Noa could summarize Benjera with one word.

  Intense.

  His brown eyes never stopped moving as they scrutinized her, sharp and unwavering. He was glaring at her, she still hadn't figured out if that meant he was angry or if that was simply how his face worked. He looked like a warrior carved straight out of a fantasy movie. There was no softness on him. No fat anywhere. The hard lines of muscle were clean and deliberate. She vaguely remembered an anatomy class from before she changed majors, and absurdly, she thought he would fit neatly into a textbook diagram of the male form.

  And he was offering to marry her in this bullshit hellhole.

  He was mulling over his explanation. The purple grass was cool beneath her, damp from the water still soaking through her clothes. Her arms throbbed in waves, pain cresting and falling with each heartbeat. In the distance, birds chirped in overlapping rhythms.

  "Take my last name, link our DIS—if I die you get my property," he listed slowly. He sounded like he was figuring it out as he spoke. Clearly unprepared. Benjera was realizing how absurd the proposition was even as it left his mouth.

  Noa had a thousand questions and no idea which one was safest to start with. Her wet shirt clung uncomfortably to her skin, and she shifted when blades of grass tickled her feet. She had lost her shoes in the current. One more problem. One more reason to take the marriage offer seriously, she couldn’t wander around in bare feet in the forest.

  "So we get married and I drop you off in the river and go on my way?" she joked absently.

  Then immediately cringed. That was an awful thing to say.

  Benjera’s face lit up.

  Not just a smile but something transformative. It cracked across his features as he broke into a full-chested laugh that shook him. The sound was startlingly genuine, unguarded in a way his scrutiny hadn't been. It didn't last. The laughter collapsed into a rough coughing fit that bent him forward, one hand bracing against the ground.

  "You— You couldn't afford the taxes," he managed once he recovered, voice still rough.

  Damn. He was funny.

  "I should have expected that even in fantasy land I'd have to think about taxes," she sighed with a smile. Her gaze drifted back to her arms. The silver scars caught the light, almost iridescent against the angry red of her skin. The pain came in waves now, sharp peaks with valleys she could breathe through. Now that she knew they would heal, she could bear it differently. The lines were even, almost pretty in an awful sort of way.

  "Is it fraudulent to get married for citizenship? Am I going to have to play-act love? Sleep with you?"

  That was the weirdest part. Noa wasn't above being a mail-order bride if it meant getting out of the woods and into an actual bed. It was probably two in the morning back home. Her nap at her desk felt like it had happened to someone else entirely. Exhaustion was pulling at the edges of her thoughts. She felt like a stranger to herself.

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  Benjera stared at her. Hard.

  Then he glanced down at himself, at the bare chest still rising and falling from exertion, the lean muscle with occasional scars, the ridged abs, and looked back up at her slowly. His eyes trailed over her body with blunt honesty, no attempt to hide where his attention went.

  "You could."

  Heat flooded her face instantly and spread down her neck. The eye contact felt unreal, too direct, too present, like he could see straight through her. When was the last time she had actually looked someone in the eye instead of at a screen? Her heart kicked up a notch despite everything.

  "To the rest of your questions," Benjera continued, his eyes alive now with interest and that escalating intensity that made her skin prickle with awareness, "a lot of problems could be avoided by sticking with me. I'm not so bad."

  Noa looked away, focusing instead on the black altar in the center of the clearing behind her. The stone absorbed light rather than reflecting it. "This is crazy."

  "You jumped in the void well and burned yourself getting me out," Benjera said.

  The term made her stomach drop. A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with her wet clothes. Void well.

  "You… wouldn't?" she asked, turning back to him.

  "No. Also can't," he said bluntly. "I ought to be dead— Damn it. I lost my sword."

  He twisted to look back toward the stream, toward the place he had fallen. Emotional pain crossed his face as he pressed a hand to his head. The stream rushed quietly in its endless circle around them. Somewhere beyond the root railing, leaves rustled. Her fingers ached where they rested in her lap. His jaw worked for a moment before he looked back at her.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  He shook his head. "I'm alive and you're the reason. Marriage solves your problems, not mine."

  That was extremely noble. And suspicious. Pulling him from the water hadn't felt like a choice at all. It had been instinct, training, reflex. If another himbo fell into a void well tomorrow, she would do it again.

  She hated that she knew that about herself.

  "Anything else…?" she asked hesitantly. Marriage meant a lot of things. Her stomach tightened. "Children?"

  His eyes went wide. Then they flicked down her body again, lingering on her hips, her stomach, before returning to her face.

  "I can afford children."

  Afford!

  She smirked despite herself, despite the pain, despite everything. What a statement. A laugh tried to escape but came out as more of an exhale.

  "But you're right," he added abruptly, as if remembering something critical. He shifted closer, the movement drawing her attention back to the way muscle moved under skin. He looked both conflicted and eager. "We have a cycle to finalize the marriage. So I'll have to… at least once…"

  His gaze caught on her chest and stayed there for a beat too long.

  Heat crawled up her neck again. Her wet blouse was still shaped to her body, leaving very little to imagination. She resisted the urge to cross her arms, but there would have to be boundaries.

  "I'm not your property," she said firmly, meeting his eyes.

  He blinked with the decency of looking confused. "Agreed.”

  The simplicity of it steadied something in her mind. The grass was soft beneath her. The air was warm. Her arms hurt, but she was alive. This was happening despite the part of herself trying to find proof it wasn’t.

  "This is the only way?" she asked.

  "Unless you want to sleep on the execution altar, yes," Benjera said with a brief, wicked smile.

  Her head turned slowly to the black square of stone nearby. The word settled into her understanding of the clearing. The altar suddenly looked much less like decoration and much more like exactly what he'd called it. The geometry of the space took on a different quality, purposeful and designed for something specific. Noa was never one to hesitate in making a decision. The facts were clear.

  "I'll marry you," she said.