Page 55 of Beds and Blades

The effects arrived in the usual sequence—the sharpening first, the warmth second, the combination of being alert and at ease that I had decided was deeproot’s defining characteristic and that I had been unable to locate an adequate Earth equivalent for.

“I suspect you have questions,” Caen said.

I had fifteen hundred questions. Most could wait.

The claiming could not.

I told her about Skip’s offer of claiming. The ring. The permanent empathic bond. The fact that I had said I needed to think about it, had meant that, and was still thinking about it.

Caen listened without interrupting, her expression composed in a way that suggested none of this surprised her.

“It is the most serious commitment available to a living person in this world,” she said when I finished. “I will not tell you otherwise. The bond does not end while both of you live. The ring is not removed until death breaks it. What you feel, he feels. This is the reality from the moment the claiming is complete until one of you is no longer alive.”

She paused and looked down at her own ring. Its warm light softened the lines of her face, and for a moment she seemed less like a mage and more like a woman remembering the life bound to hers.

“I do not say this to frighten you. I say it because you are a woman who values accurate information, and I will not give you anything less.”

“I know,” I said.

She looked at me like she already knew this and was waiting for me to say it out loud.

“He gave you pleasure you had never felt before,” she said.

I considered the diplomatic response. I considered the empirical response. I arrived at the honest one.

“Yes,” I said. “Comprehensively.”

“That is not an accident.”

She set down her cup.

“I should clarify something first,” she said. “The claiming’s restriction on penetration is theology, not law. There is no enforcement. People make their own choices and always have. Plenty of people in this world have penetrative sex before any claiming occurs and consider it nobody’s business but their own.”

She paused and took a deep breath.

“What they miss is the bond forming at the moment of maximum intimacy. The empathic connection heightens the pleasure. The difference between the physical act and the physical act combined with an empathic connection is…”

She stopped. Appeared to consider her vocabulary.

“Significant.”

She picked up her cup again.

“Skip is devout,” she said. “More than most. He understands the claiming at a deep level. He did not offer it to you casually, and he was not going to proceed without it. That is who he is.”

Her gaze held mine for a moment.

“I thought you should know that. It explains certain things about how he conducts himself.”

It did explain certain things.

“I have been watching people approach the claiming for most of my professional life,” Caen continued. “I have a developed sensitivity to the quality of the bond before it forms. There is a resonance to two people whose flames were built to burn together. What is between you and that man…”

She stopped. Started again, more carefully. “I am not going to tell you it is fate. The claiming cannot be fated. It must be chosen, freely and completely, or it is nothing. But I will tell you what I believe.”

She met my eyes directly.

“I believe you were brought to this world at this moment to this outpost, and he has been here for six years because the world needed both of you in the same place at the same time. Whether you call that fate or coincidence, the result is the same. You are here. He is here. The resonance between you is the strongest I have felt in twenty-three years of practice.”