37. Saige
Saige
The ground vibrates subtly underfoot, a heartbeat in the earth as heat flares between us.
I can feel the thundering of Archer’s heart beneath my palm.
The rest of the temple falls away, fading into obscurity as the general’s stare drops to my mouth.
My breath catches, and I lean in without thinking.
He is a current I’m unable to withstand, and for a moment, our task is all but forgotten as we drink in the whisper of time between thought and action, between sense and surrender.
I want him. I’ve wanted him since that first kiss, since every touch after—incidental or otherwise. He is under my skin, burrowed deep, unshakeable. Like a long lost memory I want to remember and relive again and again.
“There are many ways to seal an Azkari bargain…” Archer’s words feather across my lips. He doesn’t pull back; he doesn’t remove my hand from his sculpted chest.
“The spoken word, blood, ink, fire… But in that cell, with you beside me, I grew stronger. My magic returned to me, and I knew it had something to do with you, though I knew not how or why. To seal with a kiss is the most powerful of oaths, and when you held my hand through the bars, the pain lessened and my magic increased. It stood to reason that a kiss would amplify that… and it did.”
My chest rises and falls with every detail, my heart threatening to burst through my chest as his gaze traces my features, as he lets me be this close.
But a little part of me crumples. It was pure practicality.
Of course it was. He didn’t know me then.
He saw a way out and he took it. I cannot blame him for that.
“Well, it’s a good thing it worked,” I say, cringing at how bright my voice sounds, how false.
I nearly startle when he reaches for me, running his thumb along the line of my jaw. “But that’s not the only reason I kissed you.” His confession reverberates through me, curling my toes in my boots and has me arching into him.
“Oh?”
Emerald green is all I can see as he strokes me jaw again, igniting a fire inside me. I wet my lips and hold my breath.
“I kissed you because I wanted to,” he says. “Because I wanted a taste of something I could never truly have.”
The same touch that now grasps my chin follows the curve of my bottom lip. My mouth parts, waiting for him to claim me. Begging him to—
The ground pulses violently, nearly knocking us off balance, and a sudden gust of wind through the chamber extinguishes several torches, plunging parts of the sanctum into deeper darkness.
The stone plinth in the heart of the crypt shatters completely.
The mass of rock explodes outward, the fragments turning into flecks softer than flower petals.
Archer’s hands drop from my face as he points to a column of light. “There.”
I can see the bones of something beautiful.
Flecks of gold on the edges, rare pigments of color, a ribbon bookmark and stunning lettering.
But the Confluence is a disaster. A far cry from its former glory, it lies open on the plinth.
It’s encased in glass, but otherwise, there are no other protections that I can see.
“I’ve never seen a book—if you can still call it that—in such disrepair.” I inch forward to get a better look.
“But you can fix it.” It’s not posed as a question, but rather a desperate statement from a desperate man.
“Are we looking at the same book?” I circle the podium, taking in the tattered sight of the Confluence. “It’s practically deteriorating before our eyes, General. The binding is in pieces, there are pages—maybe even whole sections—missing, it looks like it once had a clasp, and the—”
“You can fix it, though,” he says again.
I glance up, meeting his gaze. “Not with the tools I brought with me.”
“Then we go back to your shop.”
“You want me to take this incredibly fragile manuscript back through these tunnels, on a week-long horse trek, through the various elements, to the mortal kingdoms?”
“I didn’t say that.”
I shake my head, ignoring him. “We’ll be lucky if I can even remove it from the plinth without it falling apart.”
Archer reaches for it, but an invisible barrier prevents him from touching it. “It has to be you,” he tells me. “You’re the only one I trust with it, Grayson.”
Biting my lip, I wedge the point of my paring knife under the glass. Nothing secures it. It lifts easily, which only fuels my growing anxiety. With shaking hands, I lift the glass case from the book completely, setting it down as carefully as I can on the ground beside the pedestal.
Without the reflective surface of the glass as a barrier, I can see it more clearly.
The tawny leather cover is barely attached to the spine and parchment within.
The intricate gold filigree is tarnished and is flaking away in some places.
Decorative metal work in the corners is chipped and bent, while the pages are yellowed and amber, with edges that appear brittle and curved.
The binding shows stress marks and small tears where the leather has dried and contracted over centuries—
“Well?” Archer says impatiently at my side.
“Don’t rush me, General. There’s an art to this.
Bring the torch closer so I can see. Restoration starts with one crucial factor: looking.
We need to know if something is missing, what’s fragile.
Are there elements that can be saved? Best case, it just needs a new spine.
Worst case, I’ll need to take the whole thing apart and rebind it.
” I take a piece of parchment and quill from my satchel and examine the binding by the flickering flames, noting down the loose quires and broken stitches.
The boards are detached as well, and I suspect that at one point or another woodworms have been at it, but with such poor light it’s hard to make a proper assessment.
“And what is it that you see?”
“Worst case,” I say without hesitation. “I wish I’d known it was this bad. I would have brought a flat basket with me as a transport cradle.”
“A what?”
I dismiss Archer with a wave of my hand, already trying to piece together alternative ways to carry the fragile tome.
“We’ll use a portal to get back to your bindery. There is one back in the forest that will take us directly to Hanniel,” Archer tells me. “So you don’t need to worry about stuffing it in a saddlebag.”
“What a relief,” I reply flatly, taking a brush with fine bristles from my satchel. Ever so carefully, I attempt to sweep the dust gathered in the embellishments. “Do you have any clean linen bandages?”
“I’ve got a shirt I can rip up.”
“That will have to do.”
To my dismay, Archer takes the shirt off his very back and starts tearing it into long strips.
Gods, the rippling planes of tattooed muscle are not the distraction I need right now.
Despite our current predicament, I can’t help mapping the expanse of corded strength with my gaze, clenching my thighs together as I drink in the sight of the deep V of sinew dipping down into his leathers.
Handing me the ribbons of fabric, he’s oblivious to his effect on me, which only makes it that much more erotic.
I push the material back towards him, clearing my throat and berating myself for ogling him. “You hold onto those for a moment.”
Ordinarily I’d wear gloves for something like this, but Archer’s filthy riding gauntlets will do more harm than good in this case and so it’s with bare hands that I reach for the Confluence.
I hesitate, feeling something uneasy deep in my bones.
My fingertips brush against its unnaturally warm surface, and it's as if it holds living energy within.
“Grayson…” I hear Archer’s voice, but it’s far away
With the deliberate care of a monk handling scripture—I lift the manuscript from its plinth.
The taste of otherworldly magic fills the chamber.
A strange sensation of familiarity washes over me, something I can’t place.
With trembling hands, I lift the board of the cover to see just how fragile the tome is. It’s delicate, but it holds. Just.
I exhale shakily and look to Archer. “I’ll take those strips now. Gently, very gently, I want you to wrap them around the book. Don’t make it too tight, don’t make it too loose. I can fashion a temporary splint for the damaged spine, but I want to keep everything together first.”
Without a word, Archer does as I instruct, amending his movements without complaint when I correct him. When he’s done, I bring the book to my chest as I reach for my satchel, hoping to empty it and pad it out with more of Archer’s ripped shirt—
But when the Confluence presses against my hammering heart, there’s a ripple of magic—
No—not a ripple—something much larger.
Against my breast, the book hums with an unknown force, and a pulse of unbridled power blasts out across the temple, across the realm.
The wind is knocked out of me, and I gasp as Archer’s body closes around mine. The touch creates a surge of energy between us.
And then I’m falling through a haze of memories.
All I can smell is burning flesh, and the copper tang of blood in the air, while acrid smoke fills my lungs, threatening to choke me. Heat tipples across my skin and the taste of ash and fear coats my tongue.
I don’t know where I am, only that it is chaos. Mud slips beneath my boots and my heart pounds wildly as hundreds of Azkari soldiers charge across desolate plains, the wind howling through the formations.
“To the general!” the men and women warriors shout as the impact shudders down their lines. “To the Black Flame!”
Archer is here somewhere.
I’m jostled as I crane my neck, trying to search for him, but it’s pandemonium. Where am I? What is this?
“Archer!” I call, panic rising thick in my throat. The Azkari were calling for him. He has to be here. But what if he’s hurt? What if I can’t get to him—
A flaming blade flickers among the madness, a blur of silver and black, radiating heat throughout the ranks, sparks flying from the clash of steel upon steel.
Archer.
Time itself seems to halt as he squares his shoulders against another armored Azkari at the heart of it all. They’re going to fight. They’re going to kill each other.
I can’t bear it, I can’t watch. Only, that’s all I can do. My screams are lodged so deep in my throat I’m chocking on them as the warriors come to blows.
Don’t die. Don’t die, I chant silently, losing track of reality, swept up in the terror swelling around me.
Fire and water pour from the dueling enemies, spilling across the plains to claim their victims. The howl of the battle is muted against the roar of the elements tearing through the ranks at the hands of the two generals in command.
A blinding flash of vivid color and a deafening boom rip through my senses, an explosion that hurtles from the heart of the battle, swallowing nearly everything in its path.
In the ranks around me, I hear a warrior’s final gasp, I see fingers clutching thin air, and eyes turning still like glass.
There’s a family crest on scorched armor, a melted token of the Eternal Triad in burnt hands…
The realm seems to hold its breath as the Black Flame fights the enemy commander.
Screams fall silent, the song of steel lost to the lick of the flames where a vast, circular crater hollows the earth.
Limbs severed, blood spattered, and moans of pain echo in the distance beyond the plumes of thick black smoke.
In the void left by screaming, there is only the tick-tick-tick of cooling metal, the wet crackle of still-burning flesh and the soft patter of ash falling like snow…
and the wheeze of a single collapsed lung somewhere in the dark.
Another nearby soldier tears off his helmet and retches, again and again, until there’s nothing left but dry heaves and sobbing.
Another simply sits, knees drawn up, rocking like a child.
Laughter bubbles up from an Azkari’s throat, high and jagged, because the mind cannot hold this and remain whole…
Perhaps my own sanity is unraveling, maybe that’s why I’m seeing all that’s happening here. I look for Archer, who has vanished in the bedlam.
As the smoke clears, a raised edge is revealed and beneath, a flat, basin floor of gray rock and dust.
Archer is nowhere to be seen. But shadows are burned into the stone itself, permanent echoes of the frontlines—warriors who no longer have bodies to cast them.
A hand reaching. A mouth open in eternal warning.
An entire battalion lost in the blast, their melted flesh and armor littering the cavity in the ground.
Still no Archer.
Time crawls as the black clouds drift further apart, like stage curtains, reluctant to reveal what masterpiece of destruction waits beneath.
But the Archer and his opponent, the two generals who fought at the helm…
They are gone. Dead.
Magic both light and dark, returned to the Weave.