32. Saige
Saige
Ipress the pads of my fingers to my bruised lips, still breathless from his mind-altering kiss.
What started as a primal claim became something deeper, more reverent—a confession.
It was as though Archer had tried to pour every truth he couldn’t speak into the slant of his mouth over mine, and the stroke of his tongue.
Like kissing me was the first real thing he’s done in centuries.
Of all the masks I’ve seen him wear over the last few days, of all the glimpses I’ve managed of the man who could be beneath that hardened exterior, the Azkari warrior who cupped my jaw and coaxed those sounds of need from me…
That was Archer. The true Archer. I can feel it in my bones.
There was something so earnest in his touch, in the low rumble of desire in his throat, that spoke more honesty than any words that have left his or anyone else’s lips.
For a time, I forgot how to feel. Or perhaps it was a choice.
I couldn’t control my body, but I could control my mind, my heart.
Or so I thought. All I wanted was to go through life without pain.
And that meant carving out the piece of me that could feel.
And it worked, for a while. Fear, hurt, dread, panic…
it all morphed into bleak acceptance, into apathy.
Until a grumpy Azkari general broke through my defenses.
I’m still trembling from his touch, standing amidst the wisteria blooms like a fool, utterly astonished and completely unsated.
Because he left. He turned on his heel and left me here, aching.
“I’m not here to make you feel special… We have a mutually beneficial agreement, after the requirements are met, we go our separate ways, end of story…
This relationship is strictly business. I have neither the time nor the patience to deal with mortal feelings or drama.
There will be no distractions, no emotional entanglements, and certainly no more kissing.
” He warned me, he set his boundaries, and I ignored them.
But it wasn’t just me, was it? I felt his desire, he answered my challenge. And then he stormed off like a child.
“Prick,” I mutter.
A low chuckle sounds from the trees. “He has that effect on a lot of people,” Daemos drawls as he bends down to gather the firewood Archer and I both dropped in the heat of the moment.
“Must run in the family,” I quip, ignoring the Azkari’s uncanny ability to sneak up out of nowhere.
Daemos snorts. “You wouldn’t be the first to say that.”
“What was he like?” I hear myself ask, kneeling down to retrieve the kindling I so unceremoniously discarded at the touch of the Azkari general. “Before all of this? Before the prison, before the war?”
Glancing at me, Daemos’ expression softens.
“Different. Archie lived hard—there was passion in everything he did. He reveled in the physicality of life… Fighting, fucking…” He shoots me an apologetic grimace, as though his whispers have told him exactly what his brother and I were up to just moments ago.
But he continues. “Anything adventure-driven and Archie was there. He and our brother were similar in that way, always off causing trouble… Sometimes I see a glimpse of him—the man he used to be. Someone who cared so deeply, who felt everything all at once. In the end, it was his downfall—to have such empathy. It broke him… that he could care for someone so much, and not be able to save them from themselves. In the end, it was either live with that, or turn it off. So he turned it off.” Daemos shakes his head and looses a heavy, grief-stricken breath, his voice becoming distant, as though he’s talking more to himself than to me now.
“We didn’t know he’d fought in the war. We didn’t know he and the Black Flame were one.
Though in hindsight perhaps we should have…
My whispers told me nothing of him, I promise you, Saige.
I would never have let him suffer had I known where he was, what Malevron was doing to him.
I would have moved mountains to save him from that.
We all would have. I swear, we truly thought he was dead… for all this time.”
“We?” I ask gently.
Daemos forges on, wrapped up in his own guilt and confusion about the past two hundred years and who his brother has become. “All of us, everyone who knew him… His family, his friends, Isindrel…”
As the last name leaves his lips, my nape prickles. I don’t know why, but an uneasiness washes over me, a strange instinct that comes out of nowhere but that demands to be felt. “Who is Isindrel?”
“Isindrel? She’s…” Realization dawns too late on Daemos’ handsome face, and his next words are laced with apology and regret. “His fiancé.”