Page 47

Behind us, the green still glowed, and the fiddler kept playing.

I brought Turnip to a stop. The lantern swung. The river went on saying whatever rivers say.

“You’re quiet,” she said. “Since the book.”

“Fine words in the book.”

“And you’ve been sitting next to me thinking about them since we left.” She turned on the bench to face me. “Let’s have it out in the open. You think the bells took something from me.”

I looked at the water, black and moving, reflecting cold stars above.

“Ogres choose once,” I said. “You know that now. Mine was done long before tonight. So the bells cost me nothing. But you—” The words wanted to break free and fast, but I gave them out slowly. “You hadn’t said anything yet. You were still free to handle it any way you liked. And now there’s a tower and a book and a county all telling you it’s settled. A bell like that is a heavy thing to argue with. I don’t want you buried under it. If you want to stand on this bridge and tell me that the bells rang early, or rang wrong, or rang for someone I’m not⁠—”

The words stuck, but I made them come out anyway, and every one of them felt like pulling a stuck fencepost. “I’ll drive you home, and keep your shelf stocked, and never once make you feel the weight of a single stone in that bowl. That’s what I needed to say. You’re not decided by bronze. Not while I stand.”

Turnip shifted his hooves and peered back at us. Rain Trevil looked at me across two feet of wagon bench for the longest silence she had ever allowed to exist.

“Goran Brack,” she finally said. “You great gold idiot.”

“Hm?”

“When did I queue?”

I didn’t follow. She climbed up onto her knees on the bench, which put us nearly level, and took a fistful of my collar. Her eyes held the lantern light in them.

“The bells rang while you were kissing me. Work the order, farmer. I was in that queue before the tower said a word. I paid my copper. I told you I wanted you to kiss me and not on the forehead.”

She tightened her grip on my collar.

“Asha will testify it was premeditated. Aris held the coin all day. Ginger is claiming credit going back to the label swap.” She sighed. “There’s a paper trail. I chose you in front of the entire county with nothing ringing but my own ears. The tower didn’t decide anything. The tower agreed.”

The plumb line stopped dropping.

“Say the last part again,” I said.

“The tower agreed⁠—”

“The other part.”

She smiled. “I chose you. Before the bells. Before the booth. Somewhere around the bitter greens, if I’m honest, which puts my choosing at about two years as well, so you can stop being noble about my freedom. I’ve had it the entire time, and I spent it on you once a week at a market stall like the world’s most patient fool.”

I gently cupped her face and kissed her.

The first kiss, on the green, had a county watching. This one had nobody. Just the river, the frost, and her hands leaving my collar to travel up into my hair and find my horn-bases. When her fingers pressed there, the sound that came out of me scared the ducks off the water.

She pulled back. “Oh. I’ve made a discovery.”

“Rain.”

“Noted for later. Purely academic interest.”

“Rain.”

“Drive,” she said, stroking my face. “Home. Now. The bridge has had enough of us.”

I’ve never in my life asked a beast for speed like I asked Turnip for it on that road. He gave it, and I’d swear on my land the animal was laughing.

We didn’t light the faelamps. The kitchen was dark and warm, and after we’d unhitched Turnip, we went through the front door already tangled, her laughing into my chest.