He came to her door on the fourth night, and he knocked.

Three light raps, evenly spaced. She had been sitting on the edge of the great green bed with her hair loose and her hands folded in her lap, not reading, not writing, not doing anything at all, and she heard the knock and did not move. She only sat there, with her heart going slowly and heavily, listening to the quiet that came after it.

It had been four days since the stone. They had been very full days. She had set out the old man's instruments on a clean linen cloth and sorted them by use. She had read Aldreth's pages three times through, with Pell at her elbow, and filled a notebook with the diagrams that he drew for her in the dust of the table, rough and shaking, one sentence at a time, before the oath closed his throat. She had sat with Hesta in the still room and taught her how the thread was held. She had fed Dravek broth with her own hand, and made him sleep, and made him walk in the garden for an hour each day with a stick and a footman, scowling.

She had not been alone with him in the dark.

Neither of them had said so. It had simply been the shape of the days. There was too much to do, and too many people in the house, and he had been so weak, and she had been so tired. But she knew that it was not the whole of it. She knew that there was a door between them that neither of them had yet put a hand to.

She rose. She crossed the floor and drew the black door wide.

He was standing on the line.

He had not come in. He stood in the corridor with the toes of his boots exactly at the edge of the stone, as he had stood on the night that she came, and he wore a plain white shirt with the collar open and no coat. He was thinner than he had been. The gray lines on his throat were no more than a faint smudge. His hair was damp. In the lamplight his face was very pale, and quite still, and his hands hung open at his sides.

"Dravek," she said.

"I did not know whether to knock," he said. "I thought that it would be strange to do so. I thought that it would be stranger not to." He drew a breath. "I have come to ask if I may speak with you. I do not mean in the garden. I mean here. If you will let me."

"Yes."

"I would like to say that I have no right to stand at this door. I have done a thing that I swore that I would not do, and you have forgiven it more quickly than I deserve. I do not think that I should be allowed to ask you for anything else."

"I haven't forgiven it."

He flinched.

"Not all of it," said Liora. "I'm going to, I think. Slowly. But I haven't, yet, and I'm not going to pretend. That's one of the things that I'd like us to do. I'd like to say all of it. Everything that's left. I don't want to go to that hill with anything between us."

He looked at her for a long moment. Then, very slowly, the tension went out of his shoulders.

"Then may I come in?" said Dravek.

"Ask me properly."

The corner of his mouth moved. It was the first real ghost of a smile that she had seen on him in nine days. "Liora Maelis," he said, with great gravity, "would you permit me to cross the threshold of your chamber, for the purpose of conversation, and for any other purpose that you may, in the course of the evening, find that you desire?"

"That's a very long sentence."

"I have been preparing it since Tuesday."

"Come in," said Liora.

He stepped over the line.

It was the same step that he had taken on the night of the rain. It was not the same. That night he had crossed like a man fording a river in flood, with every nerve strung, and his hands had shaken in the air. Now he crossed it like a man coming home late to a house where he is expected. He closed the door behind him. He did not bolt it.

They sat on the floor, in the end, in front of the fire, because neither of them could think of any other place. She had drawn the coverlet off the bed and spread it on the boards, and he lowered himself onto it stiffly, with a hand on the bedpost, and she saw how much it cost him. She sat opposite, with her knees drawn up. The firelight lay between them in a small gold pool.

She went first. She had decided on the stair.

"I kept the Warden's offer from you for eleven days," said Liora. "I've told you that. I haven't told you why, in full, because I was ashamed of it." She looked at the fire. "I told myself that I was waiting for the right words. I wasn't. I was afraid that if you knew, you'd do the thing that you did. And I thought, if I can keep it quiet for long enough, I can find a way round it, and then you'll never have to carry it. I thought that I'd save you."

"That was kind."

"It wasn't kind. It was proud." She shook her head. "I decided that I was the one who could be trusted with it. That you couldn't be. I decided that you couldn't bear your own life. It's what you did to me, with the lots. It's exactly what you did. And I stood in your study, and told you that you had no right, and I'd been doing it for a week and a half."

He was silent.

"I lied to Tobin. I lied to you by not speaking. I lay in your arms on the morning of the daylight, and I thought, *tomorrow,* and I thought it again, and again, and I let you tell me that you loved me while I had it in my pocket." Her voice shook. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all of it. I'd like you to know that I know what it was."

"Liora."

"I'm not finished."

"I know." He leaned a little toward her. "I would only say that you have said it. You may stop. I heard it, every word, and I do not think that I need to hear it again."

"I want to be sure."

"You may be sure," said Dravek. "I am sorry for it, too. For the wound that it was to you. I would not have had it so."

She let out a breath. Something in her chest that had been clenched for a long time loosened.

"Now you," she said.

He did not hesitate. He sat with his hands loose on his knees and his eyes on hers, and he said it all.

He told her about the three weeks after the letter came, when he had sat in the study every night with the gray paper in his hand and read it until the creases wore through. He told her about the man in the gray glove who had come to him in the autumn, and the sums that they had made, and the small, sick, terrible relief of discovering that a thing could be arranged. He told her what he had thought when her father's reply came. That it would be a small mercy, the money. That he would not have to see the family's faces. He told her that he had been a coward, and had called it a kindness, and had known it for a lie the moment that he saw her curtsy.

"I should have ridden to Harrowfen," he said. "I should have stood in the lane, with my hat in my hands, and asked. I should have told your father the whole of it, in his own kitchen, and let him say no. I should have let *you* say no. I did not, because I could not bear it. I could not bear to hear a refusal. I had been refused by every living thing for thirteen years, and I thought, if she says it, I shall not survive." His voice was very low. "So I took the choice from you in advance, so that I should never have to be refused. It was the most cowardly act of my life. And I have been so happy in the results of it that I have not been able to be sorry as I ought."

"You're sorry now."

"I am sorry now."

"Say it."

"I am sorry that I did not ask you," said Dravek. "I am sorry that I took it. I am sorry that I let your father think that he had been given a gift. I am sorry that I let you think that you had been unlucky." His eyes were wet. "If I could go back, I would ride to the fen. I would knock. I would say, there is a man in a black keep who has done terrible things, and he needs a healer, and he cannot ask you to come. I would say it to your face, and I would let you shut the door."

"I wouldn't have shut it."

"I know. That is the thing that I cannot forgive. That I did not give you the chance to be the person who opened it."

They sat in silence for a time. The fire popped. Somewhere in the walls the old stone ticked and settled, and it was only stone.

"There's no one in the room," said Liora, softly. "Nobody listening. I looked. I don't think there's anything that can hear us."

"No." He lifted his head. "I believe that it has gone quiet. I believe that it is waiting to see what we do."

"Then let's give it nothing to see."

He drew a long breath. He looked at her across the little gold pool of the firelight, and something in his face changed, slowly, from the grave exhausted tenderness of the last four days to something more open, and more afraid.

"May I ask you something?" he said.

"You always may."

"I should like to be near you tonight. I should like it very much. I do not wish it because of the quiet. I wish to say that plainly. It is not that it eases the thing. The thing is quiet now whether you are in the room or in the fen. I have felt it, these four days, and it has not stirred." His throat moved. "I wish to be near you because it is you. Because I love you. Because there is no part of me that wishes to be anywhere else."

"I know," said Liora.

"Do you?"

"I wrote it in my notebook. In the spring. I wrote that the curse was quietest when you were with me, and I thought, *he comes to me because of that.*" She smiled, unsteadily. "I've crossed it out. I should've known. You came to me on the nights it was bad, too. You came when you could hardly stand." She reached across the little space and took his hand. "You were never using me. I was the one who couldn't believe that you'd want me for nothing."

He turned his hand over, and laced his fingers through hers, and held on.

"You are not my cure," said Dravek. His voice was low and rough. "I want that said. You are not my physic, or my anchor, or my keeper, or any other thing that the Pact has made of you. You are a woman who walked into a cold room and told me that the road was poor. I should like to be chosen by you, on purpose, knowing everything. As a man, and not as a patient. I should like to be yours."

"You are."

"On purpose."

"On purpose," said Liora. "I'm choosing you. Now. Tonight. In full knowledge of all of it. Nobody's drawn a lot. Nobody's laid a clause." She tightened her grip. "I'm asking you to stay. Will you?"

"Yes."

"Will you let me kiss you?"

He made a sound, soft and astonished and entirely helpless. "Please," he said.

She leaned across the coverlet, and he met her halfway.

It was a very quiet kiss. It was nothing like the hunger of the other nights. It was slow and deep and certain, and it tasted of salt, because they were both crying, and of honey, from the tea that he had drunk, and under both of those, of something that she could only name as him. His hand rose and cupped her jaw. She felt it tremble. She felt, through the thin linen of his shirt, the long careful warmth of his body, which she had not touched for nine days, and which she had been afraid that she would never touch again.

"I thought that I had lost this," he whispered against her mouth. "On the stone. I thought that I would not feel it again."

"You didn't lose it."

"I know. I know that now." He kissed her again, and again, on the lips, on the corner of her mouth, on the wet curve of her cheek. "Liora. May I take you to bed?"

"Yes."

"I should like to take as long as you will let me."

"All night," said Liora. "I'm asking you to."

He rose first. He did it slowly, with one hand on the bedpost, and she saw him wince, and said sharply, "Dravek," and he said, "It is only my ribs, I have been told that they are not broken, I wish to be allowed to be gallant," and she laughed, helplessly, with her face in her hands. He held out his hand. She took it, and stood, and they walked the four steps to the great green bed together, hand in hand, as two people walk who have been a very long way round to reach a door that was never locked.

He undid the laces of her gown with unhurried fingers. He asked at every one. She answered every time. It was not a game, tonight. It was something plainer and more serious. Each question was a small clear stone laid down in a row, and each answer was another, and the long line of them made a path that she could walk without being afraid. *May I? Here? Yes. And here? Yes, please.* When the gown slid from her shoulders and pooled about her feet, he stood back, and looked at her in the firelight with a face so utterly naked and undefended that she felt it in the soles of her feet.

"You are very beautiful," he said. It was said wonderingly, like a statement of fact. "I have never said so. I should have said it in the spring."

"You've said it a great many times. You just haven't used the words."

"I should like to use the words."

"Then use them," said Liora, and drew his shirt over his head.

He was thinner. She saw it at once, and the old scars, pale and plentiful across his shoulders and his ribs, and the great yellowing bruise down his left side, where he had fallen on the hill. She laid her palms very lightly against it. He drew a breath through his teeth.

"Does that hurt?"

"A little."

"I'll be careful."

"I should be very sorry," said Dravek, "if you were careful."

She looked up at him, startled, and saw that his eyes were bright and dark and entirely wicked, and she heard herself laugh again, a low surprised sound, and pushed him down on the coverlet with both hands.

It was slow, at first. It was the slowest thing that they had ever done. She had meant to be tender, and was, and he lay under her hands with his eyes half closed and his breath coming short, and let her. She explored him again, as she had done on the night of the poppies, but with a new and different attention. She knew now which places were sore. She knew which were ticklish, and which made his breath stop. She knew the long muscle at the side of his throat, and the small scar behind his ear, and the exact pitch of the sound that he made when she bit, very gently, at the hollow beneath his collarbone. She took her time. He took his. When he drew her down to him, he did it with a hand at the back of her neck, and his mouth found hers with a hunger that made her gasp.

She felt the change in him then. It was not a flare, and it was not a surge. It was a loosening, deep and low, as when a long-held breath is let go. He rolled her beneath him, gently, mindful of his side, and braced himself over her on his forearms, and looked down into her face.

"Is this still..." he began.

"Yes."

"I wish to be certain."

"I'm certain. Come here."

He came to her slowly, and the whole long length of the night seemed to come with him. She felt the heat and the fullness and the sweet, shocking stretch of it, and she arched against him with a soft cry and wrapped her legs about his hips and held him there, deep and unmoving, with her forehead pressed to his. They stayed that way for a long breath. His heart was going hard against hers. She felt, very far down in him, the old dark thing that had been his companion for thirteen years. It did not wake. It lay as a dog lies at the foot of a hearth, drowsy and warm and utterly at rest.

Then he moved, and she moved with him.

There was nothing urgent in it. She had thought that there would be, after the stone and the lake and the long days of not touching. She had thought that they would fall on each other like starving people. They did not. They moved together as the tide moves, slowly, with great weight and great ease, and each stroke of him seemed to say something that neither of them could have put into words. *You are here. You are alive. I did not lose you.* She wound her hands into his hair. She said his name against his skin. She heard him say hers, over and over, in a voice that cracked and softened and cracked again, with other words that she half caught. Words like *home,* and *mine,* and *thank you.*

"Look at me," he whispered.

She opened her eyes.

He was above her, with his face flushed and wet and open, and his gray eyes fixed on hers with a tenderness so entire that it hurt. He did not look away. Neither did she. She watched the heat gather in his face, and felt it gather in her own body, low and bright and climbing, and she held his gaze, and did not close her eyes, and did not flee. It was the hardest thing that she had ever done and the simplest. When it broke over her, long and golden and shuddering, she cried out his name, and he held her through it, and followed her a moment later with a low broken cry, and buried his face in her shoulder, and shook.

They lay tangled for a long time afterward.

The fire had sunk to a bed of red coals. The window had gone from black to a soft starry blue. His weight was warm on her, and she did not want him to move, and he did not. She stroked his back, slowly, over the old pale scars, and felt him sigh, and felt his breath go slow against her neck.

"It is quiet," said Dravek, drowsily.

"I know."

"I did not think about it. Not once. I only noticed it now." He lifted his head. His hair was in his eyes. "That is rather remarkable, I find. I have thought about it every hour for thirteen years."

"You're allowed to forget about it."

"I should like to learn how." He smiled, a little crookedly, and laid his cheek against her breastbone, over her heart. "I think that you are teaching me."

She did not write it down. She noticed, lying there in the warm dark, that her hand was not reaching for a notebook. She was not counting his pulse. She was not measuring the gray at his throat against the gray of the morning before. She only lay with her arm around him and her cheek against his hair and listened to him breathe, and it was not a clinical finding. It was a man, and she loved him, and that was all.

"Tomorrow," he murmured, "we go up the hill."

"In two days. We need to rest first."

"In two days." His arm tightened about her. "I am afraid, Liora."

"I know."

"I think that I shall be afraid until it is done."

"That's all right. I'll be afraid too." She turned her head and kissed his forehead. "We'll be afraid together. That's what the whole of it's for."

He was asleep within a few minutes. She felt it come over him, the long slackening, the deepening of his breath. She lay awake a little longer in the soft blue dark, with his weight on her and the last coals ticking in the grate, and she was very nearly happy.

It was somewhere near three that she heard the voices.

They came up from below, faint and flat and very far off, through the thick stone of the keep. She would not have caught them at all if she had not been listening. Two voices, an old man's, hoarse and halting, and an old woman's, brisk and dry. She could not make out the words. But she knew the rhythm of it. It was a litany, a patient low recitation, one voice naming and the other answering, and between each pair there was the small bright clink of metal on metal.

*A scalpel. Two. A curved needle, the large. The silk, the pale, three spools. The bowl.*

They were in the infirmary. They had been there for hours, she thought, the old physician and the old housekeeper, taking the inventory of a surgery that had never been performed, in a lamplit room, in the dead of night, because neither of them could sleep. She lay and listened to them count. The clink went on. And somewhere under it, very faint and clear and unmistakable, there came the sound of a third voice, young and flat and stubborn, saying, *You've got that one wrong. It goes on the left.*

Liora smiled into the dark.

She laid her hand over the sleeping man's heart. And she thought, very quietly, that for the first time in all her life she was in a house where no one was being passed on to anyone else.