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His thumb found the youngest mark on its own, as if it had lived there.

Then it moved, slowly. Up her spine, one mark, then the next, then the next, in the order Nellith had drawn them. Each pause marked a silent beat on her skin. He counted them like precious artefacts, deliberate and slow.

"They went," she said into his chest.

"Mm."

"At the end. They went in sequence. I had no word for it."

"I have a word for it."

She lifted her head. "What."

His hand stilled on the fourth mark. The one Nellith had drawn the year Jovana died. He didn't look at her. He looked at the ceiling.

"The Eitr does it too," he said. "When a Severant finishes. The whole working in his blood lights from the bottom up. The Order calls it the return. They tell you it will pass after the first few years. It does not pass. You only learn to expect it."

"You're saying —"

"I am saying your marks did what my blood does."

She put her face back against his chest. She couldn't look at him for a moment. The thing in her ribs was too large.

"That isn't supposed to be possible," she said.

"Neither were we."

The lamp guttered low. Outside, the wind moved against the eaves. Lance, on the windowsill, didn't look in.

For a long while there was only their breathing.

His thumb went back to the youngest mark. It rested there. She thought he would speak. He did not.

After a long while she said, "Lysander."

"Mm."

"You'll come with me into the chapel tomorrow."

"Yes."

"And if it doesn't go well."

"It will go well."

"Lysander."

He turned his face into her hair and breathed in. "I won't leave you in there. Whatever the room is. Whatever you find. I am coming with you. You are not walking that hallway by yourself."

Her eyes burned. She closed them. "All right."

"All right."

She didn't know when she fell asleep. His hand stayed at her back. The metal one stayed at her hip. His breath was even in her hair when she stopped thinking about what was waiting in the morning.

The last thing she registered was the youngest mark under the pad of his thumb, warm in a way the others were not, answering him still, hours after the rest of her had gone quiet.

The room smelled of him. Pine and nutmeg, the way it always had at a distance. And underneath, closer in than she'd ever been to it: cedar oil from the sword-handle, iron from the blade, and brass.