Chapter 29: The Border Bridge

Torin was sitting on the rail of the border bridge with his back to the river and a canvas pack at his feet.

It was the same bridge where the bond had torn out of me, and the same grey light.

He stood up when Kurt's truck pulled onto the gravel.

He didn't come forward.

"I'll wait here," Kurt said, and turned off the engine. "I'll be where you can see me."

"You don't have to."

"I know." He kissed my temple. "I want to."

I walked out onto the bridge alone.

The wind off the water was bitter, and the planks were slick with the snow that had not yet melted.

Torin had shaved.

He looked ten years older than he had at the Gathering, and he kept his hands at his sides.

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"I wasn't going to."

"I know."

"Say what you came to say."

He bent and unzipped the side pocket of the canvas pack.

His hands were still healing, and it took him two tries.

He held something out to me across the space between us.

It was my chain, the thin silver one that had been his grandmother's, and that I had left on his plate with the writ.

"I want you to have it," he said.

"I left it for a reason."

"I know. I'm not giving it back to make you forgive anything." His throat moved. "It's a good chain, and it was always yours. That's all."

I looked at it hanging from his fingers.

It was the first thing he had ever given me, on the day the bond took.

I'd worn it for five years, through everything, and I had not known until I laid it on that plate how much it weighed.

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