Chapter 7: Hearth

"What is that?" I said.

"What is what?"

"Your hair. The white."

He touched his temple like he'd forgotten it was there.

"Age," he said. "I'm six hundred years old, Elowen. I'm allowed a little white."

He smiled and walked off toward the kitchens after Kerensa.

I stood in the corridor and told myself it was true.

I told myself all the way up the stairs.

Bonded Wardens got a suite in the east tower. Two rooms and a hearth and a window over the sea.

I'd never expected to see the inside of one.

Kerensa moved her cot into the front room that same night.

"Your feeder contract's gone," I told her. "You could have your own room now."

"My own room is a closet with a draft," she said. "Yours has a fire and a man who can reach the top shelf. I'm staying."

So she stayed.

So did the fox with the burned paw, because nobody came to claim it.

Morvran turned out to be very bad at being a person.

He was six hundred years old and had slept through most of them.

He went down stairs sideways, one at a time, with both hands on the rail.

"They didn't have stairs when you were last awake?" Kerensa asked.

"They had ladders. Ladders are honest. You know where you stand with a ladder."

He held his fork in a fist.

He would only eat with it if I was watching.

The first frosty morning I gave him a pair of wool socks, and he sat on the hearthrug and looked at them for a long time.

"What are they for?"

"Your feet. You're cold-blooded. You've been shivering since breakfast."

"I'm not shivering. I'm vibrating with menace."

He put them on.

Then he lay down in front of the fire with his sock feet toward the flames and made a low, contented sound.

Kerensa and I looked at each other.

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