Page 205 of The Sun He Buried

Then she leaves before I can ruin that too.

The passage takes her toward the west stairs.

Three servants change direction when they see Snowpetal.

Snowpetal purrs.

I wait until the bond carries them beyond the gallery.

The room should improve.

It doesn’t.

My coat still holds the shape of her cheek where the wool dried. One fur has fallen to the floor. The bed smells of snow, mead, and the sweet grain-field note that has followed me for thirteen years.

I could stay here.

By noon, the night might become a private failure. Baldr would hear her plain account. Nothing happened. He would believe her because she can’t lie to save her life.

The morning could end there.

I fasten my coat.

Baldr stands in the lower gallery beneath a row of storm-dark windows.

He’s changed his shirt. He hasn’t slept.

One hand rests against the sill. Snow fills the glass beyond it. The Hall has begun to wake behind him, but every person who reaches the gallery turns away before crossing his path.

Strength feeders don’t need emotional walls. Most never learn to build them.

Baldr’s hurt reaches me before he turns.

Salt first.

Then iron.

It gathers beneath my tongue until I can taste nothing else.

He knows.

Of course he knows. He returned to the yard with Asta last night and found an empty hollow in the snow, Solveih gone, and enough tracks for a blind man to follow.

This morning she came down from my rooms wearing one boot.

A subtle conclusion.

Baldr faces me.

Same pale-green left eye. Amber right. My face without the silver, though nobody has looked at us and mistaken one for the other in centuries.

“She told me nothing happened.”

He skips the greeting.

I stop across from him.

“Did she.” I chuckle.