“I’m all right.” I drew him over to me, and he tucked his face into my neck. He breathed a long sigh into me, and said my name, and I laughed at the pleasure of hearing my name in his voice again. “I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too.” He laughed and held me tighter. “Oh, how I’ve missed you.”

I played with his hair. Bright red hair, now with streaks of silver at the temples. “I can’t believe you looked for me.”

“I did more than that. They locked me in jail for three months in Ma-Halad when I went searching for you. They thought I was an accomplice for your breakout.” He laughed. “You deserted the Qin Army. That general, the Butcher? Oh, that got right under his skin.”

“They threw you in jail?”

“Shayat got me out.”

“She was with you?”

Sorcha pulled away just a little and propped himself up on an elbow. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Right. Ah, you’ve missed so much. She and I, uh…me and Shayat, we’re…we’re, uh, hitched.”

“Married?”

“Yeah. Got hitched in lyairo. Easier travel to come get you. Helped to get me out of jail, too. And then, we…well, we stayed hitched. Been together all this time. Is that all right with you? It just happened, you know, me and her.” He sighed and looked me in the eye. “When I say we’re hitched, I mean I love her. A lot. Deep and true, like with you. That sit all right with you?”

I confess, it took me by surprise. “I…how long?”

“Well, like I said, we hitched pretty soon after the army took you. So, nine years. Getting on ten.” He stole a glance at me, then turned his attention to the weave of the blanket we lay on. “As for the rest, me and her…well, you know, I won’t speak for her. Just me. As for me, that didn’t take all that long. Been sprung on her now for six, seven years.” He looked back up at me, searching me. “But, you know, I been looking for you all this time. A dozen years I been looking for you, Ariah. I hope that says something about us.”

“It does.” I ran a hand down the length of his arm. I looked down the length of him and drank in the sight of him. “I was all right with it in Rabatha.”

“Well, it was different in Rabatha,” Sorcha said. “It was sex and friendship, me and her, but it wasn’t love. And sometimes, you know, the shift from one to the other can be tricky for other folks involved.”