9. Saige
Saige
His lips scorch mine—claiming, taking, fingers threading through my braid and pulling it taut, locking me in place.
I don’t want to submit, I don’t want to yield, but if temptation has a taste…
It’s him. And I’m powerless to stop myself.
With a soft gasp, I open for him, kissing him back recklessly.
The brush of our tongues sends me into a spiral, longing rising up from somewhere I thought buried within.
Power erupts from the Azkari general, blasting the souldren elite back from my cell.
But he shields me, his sudden magic forming a barrier between us and the monsters.
Archer is everywhere, pushing me hard against the wall, as though he’s searching for something more.
For whatever reason, I want to give it to him.
His body is flush with mine, radiating heat, a towering wall of man—Azkari—and my breath hitches as he continues to descend on me.
My traitorous body responds before my brain.
My heart races as I meet his aggression, his need, his fire, stroke for stroke before he catches my lip between his teeth.
Against every fiber of willpower in my being, I arch into him, seeking friction, seeking relief from this wave of need rushing through me. I don’t remember the last time I kissed someone, but I know it was never like this.
The taste of him frays every thought, every harsh remark, and suddenly, he’s under my skin.
I’m burning up as he kisses me harder, deeper.
His face has stubble, I realize. It’s rough in the most addicting way, the scrape of it causing pinpricks of pain that melt away as I lose myself in the feel of him.
He kisses like he’s savoring me, as though having me like this only makes him want to devour me more.
There’s a hunger to him, and it seems… insatiable.
Lewd comments and wolf-whistles from the inmates of Gravereach echo through the cells, but I’m too far gone to care.
I feel magic wrapping around us—our bargain locking into place.
But it’s nothing compared to Archer himself.
He is ruthless with every sweep of his tongue, making me wonder what he could do with it between my legs.
The threat of Malevron’s shimmering reflection is forgotten amidst the heady desire.
I tell myself that life is short and full of pain, so I may as well make the most of what pleasure I can…
I’m desperate for Archer to touch me, my nipples hard and aching beneath my shirt.
Relentless need coils inside me. I’m not sure when my hands fall to his broad chest, but my palms meet the hard, solid muscle.
He feels nothing like how I imagine a broken prisoner of war would feel.
There are no ribs sticking out at sharp angles, no trembling limbs. He is a fucking fortress.
The ground falls away beneath me. There’s an energy around us and all my senses blur together. Everything has faded into a swirl of black heat, and nothing matters but for his mouth on mine—
My heart punches through my chest as the cold realization dawns on me.
He kisses as if to prove a point.
Is it that I’m a mere mortal powerless to his Azkari charms? Is it that he can make me want him even on my worst day? It hits me as we claw at one another—my friends are being held captive by a notorious sadist and this is what I’m doing with my newfound freedom?
Cool wind kisses my skin, not the stale air of the cell, but—
My feet touch the soft earth of a forest floor.
My nose fills with the scent of pine, the clean air tickling my lungs while birdsong dances in the canopy. Leaf litter slides beneath my wet boots, and the soft rustle of the underbrush tells me there is plenty of life here.
Gravereach prison is gone.
I stagger back, pressing my fingers to my bruised lips and blinking against the dappled light as I finally take in the sight of my rescuer—or my captor, I don’t know yet.
He doesn’t look like the Azkari I’ve seen—all pristine beauty and flawless elegance.
No, Archer has the look of someone shaped by war, violence and brutality.
He towers over me, broad and braced against his own coiled power.
The slivers of skin that I can see beneath his black clothing are littered with scars—as though he were born on a battlefield.
His hair paints a similar picture: rich obsidian waves fall loose around his face, wild and unkempt.
I can’t tear my eyes away from him, not his weathered, tanned skin—unheard of amongst the Azkari—nor the fine lines around lush mouth, or his prominent, high cheekbones that look sharp enough to cut glass.
A neat beard covers the strong, defined line of his jaw, his bone structure as angular as the carvings of the gods back in Hanniel.
His dark brows and deep-set gaze make him appear intense, brooding—or maybe that’s just who he is…
He’s watching me with piercing emerald eyes, waiting.
And that’s when I feel it—recognition. A wave of it washes over me, so powerful I almost stumble beneath the force of it. I blink at the warrior before me, my mouth agape like a prized idiot.
Archer’s voice is low, dripping with dark amusement. “So you do remember me.”
I barely hear him. My mind is already ten years in the past, when Leo, Yevna, Grim, Raven and I were celebrating a special commission I’d finished for the king.
Reid had been there too… his disappointment palpable as I battled another episode of pain.
I’d rushed outside in the hopes of being able to hide how bad it was from him, and the others, not wanting to be a burden, to ruin the occasion.
I was trying desperately to compose myself when my whole body went rigid, as though sensing something I could not yet see.
And there in the alley, had been a pair of devastating emerald-green eyes.
My response had been to throw my paring knife at the figure in the dark and run.
For a brief time, I’d convinced myself I had been imagining things, until I found my knife the next day, a sheen of crimson on the steel…
“It was your blood on the blade,” I whisper now.
“It was my blood on the blade,” he allows, his fingertips brushing against the side of his neck, where a thin pale scar blemishes his skin. One I gave him.
My stomach flips. That night in the alley—I’d all but convinced myself I imagined the whole thing, even with the memory of the blood on my knife.
A fever dream brought on by pain and exhaustion.
But he was real. He is real. This Azkari standing before me, who just had his mouth on mine, is the same figure who watched me from the shadows ten years ago.
I gave him that scar.
The thought should horrify me, but instead there’s something else—a strange flutter of… what? Connection? I try to speak, to ask him why he was there that night, what he wanted—
But then my eyes drift a few inches lower.
My breath catches again, this time in horror.
The old scratch from my paring knife is overshadowed by a much larger mark on the side of his neck.
At first, I try to convince myself it’s a tattoo. Some Azkari warrior tradition I don’t understand. But the texture is wrong—raised, silvered, the kind of scarring that only comes from—
A brand.
My heart stutters. No. I lean forward despite myself, needing to be wrong, praying I’m wrong. But there’s no mistaking it.
It’s strikingly beautiful yet terrifying: an almond shaped eye with a large, prominent pupil that seems to catch the dappled light.
The scar tissue is raised and silvery-white against his tanned skin, with delicate lines radiating from the design like cracks in glass.
My mind scrambles, trying to make the pieces fit.
The Azkari who took me from the Copper Kettle.
The souldren. The stranger from the alley.
The prisoner in Gravereach. The green eyes that have haunted me for a decade.
“You’re…” Pulse racing, I stumble back, with a yelp, falling right on my ass in the dirt. “You’re one of his…”
Fury flashes, rage distorting Archer’s handsome face. “I’m what?” he challenges, his voice booming across the forest as he closes the gap between us in a single stride. “You think I’m one of them? You think I chose this?”
I’m bound to the enemy. I kissed the enemy. Thick waves of dread wash over me, suffocating me as I try to gulp down enough air to fill my straining lungs. What have I done?
Onyx fire explodes from Archer.
Instinctively, I throw my hands up to shield myself, but the fire doesn’t touch me.
Instead, it rages all around us, pouring from Archer’s fingertips, scorching the trees and brambles, searing the canopy.
A savage wind whips through my braid, lashing through the fallen leaves, singing them into glowing embers.
My breaths come in shallow and fast, my shirt damp with sweat as the dark inferno rages on—
There’s a tingling in my chest and my jaw slackens as I behold the sight before me, realization dawning.
Goosebumps rush across my skin. A tremor wracks my hands.
And all the while, I’m leaning in, overcome by the urge to step closer, despite the very obvious danger.
Clipped words echo in my mind as I fail to speak aloud…
Obsidian power.
Onyx fire.
Battle-hardened.
Prisoner.
I take him in fully. His beauty is rough, devastating, and all-consuming.
A dark, seductive aura clings to him, a promise of destruction, a song of warning: to challenge him is to court ruin.
For a moment, his eyes ensnare me—unfathomable depths of emerald green, brimming with secrets and sins, beautiful yet cold, promising a world of danger beneath an exquisite surface.
The Azkari before me is no servant of Malevron. And if the Silver-Tongued Deceiver is still alive, then so is…