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“I dragged myself from the Gel. Threatened an old friend from my time before the monastery until they helped me heal up. I stole some talons, and left Anamora behind. For five years, I served a warlord in Bersalt,” she says, naming the eighth region of the peninsula, where disorder runs rampant.

“I rose in their ranks until I was their most trusted advisor. Then I killed them and took their place. I destroyed everyone who stood against me. I amassed power and wealth. When the king died, I was ready. I raised an army. I bathed in blood, and won a crown. And I won you. This is no ruse, Silver. I am king, and you are my bride.”

I do not know how this wolf of a woman can look at me with such hunger, such avarice, as if I am as silver as my name.

“Perhaps you no longer love me, Silver,” says Lark. “Perhaps you never did. But here I am. I am yours, and you are mine.”

She moves closer to me. Her hand on my jaw, her other on the small of my back. She holds me like I am fragile glass, her touch light but firm. I think I could break her hold in an instant, but I cannot move. Every fingertip against my skin marks me as indelibly as ink on vellum.

I touch her in return. I trace the contours of her face. Her youthful softness is all gone. She is as unforgiving as Braithen’s rocks, eyes as stormy as the Gel. She is so dear to me still.

“Why ten years?” I ask, shakily. “I did not know you lived, but if you knew…”

“I wanted to be sure that no one would have the power to separate us again,” says Lark. “And I admit it, Silver – I wanted revenge against fucking Anamora, against every person who wronged me. Now I’m king, I can have it.”

“Am I a person who wronged you?”

“Did you look for me?” Lark asks. And finally, I see something of the old Lark beneath the scars, the muscle and knife-sharp self-assurance. She is accusing me, yes – but she is also asking . “Or did you simply forget me?”

That time is an old wound. I fear to open it. So instead I ask her a question in return. “Why wed me?”

“You know very well the price for attempting to kidnap an heir of the First Witch is death,” says Lark. Her scar is a stark reminder of how close she came to paying that price. “But I have not kidnapped you. I am king, and you are my bride, and no one can take you from me.”

Her voice is fierce.

“You cannot have become king for me alone,” I whisper.

“When I was young, I was a thief, and proud of it,” Lark replies.

“Then I met you, and I changed all that I was. I became the kind of girl who would have said no to a crime lord.” A wry twist to her mouth.

“And then I became this – for you. You’re the moon that pulls the tides of my nature, Silver.

That’s the truth of it.” She draws closer to me, no distance between our bodies.

“What did you become for my sake?” Lark asks.

“Perhaps my loss did not change you at all.”

When I do not answer her grip tightens, her voice darkness. But I hear the tremble in that voice – the fragility.

“We will never be apart again. Even if you reject me, I will protect you. Even if you hate me, I will love you. You may have all the manuscripts you like – all the solace you desire. But I won’t let you go, Silver. You need to understand that. No matter how little you think of me.”

I have always been a good student. And Lark was always my favourite subject. I look at her now, and I know her – all her fractures, her darkness, her wounds.

Ten years, she avoided me from fear. Fear that I had never loved her, or stopped when I learned the truth of her.

Fear that I would turn her away. Only now that she is the most powerful person in the peninsula, only now that her armour is thicker and stronger than a mountain’s heart, can she bring herself to stand before me once more and ask if I looked for her, grieved her, when a guard callously cut her throat and left her for dead.

I know my words could break her like the great prow of a ship against Braithen’s rocky coast. But I have never wanted to hurt Lark. My heart breaks for her instead, and for me.

“What nonsense,” I say, finding my voice through the pain. “If I am the moon, then you’re beholden to me. You’ll let me go if I desire it. But I don’t. I never shall.”

Lark stares at me, dark eyes fixed upon me.

“I looked for you,” I say. “I ran away a dozen times, and a dozen times I was dragged back to the monastery in Anamora. I vowed to them I wouldn’t stay.

I vowed to them I would find you. But in the end, I told them I accepted you were dead and gone.

At last, they allowed me the seclusion of Braithen.

I decided it was enough. But I never forgot you, Lark.

And I have proof. Send one of your soldiers to collect my manuscripts,” I tell her.

“Or take me there. But you must see them. Please.”

Lark gives me an assessing look, then walks away from me to the entrance. She barks out an order, and there is a flurry of activity beyond the tent.

My manuscripts are brought to me, carefully piled, swaddled in silks. They’re placed in the tent. Lark watches the soldier, face forbidding. They bow and leave.

I pick up the first that comes to hand. Serene’s Ethics . “Open it,” I urge. “Look.”

She turns the pages. I know what she sees.

They all follow the same pattern. Ten pages, exquisitely rendered, all looping Braithenese-style script and luminous art of all manner of fine creatures.

The hart, the hare, the russet fox. Then two pages of errors: just enough to ensure no monk would seek to add my copies to any hermitage or monasterial library.

Many monks have sighed and shaken their heads over my work, but they accepted my failures.

I am not valuable because of my penmanship, after all.

Then, finally, the pages no one thinks to look upon. Page upon page of tight scrawl, humming with power. Every page is a spill of ink and magic. Magic for seeking out ghosts. Magic for protection. Magic for luck, and safety, and shelter. All of it threaded through with Lark’s name.

“What you felt, I felt,” I tell her. “I have dreamt of you every day since we were parted. I spent my magic secretly seeking to protect you.” I swallow. “I didn’t know if you lived or not. In truth, I thought you were dead. But I never stopped trying to keep you safe.”

As she reads, I see the understanding blaze across her face.

“You blessed me,” says Lark, voice awed. “Every time an arrow narrowly missed my throat – when a blade went through my chest and missed my heart – all of it was your will and your magic.”

“I hid here because I grieved for you,” I say to her, never looking away from her face. “I missed you. I loved you. I still love you, Lark. That will never change.”

We stare at one another over the books. And then suddenly Lark shoves the manuscripts aside. They fall to the floor with a flurry of pages, the thud of heavy spines. She grasps me and I grasp her, as she nearly lifts me off my feet and presses her mouth hungrily to my own.

She has fought wars for me, and killed for me. I do not know how to be worthy of that devotion. But I do not think worth has very much to do with what she feels for me, and I feel for her.

Magic’s wiliness. Might’s steel. When we return to Anamora, we will have a wedding before the city, and she’ll place a golden torc marked with those words around my throat. I have never thought of myself as wily, but I will be whatever I need to be to keep Lark safe.

“My king,” I whisper, when our mouths part.

“My wife,” Lark says in return, voice hungry.

And then she kisses me once more. In her kiss, I feel a portent of what may come: a world blood-red with Lark’s vengeance, led by a woman with cold iron in her bones and a sword in her hand.

But there is another future, folded into her kiss, where the world is made anew.

A kinder world, where those with magic in their blood are not bound to monasteries and service to the crown.

A world where girls like Lark need not choose crime or falsehoods or a sharp knife.

The choice lies in my hands. And I know what I will do. But our future will wait until morning.

“It’s our wedding night,” I say. “Will you celebrate it with me, Lark dearest?”

She removes my spectacles, carefully folding the fragile arms at their hinges, then places them aside. It’s a miracle we haven’t broken them yet, in truth.

Without them, her face is blurred and soft, her smile radiant.

As I told Lark long ago, there are no monsters. There are only people who choose chaos or order, compassion or destruction, for their own ends. But Lark could never be anything but goodness, to me.

I will give you the world , I think, already scrawling spells in my head. A world of love, my darling. And all the vengeance you desire.

She draws me close, into the strength of her arms, and I think no more.