Chapter 5

The crisp evening of the twenty fourth, a stranger stood in front of the courthouse door, fiddling with the lock.

Beside Te’ijal, Galahad sighed. "Did you fail to check the calendar again?"

"You checked it yourself," she reminded him. "We both know our appointment is scheduled for today." As if to prove her point, she grabbed his gauntleted wrist and tugged him forward until they nearly collided with the woman at the door. "Excuse me, is the courthouse closed today? We have an appointment we simply must make, we’ve been trying for-"

"Oh," said the woman, laughing a little, "yeah, it’s open. I’m just fixing the lock. Come on in." She opened the door, swinging it wide for them to step inside.

So it seemed that this was, in fact, happening. Galahad sat down in a stiff looking chair, but Te'ijal found she needed to pace.

She didn’t have to wait long until the clerk’s now-familiar face popped his head through the door. "Galahad Teomes and Te’ijal Ravenfoot-Teomes? I take it you’ve actually come prepared this time?"

"Yes," Galahad answered, standing suddenly. Te’ijal stepped to go beside him.

"Well, let’s get to my office and get this matter settled. I’m sure we’ll all be grateful to have it behind us."

Te’ijal disagreed, but she refrained from saying so. When they were all seated in his office and she’d checked the sign on his desk - Ravi, that was his name - she pulled out the marriage contract from her bag.

She placed it on the desk. "These are the terms of our marriage."

Ravi picked up the contract, reading over it for only a minute before his eyes widened. "This is dated from before the reconstruction of Thais."

In spite of herself, Te'ijal smiled. "We have been married for a long time."

"How?"

"Well," Galahad began, "for a very long time I did not believe in ever going back on one’s marriage vows, and so I-"

"I meant," Ravi said, cutting him off, "how are you still alive?"

The question kicked up a dormant spark of excitement from inside Te’ijal’s chest. "Can you not tell?" she asked, unable to resist the opportunity for dramatics. "We are not alive at all. My husband-" she faltered, frowned, and corrected herself, "- er, Galahad and I - we are vampires."

The clerk leaned back in his chair, as if scurrying away from the danger. "I have never performed a divorce for a vampire before."

"We don’t usually get married," Te’ijal said. "But I simply had to make an exception for-"

"That’s enough," Galahad said sternly. "Does it, ah, complicate the process at all?"

Ravi laughed. He didn’t seem like he meant to, but once the dam broke he was powerless to stop it, shoulders shaking and leaning hard into his desk. "You two," he said, finally calming, and his voice was laced with something far more severe. "No," he said. "One could say it even simplifies it, although in doing so it makes this entire situation a waste of my time."

Here it comes.

Galahad stiffened. "Pardon?"

Ravi leaned back in his chair. "I cannot divorce you."

For a moment, Te’ijal thought Galahad might have stood from his seat and slammed his palms against the table. "Why not? We brought-"

The clerk raised a finger, telling him to shush. Te’ijal knew the satisfaction would be short lived, but she couldn't fight the grin crossing her features. "I cannot divorce you, because in the eyes of Thais law, you have never been married to begin with. This contract applies only to the living."

She watched as the realization washed over Galahad. "Then…"

Ravi shrugged. "It’s up to the two of you. Clearly, this contract mattered to you. I’m sorry if you were looking for some closure I can’t provide." He sighed. "However, after this entire mess, I would deeply like to get back to clients I can actually help. I wish you luck, and I hope to never see either of you again."

Bewildered, Galahad stood from his seat. He seemed only half-aware of his surroundings as he stumbled out the door, Te’ijal close behind him.

She couldn’t help it. By the time they made it outside, she broke down into laughter, half from the realization that Galahad had no idea what he’d just put them both through, half from her nerves finally fraying in their entirety.

"What’s so funny, creature?"

"Oh, come now, Galahad, surely even you can see the irony? We went through all that effort to end our marriage, and we never really had one to begin with. And - and I knew, because I told you decades ago, when you were insisting that little clause meant I had to obey you."

"If you knew as much this whole time, why did you never bother to say anything?"

Te'ijal's laughter faltered.

She had, after all, been delaying the inevitable. This conversation, where she learned what this was all actually about, and presumably Galahad confirmed that he never wanted to see her again. "You clearly had some purpose in mind with this," she said. "I figured I ought to let it run its course."

She sunk down to the courthouse steps. "So, what's next?"

Galahad froze, but didn't answer. Instead, with an awkward clanging of metal, he sat down next to her. "I'm still working that out. This whole time, our marriage has been a commitment greater than either of us. Our contract was the proof of that. But without any contract..."

Te'ijal waited for the end of a sentence that never came. The silence she got instead made her uncomfortable, so she joked, "do you want to go get married again? Make sure this one counts legally, so we can divorce each other properly?"

That got a response out of him, even if it was just a scoff. "Absolutely not. That would be a waste of time."

"Because we've spent ours so wisely the past couple weeks."

He brought his fist up to his face, resting his chin on the heel of his palm. His fingers curled to cover his mouth, but Te'ijal knew there was only one reason he'd do that.

Despite it all, he was smiling.

As frustrating as this ordeal had been at times, she'd had quite a bit of fun. It was rare they worked together on something that didn't have deadly consequences for all of humanity. She wondered if maybe he thought so, too. Or maybe her joke was just so terrible it'd cracked his stony expression for a moment.

Just a moment, though. He dropped his hands to his knees, expression somber once more, and stood up. "In the absence of a contract, I suppose the only thing defining our marriage is our vows. As far as I'm concerned, we were married."

But not anymore.

Te'ijal stood up and found the will to ask the question she'd been dreading this whole time. "Is this goodbye, then?"

He turned around to face her. "It is." His mouth wasn't smiling, but his brows weren't furrowed, either. He really did almost look happy. "For now, anyways. I'm sure it won't be too long until we run into each other again."

It was perhaps the most non-committal reply he could have given, and the uncertainty gnawed at her after years of constancy.

But he seemed content with the idea of seeing her, which was more than could have been said for the centuries of their marriage. It didn't seem like such a bad trade.

She let herself smile and wave. "Take care of yourself until then, Galahad."

"I will." Before heading off, he waved back, and said the most baffling thing yet. "You too, wife."