Chapter 15: The Claiming

They carried him to the healer's tent on the Iron Hollow bank.

I walked beside the litter with the gold mark flickering on my wrist, and the healer told me the rest.

A claiming had two parts.

Each bit the other on the mark, and each drank the other's blood.

Then they finished the bond the way mates always had.

"Fast," the healer said. "Before the black reaches his heart. And he has to be awake enough to want it."

"He wants it."

"Then make him say so."

She shut the tent flap behind her, and the lamp burned low.

Corvin lay on the cot with his shirt cut away and the black lines climbing his ribs.

His eyes were half open.

I sat on the edge of the cot, still wet from the river, and took his scarred hand in both of mine.

"Corvin."

His eyes found me.

"You're soaked," he said.

"I swam the Blackwater five times."

"Show-off."

I laughed, and it broke in the middle.

"The healer says there's a way to burn it out," I said. "It means the claiming. It means all of it."

He went still.

His hand tightened on mine.

"No," he said. "Not as medicine. Not because I'm dying."

"Corvin."

"I won't have you pick me because I'm on a cot." His voice was thick. "Joss chose for you for two years. Don't let me be the next one."

I looked at him.

Grey, sweating, and refusing me the easy way out, with his last breath.

"I choose you," I said. "Listen to me. I chose you in the tent, before any of this. I'd choose you if the healer said you'd live till spring."

"Say it again."

"I want you. I want to be your mate. Now, tonight, with the door shut and nobody's seal on it."

His eyes closed, and opened.

"Then come here," Corvin said.

I pulled my wet shirt over my head.

He watched me do it.

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