28. Saige
Saige
“Please. Not again.” Archer’s voice finds me in the dark of night.
I bolt upright and a thick cloak falls from my shoulders—his cloak.
It smells like him, as though his very essence is woven into the fabric, perhaps it is with the way my body is responding to it.
It’s almost as though he’s touching me himself.
I hear his cries again in my mind, and I’m out of my bedding in an instant, crossing the camp in quick, careful steps.
His bedroll isn’t on the other side of the campfire though.
It’s nowhere to be seen. As I stand there, glimpses of a dream—a nightmare, flash in my vision.
Somewhere, Archer is drowning in the past.
I turn to find Daemos is drinking from a flask, shrouded in shadow, illuminated only by the dying embers of the fire. “What are you doing?”
“Can’t you hear him?” I ask, scanning the outskirts of our site for any sign of the General. “Why are you just sitting here?”
“I can hear the whispers in the wind, the animals in the dark, but nothing more,” he replies, frowning. “What is it?”
Unnatural heat intensifies around us.
“Archer,” I breathe. “It’s Archer.”
“Go,” is all Daemos tells me.
I’m moving before I’m even aware of it, crossing the camp and weaving through the trees beyond, following no more than a feeling.
If I let this go on, he could very well burn the whole Eldergrove down, or so I tell myself.
Panic latches its claws into my chest as I stumble through the forest, branches scratching at my exposed arms and legs.
It’s only then that I realize I’m only in my nightshirt—the instinct to go to Archer overrode my common sense.
Sharp stones and sticks bite into the soles of my bare feet, but I push on, the rush of the river sounding nearby.
“Shit,” I mutter as my toes sink into cold mud, and the trees begin to thin around me.
The water is close—too close for comfort.
This is nothing like the little inlet where we caught our supper.
Here, the Solmere River is surging with foaming rapids, almost drowning out the strange tether I’m following to get to the general.
“Archer!” I gasp, spying his thrashing body on the edge of the riverbank, his lips moving with silent words. At his sides, his fists are clenched hard, ribbons of black flame coiling around them. Water laps around him, attempting to drag him into its undertow, hissing with steam as it touches him.
His handsome face is etched in torment, his breaths coming in hard and fast. “Not the chains.”
When I reach him, I eye the black flames at his fingertips.
I know better than most how it feels to be unexpectedly ripped from a nightmare—the disorientation, the primal fear, the instinct to lash out.
But if I don’t wake him, I’m not sure I can save him from the rising river.
It’s already swelling around him, soaking his clothes.
“Archer,” I whisper frantically. “Archer, you’re dreaming.”
Sweat beads at his hairline, his dark brows drawing together in anguish, his muscular chest heaving as he pants, bracing himself against whatever stalks his nightmares.
I don’t touch him, but I lean in, keeping my words soft. “Archer, wake up.”
He looks younger like this, broken and lost. The black ribbons of flame sizzle and smoke as the water hits him, and I wonder if it was on instinct that he came here, a way to shield the forest—to shield us—from what he’s capable of unleashing.
His body jerks violently, and a cry forms on his lips, a thin trail of blood trailing from where he’s bitten himself in his fitful sleep.
This time, I can’t help it, I reach for him. “It’s a dream, Archer—”
“No.” The word tears from his throat in a vicious snarl, and his eyes snap open, a ring of black fire around that emerald green.
I hate that I freeze, grasping for the nearby rocks, for anything to hold onto as I lose my footing in shock. I stumble over the wet rocks, my feet landing in knee-deep icy water, my arms flailing as I nosedive towards the raging rapids—
A large hand shoots out, enclosing around my waist, spanning across my ribs with long, warm fingers.
The world around me fades into nothing as my focus homes in on that singular touch.
The flames that had rippled at those fingertips are gone.
Instead, all there is, is the promise of safety.
The Azkari general brings me back to the sandy riverbank, the hem of my nightshirt wet, my skin covered in goosebumps and my teeth chattering.
He doesn’t release me until I’m secure, and only then, does his hand fall away, leaving my side suddenly cold.
“What are you doing here?” His voice is hoarse, his green gaze searching my face, but for what I don’t know.
I cycle through a dozen responses in my mind. But the words that form at my lips are nothing like those I prepared. I take a deep breath, and then another. Our eyes are locked and some sort of unguarded vulnerability hangs between us. I don’t look away as I say quietly, “You were burning…”
He pulls back, something shifting behind that striking emerald gaze, as though he’d never seen me before, until now. “I always am.”
A lump lodges itself in my throat and I struggle with what to make of his words, what to make of him, especially as I spy the black ink peeking out from the back of his collar—the floral tattoos creeping up the nape of his neck, right up to where his dark hair curls.
He passes a hand over his exhaustion-lined face, and as he shifts, he exposes that brutal brand on the side of his neck.
An all-seeing eye that looks right at me, right into my soul, and a shiver rakes down my spine, like a talon threatening to carve into my own flesh.
My teeth are chattering again, and I become keenly aware again that I’m in no more than a thin shirt, the soaked edge sticking to my bare legs, the cool night air kissing my skin.
Archer’s gaze darkens as it drops, a different kind of fire catching alight as he takes in the flimsy material of my shirt and my hardened nipples beneath.
My blood heats in response and every part of me tightens with nerves and anticipation. I want him to touch me. I want those big hands closing over my curves and coaxing moans from my lips. The desire is sudden and white-hot inside me, my breath catching in my throat as Archer moves—
But it’s in the wrong direction.
My heart stutters as he disappears into the bushes, disappointment and embarrassment threatening to swallow me whole. How could I have misread things so badly? The poor man was fresh out of a nightmare and I’m practically naked, almost throwing myself at him? Gods, what an idiot—
“Here.” Archer is back and he’s draping a blanket around my shoulders, drawing it tight around me, enveloping me in warmth.
Oh.
It’s only then that I notice his bedroll nearby, and a silver flask in the leaves. He never intended to stay at the campsite with us.
I gaze up at him, the dappled moonlight catching the sharp angles of his face. “You didn’t have to sleep out here,” I hear myself say.
“I’ve slept in far worse places than on the ground, Grayson.”
“But… there was a campfire…” I argue weakly.
Archer shakes his head. “I don’t do well sleeping near others when my magic is unstable.”
“Why is it unstable?”
“I don’t know.” He runs his fingers through his already tousled hair.
“Perhaps from dredging up the past with my brother. Maybe the power of the bargain is interfering with my connection to the Weave… or it could be more than that. So I tries to distance myself. Apparently tonight I didn’t go far enough. ”
“You’re worried you’ll wake us with your nightmares?”
“Wake you. Hurt you. Burn the world to the ground… take your pick,” he says bitterly, his hand drifting to the brand on his neck.
“My recent life has been lived in fragments. Flashes of people, places and pain, with no true recollection of what was set alight by my own hand. I don’t seek forgiveness because even if I knew what I’d done, I wouldn’t deserve it.
I know that much. You don’t think I’ve tried to end it all? You think I want to live like this?”
“No, I don’t,” I tell him. “But you need time to heal.”
“You think I can heal from this? What’s the point in an immortal life if it’s lived in apathy or worse?
If there is nothing but the echo of pain and suffering?
I wanted it to be over, Grayson. But then…
there’s a flicker of magic. It’s not the kind of magic that’s Azkari-blessed or Triad-given…
But the simple, incomparable magic of life.
A perfect ripple of water, an unassuming smile…
and for a fleeting second, I forget who—what—I am. ”
He reaches up, running his fingers through his thick hair, anguish painting his dark features before he turns his back to me, exhaling hard as he grips his tresses at the roots.
The movement causes his shirt to ride up, revealing that glorious expanse of inked skin across taut muscles. The last time I’d seen it, the sight had nearly undone my traitorous body. But now my breath catches for a different reason.
Archer searches for the hem of his shirt to tug it back down, but my hand is around his wrist before I can stop myself.
I push the fabric further up, a gasp of horror escaping my lips.
“Archer…” his name escapes my lips, raw and grief-stricken. For the moonlight illuminates what I didn’t see the first time—scars.
Beneath the intricate tattoos is a canvas of pain.
I’m not thinking straight. Blood is roaring in my ears.
Bile is bitter at the back of my throat.
And I fully expect the Azkari warrior to jerk away, to shove me aside and snarl in my face.
I’d deserve it. He’s made it clear he doesn’t want me to touch him.
I’m crossing a line. And yet I can’t look away. I can’t stop.
Archer flinches beneath my touch as I draw his shirt further up his spine, revealing more long, jagged stripes of marred flesh beneath the dark ink.
My hands are shaking as I murmur, “Who did this to you?”
He shifts and I tense, anticipating his outrage, his fury.
But instead, he grabs the collar of his shirt and pulls it over the top of his head, baring his broad shoulders and tapered back to me.
“War,” he says roughly. “War did this to me.”
I don’t know what the noise is that breaks from my throat. A whimper, a sob? My hand hovers over the scarred globe of his shoulder, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his skin.
“Does it still hurt?” I whisper.
“Everything hurts. Always.” He turns to me, his features dark and menacing, but his gaze… His gaze is brimming with anguish. “My memories cling to the pain, no matter how hard I try to unlearn it. How can you forget the past when it’s carved into your whole body?”
My eyes sting as the sudden urge to cry washes over me.
“Don’t waste your tears on me, Grayson. I’m not worth it.” And then he stands so quickly he’s a mere blur of movement. A flash of white as his shirt is tugged back over his head, covering the story of his agony, his torment.
“Archer, I—”
But he’s already gone.