Chapter Nineteen – Sorina
Chapter Nineteen
Sorina
His lips press against my knuckles, then to the inside of my wrist, moving higher until his mouth traces a line up my forearm, to the crook of my elbow.
His hands hold mine the way you’d hold something you’re afraid to drop.
I can feel the warmth of him through the stone, the steadiness of his grip, and I know he means what he said. Which is the part I can’t take.
I pull my arm back.
“Sorina?” He looks up at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t say that.” The words come out barely above a whisper. “You can’t say that to me, Korr.”
I push myself off the floor and pace the length of the living room with my arms wrapped around my middle. Behind me, I hear him stand, hear his weight shift as he reaches for me, but I’m already at the door.
“I need to think.”
I don’t look back as I step out into the corridor. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and start running. I don’t know where I’m going. I just need to move and put distance between me and the insane words he just said to me.
I turn a corner at full speed and slam into a wall of living stone.
The impact knocks the wind out of me, and I cry out, my feet sliding on the smooth floor. Hands catch me under the arms before I fall, and hold me upright the way you’d catch a cup tipping off a table.
I look up. Irrva.
“Are you okay?” She’s got me secured, her grip gentle but firm, her face drawn tight. Her eyes sweep down my body, checking for injuries. “Oh, Sorina, you can’t run down the corridors like that. It’s dangerous for someone as tiny as you.”
She sets me back on my feet and doesn’t let go until she’s certain I’m steady.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“You’re sure? I didn’t…”
“You didn’t hurt me. I ran into you.”
She lets out a breath of relief. Then she looks at my face again, and I know she can see I’ve been crying.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I just needed some air.”
She watches me for another second, then lets it go.
“I heard about the council. That you and Korr were summoned.”
Heat rises up my neck and into my cheeks.
“Word has gotten out already?”
Irrva laughs. “The favorite pastime in Steinheim is gossip. You had two humans dragged out of the council chamber screaming. Everyone from the Highhalls to the Narrowhalls knew about it in less than five seconds.”
I press my lips together, unsure of how I’m supposed to respond to that.
“Come,” she says, tilting her head down the corridor. “Jarrvik is at work. Let’s have a cup of tea. Or maybe something stronger.”
I hesitate. I’m raw and shaken, and I don’t know if company is what I need right now. But Irrva is already walking, and I find myself following.
Her balcony is carved into the mountainside, open to the sky, with treetops spread below.
It’s a sight to behold, and I wonder why Korr doesn’t have a balcony.
Maybe it’s something I should convince him to add to our chambers.
Irrva pours tea from a clay pot into two cups and sets mine in front of me before easing into her chair across the table.
She gives me a few minutes of silence before she speaks.
“What got you so upset?”
I look at her and think about who she is to me.
She’s Korr’s sister and my sister-in-law.
I’ve always wanted a sister. I cut ties with my own family during my marriage to Bran, and my brothers left Tessana years before that.
I spent a long time with nobody in my corner.
Sitting here across from Irrva with tea in front of us and the sky as our witness, I decide to be honest with her.
“My ex-husband’s parents came to accuse me of murdering their son,” I say.
Irrva lifts the cup to her lips.
“Did you?”
I look down and fidget with my own cup, my lips pursed.
“I see,” she says, and drinks her tea.
She doesn’t ask for details. She doesn’t shift in her chair uncomfortably, nor does she look at me differently.
“Korr’s been acting strange since we left the council,” I say. “He’s saying things I don’t know how to respond to.”
“What things?”
“He told me I should poison him. If he ever hurts me by accident.”
Irrva sets her cup down. Her expression goes soft, and she reaches across and pats my hand.
“You got a good one,” she says. “Don’t run from him. He needs you as much as I think you need him.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighs and leans back in her chair.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s not my place, and he’ll be furious with me. But I’m going to, because my brother clearly doesn’t have the courage to tell you himself.”
My stomach tightens. All men have secrets, and more often than not, they’re ugly ones. Korr has been too kind, too patient, too careful, and now his sister is about to tell me why.
“Korr has been going through an advanced process of calcification,” Irrva says.
I stare at her. “What does that mean?”
“Our bodies are living stone,” she says. “The stone grows, moves, heals. That’s what makes us golems. But it needs something to keep it alive. A soulmate. The bond between a golem and their mate keeps the stone flexible and moving. Without that bond, the stone starts to die.”
She wraps both hands around her cup and looks out over the treetops.
“It happens slowly. The joints stiffen first, then the organs start to slow down. The heart beats less and less, the body hardens into dead rock, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left but a statue.”
“The Stillhalls.” There’s a knot in my throat.
“That’s where the unmated golems end up. The statues you saw standing in rows… Those were once living, breathing golems. They didn’t find their mates, or they lost them, and the calcification took everything.”
“Your mother,” I say.
“When our father died, she lost her soulmate. Without him, the calcification took her within a year. She’s standing up there now. She’ll stand there as long as the mountain does.”
I think about the woman in the Stillhalls, with Irrva’s cheekbones and wide mouth, with flowers at her feet. I think about Korr watching his mother turn to stone and knowing he was heading the same way.
“Have you not noticed anything about him?” Irrva asks. “The way he moves? The slowness, the stiffness?”
“I noticed. Sometimes his fingers don’t close all the way, and his joints catch when he walks. I thought it was a golem thing.”
“It’s not a golem thing. It’s his body seizing up. And the night we found him soaked in sweat, barely able to talk… That was an episode. His body had locked up. He could barely breathe.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. The broken plates on the floor, Irrva hauling him to bed while I ran to get water, not understanding what was happening, thinking he only had a fever.
“I slept in his bed that night,” I say through my fingers. “I stayed with him, and in the morning, he was better. He could move.”
Irrva smiles.
“Because you’re his soulmate. You’re the one he’s been looking for.
He spent two years going to bride markets across Alia Terra, buying woman after woman, bringing them back here, hoping he’d find the one.
More than twenty women, I believe. I stopped counting.
None of them were his mate, so he gave them their freedom and a home in the Narrowhalls.
Finally, you came, and his body started healing. ”
My face heats up. “We’ve been… Korr and I…”
Irrva throws her head back and lets out a laugh.
“I’m glad. He’s himself again. His body moves the way it did years ago. I couldn’t be happier.”
I sit with it, turning the cup in my hands, letting the pieces rearrange themselves.
The lemonade carafe shaking in his grip, his struggle to stand from the workshop stool, the way his fingers managed the bracelet clasp because I was sitting close to him.
The cracks on his skin growing shallower after I started sleeping beside him…
Now I have all the pieces of the puzzle.
He never told me… Was he ever going to tell me?
“Thank you for the tea,” I say. “I need to go scold your brother.”
Irrva groans. “Oh, he’ll kill me now.”
“He’s the one in trouble, not you.”
I walk fast, holding back when I want to run again.
My mind is reorganizing everything I’ve observed since I arrived in Steinheim.
When Irrva took me to the Stillhalls, she said calcification was a natural thing that happens to golems at some point.
I understand now that Korr asked her not to say more, and she kept his secret even as she was forced to watch him turn to stone.
I can’t be angry at her for that, but I can be angry at him.
I push through our door with a grin.
Korr comes out of the bedroom when he hears me. I can read the anxiety on him. His eyes search my face for clues about my state of mind. He thinks I’m going to leave him. He thinks his words pushed me too far and I came back to end it.
I narrow my eyes at him, march up to him, and smack his chest as hard as I can. The impact stings my hand.
“You massive oaf! Why didn’t you tell me you were practically dying?”
He stares down at me. “What?”
“The calcification. You should’ve told me.
I had to hear it from Irrva.” I jab my finger up at him.
“When she took me to visit the Stillhalls… I can’t believe you let me go up there and didn’t tell me what happened to your mother.
What happens to golems who don’t find their soulmates. What was happening to you.”
“I’m sorry.” His eyes widen and his voice is pleading. “I didn’t want to put pressure on you. At first, I wasn’t sure you were the one. I didn’t know until you started touching me more, and I noticed I was feeling better.”
“You should’ve told me,” I whisper.
“I know. I’m sorry.” He holds my gaze. “From now on, I won’t keep things from you.”
I reach up and make a gesture with my hands that prompts him to lift me up. I wrap my arms around his neck.
“What helps stop it?” I ask, my mouth pressed to the corner of his. “Specifically.”
“You. You touching me. Being with me. Your presence.”
“Does it help if I do this?”
I kiss him. It’s slow and exploratory. My hands are on his face, and his cheeks heat up under my palms. He kisses me back, pulling me closer.
“Yes,” he whispers. “That helps a lot.”
“Take me to bed, you massive oaf.”
He carries me through the doorway and lays me down, and I pull him with me, rolling us until I’m draped over him in my favorite position.
I run my palms over his shoulders, down his arms, across every part of him where moss used to grow.
I feel the living stone answer under my touch, warm and giving, and I press myself as close as I can get to him, hands, chest, and legs, every part of me against every part of him that I can reach.
He wraps his arms around me, and I settle my cheek over his heartbeat.
If he’s taken it upon himself to protect me, then I’m taking it upon myself to keep him alive.