I hold it.
For a single moment, the world melts away into the single point where I’m inside her. My muscles tremble as I delay the inevitable.
“Do it,” she orders. “Give it to me.”
I come.
My coils lock. Every muscle fires. The release comes from somewhere I did not know existed, deeper than the glands, deeper than the nerve line. Both shafts pulse and the flood moves through her and her cry breaks against my mouth and the bond seals.
The coils lock and release and lock again. My face against her throat. Her hands on my neck. Both of us gripped around each other.
The green spreading on the walls.
I hold her. She shifts into the curve of my body.
I try to speak but I can’t form the words. I can only kiss the top of her head in gratitude as I catch my breath.
I don’t know how much time has passed. The hall is dark. We haven’t moved. The lamps have burned low. She lies against mycoils, her head resting in the bend of the nearest loop, her body flushed teal in the low light.
“My body is in love with you,” she says to the ceiling. Quiet. “So is the rest of me.”
A pause. My coils shift around her. The loop at her back tightens a fraction.
“Yes,” I say. I have a word in my mother’s language that would be enough, but I am not ready to say it. “Yes” is what I can hold in my mouth tonight.
She closes her eyes. Her breathing slows. She sleeps against me.
The temple is quiet. The deep vibration below the floor is still tonight. The seal is holding. The green on the walls is darker in the low light. New growth on old stone.
I do not sleep. I hold her and watch the green.
VADH
On the twenty-third morning, I draw a measure into the old bowl so I can carry it, and the venom is transparent.
I hold it to the light from the high windows. The stone shows through the liquid. No cloud. No amber. No film. Clean.
I bring the bowl to breakfast and set it on the stone between us.
Bryn picks it up and holds it to the light, turning it slowly, then sets it down.
“Clear,” she says. Quiet.
“Yes.”
She looks at the bowl. She looks at me. Then she looks toward the lower hall.
“The second groove,” she says.
I know what she is asking. The paired grooves. The architecture my parents used together, every morning, for the duration of their bond. One warm from my body. One cold for five years.
“You’ve been absorbing the venom through your skin for weeks,” I say. “The teal. If the groove draws from the body lying in it…”
“Then I can pour.”
We go to the lower hall. I lower my body into the first groove. The stone is cool and shaped for coils. My body fits. The carved edges press against my scales.
She looks at the second groove. Cold for five years, since my mother died. Empty for twenty-five, since my father did.
