"Kahldar," she said, "are you trying to vex me?"

He caught the snowflake sliver of disappointment before it could enter his heart, and break it open. Gamely, he forged on: "I notice you often do your best to vex me. I've been curious as to why you seem to derive such pleasure from it."

"And is your curiosity satisfied?"

"I've discovered I would rather you speak to me in exasperation than not at all. But I would prefer your esteem, even if my vows prevent me from accepting your body."

"Does it so upset your Welded order when a man and a woman join in honest appreciation of each other? Do your clerics not have the prayers that delay childbirth to its appropriate season?"

He chose his words with care. "Prayers do not heal the heartache that temporary joinings inspire."

"Many of your Dawnlander squires seem quite unconcerned."

"Not all Welded youths keep their vows as I do. Perhaps they saw less inspirational examples, in their childhood. Or—" he smiled to himself, "they are insufficiently fond of romantic liturgy. Exoeras teaches that combining the flesh merges the soul."

"Are you worried I've left a string of sundered souls all up and down the coast?"

"I've long assumed that half the bardsongs in the region were composed about you."

This time she laughed. "I am not fond of minstrels, and I try not to trifle with any heart that is not at least as guarded as my own." Her voice softened. "I am sorry that I... misjudged yours."

He did not want to respond to that. He took a deep breath. "Why do you not enjoy tales of courtly love? Many women seem to find worship from afar, romantic."

The basin rocked against the stone, and he imagined her stepping into it. Little splashes, then, as if the water lapped at her skin. "Many women are lonely in their marriages or long widowhood. Some troubadours take advantage of that. They make courtly professions and ingratiate themselves in her household. Not all are like this; some have true bardic talent, but I have learned to be suspicious."

"Lady Magnus invites a few minstrels to the castle every winter year. Are your experiences so different?"

Again the sound of water, cascading over limbs and back into the bath. "Yes and no. She was born a handful of years before myself. Two years after she wed, King Harald's messengers approached my father with a similar suitor for me."

"Was your father amenable to such a match?"

"No. But we were in grave debt on account of the King's new laws. Through the Dawnlander's bride gift, my father might have preserved our lands for my brother."

"What did you think of him? Your Dawnlander suitor?"

"He was thirty years my senior, and had no sense of humor. I could not imagine moving to the mountains, and reshaping myself to fit his expectations."

"Lady Magnus made it work, somehow."

"I do not have her long patience for politics. I was my father's oldest child. I could not imagine giving up swordplay and split skirts to pretend at peace."

"Would you not have had to give them up anyway, were you to marry a Tidelander noble? Or did you expect to spark a rebellion?"

"Nothing so grand." A long pause. "At the time, I'm afraid I fancied myself in love with a minstrel."

He inhaled. "Ah."

"I thought we might run away and travel the coast together, as he alluded nightly in his verse. However, he was dependent on my father's household, and at the critical moment, declined. 'I had misunderstood him,' he said. It turned out that for a man in his position, courtly love was much more practical than the alternative."

Kahldar flinched. "I... see." He held his breath for a five count. When he was sure his voice was even again, he said, "Could you not then have accepted the marriage your father proffered?"

"I had arranged for us to be discovered together, which irrevocably solved the offer from the suitor. My father turned me out for disobedience, but I think it was my lack of foresight that he really could not abide. Luckily, my aunt had a place in the church. She introduced me to the then-Grand Abbess, who was able to weave a different tale around my actions."

"I... always thought your devotion to Aluna came from great piety."

"Oh yes. I am deeply grateful to the Goddess for saving me from a short life of disinheritance, banditry, disfigurement, and lurid public execution. It turns out that nestled in such gratitude, a desperate sort of devotion can indeed take root."

"Only one of her chosen could have removed Lydris from the caves." Kahldar focused on the memory because it was easier than examining his heart. "When the snakes flooded the chamber, it was because you rang through with sincerity."

"Of course I do. If I did not, the miracles would not come." She splashed. "But of course you are right. I follow Aluna because She encourages me to make my own way." Her voice dropped. "Perhaps excessively so."

He was silent for a moment. "And—how did you recover from having chosen and loved the wrong man?"

He heard the water pouring again. He imagined her tipping the ewer over her crown, turning her hair into dark coils on her skin.

"If the Welded teach that such a thing would blight your soul permanently, then let me assure you that it is not actually so."

"Heresy." But he was smiling, a little.

"I promise you, a catastrophic error of judgment is not so bad, if you've survived the making of it."

"If."

"If," she acknowledged. "There's certainly a period at the beginning when everything tastes like self-recrimination and the future looks as impossible as a becalmed sea. But if you survive all that, you wake up one morning, a year or more later, somehow desirous of a good buttered scone."

"That sounds agonizing. Scone or no."

"It can be." He heard another splashing sound, and then her skin on the stone as she stepped out of the basin. "The good news is that every mistake that you outlive makes you much more likely to choose better, the next time."

"And what could you possibly have learned that would make it worthwhile?"

"I suppose... to find integrity attractive." She made a self-deprecating sound. "It seems that has its own pitfalls."

He heard the sound of her feet on the stone behind him, and saw a faint radiance, beyond that of the candlelight, reflected off the wall before him.

His pulse jumped. "Selida—"

"The ritual restored some measure of Aluna's blessing," she said. "Rest easy. All I will touch is your shoulder."

"Selida, I—"

"Don't." She laid soft fingers on his pauldrons. Her voice sounded like broken glass. "You cannot give me what I ask without unravelling what I most admire about you, and—" she swallowed. "And I cannot accept either of the loves you offer without unmaking what I most admire in myself." She stopped. Started again. "But if I can see you safe and whole into some better future, with some better companion, then these blessings I offer with all my heart."

Words poured up into his mouth. He could not remember the last time it hurt to breathe; when Exoeras's platitudes fell away and revealed a wound that went on forever like a tunnel to the center of the earth. The day he had left his capitol for the Tidelands, perhaps, excruciatingly aware that would never again see his childhood home, or return to clear his parents' graves.

But obedient to her preferences, he held all of himself behind his teeth as she began to whisper a prayer. Where she touched, a sharp, cold seawater washed through him. Before he could grow numb, he heard the hiss of foam over sand, and the lines of the room lept out in sharp relief. Weariness he did not even realize he wore lifted from him. His heart beat on.

"There," she said, breath rasping in her throat. "That should last through your rotation on the parapet. Now I will dress so you can return me to Emmeline's rooms. I do not want you to suffer the indignity of sleeping across my doorway, and it soothes her to know I am there should Lydris have some unlikely relapse."

Finding words felt like forcing himself to stare into the sun. Without turning he said, "Thank you. For all our differences, it is good to know how much we are alike. Your words are an intimacy I will cherish always."

Her voice was quiet, like she was already moored on a distant shore. "For what it is worth, I will treasure yours every day I yet live."