24. Archer #2
Daemos’ gaze flicks to the thick line of trees, where somewhere beyond, Saige is with Grim. “But the mortal could?” he breathes.
“Ten years ago, she glimpsed me in an alleyway when I sought someone else. Her knife drew my blood.”
Daemos raises a brow. “What in the name of the Triad did you do to warrant such an impassioned reaction?”
“Scared the wits out of her,” I tell him. “Then a few days ago, she was handed over to servants of Malevron’s, and they saw to it that she was imprisoned at Gravereach.”
“Who is she to Malevron?”
“A bookbinder. One of the best there is, across both Azkari and mortal lands. The protégé to a master who came before.”
My brother looses a shaky breath. “A bookbinder?”
“Yes. He wants the Confluence, Daemos. And he wants to use Grayson to repair it, so he can unravel the knots of the Weave and remove the limitations on his power.”
“Shit…” he mutters, his dark brows furrowing. “But then… Why put her in the same prison as you? He practically gift-wrapped his greatest asset and handed her over.”
“He put her there to taunt me. So I could watch any chance of victory over him whittle away before my very eyes. But he didn’t anticipate…
” I trail off for a moment, remembering the way Saige had landed in the cell beside me, remembering her gaze falling to my silhouette in the dark.
“Grayson did the one thing Malevron didn’t plan for.
She saw me, brother. She sees me. And something about that broke his hold on me.
It gave me back my full corporeal form, my full power. ”
Daemos follows my line of sight back to the women by the fire. To the one woman I can’t get out of my head. “You’ve been dreaming this chance for centuries, haven’t you?”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Daemos,” I tell him, toying with the lupins brushing against my leg, their petals like velvet to the touch. “I don’t dream. Not anymore.”
I feel Daemos’ magic reach out, a delicate murmur in the air, a faint musical vibration humming around me as it searches, searches for answers I don’t have. The magic doesn’t limit itself to me, I can see it in the air as it explores further, like motes of dust drifting back to where we made camp.
“Saige Grayson dreams enough for you both,” Daemos says softly, starting back the way we came. “And it’s strange…”
“What?” I reply through gritted teeth, following him with heavy footsteps.
“She has just as much fire as you.”
“And that’s a bad thing because…?” I say dryly.
“You tell me… You believe she can break the cycle… the curse of our kind, wars being started by a people created for war…” Daemos’s gaze settles on me once more. “But what if she starts it anew? What if she burns our world to the ground?”
We walk beneath an elegant arch threaded with dark vines and curling leaves. Daemos parts the leaves and peers across the dark, to where Saige sits beside Grim, stroking the wolfhound’s head absentmindedly with one hand, and stirring a steaming pot over the fire with the other.
Grim—the enormous dolt—leaps up, hackles raised as he peers into the shadows where my brother and I walk.
I send a wave of warmth in his direction.
It’s just me, you great oaf. But it does little to reassure the mongrel.
Perhaps he has better sense than most after all. He gives a lazy snarl in our direction.
You’re not fooling anyone, he seems to say.
“I take it you know where the Confluence is?” Daemos asks.
“I do.”
He bows his head. “It was the House of Reveries and the House of Whispers who put it there… It is not unguarded by those powers. I can assist with one, but not the other.”
“So you’re only half useful to me.”
“The realm thought you were dead,” he counters.
“So I keep hearing.”
After a few minutes of silence, Daemos’ face etches with genuine curiosity. “My whispers have kept word of all this quiet for as long as I could manage. But when you get the Confluence…”
I reply gruffly as we reach a crumbling arbor where hanging flowers cascade like waterfalls in a spectrum of dazzling color. The moonlight now filters through the canopy, catching on a cluster of luminescent mushrooms, giving the place an ethereal quality.
“What then? What do the whispers say?”
“They say her name.”
I stop in my tracks, magic heating in my blood. “What?”
“The whispers say her name,” he repeats. “Saige Grayson. That’s why I’m here.”
A primal snarl threatens to burst from me, and it takes all my willpower to force it back down, to meet my brother’s somber expression with anything less than violence.
“And was it those whispers or your own that hid her name from me for all these years? Cloaking it like a shadow in the night? Concealing it from me for all this time?” I ask, struggling to keep my voice even.
“I thought you were dead, remember? I concealed her name from everyone, so it wouldn’t reach Malevron, to protect us all in case he returned.”
I’m clenching my fists at my sides, my magic closer to spilling over. “Go home, there’s no place for you on this quest,” I tell him.
He scrutinizes me, glancing back to where Saige left us. “Where can this go, brother? Before you blink, she will be old and withered. Fuck her if you must, get her out of your system. You’ve been imprisoned for two hundred years. You’re just lusting after the first woman you’ve seen.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I spit.
Daemos makes his suggestion slowly, his sharp eyes locked on me, monitoring my reaction, “The safest thing to do would be to eliminate her.”
Black flames erupt around me, roaring to life and swallowing everything in their path—the canopy, the sky, everything blurring together in smoke and ash and desperation.
All I can do is rage, and rage, and revel in the fact that I can do so with my body as my own.
The flames that pour from my blood and my bones remind me that I am in control now.
That my body is here and it belongs to me once more, and with it, I can wreak havoc where I wish.
Wave after wave of onyx flames pour from my hands, from my chest, devouring the canopy, evolving into a roaring inferno around me.
I let it rage, every emotion surging through me is more fuel to the blaze.
My brother is gone. The trees are gone. I am surrounded by obsidian heat, a roar trapped behind my teeth.
I want it out of me. This power I didn’t ask for, the proof of what Malevron did to me.
If I expend it all in one hit, perhaps it will be gone for good.
Maybe I can rid myself of this curse forever.
I rain black fire upon the forest, and a desperate shout escapes me as it cascades from my entire being.
Whispers in the wind reach for me, trying to pacify me inside my storm of flame and fury. But the only thing that calms me, the only thing that offers a soothing balm to the blaze around me is a familiar voice that murmurs a name I’ve only ever given to one person.
Archer.