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The ride to Thornwick took a full day. Aldric pushed the horse hard because Elara had told him to ride hard and return fast and those were the only instructions that mattered. The road through the Ashwood was damp from overnight rain and the trees dripped and the air smelled of rot and wet earth and his neck throbbed with every stride of the horse.

The bite had scabbed over by the time he left Greyhollow. By the time he reached Thornwick it had cracked open again from the movement and the collar of his gambeson was stiff with dried blood. He did not clean it. He did not want to clean it. He did not examine that preference too closely.

Caswell received him in his hall. The lord was eating when Aldric arrived and he did not stop eating while he read the message. He chewed and read and chewed some more and wrote a reply with one hand while holding a leg of something with the other.

"Tell Lady Elara the shipment will arrive within the month," Caswell said. He looked at Aldric's neck. At the collar. At the stain. "Rough road."

"Yes my lord."

Caswell grinned. He had the grin of a man who assumed the world was crude and enjoyed being right about it. "Ride safe."

Aldric rode back. He arrived at Greyhollow as the sun was setting and the sky was the color of a bruise. He stabled his horse and went inside and a servant told him the lady was waiting in the hall.

She was standing by the fire when he entered. Same setup. Door closed. Shutters shut. Tables cleared. But something was different. There were items on the bench by the wall. A length of rope. A cloth strip. A small knife with a thin blade. A ceramic jar he did not recognize.

She looked at him and saw the blood on his collar and her eyes changed. Something flickered there. That hunger he had seen before but sharper now. Less hidden.

"The wound opened," she said.

"The road was rough."

"Come here."

He walked to her. She reached up and pulled his collar aside and looked at the bite mark. It was angry and red and the scab had split and there was fresh blood. She touched it. Pressed it. He did not flinch but his body tightened and she saw it.

"Does it hurt."

"Yes."

"Good."

She stepped back. "Take off your armor."

He did. Piece by piece. The gambeson last. When he stood in his breeches she walked around him and looked at the wound on his neck and the scars on his back and the old burn on his shoulder. She touched each one. Lightly at first. Then with pressure. Her fingernail traced the bite mark and pain shot down his arm and he made a sound and she stopped.

"You made a sound," she said.

"I apologize."

"Do not apologize. I want to hear you. I want to know what I am doing to you. I want you to stop hiding behind that silence of yours. Do you understand."

"Yes."

"Kneel."

He knelt. She went to the bench and came back with the rope. She stood behind him and took his wrists and pulled them behind his back and bound them. The rope was rough. Not silk. Not something made for comfort. It bit into his skin and she pulled it tight and tied it and he tested it once and it held.

"Can you break free."

"Not without effort."

"Try."

He pulled. The rope dug into his wrists and the pain was sharp and immediate and he stopped.

"Again."

He pulled harder. The rope cut and he felt skin give and warmth on his wrists and he stopped again.

"Good," she said. She came back around to face him. She crouched down and looked at him kneeling there with his wrists bound behind him and blood starting to seep from the rope burns and she put her hand on his chest. Over his heart. His heart was fast.

"You said you wanted to kill Harren," she said.

"Yes."

"Why."

"Because he touched you."

"Because he touched something that you believe is yours."

He said nothing. She was right. He knew she was right. She had told him he did not get to have her and he had said the words and he had meant them but underneath the words and underneath the meaning there was a thing that would not die. A thing that said mine. She had seen it and she was holding it up to the light now and making him look at it.

"It is not yours," she said. "Say it."

"It is not mine."

"Who does it belong to."

"You."

"And what do you belong to."

"You."

She smiled. Not the real smile. Something else. Something that had teeth in it.

She went to the bench and came back with the knife. The blade was thin and short. Not a fighting knife. Something precise. Something a surgeon might use or a craftsman. She held it in front of his face and let him see it and his heart rate spiked and he could feel the fear start in his stomach and move outward.

"I am going to use this on you," she said. "Not much. Not deep. But I am going to cut you and you are going to let me and you are going to stay still and you are going to feel it. And I am going to watch you feel it."

"My lady."

"Quiet."

She placed the blade against his chest. Below his collarbone. The steel was cold. She did not press yet. She held it there and looked at his face and he looked at hers and the room was silent except for the fire.

"This is the second mark," she said.

She cut. Not deep. A line of fire across his chest. The pain was different from the bite. Sharper. Cleaner. More precise. Like a letter being written. Blood welled up in the line and ran down his chest and he made a sound. Not a gasp this time. Something lower. Something that came from deeper.

She watched the blood run. Her eyes tracked it. Her breathing had changed. It was faster. Her lips were parted and her cheeks had color in them and she was not just watching. She was consuming it. She was feeding on it. The sight of his blood and the sound of his pain were doing something to her that went beyond satisfaction.

She cut again. A second line. Crossing the first. The pain doubled and his body jerked and the rope bit into his wrists and he made another sound and she put her free hand on his shoulder and held him still.

"Do not move."

"I am trying."

"Try harder."

A third line. Below the first two. His chest was a mess of blood now and the pain was a living thing that pulsed with his heartbeat. She set the knife on the floor and put her hand on the cuts. Her fingers pressed into the blood and the contact was salt on an open wound and he groaned and she did not stop. She spread the blood with her fingers. She painted it across his chest. She held up her hand and looked at it. Red and wet and shining in the firelight.

She put her fingers to her lips. She tasted his blood.

Something broke in the room. Something that had been holding a line in place. She tasted his blood and her eyes closed and her body changed. Her shoulders dropped. Her breathing deepened. She was aroused. There was no other word for it. The pain she had caused him had traveled through the blade and the blood and arrived somewhere in her body that responded with heat and need and she did not try to hide it.

She opened her eyes and looked at him and her face was different. The control was gone. Not cracked. Gone. What was left was raw and female and hungry and it scared him more than the knife had.

"You are mine," she said. Her voice was thick. "Your blood is mine. Your pain is mine. Your body is mine. Every scar is mine. Every sound you make is mine."

"Yes."

"Say my name."

"Elara."

She put her bloody hand on his face. Smearing his blood across his cheek. She leaned close and her mouth was near his and her breath was on his lips and her hand was wet with his blood on his skin.

"If I told you to die for me would you."

"Yes."

"If I told you to kill for me."

"Yes."

"If I told you to kneel here while I bled you dry."

"Yes."

She pulled back. She stood and looked down at him and the rawness on her face warred with something else. Something that was trying to come back. The control. The structure. The walls she had built. They wanted to go back up but they did not want to go back up and she stood there shaking with the effort of deciding.

She turned away from him. She walked to the fire and stood with her back to him and her hands at her sides and her fists were clenched and her shoulders were shaking and she stood there for a long time.

When she turned back the walls were up. The control was back. But it was thinner now. He could see through it if he looked. And she knew he could see.

She came back to him and untied his hands. The rope had cut deep. His wrists were raw and bleeding. She looked at them and touched them and her fingers were gentle and the gentleness was worse than the knife because it reminded him that the same hands that held the blade also held the kindness and he could not have one without the other.

"Clean yourself," she said. "There is a jar of salve on the bench. Use it on the cuts. Bandage your wrists."

She picked up her dress from where it had fallen. He had not even noticed her remove it. She put it on and buttoned it and she was Lady Elara again and he was kneeling on the stone floor with blood on his chest and blood on his face and rope burns on his wrists and an erection that would not go away and shame and need and devotion all tangled together in a place he could not reach.

"Tomorrow you will train the men as usual," she said. "You will wear a high collar. No one will see the marks."

"Yes my lady."

"Go."

He went. He cleaned the cuts in his room. He bandaged his wrists. He put the salve on the cuts on his chest. Three lines crossing. A mark that would scar. Her mark. He stood in front of the mirror and looked at it and at the bite mark on his neck and at the rope burns on his wrists and he saw a man being taken apart piece by piece and he did not look away.

He did not sleep. He lay in the dark and felt the cuts throbbing and the burns stinging and somewhere below that the thing that would not die. The thing that said yes. The thing that said more. The thing that was his and hers at the same time and could not be separated and could not be stopped.

He pressed his fingers to the cuts on his chest and he felt her hand there. And he waited for dawn.