7. Archer
Archer
When I regain consciousness, the first thing I notice is that the agony in my head eases sooner than usual. The piercing pain that follows a stint on the souldren’s tables is no more than a dull throb. The second thing I notice is that there’s a small, warm hand in mine, a soft palm against my own.
The bookbinder.
A shocked breath shudders out of me. My fingers tighten around hers and I force them to relax.
Easy. Gentle. Like I remember how to do this.
Like I’m not a man drowning and she’s not the only solid thing in the entire realm.
I don’t remember the last time I was touched like this, the last time I was offered comfort in its simplest form.
So I hold her hand between the bars of our cells, committing the feel of her fingers threaded through mine to memory, mentally tracing the small calluses from her work and the short half-moons of her nails.
I don’t stir, lest I wake her. What if this is it?
What if she lets go and I never feel this again?
The thought makes me want to do something desperate—drop to my knees, beg her not to move, promise her anything—
But I feel the familiar fury beneath the grief—hot and sharp. I want to snarl at the gods, at fate, at fucking Malevron for inflicting the cruelty that meant I could exist but not be real. Two centuries of reaching for things I couldn’t hold.
Until now.
Until her.
My skin hums beneath the contact, an energy surging where my palm meets hers… There is a pins-and-needles feeling in my limbs and a warmth pooling in my chest. The noise of the prison fades away and I inhale sharply as the sensation spreads to my fingertips.
I know this feeling—ancient yet familiar. The kiss of fire, a ribbon of smoke… It’s the flutter of power.
Power I should not have in this place.
Power that was ripped from me and ceased to exist within these walls long ago.
But it’s there… My magic is slowly heating my blood, trickling through my veins.
How is this possible? After two hundred fucking years in this cesspit, why now?
Is it some sort of trick? I hold my breath, both terrified and thrilled as I call upon the flames that were once as much a part of me as flesh and bone.
My eyes sting with tears. I can feel my magic rise to the surface—
“Archer?” Grayson whispers into the dark.
I snatch my hand back through the bars as though burned, heart pounding. “What?” It comes out harsher than I intend, and I realize I’ve turned my back to her.
“The welcoming atmosphere in here is really growing on me,” she says dryly. There’s a beat of silence before I hear her intake of breath. “Thank you,” she says instead. “For what you did.”
“I didn’t do it for you.” I sound like an asshole, I’m being an asshole, but I don’t know how to unpack what’s happening—the magic slowly infiltrating my body, the reservoir of it opening inside me, and the touch of the mortal bookbinder that seemed to ignite it all.
“For who then?” Grayson asks.
“Are you always this perky in dire times?” I don’t face her, not yet. Instead, I toy with the onyx power sparking at my fingertips, the bare bones of a plan starting to form in my mind.
“When I can manage it, yes.” She chews on her bottom lip as she tries to rub warmth back into her arms and I continue to study her from the shadows, intensely aware that I must play my cards just right here.
Mortals are easy to read, their desires so basic, so obvious.
And like everyone else, the woman in the cell next to mine wants something, badly.
So badly I can taste it. So badly I can use it.
At least for now. The thing about desire—about wants and needs—is that even when they’re met, they’re never adequate.
Life becomes just that—the fleeting, relentless search for enough.
I almost laugh. If enough exists, I’m yet to find it.
“I can get you out...”
A huff of amusement sounds from her cell. “And why would an Azkari prisoner of war do that for a mortal bookbinder?”
Why indeed. I wait a moment, body tense, chest tight, as I take a steadying breath. The distant chatter, the clank of iron chains, the moans in the depths of the dungeons all fall suddenly quiet. I can feel every poor bastard in here hanging on my words.
“Ke-Vor?” Cahir murmurs from his cell.
But I don’t take my eyes off the bookbinder.
Grayson pins me with that penetrating silver stare again, the molten fire reminding me once more of a better place, and then she does something I don’t expect. She laughs. The sound is layered—rich and dark and full of bite.
“Let me guess,” she ventures, folding her arms over her chest. “For a price?”
“Naturally. Everything has a price, the Azkari practically invented the concept.”
“And what makes you think I’m willing to make deal with you?”
“The fact that I can taste your desperation from here,” I say, because admitting the scent of her tastes like hope might break me.
I remain where the darkness pools thickest, tendrils of heat gathering at my boots like faithful hounds.
Magic is returning to me hard and fast now, that reservoir of power yawning wide within, full of untapped fire.
I let it build, and from the way her nostrils flare, I know she can sense it in the air around her; her knuckles turn white as she clenches her fists at her sides.
“I’ll help you escape and save your friends. In exchange, you help me retrieve something I need,” I say, twisting the ring on my pinkie finger.
Grayson is shaking her head, muttering something under her breath. “Never make a deal with the Azkari, never—” She cuts herself off before narrowing her eyes in my direction. “How do I know you can save my friends when you can’t even save yourself?”
There’s another ear-piercing shriek, and the metallic tang of blood is suddenly thick in the air. The souldren are hungry today it seems.
“Things are different now.” I let the power that’s returning to me dance around her.
She’s pacing again, her movements frantic. Her beautiful face is lined with anguish, not for her, but for her friends. They are leverage, to ensure her cooperation with Malevron. “The monsters… the souldren elite… They’ll come back?”
“Always.”
“How long? Until they come for me. Until—” She gestures wildly at the darkness beyond her cell. “How long do I have?”
“There is no routine to their methods. They torture when it suits them, when they thirst for selecting someone new to go to the tables.” I let that sink in. “But if I had to guess… Soon. They weren’t happy with my interference.”
“But—”
“You are running out of time, mortal.”
“Make a deal with an Azkari who won’t step out from the shadows? I don’t trust you.”
I can’t help the smile that tempts my lips, the sensation strange and foreign. “Nor should you. I don’t trust me either.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring.”
“You don’t want reassurance from me.”
Her anger burns brighter than her fear, which is of course, fascinating. I want to capture it, harness it into something more. “You don’t know anything about what I want.”
Pushing the loose strands of golden hair from her face, she pushes back her shoulders and lifts her chin in challenge. “Well, Archer…” she says. “Tell me this… If you can get out of this shithole, why are you here at all? What are you waiting for?”
The Azkari are not men. We are woven by gods. But in the presence of the bookbinder I feel human, I feel alive.
I lean in, just enough that she can make out my eyes in the dark. “Apparently, the right partner.”