was leaden. "Look at my gift and tell me nothing I could do could ever disgust you."
She'd never tried to summon the gift, but it came easily all the same, as if it were a true part of her, a power that had lain dormant all her life. A shiver started at the back of her neck, chased up over her scalp, raising each hair in a fast prickling wave, then sped down her spine to drive goose bumps out all over her skin.
Her jaw locked, spiking pain into her ears, forcing her throat closed. Her fingers splayed out, stiffer than she could make them by herself, as stiff as if the bones in her hands were turning to tiny rods of steel.
And the cold came. Waves of it, colder than stone, colder than the dead hours of the night, colder than the deepest ocean wave. As cold as if it were not just the absence of warmth but a force in itself, as actively frigid as the fire that burned in the hearth was actively hot. Cold that couldn't come from anything human. Cold that could only be demon-borne.
Her fingernails went white. A hard, translucent white, like wave-polished glass. She knew her eyes were changing too—she'd seen it happen once before as she watched, caught motionless by terror, in the tiny hand-mirror Arach had bought her for her name-day. They'd be white as well, not quite opaque but expressionless, horrible. For an instant she felt the bite of cold at the back of her eye sockets before it crept out over her face, up into her hairline, down over her throat.
Whiteness, as hard as stone, spreading cold as the lamp spread light, climbed up her fingers, up her arms, clutched her heart, her lungs, making each part of her body stop in an moment that felt like death before it, too, changed, and the cold moved on.
In the hearth the last flicker of the fire dwindled, the glow of the embers sinking away into blackness. Even the light of the oil lamp shrank as the cold swept out from her body, filling the room.
"Stone…" said Arach, the hesitation in his voice showing that even as he said it he knew it wasn't true, then, "No, it's not. Is it? It's…"
"I don't know." She'd never spoken in this form before, and she cringed at the thin whistle her voice made, issuing from lips so stiff it seemed impossible they could still move. "I don't know what it is. But…" She tried to swallow but all the moisture in her body had disappeared, and all that happened was that her throat made a creaking, wheezy sound like something breaking. "It's like Aera's power, but opposite." She couldn't look at his face. Couldn't look at him as disgust and horror replaced the love she'd never deserved. "It…it must be the worst power. The worst ever. The most unclean, the most evil." She tried to swallow again, felt her throat close instead. "Do you see now, Arach, why I dare not let them think you knew?"
"I do see."
His voice sounded as stiff, as inhuman, as hers. Whether that was because her ears could not hear properly in this form, or whether it was because of another reason she did not know. There was a shaking inside her now, so deep inside her body that it didn't show on the outside. This was the end. In a moment, when she could bear to, she would look up at his face. Then, when she turned to leave, to give herself up, this time he would not stop her.
She looked up.
Arach was watching her. No expression showed on his face. Within her, the shaking grew so much she thought it must penetrate even this form, wondered for a moment if it would spread all through her, shake her into merciful pieces, break her apart before the priests could do it.
He took two steps forward, and his hands came up to grip her arms, warm against her cold-beyond-cold flesh. It wasn't a gentle gesture, and his voice was not gentle either, so for a moment she could hear only his tone, not his words, hear the anger, the disgust that would save his life and break her heart. Her decision was bitter within her. It was worth it, but it was bitter.
"You stupid girl," said Arach. "Why in the names of all the gods do you think this changes anything?"
She stared into his face, not understanding, her mind as stiff, as slow-moving as her limbs. Then she saw the tears in his eyes.
"Arach?"
"You think this will stop me loving you? You think I care what you can turn into?"
Against all likelihood, warmth seemed to spread into her body, stilling the shaking. "You—don't care? When it's—when I'm like this?"
"I don't care. And yes, I mean when you're like this."
"I…" She put her hands up between them, saw their dead, cold whiteness, like glass, like bone. "But I look—I'm…I'm awful."
Anger leapt again through his voice. "Like I said, you've never understood, have you?"
Anger, but not, after all, disgust.
She took her hands down, spreading them out. Their bone-pale colour made her want to shudder. But Arach was watching her, his eyes steady. He wasn't shuddering, he wasn't looking away. He'd seen the very worst she could show him and he had not turned from her.
"I—" she started, and her voice shook with what, had she not been so cold, might have been tears. "All right. I think I'm starting to understand."
"About damned time." The words sounded rough, but when she met his eyes they were full of tenderness. "Gods, Eleria, all these years, have you not understood what I mean when I say I love you? If I'd known this was what you thought, I'd have made you tell me years ago."
A half laugh caught at her breath. "If I'd known you'd see it like this I might have told you of my own accord. When it first happened I thought—oh, I was afraid for you, but I was afraid as well of the way you'd look at me if you saw…"
"I'm looking at you now. Can you see anything to be afraid of?"
She shook her head. "I— No. But, Arach, why did you never tell me you already knew?"
A flush that was not to do with the firelight rose in his face. "Because of how I knew. You're not the only one who was afraid."
"You thought I'd—?"
He lifted one shoulder in an uncomfortable shrug. "I… Well, I never thought it—my gift—was unclean. But you—when I told you, earlier…"
"I know. I'm sorry, I don't deserve that you should—"
His arms came round her, close against her hard, unyielding form. "It doesn't matter."
"I'm sorry," she said, muffled against his shoulder, seeking comfort to which she had no right. He would forgive her without question, wouldn't ask for reassurance, she knew. But when she looked back up at him, she saw a trace of fear still in his face.
"You changed my mind," she said.
"What I said?"
"Yes. But, Arach, listen." She looked into his eyes. "What you said changed my mind. But if you hadn't said it, if you'd given me more time, I would have changed my mind anyway."
"Because?"
"Because it's you."
For a moment his face was naked with relief. His hands relaxed against her arms, and it was only as they did that she realised the cold was leaving her body, evaporating as water evaporates under the heat of the sun. For a moment it left a skin of damp behind, making her clothes and hair stick to her, then that too evaporated and she was fully human again.
The glow of the oil lamp swelled, and in the fireplace edges of flame quivered, then leapt up between the coals. Warmth flowed back into the room.
She looked into Arach's eyes and realisation struck, a shock like huge hands descending onto her. "Ah gods, Arach, I was going to give myself up. If you hadn't stopped me—"
"Yes. Hence the anger." His arms were steady around her, and so was his voice, but too steady, as if he was having to hold them under control to stop them shaking.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I— Arach, I never wanted to leave you. I could only just bear to because I told myself it was for your sake—"
She reached up to try to comfort him, but as her arms went round his neck the after-effects of fear and relief swept over them, instant, electric. Heat kindled, as swift as the returning flames in the hearth.
"Eleria." His voice shook on her name, his control evaporating as the cold had done, into nothing but a shimmer of water vapour, a haze that blotted out the world. When he drew her again
st him, so close they might have been one person, she felt his hands shaking too.
They made it to the bed, but only because it was in the same room.
Much later, Eleria floated up through sleep like dark water, and woke to find herself still close within the circle of his arms. She turned her head so her face brushed his skin, so she could breathe in his scent—sweat and warmth, and the spices she used to fragrance the sheets—the scent that for the last nine years had meant safety and love, everything in the world that mattered.
She had steeled herself to walk away from it once. She knew, with a sudden leaden sinking in her belly, that she would not be able to do so again. Not now he knew, not now he'd shown he loved her still.
"What are we going to do?" she asked him. "Both of us, with gifts they'd kill us for?"
His voice was slow, heavy with the aftermath of pleasure and with sleep. "Must we do anything?"
"Ah gods, Arach, how can we keep it concealed forever? The priests, they'll find out—"
"They don't always. We've lived undiscovered."
"Yes, but…" She pushed herself up on her elbow to look at him, and her breath caught as she saw the beloved lines of his face, jaw and mouth and cheekbone, outlined against the fire. As, too, she thought of all the years of concealment ahead of them, thought of how she would have to live again with the fear—not, this time, just for herself, but for him. "What if it's just so far? We've stayed undiscovered so far? What if we're already running out of time? What if we can't