The temple women came at the half-moon and took her over with soft hands and hard eyes: the bathing, the oils, the gray shift that would become the rite robes, the hours of instruction in the bridal chamber's customs. The rite had a shape, and the shape had words, and the words had to be learned until they lived in her mouth like her own. The oldest of the women, a priestess with a face like a closed door, made her practice the vow until her voice went raw."I, Shen Xi, of the salt house of the coast, take Xiao Jin, crown prince of Dalang, before the Moon, with this body and this soul—""Again," said the priestess. "The Moon hears the heart behind the words. Your heart is not in it."Nine bowed her head and said it again, and the words tasted like ash in her borrowed mouth, because they were a lie built on a lie: a dead girl's name taking a living prince, a blade practicing the vow that would either save her or burn her, and she did not know which one the Moon would hear when the time

"There you are," he said.The words came out of the lamplight, and she did not understand them, because she was still on the stone floor of the rite chamber with the fire in her arms, except she was not: she was lying on the bed, the white-remade bed, and the moon column had crossed the room and now lay across its foot, and the lamps were lit, and he was propped above her on one elbow, looking at her, and his face was doing something she had never seen it do. Open. Unarmored. Like a man who had been holding his breath for a very long time and had just been told he could stop."What do you mean?" she asked. Her voice sounded strange to her. Everything sounded strange. The heartbeat under her ribs was still learning its rhythm, and she could hear it, and she could hear the lamps, and the silk, and his breath, and the whole loud unbearable miracle of being alive."I mean there you are," he said. "Under the other face. I have been looking for you under it for weeks. I knew you were in the

The moon came up over the moon-door, and she stood in the middle of the chamber and did not know what to do with her hands.She had known what to do with her hands for three hundred years. There had always been a next thing: a blade to clean, a route to memorize, a mark to study, a death to deliver. Now the next thing was a bed, and a man, and a night, and she had done this once, she had done it and it had unmade her in the best way, and she did not know how to begin it again, and she stood with her hands useless at her sides, and he watched her from the bed with his wolf-gold eyes half-lidded and patient, and he did not move to help her."You're thinking," he said."Yes.""Stop that.""I don't know how."He laughed, the boy laugh, and it undid something in her chest the way it always did, and he said: "Come here, love, and I'll show you. It's the same as yesterday. You were good at it yesterday. I have witnesses.""The Moon," she said severely, and he laughed harder, and she crossed