Page 27

She looked up at him, and her eyes were suspiciously bright. “Korrak, it’s beautiful.”

He didn’t know what to say to that either. He ducked his head, pleased and embarrassed, and the heat rose into the scales along his jaw.

She made him sit down afterwards, at the edge of the warm pool, so that she could look at his shoulder. He didn’t want her to. He told her it was nothing, and she ignored him completely. She knelt behind him with her fading lamp propped on a rock and unwound the gauze gently, a little at a time. He felt her fingers hesitate. Then she let out a long, slow breath.

“I knew you healed fast,” she said. “I didn’t know it was this fast.”

He twisted his head to look. The gash where the stone had struck him was already closed. There was a raised line across the scales, pink and tender at the edges, but the bleeding had stopped long ago and the skin had knitted cleanly together.

“It was still bleeding when I wrapped it,” she said faintly. “That was only a few hours ago.” She touched the edge of it with one fingertip, so lightly that he barely felt it. “Do all your people heal like this?”

He thought about it. Somewhere in the empty places of his mind, there was an answer. He could almost feel it, like a stone under the silt that his fingers brushed and couldn’t quite grasp.

“I think no,” he said slowly. “But the other part…”

“The other part?”

“I was not always as I am.” He wasn’t sure how he was different, but he knew that he was.

“What do you remember?”

He was quiet for a long time. The water moved softly in the pool beside them, and somewhere across the gardens, the stream trickled down into the river.

“Pieces,” he said at last. “Like stones in the river. I find one, and then another. Words. The channels. The songs.” He touched his chest. “Some are gone.”

She didn’t say anything for a while. Then she picked up the gauze and began to wind it carefully back around his shoulder, even though he didn’t need it anymore. He didn’t tell her that. He sat quietly and let her do it, her small, warm hands moving on his skin. She tied the knot and then smoothed it down, as if it mattered to her very much that it lay right.

“Then we’ll find them,” she said. “The pieces. Maybe I can help.”

He looked back at her over his shoulder. Her face was serious in the lamplight, and there was a smudge of dust on her chin that she had missed.

“You help already,” he said. “When you talk, the words come.”

She blinked at him, and then she laughed, and her cheeks turned pink. “Well, that’s lucky. Because I never stop.”

“No,” he agreed gravely. “You never stop.”

She swatted his good shoulder, and he rumbled with laughter. After a while she switched off her lamp to save what was left of it, and they sat together at the edge of the pool and watched the moss slowly dim.

The gardens grew cold that night. They never had before, but the surge had filled the river with water from the deep places, far colder than the warm springs. After the moss dimmed, a chill crept up from the water and settled over everything. He might not have noticed, because he didn’t feel the cold the way she did. But her covering was still damp from the spray, and he heard her shivering beneath her thin silver blanket. He heard her teeth start to chatter, softly, and then stop, and then start again.

Earlier he had lain down across the mouth of the hollow, between her and the gardens, the way he had lain between her and the dark on the sand. He told himself he would stay there. He told himself it was enough to be close.

Then she made a small, miserable sound in her sleep and curled into a tighter ball, and he gave up. He moved carefully, lying down on his side on the moss beside her, not quite touching, so that the heat of his body would reach her. She was asleep, or nearly asleep. He didn’t think she would even notice.

She noticed, perhaps not with her mind, but certainly with the rest of her. Within a few moments she had moved towards him, still half asleep, and burrowed into the warmth of him with a long, contented sigh. Her back pressed against his chest. Her head tucked itself under his chin. Her cold feet found his legs, and he nearly laughed out loud at the shock of them. And then she was quiet and warm and breathing slowly against him, and he couldn’t breathe at all.

He lay there in the dark with his arm over her waist and her body fitted against his, and the need rose up inside him so strongly that it hurt. He had wanted her from the first night, and he knew that now. He had wanted her when she was only a voice in the dark and a sweet warm scent on the air. He had wanted her more with every day since, every time she laughed or scolded him or looked at him with that soft flush on her cheeks. He had kissed her, and he had learned how she tasted. He had held her while the water roared past beneath them, and felt her heart pound against his.

He had told himself it was enough to keep her safe. That he could clear her path and carry her up the hard places and build her a bed of moss, and that would be enough. It wasn’t enough, and it would never be enough. He wanted desperately to be hers, and he wanted her to be his.

Mine, the old voice whispered inside him, and this time he didn’t try to hush it. He closed his eyes and breathed her in, and he didn’t move.

He didn’t know how long he lay there before she woke. He felt it happen gradually. Her breathing changed first, the slow, deep rhythm of sleep catching and quickening. Then her body tensed against his, just slightly, as she realized where she was.

He waited for her to pull away and braced himself for it, but she didn’t. She lay quietly in his arms for a long moment, and then, slowly, she pressed back against him. The movement was small and deliberate and sent a burning wave of heat through his body.

“Korrak?” she whispered. “Are you awake?”