17. Sabine #2
I open my notebook. Flip past the renovation budget. Past the plumbing section. Past the roof estimates. I find a clean page near the back and write in letters much larger than my usual tight, efficient print:
GARDEN?
Then below it:
Vegetable. Herb. Investigate growing season for this county. Raised beds - Jagger can build.
I underline his name once. Stare at it.
Then I turn around and walk back toward the house, my ruined flats squelching in the soft earth, the wind pulling my hair in six directions. My notebook is full of chaos. The field is full of rabbits and aggressive bees and plants nobody planted.
The porch groans when I step onto it. Jagger stands in the doorway, filling it completely, silver tusk-piercings catching the afternoon sun.
"I need a bigger notebook."
His grin splits wide enough to show both tusks. He steps aside to let me through, and the doorframe is still too narrow for both of us, so I duck under his arm. My shoulder brushes his ribs.
The annulment papers sit on the kitchen's plywood countertop where I left them three days ago.
Right next to my prioritized renovation spreadsheet and a half-eaten bag of trail mix we bought at the last gas station before the county road turned to gravel.
The DMI seal gleams in the dusty light. Official.
Embossed. Very serious government foil stamping that probably cost taxpayers eleven cents per document.
I pick them up.
The paper is heavy. Premium stock. The DMI does not skimp on materials when it comes to legally dissolving magical bonds between unwilling participants.
Every clause is printed in that specific bureaucratic font designed to make your eyes slide off the page before you reach the part that matters.
Section 14, subsection B, paragraph 3: Upon mutual signature of both bonded parties, the fated mate designation shall be rendered null, void, and magically inert, effective immediately upon filing.
Mutual signature.
Both lines are blank. His and mine. Two empty spaces on government paper, waiting for ink that never came.
I carry the papers into the main room. The brick fireplace is cold.
The flue needs work. I noted it on page one of the renovation budget, circled in red, priority one.
But the firebox itself is functional. Deep and wide, the kind built for a time when winter meant something personal, something that came for you specifically if you weren't prepared.
Jagger follows me. His footsteps make the floorboards sing their low, groaning song.
He doesn't ask what I'm doing. He crouches by the fireplace, pulls a long match from his coat pocket, and strikes it against the brick.
The match head flares orange. He touches it to the old newspaper wadded in the firebox, leftover from whoever lived here last. The paper catches.
Curls. Smoke rises in a thin grey thread and finds the flue.
I hold the annulment papers in both hands. Study them one more time.
Form 12-C, Dissolution of Magical Bond (Fated Mate Classification).
Filed under case number 2024-FM-00847. Petitioner A: Sabine Lin.
Petitioner B: Jagger Ironjaw. Date of bond: March 14th.
Cause of bond: clerical error involving Form 8B and blood-magic ink.
Status: approved for dissolution. Signatures required: two.
Signatures received: zero.
The fire pops. A knot in the old newspaper explodes into sparks that rise and die.
I fold the papers once. A crisp, even fold, with the edges aligned. It’s habit. Then I fold them again and toss them into the fireplace.
The premium government stock catches slower than regular paper.
The DMI seal melts first, the foil bubbling and blackening.
Then the edges go amber, curling inward.
The official font disappears line by line, clause by clause, subsection by subsection.
Section 14 goes. Section 12. The signature lines.
The case number. My name, then his, consumed by the same flame at the same time.
The fire eats all of it.
There's nothing left but ash and the chemical smell of burned foil.
"That was a legally binding government document."
"Yes."
"We'll need to notify the DMI that we're declining the dissolution."
"Yes."
"There's a form for that. Form 18-A, Voluntary Continuation of Magical Bond. I looked it up."
Jagger makes a sound. Low, rumbling. Not quite a laugh. The sound a mountain would make if a mountain found something funny.
"Of course you did."
"It requires notarization. The nearest notary public is forty-two miles from here. I mapped it."
"Sabine."
"We'll need to bring two forms of identification and proof of the original bond filing. I have copies."
"Sabine."
The way he says my name stops my mouth. Not loud. Not sharp. Soft, actually. Like he's holding the syllables in his palm and being careful not to crush them.
I turn.
He is on one knee.
The old floorboards groan under him. His massive frame, condensed into this position, still takes up half the room.
The firelight catches the silver piercings in his left tusk.
The runic tattoos on his forearms pulse with a warm, steady amber, not the angry red-hot flare I saw at the warehouse.
Something calmer. Something that matches the rhythm of the fire.
In his hand, a band of iron. Dark, heavy, thick as my ring finger is long.
The surface is covered in engravings so intricate they seem to move in the flickering light.
Not polished. Not pretty. Not the kind of ring that sits in a velvet box at a jewelry store under halogen spotlights.
This ring was forged. Hammered. Made by hands that understood metal as a living thing.
"This was my grandmother's."
"It is the traditional Orcish mating band of my bloodline. Passed from the eldest to their chosen. Four generations of Ironjaw women wore it."
The iron catches the light. The engravings shift. Runes, I realize. The same language written on his skin.
My notebook slips from my fingers and hits the floor.