Belfry

Three hundred and twelve steps. Two stone guardians. One night of lanterns over the city.

Sabine Lacroix is thirty-two, a master stone carver with stone dust on her hands, a dry tongue, and no patience for anyone who tells her a woman can't climb scaffolding. For three weeks she has worked alone by lantern light high in the open north belfry of the Lantern Cathedral, restoring four hundred years of weathered roses, and for three weeks something up there has been paying attention. The stone is warm when she touches it. Her chisels turn up sharper than she left them. Someone left her a rose.

Tonight is the Lantern Feast, and she has climbed up from the guild hall in deep emerald velvet, a laced corset bodice and a plunging neckline she cannot honestly defend, long copper-red curls loose past her shoulders, freckles across fair skin, green eyes, and curves the velvet barely holds. One carving left to finish. One last chance to say out loud what she has been whispering to them every night.

Brannoc is the one who listens: massive, quiet, deep dark brown skin with the faint grain of stone still in it, a shaved head, a full black beard, thick black horns, and huge slate-grey wings. Severin is the one who talks: tall and lean-hard, pale ash-grey skin, long ash-silver hair falling loose, silver stubble, pale grey horns and paler wings, and a smile that has had four centuries of practice. Both of them shirtless in dark leather. Both of them hers, if she is brave enough to ask.

They have kept the great bell for four hundred years. They have always been two. Tonight, with every lantern in Aubrevaux burning below, they would very much like to be three.