Chapter Seventeen – Sorina
Chapter Seventeen
Sorina
Korr and I spend a whole week inside his bedroom, cocooned in our own world.
I lose track of which day it is somewhere around the third morning, when he brings me bread, cheese, and cold milk, and I eat with my back against his chest and his arms loose around my waist.
We make love in the pale light that comes through the window, again in the afternoon when the room goes dim, and sometimes late at night. Whenever I reach for him, I find him ready, hard and throbbing.
He brings food, and we eat in bed, crumbs in the furs, wine in heavy cups that I can barely hold. I wash his back in the bath, and he washes mine; we stay in the water until it cools and the steam fades.
We talk for hours. He tells me about the mine, about shafts that go so deep the air becomes suffocating, about diamonds pulled from veins that have been locked in the rock for thousands of years.
I tell him about my grandmother’s garden and the rows of herbs I had to learn by touch and smell before she’d tell me their names.
We listen to each other and memorize every detail.
I want to know him as much as he wants to know me.
I leave our nest twice. The first time, I take the lift to the Narrowhalls and find Julie at the apothecary counter. I tell her I won’t be around for a while, and she grins and waves me off with a dried sprig of lavender.
“Enjoy your honeymoon. When you’re done being obscenely happy, come back. You’ve got a job here, if you want it. No more volunteering.”
The second time, I visit Vicky. She opens the door, and inside the house, the curtains are pulled back and daylight fills every room.
“I’m getting a divorce,” she informs me.
I hold her hands and tell her I’m proud of her.
After those two visits, I move into Korr’s room for good.
My old bedroom sits empty down the hall, the bed made, and the fireplace cold.
I sleep on his chest with his heartbeat under my ear and his hand spread across my back, and the days bleed together in a way that makes me forget there’s a world outside our chambers.
Until there’s a knock on the door, at seven in the morning.
Korr is out of bed and pulling on trousers before I’ve sat up. I hear him cross the living room, hear the heavy door open, then his voice drop low. I get up, pull my robe on, and go to see what’s gotten him so grave and worried.
A golem guard stands in the corridor.
“Is everything okay?” I step around Korr’s arm. “Is Vicky all right?”
“This isn’t about Victoria, ma’am.” The guard looks at me. “This is about you.”
My chest tightens, because I haven’t left the Highhalls in days, and I haven’t done anything.
Korr moves between me and the guard. The guard takes a step back and holds both hands up, palms out.
“She’s not under arrest,” he says. “The Council of Five is requesting her presence. I’ve been sent to escort her. You’re also welcome to attend.”
“What does the council want with my wife?” Korr asks.
“I don’t have the details. I was told to bring her, and that she isn’t in trouble.”
“Wait outside,” Korr says.
The guard nods, and Korr closes the door in his face.
I look up at him. My voice holds steady, but my hands are shaking.
“I don’t know what this is. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
He takes my hands in his and leans down to press his lips to mine.
“It’s a misunderstanding,” he says. “We’ll go together. We’ll sort it out.”
I pull on a dress and push my hair back. In the mirror above the basin, I see a woman who looks afraid. I lift my chin and walk out with Korr.
The guard leads us through the Highhalls corridor to the lift, down one level, and into the Corehalls. I’ve never been inside the council chamber. He stops at a pair of tall doors carved with geometric patterns and pushes them open.
The room is vast. The ceiling climbs so high it disappears into shadow, pale gray stone veined with runs of quartz that catch the light from iron fixtures along the walls.
Everything about the space is designed to press down on whoever stands in the center of it.
At the far end, a dais rises two steps above the main floor, and on the dais sits a long table of dark polished stone with five high-backed chairs behind it.
The Council of Five is seated. A human man occupies the center chair, middle-aged, with a trimmed beard and hands folded on the table. Two female golems sit to his left, two male golems to his right. All five of them watch us enter with curious expressions.
There are officials along the walls, guards posted at the doors, and two figures standing to the side of the dais.
My legs buckle under me, and I hold onto Korr’s arm to stay upright.
Bran’s parents are here. How? I don’t… I can’t process this…
They’re here, inside the council chamber in Steinheim, inside this mountain, in the last place on Alia Terra where they should’ve known to look for me.
My ex-father-in-law stands with his arms crossed over his chest. His jaw is set, and he’s looking at me with disdain so familiar it makes me flinch.
His gaze drops to my earrings, then moves to the diamond necklace around my neck, and the numerous bracelets and rings that adorn my wrists and fingers.
His expression curdles. In Tessana, I couldn’t afford a copper ring.
Now I’m dripping with diamonds my new husband gifts me every day, and I can see how much he hates me for it.
My ex-mother-in-law points at me and shrieks.
“That’s her! The woman who poisoned our son!”
One of the male golems on the council raises a hand. Her voice cuts off, though she keeps pointing, her arm shaking.
“Approach,” the human councilman says.
Korr walks forward, and I follow him because his arm around my waist is the only thing keeping me on my feet.
The room tilts and my vision narrows. I am doing my best not to faint.
I thought I was rid of these awful people, but they’ve found me, and just the sight of them brings back all the abuse I endured.
I thought I was healed. I thought Korr, with his love and kindness, had cleansed my body and mind of the things these people and their son had done to me, but it seems I’ve been a fool.
The second they’re back in my life, in my space, I feel myself become the victim they made me.
“These two individuals have traveled to Steinheim to bring accusations before this council,” one of the female golems says.
“They claim that you, Sorina Veld, now Thaldren, murdered their son, your former husband, by poison. They further allege that you killed several other men in the city of Tessana using the same method.” She pauses. “What do you have to say?”
I can’t speak. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
It’s like my mind has been wiped clean. I look at Bran’s father, and he stares back with open contempt.
I look at his wife, shaking with grief and fury, this woman who took her son’s side every time, who saw my bruises and never once asked where they came from and if I was okay.
“I didn’t…” That’s all I manage.
Korr steps forward. He moves between me and the council, and his body blocks everything out. If I want to see the council or the two people accusing me, I have to peer out from behind him. I don’t.
“My wife would never do such a thing,” he says. “These people are liars. I can see they’re in pain over the loss of their son, and I won’t dismiss that. But grief is not a license to accuse an innocent woman of murder.”
The council listens to him. They know him. This is Korr Thaldren, whose father died in the mine. His family has given much to the citadel, and the citadel will support him.
“I take full responsibility for my wife,” he says. “She did not harm anyone. She was the one who was harmed.”
He turns toward Bran’s parents. The mother is crying now, her hand lowered. The father hasn’t moved.
“Sorina told me what your son did to her,” Korr says. “He was violent. He hurt her the entire time they were married.”
He points at the father.
“And you hurt her. I saw the bruises you left on her body.”
My stomach drops. He believes every word he’s saying.
He’s standing in front of the governing council of Steinheim and declaring my innocence with a certainty that doesn’t waver.
I didn’t even tell him that much about my past. Only that I was married before, that my husband died, and the bruises he saw had been inflicted by my ex’s father.
Korr didn’t push for more information, and he’s not questioning me even now, when two people have traveled half the world to find me and accuse me.
He turns back to the parents, and the sound that comes out of him is low and animal, a growl that makes the guards at the door shift their weight.
“Leave Steinheim,” he says. “Don’t ever set foot inside this mountain again. If you do, I’ll make sure you pay for what your son did to my wife.”
The council erupts. The female golem on the far left speaks first, her voice slicing through the chamber.
“No man should ever raise his hand against a woman. Women are sacred. They carry life into this world. The accusations you have brought before this council are an abomination.”
The second female golem leans forward.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves. Your son hurt this woman, and you come here to torment her further.”
The human councilman raises his hand and the chamber quiets.
“Let me make the legal position clear,” he says, looking directly at Bran’s parents.
“Once a human bride has been claimed by a golem, she falls under our law. She is outside of human jurisdiction. You had no right to come here and level these accusations against a woman who is no longer subject to your authority.” He looks at the guards and nods.
“Escort them out. Remove them from the mountain before this council is forced to take more drastic measures.”
A tension I’ve been carrying since Tessana rolls off my shoulders.
I knew the bride market put me beyond the Peacekeepers’ reach.
That was the whole reason I went. But hearing it spoken by a governing body, in a chamber built for exactly this purpose, in front of the two people who’ve hunted me since Bran died…
The relief is so strong my knees give out, and Korr’s arm tightens to hold me up.
Two guards step forward. Bran’s mother screams as a human guard takes her by the arm and pushes her toward a side door. His father walks between the guards, stiff and silent, and doesn’t look back.
The doors close behind them, and I can finally say I’m free.
Korr turns to the council and bows his head. I manage a nod. He half-carries me out, but in the corridor, I sag against him and shake my head.
“I can’t walk,” I tell him. “I’m sorry.”
He lifts me without a word. I curl up and grip his shirt with both fists, press my face into the warm stone of his neck. He carries me to the lift, up a level, through the Highhalls and into our living room.
He sets me down in an armchair. I don’t let go of his shirt. He kneels in front of me so we’re closer to the same height, his eyes level with mine, his hands resting on the arms of the chair.
I look at his face. My hands are trembling against his chest.
“I need to tell you something.”