35. Saige
Saige
“Why did you take my place at Gravereach? Why did you sacrifice yourself for me?” It’s something that has lingered at the back of my mind ever since I held Archer’s hand on the floor of that prison.
Those green eyes pierce me now, dark with conflict as they trace my features, while Archer’s words form on the tip of his tongue.
“You saw me,” he says, his voice hoarse.
“You were the first person to truly see me in centuries, and I did not want to give that up, not for anything. For so long I was no more than a shadow, and then… there you were. In that alley ten years ago, in the cell next to mine in a prison no mortal should breach…”
My nails are cutting crescent moons into my palms, but I don’t unclench my hands. The way Archer speaks, I know we’re only at the beginning.
His throat bobs as he swallows. “As soon as you dropped into that dungeon, something shifted. The magic that had been out of my reach for so long was coming back, albeit slowly. It stood to reason that you’d disrupted Malevron’s hold on me, on the part of me trapped inside his mirror magic.”
“So you took my place to ensure that I’d be in one piece so your magic could fully return?” The great door before us groans. I don’t know how the damn temple works, if I’m even allowed to ask follow-up questions, but it seems to me there is more to be uncovered still.
“In part,” he replies quietly. “But there was another part of me that just couldn’t stomach the thought of you being hurt.
I was more afraid of that than I was of another two hundred years in that gods-forsaken place.
You had saved me before, though you didn’t know it.
It was thoughts of you over the last decade that stopped me from giving up entirely.
Then there you were, about to be taken to the tables where skin would be ripped from your bones, memories torn from your mind and mutilated. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Ke-Vor…” I say softly. “You were my dark shield.”
Archer dips his head. “I tried to be.”
“You were. You have been, ever since.”
His green gaze is sad when it meets mine again. “Nothing lasts forever, Grayson.”
An audible crack echoes through the ruins behind us, and a faint fracture appears down the center of the door.
Peering over at it, Archer rubs the stubble at his jaw. “It seems to be working…”
My heart hammers as he closes his eyes, as though he needs to steel himself for what comes next.
“Back at the compound, Reid said something about Thorne.” The deep timbre of his voice dances along my bones as he begins, and my blood runs cold.
Not this, I silently beg, feeling more exposed than if I were stripped bare before him.
But Archer forges on. “Reid said: You already gave him the one thing he was willing to trade for. What did he mean?”
I consider lying. I truly do. I tell myself it’s because if Archer is stripped of his power, the bargain between us will be forfeit.
There will be no magical chains made of black flames, no tethering me to him with onyx fire.
It would mean my freedom. He would be but a mortal man to defeat. And I can add him to the damn list.
He lied to me. I could do him the same courtesy.
Perhaps there would be some justice in that…
But as I taste the bitterness of the lie on my tongue.
I know those aren’t the only reasons. The truth is, I don’t want to give Archer these pieces of myself, the pieces I keep buried with the rest of the rot.
I don’t want to admit that I’m as broken as he thinks he is.
That the things I carry within are ugly and poisonous.
I hate that tears instantly prick my eyes, I hate that my hands tremble at my sides, but there is no choice here, not really.
All I can do is lay myself bare. I suck in a broken breath and turn to the stone door before us, a door made for titans, not mortal bookbinders.
I close my eyes, bracing myself against the memory that’s still as vivid as if it were yesterday.
“I sold my virginity to Thorne.” As the words leave my lips, they sound far away, like those of a stranger.
It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted it aloud, what I did, and the hot shame floods my cheeks.
Whore, Reid had called me. And I suppose that’s exactly what I am.
I sold a piece of myself that day, I can still recall the scent of sour breath, and the feel of meaty hands pawing at me.
My throat feels like razors as I swallow and clamber for an explanation. “I did it to pay a debt.”
The look of disgust I’m expecting doesn’t come though. The vile names and scorn do not come either.
Archer watches me with his green eyes, their emerald hue slightly softer.
“You already knew that,” I say slowly.
“I suspected something like it,” he murmurs. “But that is not your shame to bear.”
Damn him. Damn him and his pity, his understanding. Part of me wants him to be a monster now. It would make the conflict in my chest easier to deal with at least. But the Azkari general simply waits for the rest of my story.
Pushing my hair back off my face, I train my gaze on the door.
“Reid introduced me to Thorne. He could smell blood in the water and wanted to make an impression on Hanniel’s top gang leader.
So he used me to do exactly that. He brought me to the most dangerous moneylender in the whole kingdom and watched as I sunk further and further into debt.
When there was no escape, Thorne offered a solution.
” I take a shuddering breath. “He’d wipe out half my debt if I slept with him.
Virginity meant nothing to me, it’s no more than a construct designed to diminish women, so I thought I’d use it solve my problems. Problems kept finding me anyway. ”
“You did what you could to survive,” Archer says firmly, there’s a ring of fire around his emerald eyes now. Rage. “Thorne took advantage. Reid took advantage.”
“I thought he was what I deserved,” the words spill freely from me.
“I shouldn’t have been with him; I know that.
I know I shouldn’t have let him treat me the way he did for all those years.
I’m embarrassed by it now, knowing that everyone else could see what I could not.
And now he knows about Thorne… he might have told Yevna and Raven…
It feels… wrong.” It’s so intimate, uttering those words aloud to the Azkari general beside me, and it hurts.
Like another tiny cut to a heart that is already shredded.
As I clear the thick emotion from my throat, the great door before us splits. Each half swinging inward with a heavy groan.
“You did good, bookbinder,” Archer offers softly, drinking in the sight of the open doors. “And I won’t tell a soul.”
Despite his other deception, I know I can trust him with this.
With a glance at me, he steps inside and I follow, where forest turns to jungle.
The chamber is bursting with all manner of tropical greenery, the likes of which I’ve only ever seen in books: monstera with their passive split leaves, bird of paradise plants with striking orange flowers, understory palms with fan-shaped leaves; lianas, and passionflower wind their way up tree trunks toward the light, creating dense tangles.
More dark vines creep towards us across the leaf litter, not aggressively, but insistent, coiling at my ankles, as though they wish to hold me in place.
An oppressive humidity weighs down on us, my breathing becoming laboured as perspiration beads at my brow.
The forest floor is carpeted with more strange plants, mosses, and decomposing leaf litter, and at its heart is a massive stone disc embedded in the ground.
Engraved into its design, are illustrations of battle.
Warriors flying down from the Weave itself, on strange beasts that look like enormous wild cats with great feathered wings.
Crouching at the edge of the metal disc, a sound comes back to me the memory—a thunderous, savage roar.
“Valreth…” I murmur, tracing the depiction that Cahir had described to me within my cell at Gravereach.
Archer startles. “What do you know of the valreth?”
“That they guard Gravereach? That they feast on the bones of dead prisoners?”
Archer makes a non-committal noise. “The original Azkari flew into battle on them. But the gods made the creatures too wild, too vicious to bend to the will even of immortal warriors. Malevron’s brand of cruelty suited them better.”
“Then I’m glad I never laid eyes on them in Morzanmyre,” I reply, shifting my gaze from the strangely majestic engravings to the concentric rings that envelop the design of the metal. “It looks like a compass. Or a clock.”
“It is neither,” Archer says. “It’s another door.”
Straightening, I try to hold my chin high, to pretend I didn’t just utter one of my most shameful secrets out loud, and then I speak the next question designed to carve us open, designed to carve me open. “Who is Isindrel?”