of his side of the parchment, not to perform and, in the unspoken understanding under all the rest, not to take what he could not yet keep.
“Not until the binding, baby.”
The voice was wrecked. He was holding himself by the same thin line he had held himself by an hour ago in the gallery, the same line, the one that was getting thinner.
“I will not take what I cannot yet keep. The ceremony first. Then everything. Then everything you want and everything Iwant and everything the contract just wrote into both of us. I swear it. On the new sigils. On my true name. I swear it.”
He lifted my left wrist.
He brought it to his mouth and turned the inside up. He laid his mouth, very softly, over the new braid of sigils at the pulse, and kissed it—long, reverent, the press of someone just given the only thing he had ever asked for and, by the discipline of his own first clause, declining to take it before the time.
He stayed there.
Chapter 6
WhenIwokethenext day, I felt brand new. It was like my whole body was alive with the bond, with this place, with the person I was learning to be again.
Pride wasn’t with me when I woke, but through the bond I could tell that he was nearby. Very nearby.
He was at the window. He was dressed and he had his back to me. He was looking out at the strange colors of the terrace sky, his hands folded behind him.
I sat up.
The shift moved against me. The bond made the hum again—warmer, a little higher, something like fire.
He turned.
He had heard me. He had felt me.
“Good morning, precious one.”
The voice was low. The chamber ushered it.
“Good morning, my Lord.”
He came to the bed and stood at the edge of it, and he looked down at me, his golden irises turning in the concentric rings I was learning to read.
“I very much enjoyed our signing last night.”
