33. Saige
Saige
Inearly lose the bundle of firewood for a second time, my stomach bottoming out as a wave of dizziness washes over me.
My mouth goes dry. Fiancé. Archer is engaged.
He is going to have a wife. The way it hits me takes me aback, like a low, painful throb in my gut.
There’s a lump in my throat I can’t seem to swallow and my ears are buzzing, so much so that I think I must have misheard Daemos.
I force my stiffened muscles to relax. “What?”
“Shit,” he stammers. “That’s not for me to say, not my story to tell. Shit.”
I can still feel the heat of Archer’s lips on mine; I can still taste the temptation of him on my tongue…
And he has a fiancé? An anger like I’ve never known before boils in my blood.
I’ve been so blind, so stupid… He damn well told me not to trust him.
That we wouldn’t be lovers, or friends, or anything.
And I carried on like a fool, trying to coax the good from him, trying to see what I thought others could not.
Am I so pathetic that I insist on overlooking every warning signal that’s waved in front of my face?
He lied. Why? So he could lock lips with a measly mortal woman?
What does he gain in this situation? My face flushes, Raven’s warning coming back to me like a blow: How many times have we been dragged through the mud because a man wanted something? How many times have you been used?
What in the realms convinced me that Archer was any different from all the rest? I was just a means to an end. Just a footnote in his centuries-long epic. And I am chained to him, not free to walk away from this disaster.
Arms full of firewood, Daemos motions back to where we’ve left our supplies. “I’ll just…” He walks away all too quickly, leaving me with a sharp pain in my chest and my jaw slack.
Engaged. Questions overwhelm me in quick, frantic succession—who is she?
Where is she? Why didn’t he go to her the moment he was freed from the prison?
How could he not have told me? How could he have kissed me?
Twice? How could he have put me in this position?
I don’t want to be a woman who does this to another woman.
Each thought barrels into me harder than the last, until I feel my palms sting.
Splinters from the branches I’m clenching too tightly are digging into my flesh, grounding me back in the present. Thank the Triad.
I clear my throat and blink back the tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. I feel lost, unmoored from myself, from reality. I’ve been fooling myself.
As I start to walk, I have no idea what I’ll say to Archer when I make it back to the camp.
I can’t untangle the hurt from the rage, the disbelief from the resignation I feel.
I spend the short journey sifting through a dozen options before I reach the crackling fire, Archer’s firewood stacked neatly nearby.
But there’s no other sign of him. Not his horse, or his stupid brother for that matter.
I drop the kindling I’m carrying next to the tidy pile and feed a few pieces into the orange flames.
Leaves rustle behind me and I look around to see Grim ambling my way, tail wagging lazily as he greets me with a lick to the back of my hand and positions himself at my feet, head tilted up, ready to receive ear scratches.
“You’re shameless,” I tell him, doing exactly that.
Grim gives a soft bark and nuzzles into my side.
“You always know when something’s wrong, huh?
” My left side twinges and I do my best to massage the ache away, almost grateful for the distraction from the pain in my chest. I wish Raven was here.
I can imagine her freezing at the words, “He kissed me,” and then her utter violence as I follow up with, “And then I found out he’s engaged. ”
Her jaw would go slack. “What did you just say?”
“He’s—”
She’d cut me off with an erratic wave of her hand. “No, I heard you alright. Fuck the wine. We need Yev’s gin.”
Raven Lockhart would turn into a storm of chaos, plotting revenge and retribution. Then after plundering whatever supply of gin Yevna had left in the bindery, we’d be off to the Copper Kettle to take advantage of her family discount on ale where we’d get steaming drunk, until she felt bold enough…
“Dare I ask…” she’d say in a salacious tone. “How was it?”
And I’d tell her, “There aren’t enough words.”
“Damn.”
“I know.”
“Maybe I need to get myself a Azkari warrior,” she’d muse.
I’d snort and take a long swig of beer before saying, “Just make sure he’s not taken first.”
Things would feel lighter somehow.
But I’m nowhere close to home, or Raven, or Yev.
It’s just me and Grim.
My eyes sting and I hate that I want to cry over this, over a man.
Everything had been fine before he came along—well, maybe not fine, but not this bad either.
“I feel like a fucking idiot,” I admit to the wolfhound, the shame burning my cheeks.
“I’ve seen what the world has to offer women like me.
And Archer… he seemed too good to be true.
Instead of trusting my decades of experience, part of me thought he’d be the exception to the rule. ”
I take the tie from the end of my braid and begin unravelling my tresses, needing something to do with my hands. With my hair now loose around my shoulders, I massage my scalp.
“Raven warned me… Yevna warned me…” I sigh to Grim, taking a seat on one of the fallen logs. “And still, I didn’t see it coming.”
I rest my elbows on my knees and let my head drop, staring at my boots as I berate myself over and over.
I’m momentarily distracted—something shiny catches my eye embedded in the earth.
Shards of glass? I reach for a piece, frowning as I hold it to the fire for better light.
Not glass, I see now, but rather… fragments of what look to be a mirror.
It doesn’t seem like an item we’d have brought with us and then broken.
But it’s also a strange thing to find out in the middle of a forest.
“What have you got there?” Daemos strides back into camp, with three dead hares but no brother in sight.
I turn back to the glimmering piece between my fingers. “Did you bring a mirror with you?”
Daemos stills. “No. Why?”
I hold out the shard. “I found these here.”
The Azkari drops the game on the log beside me and carefully takes the fragment from my fingers. He doesn’t look like he’s breathing as he studies it, his body rigid with tension.
I point to the dirt by my feet. “There’s more here.”
Kneeling, Daemos brushes a hand over the other pieces, a breeze picking up around us as he does, swirling unnaturally around our campsite. “For a moment I hoped these might be old, left over from the war...”
“But they’re not?”
Daemos shakes his head. “They’re too close to the surface of the ground to be anything but fresh. Someone was here. An emissary of Malevron.” The wind intensifies, tangling in my loose hair, rippling through the trees, causing the leaves and blooms to dance in its current.
“My whispers confirm it,” Daemos adds with a shake of his head, collecting the other visible fragments from the dirt.
Grim paws at the ground nearby, unearthing more pieces. I kneel beside him and dig them out, handing them over to Daemos, who wraps them in a kerchief. “What… what can a few pieces of mirror do?”
Daemos stands, pocketing the carefully folded fabric with a somber expression.
“During the Reckoning, Malevron harnessed the water magic of the House of Mirrors and began to use reflective surfaces as a conduit for his corrupted magic. Depending on his access to the surfaces in question and how much power he could channel, he could spy through them, sometimes even travel through them like a portal. If he wanted to attack a stronghold, he’d have one of his informers take shards like this into the territory.
He’d send monsters and men through the Weave like that and attack his opponents from within. ”
My stomach bottoms out. “Shit.”
“Precisely.” Daemos feeds the fire and then unties his horse. “I need to go. I need to report this to Prince Eryx and then send word to the other Azkari territories. Malevron is no longer just whispering in the shadows, he’s making moves.”
“You’re leaving me here alone?” I hate that it sounds weak, but given what I’ve heard of Malevron so far, given that I’ve been in the cell he intends for me, I’m not keen on meeting him anytime soon.
“Arch isn’t far behind me,” Daemos tells me. “I’ll veil this area so no one will see you.”
“What if there are more mirror shards? Whoever brought them could have put them anywhere.”
Daemos mounts his horse, glancing down at Grim, who has picked up on the tension and is standing loyally at my side. “Then I hope he’s got a decent bite on him.”
“And the temple?” I demand. “I thought we needed your help to get through it?”
“I told Arch all I could. The secrets of my house are his to use, but that’s only half the battle. The rest is down to the both of you. I was staying to support my brother, to get to know him after so long, but this? This is more important. The fate of the realm depends on it.”
I watch as Daemos canters away, disappearing into the trees. Shaking my head, my heart beating erratically, I turn to Grim and mutter, “Fucking Azkari.”
He barks in agreement.
The hour grows late and there’s still no sign of Archer, so I unravel my bedroll by the fire beneath the stars, admiring how many I can see in the gaps of the canopy.
They’re bright tonight, luminous, and despite everything, I find myself wishing Archer could see them.
I count them slowly, willing my mind to unlatch from the threat of Malevron, trying not to think of just how easy it would be to hide more mirror shards throughout the forest, throughout the whole damn realm.
When sleep finally claims me, I dream of rivers flowing with molten fire, and dark flowers blooming between the cracks of blackened stone.