I did not run in the night. I slept with my boots on and the black scale under my pillow.
At dawn I went down to the great hearth with my terms sharpened like a blade.
Vareth stood with his back to the fire. Cedric held paper and ink, and Calder waited at the door with two men behind him.
Vareth: Come where I can see you. Say your terms loud enough for them to hear.
Heat climbed my neck. He wanted witnesses to watch me ask.
Calder: A list, is it? Does she get a collar, or does she open her legs for the fire and skip the paperwork?
Laughter rolled around the doorway. I kept my chin up, because that is all a woman has when a room decides to laugh.
Vareth: Calder. One more word about her body and you will spend the month on the gorge stairs.
Vareth: She is not bought. She is owed. Write that first, Cedric.
Sorrel: First, Fenn's bond is torn up and in his hand tonight. Second, my father's maps come home, every page.
Vareth: Cedric, write both.
Sorrel: Third. No collar. No iron at my throat, no mark burned into me, no band I cannot open with my own hands.
The hall went quiet. That was the term with teeth in it.
Vareth: No collar, then. Only what you hand me yourself.
He said it softly, and he watched me feel how much worse that was.
Sorrel: Those are my terms. All three. Say yes or say no, but say it now.
Vareth: Yes.
It came so fast that the floor seemed to tilt under my boots.
Sorrel: Then I answer you now. I will stay the month, and I will not run.
Vareth: No.
Sorrel: No?
Vareth: You will answer me on the last night, when your brother is free and your maps are home and you owe me nothing.
Sorrel: You bought my debt in the dark and put me in a keep with one bridge out. Now my word is not good enough?
Vareth: It is not free yet. Run before the month ends and I will not chase you.
Vareth: But I will not buy your brother's bond either. The Merns will, and they will not ask him politely.
Something in my chest went cold and stayed cold.
Sorrel: How long could you have paid it? The truth, not a lord's answer.
Vareth: A year. More.
Sorrel: My father died with that debt on his name.
Vareth: Yes. I paid nothing until I knew what I was paying for.
Sorrel: And what was that?
Vareth: You.
Vareth: Leave us. All of you.
The door shut. He sat on the hearth bench and pulled me between his knees, one hand light at my hip.
Vareth: You are shaking.
Sorrel: I am angry.
Vareth: Yes. That too.
His thumb came up along my jaw, slow, and stopped at the corner of my mouth.
Vareth: If you want me to stop, say stop. I will hear it the first time.
I did not say it. He leaned in, and the first touch of his mouth was careful, and then it was not careful at all.
I kissed him back. My hand found his collar and held on like a rope.
He tasted of smoke and something sweet, and his palm came to the back of my neck and stayed, warm as the scale in my coat.
When he pulled back, I had every term I asked for and no idea what he had bought.
Vareth: One month. Then you answer me.
Vareth: And if it is no, I open the gate myself.
He said it like a man settling a bill he had already counted.