Chapter Eight – Korr
Chapter Eight
Korr
I think I’m going mad.
I sit in the living room with a book open in my lap and I can’t read a single word on the page.
My eyes slide over the text and nothing sticks.
I’m not here for the book. I’m here because Sorina is behind her door, ten steps from my armchair, and I want to see her so badly that my body aches from it.
It’s not the ache of calcification, but something deeper, in a part of me that isn’t made of stone and can’t harden.
My heart. Yes, that’s right. Her being so close, yet so far, gives me a heartache.
I want to talk to her. I want to sit with her and hear her voice.
If she doesn’t want to talk, and I’m fairly sure by now that she’s the quiet type, I’ll take silence.
I’ll take five minutes of her breathing in the same room as me and be grateful for it.
I know what I want. I know what I need. She’s right there, so close that I can hear her through the wall. I hear a drawer opening, footsteps on the thick rug, the creak of her bed. Every sound pulls at me.
I haven’t sat in the living room since she arrived.
I gave it up and left the shared space to her so she wouldn’t feel watched or crowded.
I still think it was the right thing to do, but it’s killing me slowly.
So, today I’ve decided that dignity can go to hell.
I’ve planned this: me pretending to read in my favorite armchair, casually flicking the pages while a plate of cake waits on the table.
I feel pathetic about it. A massive golem staging a casual morning in his own living room like it’s some kind of ambush, but what else am I supposed to do?
If pathetic is what it takes to get five minutes with her, then I’ll be pathetic. I’ll be whatever she needs me to be.
Her door opens and she slips out, as quiet and careful as always. She freezes when she sees me.
I look up from the book as if I’ve been reading for hours, as if this is where I spend my mornings and I didn’t position the armchair to face her door.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she says.
“Did you sleep well?”
I study her while I wait for her answer. Her skin is clear. The bruises are gone, faded to nothing, and there’s color in her cheeks that comes from rest, good food, and sleeping for as long as she wants. She looks healthy, and it makes me feel better that living with me is helping her heal.
“I slept well, thank you.” A pause. She’s trying to decide if she should say more. “And you?”
“I slept well too.”
And that’s the whole conversation. Every word she gives me has to be begged out of her, and I’m sitting here with a head full of things I want to say and don’t know how. Of course, Irrva was right.
I nod, and she gives me a small smile. I realize she’s feeling uncertain because to walk out the door to our quarters, she has to walk past me.
I reach for the plate on the table. There’s a slice of strawberry cake on it, Irrva’s recipe, which I set aside before Jarrvik finished the rest. I stand, bring it to her, and hold it out.
“My sister made this. I saved you a slice.”
“Thank you.”
She takes the plate, and I watch her eyes move toward her room. The shift is small, just a glance, but I know what it means. She’s going to take the cake, disappear behind her door, and eat it alone. So much for my plan to have her to myself for a few minutes.
“Would you like to eat it here?” I say it too fast, but I don’t care. “There’s lemonade as well. I’ll pour you a glass.”
She looks up at me, bites her lower lip without realizing, then finally nods.
I try not to let out a breath of relief.
She walks to the table, sets the plate down, and climbs onto the armchair across from mine.
It’s not exactly easy for her, but she manages and positions herself on her knees to better reach the table.
She’s stiff, her back straight, and her shoulders held just so, the posture of someone who is making herself stay. I move around her gently, reaching for the carafe and the glasses, keeping my movements unhurried so I don’t startle her. It’s not hard. My joints won’t let me move faster, anyway.
The carafe shakes in my hand when I pour. My fingers don’t close well enough to hold it steady, and lemonade sloshes over the rim of the glass and runs across the table. I try to correct and it only gets worse, my wrist locking at the wrong angle.
Sorina reaches out and puts her hand over mine.
Her fingers press against the back of my hand, small and warm on my cracked stone skin, and she holds me steady.
My hand stops shaking. The tremor dies under her palm, and the carafe sits level in my grip while she waits.
I can feel every point of contact. Her thumb against my knuckle, the flat of her palm across the ridge of my fingers, the light pressure of her hold.
I know she’s just being helpful. To her, this is a reflex, a practical gesture, the same instinct that makes a person catch a cup before it falls.
She has no idea what it does to me. Her hands are so small and frail, so gentle, and her touch is a balm to my stiffening body.
“Here, let me help you,” she says as she takes the carafe from me.
There’s no rush and no flinching away. She pours lemonade into both glasses and sets the carafe down.
I let out something I hope sounds like a chuckle.
“I’m clumsy. Sorry.”
She doesn’t answer, just pushes one of the glasses toward my side of the table. I sit down across from her, open the book again and let it rest in my lap as if I’m going to keep reading. She picks up a fork and takes a bite of the cake.
“What are you reading?” she asks.
I turn the book so she can see the cover. It’s an old, leather-bound tome, the spine cracked and soft from decades of handling, with a hand-drawn illustration of a cut stone on the front.
“It’s about the spiritual meaning of gemstones.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have thought you were spiritual.”
I smile. “I don’t know about that. I’ve read all the books in Steinheim, and this was one of the few I hadn’t gotten to yet. Might as well.”
“Tell me what it says.”
“Name a stone.”
She thinks, her fork hovering over the cake.
“Ruby.”
I flick through the pages. The paper is thick and yellowed, the illustrations done in faded red and black ink, each gemstone drawn with careful detail and surrounded by flowing script. I find the chapter about rubies and read out loud:
“The ruby stirs vitality and courage in the one who carries it. It’s a stone that represents life force, said to protect its wearer from harm and to deepen devotion where devotion already exists.”
Sorina smiles, and it’s a real smile, not the measured version she gives me when she doesn’t know how to deal with my presence.
“How about emerald?”
I turn a few more pages and find the emerald, drawn in green ink with roots curling around its base.
“The emerald is a stone of renewal and patience. It strengthens the bonds between people and brings growth where there has been stillness. The old healers believed it could restore what has been lost or damaged.”
She giggles, and the unexpected sound catches me off guard and makes my chest feel wider.
“It’s a bit ridiculous, isn’t it?” she says. “But I suppose it makes sense. Plants have spiritual meanings as well.”
“What’s your favorite flower?”
“Peony.”
“And what’s the spiritual meaning of a peony?”
She shrugs and takes another bite of cake.
“I don’t know. I’ve always studied plants and flowers for what they actually do, not for what people think about them and associate them with.”
I like that about her. She’s practical.
She finishes the last bite, drinks her lemonade, and sets the glass down.
“I have to go. I’m helping at the apothecary in the Narrowhalls.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing?”
“Yes. I’ve been helping Danielle and Julie.” She pauses, and then adds, as if deciding she can give me a bit more information: “And sometimes I meet friends at the Pickaxe.”
I’m happy for her. I am. I want her to have friends, do work she enjoys, and live a life of her own inside the mountain.
But there’s a greedy, selfish thing inside me that burns hot at her words, because Danielle, Julie, and whoever else is at the Pickaxe get to spend hours with her every day.
She talks and laughs with them while I waste away in the Highhalls waiting for her door to open or for her to return so I can get a glimpse of her.
I push the feeling down because it’s ugly, and because she doesn’t owe me her time.
“I’m glad you’ve made friends. Do you like it here? In Steinheim?”
“Yes. It’s nice. It’s a good place to be.”
I nod, and once again, I think about how right Irrva was when she said I have no clue how to talk to the people I care about. This is the most I’ve interacted with Sorina since she came here, and I want to make it last a little longer, but I don’t know how.
“I’m sorry, I really have to go.”
She jumps off the armchair and walks past me toward the door. As she passes, she reaches out and touches my arm, just above the wrist. Her fingers press lightly into my hard skin and linger for a breath before she removes them.
“Thank you for the cake.”
Then she’s through the door and gone.
My eyes widen, and my other hand comes to cover the place where she touched me.
I stare at her empty glass of lemonade, more specifically at the delicate print her lips left on the rim.
Before I beat myself over the head for how utterly pathetic I am, I snatch the glass, turn it around, and press my lips to where hers were just a few moments ago.
There’s only a drop of lemonade left at the bottom, and I drink it greedily.
I can swear I can feel the taste of her lips on my tongue.
Later, when I get up and walk to my workshop, I feel different. My knees don’t grind as hard with each step, my stride is a little wider, and the weight that’s been pressing into my legs has loosened, not by much, but enough that I notice it.
Sorina is the one. She has to be, because it never felt like this with any of the others. Sorina barely touched me, and I feel like I’m soaring.
In the workshop, I go to the shelf where the diamond earrings sit.
This is the pair I fought my own hands to finish and that has cost me an overturned bench and a magnifying lens I still need to replace.
I pick them up and hold them to the lamplight.
I take a soft cloth and start polishing them, turning each one slowly until every facet catches the glow.
I’ll do anything, give her everything I have, whatever she wants, whatever makes her smile the way she smiled this morning. Whatever makes her reach for me again and lets me feel her small hand on my cracked stone, steadying me the way nothing else in this world can.
I turn the earring in the cloth, and the diamond throws a point of light across the ceiling. I’ll give her whatever it takes to make her want to stay.