Galen propped himself up on one elbow and watched Piper’s face intently.
“What are you doing?” he asked, embarrassed. Galen had white eyelashes mixed with the dark red ones. Somehow he’d never noticed that before. Probably because you close your eyes when you kiss.
“You’re blushing again,” said Galen.
“I am not,” said Piper, despite the fact that he could feel his ears getting hot.
“Dare I ask what you are thinking about?”
“You, obviously.” This was true, but did not lessen the blush at all.
“What fascinating thoughts you must be having.”
Piper dropped his head against the paladin’s shoulder and muttered something. Galen chuckled and lay back, wrapping an arm around him. Piper closed his eyes, feeling pleasantly exhausted.
“I dreamed about doing this,” Galen said. “Every day.”
“If we do this every day, neither of us is going to be able to walk.”
Galen chuckled. “Not quite that. Well, all right, a great deal of that. But mostly I dreamed about being with you.”
A cool wash of relief went through him. He means it. He’s serious. He’s not going to get that look in his eyes and leap up and flee. Piper settled himself a little more securely against Galen’s chest. He could hear the even beating of the other man’s heart under his ear.
“I never thought about anyone else like that,” Galen said musingly. “Sex, yes, but not just…being around them. I would hear something interesting and I’d want to talk to you about it. I wondered where you were, and what you were doing. I believe I’m in love with you.”
He delivered that last line in the same calm tones as the rest, and for a moment, Piper thought he’d misheard. “I’m sorry,” he said, turning the words around in his head and failing utterly to find something that sounded similar. “Did you just say that you were…?”
“In love with you. Desperately. Terribly.” He still sounded light and amused, but Piper felt his heart beating faster and knew what a risk he was taking.
He’s the paladin. Of course he’s the one who takes the risks.
For a moment, Piper thought of pulling back. Galen had hurt him once already. Walking away now would be agony, but it would heal. Much more time in the paladin’s arms and that would change. He wouldn’t be able to push those feelings aside any longer. If Galen drove him away again, that wound would scar instead.
Galen’s fingers stroked through his hair again, and Piper threw the dice. “Oh good,” Piper said. “Because I am quite hopelessly in love with you as well.”
It did not quite ease the tension in Galen’s body. Long auburn hair fell over his face as he sat up, and he pushed it out of the way. “I’m terrible at this,” said Galen. “I don’t know how to be in love any more. Hell, looking back, I don’t know if I was ever any good at it. I’m going to screw up and hurt you and the thought of doing that kills me. All I can do is hope that I don’t fail you completely.”
“That’s how it works,” said Piper gently. “You hurt each other and you apologize and you learn better.”
“I’m a bastard. And a berserker. I’ve killed so many people. You have no idea.”
Piper put two fingers over Galen’s lips. “I’ve died a hundred times. I spend my life with corpses. I’m not afraid of you.”
Galen’s tongue flicked out across Piper’s fingertips and Piper inhaled sharply. There was a wicked gleam in the paladin’s eyes now, for all his solemnity.
“It may not work,” Piper said, determined to say his piece before Galen succeeded in distracting him. “In a month we may be sick of each other. You might decide that I’m horribly annoying and I might decide that you’re far too noxiously noble—”
“Ha!”
“—hush. You are relentlessly noble, even if you try to hide it. But we won’t know unless we try. And I’m willing if you are.”
Galen’s breath was warm against his fingers. “Even if you never get to sleep next to me?”
Piper surveyed the room, lingering on the disaster that had been the sheets. Tomorrow, he would apologize to both the washerwoman and the neighbors. “If there was only one thing that we could do together in bed, I have to say, I would not choose sleeping.”
The paladin laughed and wrapped his arms around Piper’s shoulders, and what they did for the next hour had nothing to do with sleeping.
Epilogue
Six Months Later
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It had been a dry summer and a drier autumn. The horses kicked up dust and the coaches traveled in a pale cloud. Dust got into Piper’s eyes and mouth and stuck to his clothes and he hated it, but he did not complain.
The three paladins in the coach were as silent as the grave. Even Galen had said nothing for the last ten miles. Shane and Wren might as well have been carved in stone, and Wren, at least, was usually as chatty as her namesake.
If you knew how to look—and Piper had learned quickly—you could see the signs of strain. Shane’s forehead had beaded up with sweat. Wren’s lips were set and white. Galen’s fingers were laced with Piper’s and he had been rubbing his thumb mechanically over Piper’s wedding ring. Piper had taken his gloves off in the heat and was beginning to think he should put them back on, if only so that Galen didn’t wear the engraving off.
Piper had been stunned when Galen went to one knee, in the finest romantic tradition, and begged for his hand in marriage. Moreso because he’d been holding a bonesaw at the time and there was a body open on the slab in front of him. “I…I…Galen, really? Are you sure?”
“It’s been five months,” Galen had said, looking up at him. “And I have come close to ruining it at least three times because I’m an absolute idiot. I expect I’ll probably come close again. If we’re married, at least I’ll have a chance to throw myself at your feet and apologize before you tell me to die in a fire.”
“That’s a terrible reason to get married,” Piper had said.
“How about that I don’t deserve you and I don’t deserve to be as happy as you make me, but I’m just enough of a bastard to try to grab onto something I don’t deserve?”
Piper had gulped and dropped the bonesaw. Kaylin had come down the stairs and was in the doorway, grinning. She had nudged Galen with her crutch. “Tell him you love him, you redheaded numbskull.”
“Did I not say that bit yet? Piper, I love you. I love you more than I love life. A lot more, actually. Would you like me to die for you? That might be easier than living with me, honestly.”
“No dying.”
“You don’t actually have to live with me. I thought we could maybe get a larger place with separate bedrooms, but I’m flexible. I know I’m hard to live with.”
“Your cooking is terrible,” said Piper around the lump in his throat.
“There, you see? And I have never learned not to drop my clothes on the floor. I know. I’m dreadful. Please marry me anyway. I love you. Did I mention that?”
“Mention it again,” Kaylin suggested.
“I love you, Piper. I want to have the right to worry about whether you’re eating enough and to tell you that you’re working too hard and to fuck you all night—”
Kaylin cleared her throat.
“—and I know that I’m a lot to deal with but I can’t get enough of you. Please marry me, Piper.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll dedicate my entire life to making you happy. If you have any enemies, I’ll kill them. Then you can dissect them if you like. Would you like that? I’ll do it. Just marry me.”
“Yes.”
“If you marry me, I swear I’ll—”
“He said yes, you dolt,” Kaylin said, nudging him with her crutch again.
Galen blinked. “You did?”
“I did.” Piper tried to pull him to his feet. “Yes. I’ll marry you. I don’t know why you want to, when you’re so much more…everything…than I am, but I will.”
“You will?”
“Ye
s.”
“Oh thank god,” Galen said, and swept him up in his arms, ignoring the blood and the corpse and Kaylin snorting in the background.
It had been a small ceremony, or as small as it could be, when the Bishop of the White Rat was the person presiding over it. Seven paladins had attended. Istvhan, that huge bear of a man who had worked with Piper on the problem of the smooth men, had given him a rib-cracking hug. “I told him to propose,” he had informed Piper. “He’d bought a ring a month ago and was dithering. Dreadful thing, dithering.”
“Thank you,” Piper had said, trying to regain his breath.
Now, sitting in the carriage, Galen rubbed his thumb over Piper’s ring again. Piper glanced at the side of his face and saw that the paladin’s eyes were closed and his lips were trembling.
It was good that Istvhan had come down from the north to speak to Beartongue, and not just for the wedding. Barely a week later, word had come from Anuket City that the ruins of the great temple of the Saint of Steel were being cleared at last.
“But it’s been years,” Piper had said. “I thought they’d have done it years ago.”
Galen had shaken his head. “Cursed ground,” he had said. “The high priest burned it when the Saint died. Said that he wanted to make a pyre fit for a god. I thought it would lie in ruins forever.”
It made sense. Anuket City was built on profit. If anything, Piper was astonished that the temple had not been cleared within a week to put in a warehouse.
“We are all going,” Galen told him. “All of us. One last pilgrimage, to lay the dead to rest.” He swallowed. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course.”
And so here he was, in this stifling coach, coated in dust, with three paladins pretending to be calm. A round dozen of them—seven paladins, Stephen and Istvhan’s partners, a functionary of the Rat and Jorge of the Dreaming God. And Piper himself, of course.
The coach stopped. When it became obvious that none of the three were going to move, Piper flipped open the shutter and looked out onto an expanse of burnt stone. “We’ve arrived,” he said.
They stayed statues a moment longer, and then Shane let out a long, long sigh and opened the door. They stepped out into the cool autumn sun. Piper no longer paused involuntarily at doorways, but he went last anyway.
The other two coaches had also stopped. Piper watched as the paladins emerged, and one by one, they turned to some unknown point in the ruins, like iron filings aligning to a magnet.
“The altar,” murmured Galen.
Stephen squared his shoulders. “All right,” he said. “Jorge, Clara, you know what to do. Brothers and sisters, let us end this.”
Galen squeezed his hand and stepped away. Piper gazed after him, wondering if he should follow, when Jorge tapped his shoulder.
“Come with me,” said Jorge quietly. “We’ve made preparations. Just in case.”
Piper frowned. “Preparations?”
He followed the Dreaming God’s champion to the third coach. Stephen’s partner Grace and the Rat priest were already inside it, and the other two drivers were standing on the board at the back. Clara, an enormous woman as large as Istvhan, stood outside with her arms folded. She nodded to Piper, though her eyes were still on the seven paladins. “All right,” she said softly. “In the event that something happens to set them off, we’ll have seven berserkers to deal with. You, Grace, and Zale will stay in the coach, and Matthias here will get you the hell away from here.”
“What about you?” asked Piper, frowning.
Clara smiled. “Jorge and I will stay and watch and clean up after.”
Piper looked her up and down. She was very large and powerfully muscled, but she wasn’t even wearing armor. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He looked at Jorge for confirmation. Jorge nodded. “I’ve fought two of these men before,” he said quietly. “I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t lose.”
“We don’t expect trouble,” said Clara. “But we’re planning for it anyway.”
Piper looked past her, to where the paladins had threaded their way through the ruins. They stood in a semicircle around a vast, fire-blackened stone slab. As he watched, one by one, they went to their knees.
They waited. The vigil kept at the coach could not compare to the one at the altar, but it felt like vigil nonetheless. Piper swallowed repeatedly. Jorge tapped his foot. Grace wrung her hands. Zale, the slender solicitor-sacrosanct from the Rat, kept pushing their hair out of their eyes, whereupon it would immediately fall back down.
At last, Istvhan rose. He turned toward the coach and lifted a hand in acknowledgment. Clara let out a long sigh of relief.
Would she have fought the man she loved? Somehow Piper thought she might. There was a hard practicality to Clara.
The others began to rise. Only Marcus and Galen stayed kneeling for a long time.
Stephen made a beckoning gesture. Clara pushed away from the coach and nodded to the others to follow.
The stones turned underfoot. Weeds had sprouted between blackened tiles. Even now, Piper could smell burning.
It had been a very large temple. It took a long time to reach the altar, and still Marcus and Galen knelt before the stone.
“Speak to him,” murmured Stephen to Piper. “I’ll take Marcus.”
Speak to him? What could Piper possibly say to a man in mourning for a god? He swallowed hard and nodded.
Galen’s shoulders were drawn tight. Piper winced in sympathy for how his legs must feel, kneeling so long on the uneven terrain. He reached out and put a hand on Galen’s shoulder, and the paladin flinched.
“Galen,” he said softly. “Galen, I love you.”
“He’s dead,” said Galen.
“I know.”
“Something that big shouldn’t die. It’s like the ocean or the wind dying. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“It’ll never make sense.”
“I know.”
Galen’s hand came up, slowly, and squeezed Piper’s. Piper waited.
Finally, the paladin took a deep breath and rose to his feet. “Thank you,” he said.
“Of course.”
Galen turned away. Piper looked past him to the altar stone. Nothing but a chunk of stone in the middle of a burnt-out ruin. A strange thing, to have such power over men.
You were the center of Galen’s life, Piper thought, to the absent Saint of Steel. I cannot forgive you for what you did to him, but perhaps you had no choice. And you made him the man he is, and I love that man very much.
Thank you for my husband.
He reached out and laid his fingertips on the broken stone in gratitude and reverence. Bare skin touched sun-warmed stone.
And suddenly Piper knew what it felt like when a god died.
About the Author
T. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon, an author from North Carolina. In another life, she writes children's books and weird comics. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy and the Eisner, and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, Nebula, Alfie, WSFA, Coyotl and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections.
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This is the name she uses when writing things for grown-ups. Her work includes horror, epic fantasy, fairy-tale retellings and odd little stories about elves and goblins.
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When she is not writing, she is probably out in the garden, trying to make eye contact with butterflies.
Also by T. Kingfisher
As T. Kingfisher
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Nettle & Bone
Paladin’s Strength
A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking
Paladin’s Grace
Swordheart
Clockwork Boys
The Wonder Engine
Minor Mage
Nine Goblins
Toad Words & Other Stories
The Seventh Bride
The Rave
n & The Reindeer
Bryony & Roses
Jackalope Wives & Other Stories
Summer in Orcus
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Horror Novels:
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The Twisted Ones
The Hollow Places
What Moves The Dead
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As Ursula Vernon
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From Sofawolf Press:
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Black Dogs Duology
House of Diamond
Mountain of Iron
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Digger
It Made Sense At The Time
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For kids:
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Dragonbreath Series
Hamster Princess Series
Castle Hangnail
Paladin’s Hope: Book Three of the Saint of Steel Page 26