5. Archer
Archer
There is no untainted power in Gravereach.
It is all cold, soul-sucking, poisonous filth, and yet…
warmth radiates just beyond the bars of my cell—waves of magic washing upon black and broken shores.
There’s a ringing in my ears, and a primal instinct to step towards whatever sorcery this is, I can almost taste it on my lips.
Slowly, its ripples fade, and it’s then that I see her.
The woman is rigid with fear, her breath audibly catching.
In the guttering torchlight, I watch her scramble to press herself against the far wall of her cell, a weathered oilskin satchel clutched to her chest like armor.
The torchlight catches on her high cheekbones, and I find my gaze mapping her slender nose next, and then her full, slightly parted lips before my breath catches.
Those eyes. The same silver as the molten lava from my homeland.
Her hands are shaking—I can see the tremor even from here—and then her gaze meets mine.
They pierce me, straight through like a blade.
My hand shoots out, finding the wall beside me, fingers digging into stone.
It’s her. The silver-eyed mortal from the alley in Hanniel.
From ten fucking years ago. After all this time, the impossible has fallen into the cell next to mine.
And I suddenly can’t find my words. My heart is racing, thudding against my sternum as I try to cast aside my disbelief, as I hang onto the thread of hope that this is real, that the woman before me isn’t one of Malevron’s cruel illusions.
I fight to get air into my lungs. What is this madness? How is it that an unbranded mortal woman can see me? Why is she here? Another form of torture? Yes, this must be another one of Malevron’s cruel mind games, dangling hope right before me, only to rip it away.
But that silver stare draws me in all the same, something unspoken, unexplained…
My own hands are trembling now as I grip the bars of iron between us, my voice hoarse, “I have to ask again. Do you see me?”
She peers into the darkness where I’m mostly concealed, her pewter eyes wide and searching. “I see you.” Her voice fractures, though she’s clearly trying to keep calm.
The words hang in the air between us.
The darkness around me surges, responding to the spike of emotion I can’t quite suppress, tendrils of heat licking at the stone floor.
My body locks. My breath stops entirely.
For a heartbeat, two, three—I don’t move, don’t speak, convinced that any sound or motion will shatter whatever impossible magic has allowed this moment.
She spoke. To me.
Shock ripples through the cells of Gravereach. Whispers cascade through the cells like wildfire—voices I haven’t heard speak with such animation in decades suddenly calling out, some shouting Ke-Vor! The reaction rolls through the prison like a storm gaining momentum…
“Did she say she can see him?” someone murmurs.
“That’s impossible.”
“She has no visible brand. How can she see Ke-Vor?”
Even whispered, the sounds ricochet off stone, building into something like thunder, and I feel it vibrating through me. The awe pulsating through Gravereach is a living thing, pressing against my chest, and there’s an ache in my bones, like they’re restructuring.
“Silence.” The command leaves my lips on instinct, and the torchlight flares and flickers as if in response.
The hair on my arms stands on end and I blink at the fading traces of magic.
It can’t be returning, can it? A whisper of warmth drifts through the air, and for a moment, my senses sharpen.
The soft scent of lilac tickles my nose, but just as quickly as it came, it’s gone.
At my order, a hush falls over the network of cells. The mortal is clearly terrified, and though she’s bound to die here, a forgotten part of me doesn’t want to see her suffer.
I glare across the dark to my fellow prisoners in warning for good measure and I turn back to the woman who has made herself as small as possible in the corner of her cell, arms wrapped around her knees, golden hair falling across her eyes.
My hands shake where they rest against stone. I remain perfectly still in the shadows, every muscle locked tight, with my back against the adjacent cell wall, keeping a side profile in the dark, and fight for the composure that has kept me alive this long.
If I move toward the bars now like the strange pull inside me is telling me to, if I let her see how much this moment means, Malevron will have the power to take it away.
And then I understand.
If this woman is in the cell next to me, it’s no accident.
Her presence is designed to break me. Knowing that, makes her identity simple. My gaze drops to her practical clothing, the ink stains at her fingertips and the roughness of her worker’s hands.
There’s only one person Malevron would lock in the cell beside me. Only one person whose capture could turn the tides of the war ahead.
“You’re the new bookbinder,” I murmur.
Her eyes flit back to me, and I struggle to contain my reaction as she clearly maps my outline. “How do you know that?”
I am spellbound as she suddenly gets to her feet, strands of hair come loose from her disheveled braid, falling into her face. The color is rich and warm, a subtle mix of honey and tones ranging from pale, creamy gold to deeper, more burnished hues. Sunlight soon to be swallowed by darkness.
“Ke-Vor and Malevron were looking for a bookbinder for a long time,” Cahir calls out.
“Enough,” I hiss in his direction.
That silver gaze tries to penetrate the dark side of my cell. “It’s not me they were looking for.” Her expression shutters with grief. “That was Leo. Leofric Bergmunn… He was my mentor, my friend.”
The name echoes through me like a bell tolling in its tower, the name I’ve known for two decades, the name I chased across Lorevael countless times.
And now, in his place, is her. She’s being held here until Malevron can retrieve the Confluence.
He intends to have her repair it right in front of me, here in Gravereach.
He’s placed her here deliberately, another way to torture me, by positioning my potential salvation just out of reach.
I press my freshly tattooed back into the hard wall, the sharp pain bringing me back down from the elation.
But this, her being able to see and hear me, was not part of Malevron’s plan.
He wanted me to watch and know there was nothing I could do.
And as such, there’s no way he knew she would be the only unbranded person to see me in two hundred years.
“Besides,” the woman adds, steeling herself. “Malevron is dead.”
There’s a breath of silence.
Then, the whole of Gravereach erupts in dark laughter, some of the wilder inmates howling from the far reaches of the cells.
A low chuckle escapes me. “What makes you think that, bookbinder?”
She finds a bit of backbone now, straightening as she shoots back, “History? Education? The fact that before I was thrown in here, the whole of Lorevael was celebrating the Reclaiming—the end of the war when the Black Flame defeated him? Both of them are dead.”
“You hear that, Ke-Vor?” Cahir calls out with an infuriating note of amusement. “They’re throwing parties out there.”
The woman’s dark brows furrow. “Ke-Vor—what does that mean?”
“No idea,” I tell her flatly, tossing another warning look over my shoulder in Cahir’s direction who snorts a laugh before falling silent again.
But the woman’s brow furrows. “The Azkari who brought me here… they had the brand,” she says, her teeth chattering.
Beneath my skin, my muted magic tries to reach out, attempting to lay her open, to prise her apart to see what lies at her core.
For a second, I think it’s going to work, that my power has miraculously returned, but...
I am as broken as ever. Instead, I breathe in the subtle scent that drifts through the bars of her cell, a contrary mix of lilac and parchment…
stirring something within me I thought I burned out of myself long ago.
I harvest it like I do all other weaknesses and cast it aside before it can take root.
She closes her eyes and tips her head to the ceiling, cursing.
“Dead or alive, fuck Malevron. I’ve gotta get out of here.
If I’m trapped, if I resist whatever’s ahead Thorne will…
Raven will die. Yevna will die,” she trails off, her grief utterly raw.
The way she says the names tell me these people are her anchor, her reason for surviving.
That she’s more afraid of living without them than dying herself…
I knew that feeling, once upon a time. But now all I know is the torment of this place, and the nightmares that will unfold all over the realm if the bookbinder remains within these walls.
“You cannot stay here,” I agree quietly, though I do not share my reasons. Not yet.
Cold seeps through the cracks between the ancient stone, stalactites hang from the cavernous ceiling like spears, and in the distance, I can hear the scurry of rats. Just another day in Gravereach, except… she’s here.
Any moment, I expect her to vanish, to be ripped away—no more than a figment of my imagination. But there she stands; her hands tucked under her arms and her teeth chattering.
A scream echoes through the prison, the blood-curdling sound bouncing off the walls, causing the puddles of water in the cobbles to ripple.
Her throat bobs as she asks, “What was that?”
“We’re in an Azkari prison, Bookbinder. What do you think?”
Instead of responding, those silvery eyes watch me.
Then, something shifts in her expression—calculation replacing curiosity and fear.
I’ve seen that look before, though she doesn’t remember.
A strange sensation washes over me, warmth surges beneath my skin, as though something within is waking from a long slumber.
Her nostrils flare. “Come into the light.”
It’s a cruel paradox, having spent so many years yearning to be seen, only to now fear being perceived. “Trust me, the mystery is better than the reality.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she retorts. “But I want to see who I’m talking to.”
“And I want to be serenaded in the moonlight by the Eternal Triad. Yet here we are. I assure you; the darkness suits me just fine.”
I don’t miss the frustrated flex of her fingers at her sides, like she’s ready to take a swing at me. Wouldn’t that be something? A mortal woman, punching an Azkari in Malevron’s prison of despair? I’d welcome the pain if it meant her touch actually landed on me.
“What’s your name?” The question leaves my mouth before I can ask whether I truly want the answer after all this time.
Her name… a detail hidden from me from our very first moment in that alley.
Even all this time later, it’s protected by whispers in the wind.
There is ancient Azkari magic at play here, but why, I do not know.
“Grayson,” she allows. “You can call me Grayson. And what should I call you, cellmate?”
I give her a name that means nothing to me. It never has. “Archer.”
“Archer…” she experiments, as though she’s savoring its taste. I like the sound of it on her lips more than I should—
“Ke-Vor,” Cahir’s voice cuts through the dark, sharp with worry. “They’re coming.”
An icy talon rakes down my spine. And for the first time in two hundred years, the dread and fear that courses through my veins isn’t for me.
“Who is coming?” Grayson whispers, backing deeper into her cell.
“Former heroes of the House of Mirrors, corrupted into something far more terrifying than they ever were in life. They are Malevron’s personal guard, and the commanders of his armies,” Rook speaks for the first time, his words unsteady.
I hear Grayson’s breath catch as the unnatural sounds penetrate the dungeons. “What… What are they?”
I’m on my feet at the door to my cell, peering out into the shadows, an unnatural chill sweeping through prison. I don’t take my eyes off the movement just beyond the bars as Cahir answers, “The souldren elite.”