36. Archer
Archer
It all clicks into place. Saige’s strange mood and her unusual silence.
Isindrel. Gods, of all the things my fragmented mind remembers, I wish her name wasn’t one of them.
A part of me wants to crumple inward, to avoid Saige’s penetrating silver gaze and escape.
She thinks I kissed her while promised to another.
She thinks I’d do that to a woman. To her.
The thought makes me nauseous. I want to say, you know me better than that, Grayson.
But the words taste bitter on my tongue. Does she? Have I let her know me?
I stare at the metal door in the ground that resembles a sundial, moss and vegetation stopping at its edges as though repelled. “Where did you hear that name?”
She doesn’t look away from me, doesn’t back down. “Where do you think?”
“Daemos.” I sigh, running my palm over my face. “He’s got a big mouth.”
“Who is she?”
“Someone I used to know.” A single mechanism on the sundial clicks as it shifts, but the door remains unsurprisingly closed.
“By all means, General… damn us both.”
I rake my fingers through my hair, silently cursing the past and all its damn secrets. “Isindrel was my betrothed.”
“Was?” Saige asks quietly. “What happened?”
“She didn’t die, if that’s what the pitying look is for.” My words come out far sharper than I intend, and now it’s me I’m cursing. Saige doesn’t deserve my ire, and I don’t deserve her kindness. Neither of which is here nor there now, so biting back the apology that forms on my lips, I forge on.
“She was a pure-blood Azkari, a noble, gentle female that everyone greatly approved of. We met at a ball, which I later discovered was a ploy orchestrated by my mother. Back then, I was much like a puppet whose strings could be pulled any which way for my desires were plan as day to see. We were together for a decade. A mere blink of an eye to us immortals. But she left me—for my brother. I don’t know how much he ever cared for her, or if using her was just the best way he could hurt me.
Either way, she left my side and went to his, working with him to bring about my ruin. Whispering my secrets in his ear.”
“Archer…” My name on Saige’s lips is soft, full of empathy, which I have no interest in.
“Suffice to say, we are no longer together. From what I know, she survived the Reckoning and returned to the House of Reveries to be with her family.”
“She didn’t stay with him?” Saige asks, frowning.
“She did not.”
This truth costs me, and I find myself unable to look Saige in the eye. But the deeper confession sends the designs and cogs of the sundial door whirring. They are shifting, clicking into place with one another.
Saige touches my arm, drawing my attention back to her. “Just as you told me that my history with Reid and Thorne is not my shame to bear, nor is Isindrel’s betrayal yours.”
“Then we have that in common, bookbinder.”
“It’s more than that,” she replies. “You and I are the same in so many ways. Can’t you see it?”
“You and I are nothing alike, Grayson,” I grind out, choosing frustration over the delirious urge to laugh.
And it is laughable, that the beautiful mortal bookbinder thinks we are kindred spirits, one and the same.
She has as much kindness in her as I have blood on my hands.
And I do not deserve it amidst all my failings.
“Then we’ll have to agree to disagree,” she says curtly.
I set my hand to the handle and pull.
The door doesn’t move an inch.
“Your turn to carve out my heart again, General,” Saige says.
At her dry humor and the quirk of her luscious mouth, I’m filled with affection for her.
I fight the urge to pull her into my arms and press her against my chest, to offer her some kind of reassurance that is not mine to give.
Saige is easy to admire; her ability to switch seamlessly between hard and soft, her understanding of when to push and when to let things lie.
It’s in this moment that I realize she understands me better than I think. The poor woman. What a burden to bear.
“What is your vision for the future?” I ask her. “If you could choose it, what would you hope for? A husband and children? A bookbindery within the palace walls? Would you want to live forever?”
Saige’s eyes dance across my face as the words spill from me, a smile tempting her lips. “A husband? Children? No.”
My chest flutters in response, at the surety in her tone.
Relief, that’s what I feel. Relief that she doesn’t want some mortal husband and a set of brats to match.
Relief that I won’t somehow see her and her family from afar.
They won’t exist, and that thought makes me glad.
As soon as I recognize the sensation though, I shove it deep down.
I have no business concerning myself with who Saige ends up with, if anyone.
“A bindery within the palace walls?” she repeats the question back to me. “I don’t think so. I love the Awl and Cradle. One day, I hope to make it truly my own, perhaps expand into one of the shops next door, while still honoring Leo’s work and legacy.”
There she is, the ambitious, self-sufficient mortal I’ve come to respect. A master of her craft, a woman who knows what she wants. I want to see her succeed, I realize now. I want to witness her bloom into her own even more than she already has.
“As for living forever? Gods no.” She laughs as she says it, but her words sting and I don’t know why. “Sometimes when the pain is bad, I think of how much of my life is already behind me, how little there is ahead. A stupid thing to voice to an immortal no doubt—”
A loud metallic groan cuts through her words, the symbols on the door at our feet clicking into place one by one.
The latch at the side releases and with it, the hiss of air expels.
I brace myself, gripping the handle and pull.
This time, it comes away from its frame in the ground, and I open the hatch entirely.
Saige and I stare into its maw, a dark hole with a series of vines to climb down. Saige reaches for one, but my hand on her shoulder stills her.
“Just so you know, nothing you tell me is stupid, Grayson,” I croak, still fighting with the chasm in my chest at the thought of the world existing without her in it.
“I’m well acquainted with periods of life that make continuing on seem impossible.
Whatever you feel, whatever you fear, it’s valid. All of it.”
“I don’t know how you do it.” She shakes her head as she looks up at me. “How you keep going after all this time.”
“I was fueled by thoughts of vengeance for centuries.”
“And now?” Saige presses.
I can’t help but lean in and inhale her scent, letting it cloak my senses and settle me. “And now… Is that your question for me, Grayson?”
I’m trembling, at her proximity, at the power she holds over me without even knowing.
“No.” Squatting by the hole in the ground, she slowly reaches for the vines.
There is too much at stake to rush through this. If I am stripped of my power… I don’t even want to think of the repercussions. And it’s not only that. The thought of putting pressure on Saige in any way makes me recoil. She has dealt with far too much of that in her brief life already.
I gently take the vine from her hand and leverage myself over the edge of the trap door.
“See you down there.” The vines act as abseiling ropes, allowing me to lower myself down into the chamber below, where torchlight blooms to life around me, illuminating the cavernous space.
It’s a long drop to the ground, the temperature dropping as I descend.
Here, my own breath sounds too loud, too invasive in the stillness that holds the inner workings of the temple.
When my boots hit the ground, I call up to Saige, who starts down after me, and then I turn to take in the sanctuary of Azkari treasures. The hair on my nape stands on end, a strange energy charging through the sacred place.
At the end of what was once a grand hall stands a towering altar, rising through nested arches and elaborately carved pillars.
It’s like a living tower, where nature has used the architecture as its trellis.
Maidenhair ferns, orchids, and small shrubs grow directly from the crevices of the stone, broad-leafed plants creating dark frames either side of the shrine at the far end.
Ornate metalwork twisted into sweeping patterns, gold and verdigris entwined as they creep up the plinth—where the crown jewel of the Temple of Truth sits.
The Confluence rests on the stone pedestal, motes drifting in the beam of light shining down on it. Even from here, I can feel the low hum that emanates from the book, a vibration through the Weave itself.
“Wow.” Saige lands deftly at my side, bending at the waist to massage her left leg as she takes in the inner sanctum of the temple.
I give her a questioning look. “Are you alright?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Not what I asked, bookbinder.”
But she dismisses me with a wave of her hand, and she starts towards the altar.
Shadows pool in the carved recesses, and leaves rustle though there is no wind.
I can hear the distant creaking of roots, and smell the underlying notes of incense trapped in stone for centuries while the decay of composting vegetation, cloys in the back of my throat, sickly sweet.
“What if we’ve come all this way and I can’t help you?” she asks.
“Then we’re all fucked.”
A hoarse laugh escapes her. “Then you’d best cross your fingers, General. And ask me for my last truth.”
The energy in the air changes, and though I’m not touching her, I can somehow feel the tension of her body grow taut.
You’re brave, I want to tell her. So much braver than I could ever be.
If there was ever a place to lay yourself bare, it was here.
I will the strength I know she has to take the reins.
“What are you afraid of?” I ask.
As though turning to the gods themselves, Saige looks up at the stalactite covered ceiling while we close the gap between us and the Confluence, ignoring the writhing vines threading through the metalwork like veins, alive and slowly snaking across the floor towards us.
“I am not afraid of pain itself,” she says slowly, “but what pain can take from me. Time is one facet of that fear—days bleeding into one another without accomplishment or progress. Independence is another. The pain makes me feel like I’m broken, someone who needs constant care, and I become the burden who saps the life out of everyone around me.
I’m scared of what I will find within,” she whispers.
“If I dig too deep, or pry too hard beneath the surface. I’m afraid of what I truly am.
I don’t know how far down my poisoned roots go. ”
“Grayson,” I murmur, as my heart fractures for her. A heart I didn’t even know I had at this point. I have seen centuries of death and war, of betrayal and grief, and yet this? This is what undoes me.
The dense vegetation closes in on us, making this sweeping chamber seem like a secret grotto as we approach the plinth.
The plinth itself is covered with mosses, lichens, and possibly algae, though the book atop remains untouched.
Years of debris from the plants make the ground beneath our boots rich and spongy, while more vines and climbers have anchored their roots around the stonework, creating gnarled patterns across the surface.
The flame from the torches dances against damp stone walls, casting writhing shadows that have Saige stepping just a little closer to me.
Even here, she feels safer at my side, and I can’t deny that it fills me with a primal sense of satisfaction.
Saige forges on, like the warrior she is, her gaze trained on the Confluence ahead.
“But when it comes down to it… I am afraid of exactly who I am. I am scared that I’m not enough.
Or worse, that I’m too much. Most days I genuinely don’t know if I’m a good person, if I’ll leave the world a better place when I’m gone. ”
I feel the weight of her words in my soul, the burden she has carried for her short thirty-five years in these realms. “You are perfect,” I promise. “Exactly as you are, exactly as you mean to be.”
Tears line her eyes, and I’m too stunted to know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. All I know is that I want to hold her, to reassure her, to bring her peace in this fucked up world, despite being the one to drag her into it.
Slowly, her hand drifts up and rests against my sternum as she peers into my eyes.
Something glimmers there that has me leaning in, and the sensation of familiarity washes over me.
For a moment I wonder if I knew her in a past life, one before the realm went up in flames.
The déjà vu makes my head spin, as does her touch, her fingers spreading across my pectorals.
I hear Saige’s breath catch. “I’ll ask my question now.”
Thank the Triad. I’ve made enough of a fool of myself. “Ask it.”
She bites her lip before she utters, “Why did you insist on sealing our bargain with a kiss?”
With those words I am taken back to that exact moment, where her mouth was on mine and her body was pressed against me. Where one life ended and another began.
My gaze drops to her lips.