A stinging rain had turned the courtyard outside the stables into black mud by the time Kahldar handed Selida down from the hayloft. By the guard rotation, he guessed it was past midnight. He paused outside the great hall, wiping water out of his eyes as he waited for her to remember to kick the mud off her shoes.

"You haven't eaten all day," he said at last. "May I fetch you something from the kitchen?"

She looked down at her hands. In the torchlight, they were no longer red, but he knew she still saw it: the blood, the baby, the drained mother, the hysterical family.

"I'll eat at breakfast."

Her wan expression silenced his objections, and he opened his hand so she could precede him up the stairs.

"I did not know it was possible to cut a woman open, when the birth becomes... difficult," he said. He would never forget her knife, transformed by prayer into a sickle of moonlight.

"The cutting open is just the beginning," Selida said. "It is putting everything back in place the way Aluna intended that renders it an operation of last resort."

Kahldar thought about how easy it would be for a cleric to knit two wrong things together with nobody the wiser until days later. He softened his voice. "I am sorry. I did not mean the remembrance to cause you pain."

"My mother passed from the many complications that follow childbirth. It's likely why midwifery has never been one of my gifts. Growing up, I remember mostly men, embroiled in war."

"I imagine that makes you a diligent attendant, at least."

"Diligence does not make up for instincts that accrue over years. I've lost enough mothers to know." She paused, to rub a bit at a rough patch of masonry. "If this woman had been at home with her village, she might have had any number of better midwives."

"She is alive and so is her child. How is that not a victory?"

Kahldar watched Selida inspect her nails for blood. Then, she resumed her slow march back up to her chapel. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper of sound. "What victory is it to be a baby, born in the Tidelands twenty years into this occupation? Will his end come from a conscription? Banditry? Torture?"

He did not say what hung over them both; that the birth would have been easier had she not expended so many prayers, fruitlessly, in the dungeon that morning. Instead he chose: "You are unduly dire."

"Am I? Clerics of Aluna offer healing and absolution in exchange for belief and occasionally, coin. But what that belief actually purchases is reassurance."

"Hope."

"Yes. Hope. And when all of that is exhausted, there is little left for me except to bear witness to bitterness and pain. Sometimes I think the witnessing is all that there is, anymore."

He frowned. "Stop. You are tired, and do not sound like yourself."

She halted on the stairs, and pressed her hand into her face. "A convenient accusation, for an Dawnlander."

"Convenient or not, accurate or not, I know despair is not your tonic of choice."

She gave him a black look. "Why Ser Kahldar, how well you presume to know me."

He took heart from the renewed acid in her voice. He spoke slowly, in hopes she would hear him. "You have taken pains to explain to me why your people are discontented. I cannot change their situation, but I also cannot allow you to dismiss your helpfulness to them. If your aggravation with me might save you from unhelpful doomsaying, I am happy to serve."

Her brows flattened over his eyes. He met her frown, and did not look away. "Aluna save me," she sighed, as she again began to climb the stairs. But this time, her voice was light.

"She does," he agreed.

***

They stopped outside the moon and star-marked door. It felt too soon. Kahldar would have preferred another flight or three, to see her self-possession restored. Instead, he considered Ser Aegison's orders: to watch her, constantly. "I will see you inside and return to the barracks," he said. "Wait for me to come to you tomorrow morning, and we can walk down to the stables to check on your patient and her child."

She fished in her sleeve for the key. "You're not going to sleep in the hallway to make sure I do not send traitorous signals to our besiegers?"

It was uncanny, how often she read his mind. "Will you give me your word that you will not?"

"Would that make a difference?"

"It would. To me. And I suspect, to you, as well."

"Really."

"Yes."

She sighed. Loudly. "Then to protect your reputation with Ser Aegison, yes, I pledge by the Serpent of the Sea that I will not."

"It is not my public reputation, but my personal honor that matters. So I thank you."

Before he could turn to go, she stepped into his path.

"Wait." She placed a hand on his pauldron. He could feel it: through the metal, through the leather, through the bandage and the ache of the wound underneath. "Show me your shoulder."

He dared not. "It is late, and you are out of prayers. Sargent Finch can tend to such minor injuries well enough."

"I reopened your wound," she said. "This morning." He wondered if fatigue made her stubborn. More stubborn. "I should have remembered it, and insisted on fixing you as soon as Lady Magnus mentioned it."

"If you had, you might not have had enough prayers for tonight."

Her shoulders set. "The least I can do is change your bindings. Take off your pauldrons, your mail, and your tunic, and I will see to it."

Temptation—to bask in her competence, to let her do a task she clearly relished and preferred—dried his mouth. "Are you refusing to stay in the chapel unless I comply?"

She pushed him gently backwards into the little room until his knees hit a chair. Then she turned his torso until his shoulder faced the altar, and lit a brace of candles to provide an even light.

"Sit," she said. "I will do the rest."

He could feel her fingers undoing the leather straps. The weight lifted away as she removed his armor, piece by piece. Eventually, he sat before her in his breeches and boots and the soaked-through bandage.

"The wound is not deep," he said.

She cut the bandage free with a pair of small silver scissors. He winced as it pulled at the scab poorly forming. Her cool fingers soothed his burning skin, touching him this way and that. "It may yet take infection," she said, "but you are right, the cut was clean. Let me change the dressing and apply another bandage. Aluna willing, I can heal you in full tomorrow morning." A smile, lovely as evening jasmine, touched her lips. "It's not like I won't know where to find you."

Her fingers returned to his skin, and then the rasping sting of a cold washcloth. He felt very aware of his relative nakedness, of the allure of her body so close to his. All she would need to do was look down, to see evidence of it. "This is unseemly."

"Seemliness matters only when you're not bleeding," she said. "Here. Rest your forehead against this other chair, and relax."

He had intended to close his eyes for just a moment, but when he opened them again it was to the sound of her settling into the chair beside him. The room was dark, and the door to the hallway closed. He still wore his boots and breeches, and the wound in his shoulder tingled with cool salve under its fresh new bandage.

Selida had snuffed all the candles save the ones in her bedside alcove, and a latticed screen muted them to a soft glow. The open window over the altar let in moonlight. After the close air of the birthing stall, the silence caressed his skin like a balm.

She placed her hand over his, where it rested on his knee. He marveled at the way the faint celestial rays lined her fingers in radiance.

"It seems neither of us is getting enough sleep," she said.

His eyes followed the moonlight up her arm, past her shoulder, and to her cheek. She had pulled the clips out of her hair, and it wreathed her face in sinuous waves. Her pupils were huge and dark.

With incredible effort, he rose to his feet. His shoulder throbbed, but more striking than the pain was his awareness of her: her scent, her skin. Selida's hand was still in his, so he pulled her up beside him.

"Thank you. I—should dress, and return to the barracks."

Her free hand touched the naked skin of his waist, sending lances of heat through his body. "You don't have to go." She stepped so close he could feel her warmth through her robe. "What better way to ensure I am up to no mischief, than to stay the night?" His vision pounded as her fingers trembled against his skin, and he imagined tucking them safely against his breast.

"You offer more than I can accept." He captured her errant hand, and returned both to her.

Her lips quirked. "Because you have paid no bride price?" Selida reached up to cup his cheek. Her thumb traced the edge of his mouth. Kahldar felt his lips tingle with awareness. "You cannot buy what I offer—myself, and a moment to be alive, together." She leaned in further, so that her lips brushed his cheek. "What is mine to give, I would share freely with you tonight."

Her fingers were tracing lines of fire on his flank, above his pelvis. His skin became a battleground, awash with ambushes. He could not think. If he shook his head, his lips would touch hers, then he would kiss her, and then he knew he would not stop.

Kahldar took a shaking breath. "I told you last year. I took a vow. I cannot."

Her lips hovered beside his ear, and her breath sighed through him. "Do you still hold yourself apart for a Welded bride who may never appear? Whose name you do not even know?"

"It does not matter." It took incredible effort to think it—to say it. "In the unlikely event that my liege chooses a wife for me, I would go to her with my honor untainted."

"Untainted?" Selida's voice squeaked upwards over the word, like an explorer over a surprise patch of ice. Her fingers stilled their maddening caresses. "You think I would soil you?"

He knew he had hurt her feelings, knew it was somehow both the truth and exactly the wrong thing to say. He also dared not delay. "Please stop," he breathed.

Her hands fell away and she stepped back from him. His skin mourned the places where she was not. He looked into her face. The aqua rings in her eyes were thin around wide pupils, but as he watched, her mouth firmed into a small, ironic smile. "As you wish," she said. "Aluna smiles on passion, but a sleeping serpent will justly bite the hand that grabs it."

He took a deep breath. "My shirt and tunic, if you will."

Selida took a step back from him. "I might taint your tunic." Brittle frost had returned to her voice, and he felt it slice him, to know that he had put it there.

He tried to summon enough wit to explain. Eventually, he ground out: "I may live among your people, but I have not stopped being Dawnlander. Chastity until wedlock represents a man's respect for the order imposed on the world by the Heavens, and the future he and his bride will build together. It is a tradition I am not sorry to uphold."

She glanced down. "Your body says otherwise."

Kahldar flushed, but refused to lower his gaze from hers. "I am more than my body."

She took another step back, hands spread. "We must all live by our principles, I suppose. I find the thought of binding myself in wedlock to a Dawnlander family unspeakably horrifying. I could never trade a lifetime of servitude for a night's pleasure, as enjoyable as you might be."

It should not have stung, but it did. "I hold my honor as dearly as you do your independence."

She tore her gaze away to fix on the window, and the moon beyond. "I am going to bed. You may dress and see yourself out, Ser Kahldar."

He gathered his garments and departed before the pain in her voice made him think better of it.

Selida woke the next morning, finished her prayers, and opened the chapel door. She half hoped the hallway would be piled high with obstructive furniture: An assortment of hazardously stacked weapons racks, perhaps, or a crenelated wall of wine barrels. Instead, she saw Kahldar, crisp and glossy in full plate. She would never have guessed he still harbored injury, had she not tended it herself. He stood in an easy half-attention, and filled the hallway as thoroughly as her imagined barricade. The scent of his soap in the warm air told her he'd been there for at least an hour.

She glowered at him. "What a clear conscience you must have, to idle for hours outside a closed door."

"But it is not clear." He bowed, expression both blank and grave. "Lady Selida. I apologize for the offense I caused you last night."

Her heart skipped a beat in dismay. She fought to remain in her safe, petty sulk. "Then you retract your decision? I suffer rejection very rarely, and very poorly, it seems."

She'd hoped to provoke another blush, but it seemed he had spent his time in the hallway in earnest philosophical contemplation. "I cannot. But I wish to clarify that my repugnance stems only from the actions I might commit at your invitation, not from who you are as a person."

Selida gave in and rubbed her face. It was that or and slam the door, and she didn't want the sound to carry to any petitioners who might be hiding below the stairs. "And you do not think that expressing disgust for a night we might share together is not in itself, insulting?"

"I feel repugnance for any action I might take that would violate my standards of behavior." He paused, and this time she did have the satisfaction of feeling the air around him grow warmer. "I understand that what you offered me was, in your culture, a gracious gift. I regret it is not in my power to accept. I regret as well that I cannot properly convey that what I feel about what I do, and what I feel about who you are, are separate."

He bowed again, and Selida forced herself to count to five as she watched the morning light halo his regret-colored hair. When her voice was steady, she reached out and touched his pauldron. "Let me heal your shoulder."

He rose and nodded, eyes steady. "After, there is time to go to the stables before breakfast, if you would like to check in on your patient and her child."

Selida closed her eyes, and summoned Aluna's blessings. Knit him and keep him, her heart whispered, under the cover of the usual words. Safe from injury, safe from pain, and above all, treachery. Above all, safe from that.