Page 187 of The Sun He Buried

“The sky didn’t listen.”

“A common response.”

His worry stays open between us. Ketill has given it to me freely since we were boys and neither of us understood the cost. Every other emotion feeder learned to hide. He learned too.

Then he decided I’d never have to guess with him.

Six hundred years later, I still answer that gift with a wall.

His gaze drops to the blood freezing along my jaw.

“It’s her,” he says.

The whole settlement keeps pressing into me.

Solveih’s hurt cuts through it.

“A remarkable conclusion. She’s been here nearly a week.”

“I know, Eirik. I’ve known a long time now.”

I look at him.

Ketill meets both my eyes.

“The bond,” he says.

There it is.

Spoken on my hill by the one man alive who knows when to leave a wound covered.

Apparently the storm damaged his judgment too.

“You fell beneath a mine brace once,” I say. “I’d hoped the effects were temporary.”

“That’d land better if you hadn’t kept her rooms warm before she arrived.”

“Guest rooms benefit from heat.”

“You reopened every sealed release to keep her here.”

“Eight bars were missing.”

Ketill doesn’t stop. “You knew where she was before the watch horns.”

“My border isn’t ornamental.”

“You felt her from the road.”

I say nothing.

“Careful,” I tell him.

Ketill receives the warning and remains where he is. He’s survived six hundred years by knowing every line I draw and stepping over only the ones that matter.

Tonight, this one matters.

Ketill’s certainty remains.