Chapter 20: Release

Declan's POV

She looked at the page for a long time.

I had thought I knew what that moment would cost.

I had not known.

"Say something," I said.

"Sign it," Freja said.

She said it very quietly.

Her eyes were wet, and her chin was up, and she did not look away from me.

I had promised her, the first night, that it was always her choice.

I had said it the way you say a thing you think you'll never be asked to prove.

I opened the Judge's door and asked him to come back.

He stood in the doorway with his hand on the frame, and when he saw the pen he closed his eyes.

"Cobham," he said. "This is not a small thing."

"I know what it is."

"The bond that comes with a Hallowell does not come twice."

"I know that too."

"You may not feel her again."

"I know," I said. "Witness it."

He crossed to the desk.

I put the pen to the page and wrote my name under the Seven's seal, and my hand did not shake.

Freja signed below me.

Her handwriting was small and neat.

She put down the pen and stood very straight.

The Judge laid his palm over our names and spoke three words in a language older than the Seven.

Something went out of me.

I had known it was coming, and I still wasn't ready.

It was like a door closing in a house I had lived in all my life, softly, in a distant room.

The pull in my chest, the warm line that had run from me to her since the terrace, came loose and went slack.

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