She gasped when he spoke her name. “Is the binding broken then? You can speak my name?”
A languid smile stretched over his mouth. “The binding sigil is broken. It has been broken since Twelfth Night. I know who you are, Lia. I know everything about you now. Your father’s tome is in my rucksack with mine. I know everything, Lia.” His hand strayed and brushed aside a lock of her hair. “You did it. You did what he meant you to do.” Tears filled his eyes. “I am so proud of you, Lia. Your courage did not fail.” He gazed at her pointedly. “Neither did mine. If I could have sent you word, I would have. Believe that. But I only just escaped and I rode hard and fast.”
Lia was so startled and shocked, she clutched him, seizing his tunic front and hugging him so tightly, breathing in his smell, the texture of his tunic and shirt. She squeezed him so hard she was afraid she was hurting him.
“What of Hillel?” she asked fearfully.
Colvin stroked her hair. “She weds the young king in a fortnight. After all, I am dead now.”
She looked at him, seeing the humor in his eyes. “You seem very sturdy for a ghost. What are you saying? Please do not jest! My heart is still near breaking. That this is a dream and I will awaken.”
“I will tell you all,” he answered. “But first, may I kiss you? My darling. My wife.”
She stiffened.
He looked at her, gazing at her face, feeling through her wild hair with his fingertips. He brushed the back of his hand across her cheek. “Do not fear my touch, Lia,” he whispered. “Your father foresaw it perfectly. I knew who Hillel was truly. Your father’s tome told me what I had to do to bind myself to you forever. When I was at Billerbeck, I shared the knowledge with the Aldermaston since I had broken the binding. I showed him the tome. He saw what was written and he agreed to perform the ceremony, binding me forever to Ellowyn Demont. We are bound, you and I, by irrevocare sigil, the same way your mother and father were bound together while they were apart, she in Dahomey and he in Pry-Ree. The orb works for me now, you noticed, because of you. Because of that binding. I share many of your Gifts. Hillel took the hetaera oaths, but she did not deceive me. I let her believe she swayed me. But I never let her lips touch mine. I am saved from the Blight.” His fingers clenched in her hair and his forehead brushed hers. “You are mine. Forever.”
With his hands tangled in her hair, he brought his mouth down on her cheek and kissed her. Then he kissed her chin. And then finally, as her heart nearly melted with fire, he kissed her mouth. It was not a soft kiss or a tender one. It was a kiss that stole her breath with its urgent claiming of her mouth. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer until their bodies touched and she leaned into him, grabbing his hair, kissing him back with every pent-up longing and feeling she had experienced. He kissed her again and again, breathing her in, clutching her as if she would float away and leave him. She trembled inside, awakened to feelings she had never experienced except in dreams. The world blurred around them for that moment, gasping and breathless. She could not believe how it made her feel. The worry and torment since he had buried her in Dahomey melted into nothingness. The agony and loneliness of winter was gone like the frost. He was there. He was hers. And they would go together to a new land and build new Abbeys together.
She thought she would faint with joy and was grateful his arms had managed to loose themselves from the tangled weave of her hair and clutched her shoulders to keep her up.
Glancing up at him, she blinked as if in a dream. “Are you saying, Colvin Price, that we are married?”
“I am,” he whispered huskily, greedily.
“But do not I get a say in this?” she asked with a teasing voice. “Am I bound forever to you then with no choice of my own?”
His eyebrows raised in mock solemnity. “You must accept the binding for it to be sacred. I suppose I was presuming…?”
Lia ran her finger down his mouth. “Yes.”
“Yes?” he asked.
“Yes, I accept it,” she answered. “I give you all that I have and all that I am.”
“Then kiss me again,” he demanded.
She was only too willing to oblige.
* * *
Lia awoke first before the blush of dawn lit the windows of the kitchen. After rising from the pallet, she summoned fires from the oven Leerings to warm the tiles and quickly set about making something for them to eat. She was starving and knew Colvin would be too when he awoke. For a moment, she remembered the day she had made him porridge and he had tried to guess her age without asking and how they had argued. She warmed the kettle and added some spice to the dish before tossing in the seeds to the boiling water.