Evening took one more step downward outside, and the cave let it, but on their terms.
"On mine," said a voice that had learned how to be quiet without becoming soft.
Kael Morcant stepped from the shadow near the stone bench as if shadow had been keeping his coat for him. Sleeves rolled with neat malice. Hands empty and mannered. He looked at Sera Vale first—not at Brukk, not at the wolves outside—taking the exact measure of a woman who had walked in under her own sentence.
He inclined his head just enough to call it respect and not enough to call it apology. "You are Sera," he said, making the name earnest. "I am Kael. This is Lady Vespera." His gaze didn't leave Sera when he said the name; the respect belonged to both women and he made the room understand that.
Sera tipped her chin a fraction. "I'm here by choice," she said, before anyone could try to be grand on her behalf.
Kael's mouth acknowledged the answer as if it had been waiting for it. "Then we obey choice," he said. "We obey our rule." His eyes touched rope, knot, ribbon on Brukk's wrist, wolves' absence like a held breath. He counted each tool and then looked at Brukk. "You spoke our terms."
"No fear. No harm. Alive. Unscarred. Mouth free," Brukk said, because liturgy works when everyone knows the lines. "Safe-word Stubborn."
Kael nodded once, a king granting the kingdom what it already owned. "We say them aloud to teach the cave. It keeps memory in stone." He stepped one pace closer—slow, visible. His hands stayed at his sides, palms open. "Sera."
"I hear," she said.
"If you say Stubborn, I stop. If you look at Brukk and say home, I step back and he decides stairs before I decide light. If you say name and look at me, I repeat yours until both of us agree with the sound. If you say wrong, I ask what and we fix that and not some other problem because it is easier. Agreed?"
Sera let the inventory move through her and find chairs. "Agreed."
"Prove me," Kael said, and lifted a hand to the side—permission without touch.
Sera's mouth shaped the word cleanly. "Stubborn."
Brukk's hand landed on Kael's chest—flat, not a shove, a stop written in muscle. Kael honored it without any theater at all. He took one step back, set both hands behind him on the bench, and waited for Sera to enjoy the power. She did, briefly, the way you take a sip of water to confirm the well still works.
"Good," she said. "Now begin."
Kael moved to his tools. Bowl; brazier; water warmed more by patience than by flame. He lifted his wrist to his mouth and bit, precise—a measured drop, nothing that would exhaust a god or feed a rumor. The blood beaded with a self-respect that matched the man, fell into the bowl, and unknotted itself into a soft cloud. The Bloodglass at Vespera's throat woke, meat-light crawling its veins to an obedient glow.
He set the bowl under the line where the single gray thread swayed. He did not invite Sera closer to the stone. He raised his chin toward the space above the shard, not the shard itself. "Stand there," he said, indicating a stone seam a hand's length from the table. "No touching. Let your breath be your hand."
Sera stepped to the seam. Brukk came with her, a half-pace behind and to the right—the place where a man's presence counts as proof instead of pressure. The knot she had set hummed faintly as she settled her weight and found a stance you can work from.
"Say your name," Kael said. "Once."
"Sera Vale."
The shard listened. The glow tightened, a jealous cat narrowing its eyes at a new sound near its bowl. Kael watched the phase between breath and light; his lips moved fractionally as if counting.
"Say mine," he said. "Only once."
Sera didn't blink. She looked at Vespera only enough to be polite to a queen in her home and then at Kael—because he had asked for honesty and this was where it lived. "Mine."
The Bloodglass pulsed quick—sharp envy, a flick—then steadied. The thread swung minutely toward Sera as if the air had learned her shape.
Brukk's hand settled to the knot at her shoulder, not to hold, to remind. You are tied into something you control.
"Say ours," Kael said.
Sera took one breath—clean, practical—and turned her face toward the shard without leaning. "Ours."
The light changed. Not brighter; truer. The jealousy remained—jealous light, the right kind, the kind that wants to keep and share without pretending it invented the idea. The thread found center again and stayed there like a truth you can build with.
Kael's head bowed one finger width. "Good," he said. Not praise; measurement. "Again. Name. Mine. Ours."
She did it. The light answered in the same grammar. The bowl gave off a thin thread of steam; Kael lifted it nearer Sera's mouth and let her breathe over it, not into. The steam carried her breath down and the shard ate envy without eating her.
Outside, a wolf growled—low caution. The cave passed the growl along its ribs until even polite stone remembered teeth.
Sera's eyes flicked to the gap, then back. "Cellar-apple," she said, naming the smell before anyone could use it to write on her.
Kael didn't turn. "Stairs. Watch," he called, a note shaped for wolves. The growl smoothed into listening. His attention returned to Sera as if the interruption had been a doctrine he'd given to a student and graded in the same breath. "If it watches, it learns no new names tonight," he said. "No fear; no harm. Continue."
Sera swallowed. Metal threatened the tongue and didn't win. "Name," she said, steady. "Sera Vale."
"Mine."
"Ours."
On the second ours the shard gave a wanting little purr, and the sound that wasn't a sound ran through the rope. Brukk felt it in his palm and adjusted weight like a man handling a spirited horse—not to restrain; to lengthen the stride.
Kael stepped closer—not near enough to touch, near enough for heat to admit the existence of heat. "You learned rules," he said, voice as flat as pooled water. "Three of them. No iron in the bed. Don't ask thrice. No bells on the body. Hold the first. I am asking you twice only. And here the bell is mine to ring."
Sera's mouth twitched, a small confession of liking a competent taunt. "I'll take your twice," she said. "I owe you no third."
"We agree," Kael said, and the cave took agree and filed it under things to be held to later.
Something brushed the plank at the cave mouth—a whisper of cloth that had decided to be important, the idea of hair that wasn't hair catching on splinter and refusing to be caught. Cellar smell stepped in the first inch the night allows itself indoors. Torn-ear huffed once in deep disapproval. The air pressed a small request into Sera's ear, the way a hand sometimes presses the lower back of a woman who isn't dancing.
Don't turn, Kael almost said, and did not; he let Sera keep her ownership of instruction.
She didn't turn. "Wrong door," she told the smell, and turned attention hard to Kael, to work, to the rope humming with her pulse. "Name. Sera Vale. Mine. Ours." She set the words like stones across a ditch.
The shard answered hungry-tender, flick-purr, the jealous light choosing who it loved.
Kael's eyes softened by a fraction you'd have to be a mirror to measure. "Well done," he said, and even on his tongue well remained a well, not a compliment—water where you need it. "Enough for a first tuning. We do not boil tools when warming sharpens them."
He lifted the bowl away, set it exactly where the brazier wanted it, and returned to the rope between pegs. With two deft motions he tied the oat-colored ribbon Sera had put on Brukk's wrist along the line above the shard—not touching, near enough to tease. The ribbon's grain took the cave's draft and moved. The shard noticed. Jealousy made its helpful little fist.
Sera let out a breath she wouldn't call relief in public. "You feed it like that," she said, looking at the space between ribbon and gem, "and it doesn't eat me."
"Yes," Kael said. "Jealousy is a sentence with objects you can choose."
Brukk's palm eased from the knot and returned. He didn't need to keep touching; he wanted the reminder that choice had handles now. He looked toward the mouth again, listening the way men listen when their hands already know what to do if someone mispronounces door.
Kael finally turned his head enough to scold the threshold without granting it face. "You stay there," he said to the night-blue attention curled about the plank. "You teach yourself hunger that watches. You will learn work tomorrow if you want to live in rooms with work in them."
The pressure withdrew as if offended and pleased at once. Torn-ear relaxed one inch, which for a wolf is five compromises.
"Now the rules hold," Kael said to Sera, restoring the smaller world they had made. "We stop on your word. We stop on mine before that if my reading says the gem tries to bite with the wrong teeth." He gestured to the bench. "Sit, eat bread, drink water. Tell your body what you did on purpose." He looked to Brukk. "You watch her breath. If it lies to itself, teach it its name until the lie is too embarrassed to stay."
Sera shook her head—amused, unwilling to give language too much credit. "You do use words like nails," she said, and then she sat. Not tired, exactly—braced. She broke a piece of bread, handed half to Brukk. He took it as if accepting terms again. She ate with the practical rhythm of women who can be hungry and brave simultaneously. The metal taste flickered and failed to take hold.
Kael moved to Vespera and smoothed a coil of hair into an obedience it had not asked for but was glad to practice. He bent, mouth near the cold ear. "Jealous light learned your name," he said, a lover's aside turned into accounting. "It lifted its eyes when ours was spoken."
Sera watched how he spoke to the woman on the stone—not heat, not sermon, intimacy as work—and seemed to decide, by some inner ledger, that this was a math she could live near.
"Tomorrow," Kael said without turning, as if Sera had already agreed to the second page, "we add water's memory. We let the ribbon and the thread change places and do not touch skin. We let the wolves spell the steps outside so the coat spends its time inventing manners. We invite Tawny to name a price for any errand our path requires." Now he did turn. "Tonight, enough. We have work that has to learn to like sleep."
Sera stood. The rope hummed a small farewell before yielding its task back to simple gravity. She touched the knot, checked that it remembered whom it belonged to, then let it fall. "We walk down together," she said. "We walk back under the same words. If I feel wrong, I say wrong and we fix that."
"Yes," Brukk said, a man enjoying the taste of competent sentences.
Kael lifted the bowl, tipped a thin thread of blood-clouded water into the brazier so heat could keep the secret. He set the bowl upside down to dry. He tightened the ribbon's tie a hair until the jealousy took just the right amount of bait. He put his hands palm-down on the stone's edge—owner's posture—and looked from Sera to Brukk as if appointing the hour to them.
"Work continues," he said, softer. "On our terms."
Sera nodded once, like a craftsman telling a table it belonged to the room. "Tomorrow," she said to the shard, to the stone, to herself. She took up her basket, set the kerchief back where hair behaves. "Brukk," she said, and he came to her shoulder like a tool that had memorized hands it liked.
They faced the mouth. The wolves stood to their feet without drama. Torn-ear looked at Sera, then at Brukk, then at Kael, and made the small animal decision to respect words for one more hour.
They stepped toward the plank and the blue dark behind it.
The oat-colored ribbon above the shard fluttered once in a draft no one else felt and then learned to be still. The Bloodglass held its jealous glow like a promise that had found the right sentence at last.