Page 15 of Snowed in with the Ice Elf

“What are you not telling me?”

He sets the Chronicle down carefully. “The ritual requires complete trust.”

“Okay...”

“Complete trust. You must trust me entirely, and I must trust you.”

“And?”

“And trust cannot be forced or faked. The magic will know. As we discovered last night.”

“But we just met.”

“Yes.”

“And the bond is permanent.”

“Yes.”

“So we have to completely trust each other to be permanently bonded, even though we’re strangers who already failed once?”

“Essentially.”

I study him in the emergency lighting. He looks deeply uncomfortable. “Have you done this before?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“The ritual was not scheduled for another thirty years. Edgar was supposed to prepare his heir, just as his grandmother prepared him.”

“But Edgar died.”

“And you triggered the Chronicle early.” His ear twitches. “The treaty requires renewal every hundred years, but it can be invoked at any time if the Chronicle is activated.”

“So this is a mistake. An accident.”

“An unexpected circumstance.”

I process this. “Why isn't Margaret's partner doing this renewal?”

“The treaty requires new participants each century,” Stenrik says. “Once bonded, you're done. You can't renew again.”

“So this is your only chance.”

“And yours.”

The weight of that settles between us. One shot. One bond. Forever.

“Wait.” I narrow my eyes. “If you've never done this, and it wasn't supposed to happen yet, why you? Are there other Vetrfolk?”

“There are. But I was already here. Henderson's statue.”

Right. His post. Where he's been for 150 years. “So we're both unprepared, neither of us knows what we're doing, and we have to completely trust each other to be permanently bonded?”

“Essentially.”

“That's not better!”