Maren
We stay in Korsmot for two days.
Two days of learning each other. Not just the physical, though there's plenty of that.
Two days of waking up on a stone floor, his body curved around mine, and not having to wonder if this is the morning he leaves.
Two days of walking through the market with his hand on my back and watching people look at us and not caring what they see.
He buys me new boots. Proper ones, fitted, with soles that won't wear through in a month. I argue about the cost. He puts the gold on the counter and tells the cobbler to measure my feet, and the argument is over before it starts.
I buy him tea. Loose leaf, the kind Mother Sanque drinks, because he's been making it wrong for years and someone needs to teach him the difference between steeping and boiling. He holds the small paper packet in his massive hands and looks at it with an expression I can't read.
“No one's bought me anything,” he says. “In a long time.”
“It's tea, Kovren. Not a declaration.”
“It's the first thing someone's given me that wasn't medical supplies or directions to the next creature sighting.”
I don't have an answer for that. I take his hand and we keep walking.
The portal back to Vorneth costs less than the one coming.
Returning traffic, the portal keeper says.
Demand goes one direction. We step through in the late afternoon, and the mountain air fills my lungs.
I realize I've been breathing shallow for two days.
Korsmot's air is thick and warm and smells of too many people.
Vorneth smells of pine and cold stone and the particular sharpness of altitude.
Mother Sanque is waiting at the top of her stairs. She takes one look at us and nods.
“It worked.”
“You sound surprised,” I say.
“I sound satisfied. There's a difference.” She ushers us inside, puts a kettle on, and makes me sit while she examines Kovren. Her hands press flat against his chest in the same places as before. She closes her eyes. Stays still for a long time.
When she opens them, the lines around her eyes have loosened. Not softness. Mother Sanque doesn't do soft. But relief, maybe. As close to it as she gets.
“What the stone gave you has taken the deeper seat. The oath to his brother is still there, but it's stepped back. Made room.” She looks at me. “You feel the difference?”
“Yes.” Our bond sits differently since the ceremony. Thicker. More present. “It's stable.”
“More than stable. It's dominant.” She pours tea and doesn't offer sugar. “The beast?”
“Contained,” Kovren says. “Not gone. But the door between me and it is heavier than it was.”
“Good.” She settles into her chair and fixes us both with that sharp gaze. “Now. We need to talk about Rodvek.”
Mother Sanque has been working hard while we were in Korsmot. Her table is buried. Books open on top of books, pages marked with torn strips of cloth.
“Tell me what happened at the stronghold,” she says to Kovren. “When Rodvek turned. What you saw.”
He tells her. Haltingly, in pieces. The line breaking. Rodvek holding it so the children could get out. The moment Rodvek went under and didn't come back.
“He was still fighting when you left?”
“He was still standing. Still between them and the children. But his eyes had gone gold. All the way.”
She writes something. Checks it against a passage in one of the open books. Writes again.
“And the children,” she says. “They escaped.”
“All of them. The rear passage. I found the trail markers later.”
“But Rodvek didn't know that.”
Kovren is quiet.
“He was too far gone,” I say. “By the time the children were out, the berserker had him.”
“Yes.” Mother Sanque pulls a diagram off the wall and lays it flat between us.
Two interlocking circles, dense with her handwriting, arrows looping back and forth.
“A Bogatyr oath binds to purpose. Rodvek's purpose was the stronghold. The children. When the line broke and he believed they died, the oath had nowhere to go. Still pushing, nothing to push toward.”
She taps the second circle. “The berserker feeds on whatever it can find. In Rodvek's case, it found the oath.”
“They fused,” I say.
She looks at me. “You're quick.”
Kovren stares at the diagram. His hands are flat on the table, pressing until the grain bites into his palms.
“How do we break it?” I ask.
“You don't break it. You complete it.” She pulls one of the books closer and turns it so I can read the passage she's marked.
Old text, formal, the language stiff with age.
I read it twice. The core of it is simple: an unfulfilled oath can be released if the oath-holder learns the purpose was achieved.
“Rodvek needs to know the children survived,” I say.
“Yes.”
“He can't hear us.” Kovren's voice is flat. “When the berserker has him, Rodvek can't hear anything. I've tried. For eight years I've tried to reach him.”
“You tried alone.” Mother Sanque looks at him over the rim of her cup. “Before you had an anchor. The bond changes this, Kovren. Maren keeps the beast controlled in you. You can go to the edge without going over. Hold that edge long enough and you might reach Rodvek underneath.”
“Might.”
“The beginning of it. The rest depends on her.” She turns to me. “You're a healer.”
“I'm not a mage.”
“I'm not talking about magic.” She leans forward.
“The berserker fused with the oath through a wound.
Psychological, but a wound. Rodvek broke when he believed he'd failed.
The fissure let the rage in, and the oath sealed it shut.
Someone needs to find the wound and close it.
That's what you do. Every day. With flesh and bone.”
I wait. She's building to something.
“The binding stone didn't just formalize your bond with Kovren. It gave the anchor weight. Range.” She picks up my hand, turns it over, presses her thumb against my pulse point.
“When you touch Kovren, the beast goes quiet. The anchor extends through physical contact. If you touch Rodvek while the bond is active, that same anchor can reach him through you.”
“Contact transmission,” I say. “I'm the delivery system.”
“In theory.”
“In theory.”
“I've never had a bonded pair to test it on.” She lets go of my hand. “But four sources say the same thing. The anchor extends through the bonded partner. It should work.”
“Should.”
“Should. I believe it will. But I won't promise what I can't prove.” She picks up her tea. “You've noticed he hasn't come since the binding?”
I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but she's right. No attacks since Gorvani. No screaming in the night. Nothing.
“The stone shifted the oath. Made it secondary.
The pull between them weakened, and without that pull, Rodvek has no reason to track you.
He'll have been drawn back to the stronghold.
The place the oath began. That's where this ends.” She sets her cup down.
“Two days through the mountain pass. I'll prepare supplies and draw you a route.”
Kovren hasn't spoken in a while. I look at him. He's staring at the floor, his hands locked between his knees, his shoulders tight.
“Kovren.”
He looks up. His expression is stripped bare.
“Eight years,” he says. “I've been hunting him for eight years. Trying to kill him, trying to free him, trying to reach him. And every time I face him, I lose control. Every time, the berserker takes me, and I become what he is.”
“That was before the bond,” I say.
“What if the bond isn't enough?”
“Then I'll be there. And I'll bring you back.”
“And if you can't?”
“Then we'll deal with that when it happens. But I don't think it will.”
He holds my gaze for a long time. I can feel the fear through the bond, the dread, the old guilt. But underneath it, the warmth that was there before the stone and is stronger now.
“When?” he asks.
“Tomorrow,” Mother Sanque says. “Rest tonight. Leave at dawn.”
We don't argue.
Mother Sanque puts us in the guest chamber again. The same narrow room, the same too-small bed, the same stone walls. But different now. The last time we slept here, the bond was raw and new, and he'd stopped when I said wait.
I don't say wait tonight.
He closes the door. Turns to me. The room is dim and he fills most of it and I can see the tension in him, the fear of tomorrow, the weight of what Mother Sanque is asking.
“Come here,” I say.
He crosses the room in one stride. His hands find my waist and I pull at his shirt and the urgency between us is different from Korsmot. In Korsmot it was discovery. Here it's need. Raw, desperate, the kind that comes from knowing what's ahead.
“I need you,” I tell him. “Right now. Not slow. Not careful.”
His hands tighten. “Maren.”
“I know what I'm asking.”
He picks me up. My legs wrap around his hips, my back against the wall, and his mouth is on my throat, my collarbone, the curve of my shoulder. The wall is cold stone against my spine and his body is furnace-hot against my front and the contrast is sharp enough to make me gasp.
The oil is in my pack. I dig for it one-handed, the other hand gripping his shoulder, and he holds me up with one arm while I work the cap off. We manage. Not gracefully. We're past grace.
When he pushes into me, I bury my face in his neck and hold on.
This is not our wedding night. The wedding night was careful, exploratory, two people learning how to fit. This is something else. His hands grip my hips and pull me onto him with each thrust and I can feel the power he's holding back, the fraction he's using, and I want more of it.
“Harder,” I say against his throat. “I won't break.”
He gives me harder. The wall shakes behind me, dust sifting from the ceiling, and I don't care. I'm gripping his shoulders with both hands, and he's buried inside me. The bond is thrumming between us, bright and loud, his heartbeat and mine hammering in unison.
“This might be...” he starts.
“Don't.” I pull back enough to see his face. “Don't say it. Don't think it. This is not the last time.”
“Maren.”
“This is not the last time. Swear it.”
His hips slow. His forehead presses against mine. I feel him shaking.
“I swear,” he says. “This is not the last time.”
“Then come back to me. Tomorrow. Whatever happens. You come back.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
I pull him in and kiss him and we stop talking.
After, we lie on the stone floor, tangled together, breathing hard. His hand traces circles on my back and I can feel the calluses of his fingers catching on my skin.
His chin rests on the top of my head, and I can feel his breath moving my hair.
“If I can't reach him,” he says. “If the berserker is too deep. If there's nothing of Rodvek left…”
“There is. You've seen it. He fights himself. He attacks and retreats. He says brother and help me. That's not the berserker talking. That's Rodvek.”
“He might not come back the way I did.”
“He might not. But he deserves the chance.”
His arms tighten around me. We lie there, not sleeping, not talking, just breathing in the dark. Through the wall, I can hear Mother Sanque moving around her study, pulling books from shelves, making notes. Preparing.
I press my face against Kovren's chest. His heart beats against my cheek. Slow. Steady.
We sleep. Not long, not deep. But we sleep.
Mother Sanque wakes us before dawn with tea and a pack.
“Supplies,” she says. “Food, water, bandages. My route through the pass is marked. Two days if the weather holds.”
She hands me a separate pouch. Inside, dried herbs I recognize and a few I don't. “For his wounds, if it comes to that. And for yours.”
“Mine?”
“The anchor effect will pull from you. When you touch Rodvek and the bond extends through you, you'll feel it. Fatigue, disorientation, cold. Don't push past your limits.”
“I'm a healer. I shouldn’t have limits when someone needs me.”
“That's exactly what concerns me.” She fixes me with that sharp gaze. “You're no good to him dead, girl. Remember that.”
I tuck the pouch into my pack.
At the door, she catches Kovren's arm. The same gesture as last time, her small hand wrapped around his massive wrist.
“The bond will hold,” she says. “Trust it. Trust her.”
“I do.”
“Then trust yourself.” She releases him. “And come back alive. Both of you. I want to hear what happens.”
The morning air is bitter cold. Frost on the stones, our breath visible, the sky just starting to lighten above the mountains. Kovren slings both packs over one shoulder and holds out his other hand.
I take it.
We walk.