61. Archer
Archer
“What?” I stare at the maimed side of her body in horror, not at the sight, but at the words on her lips.
“You did this.” She doesn’t hide her nakedness beneath the open robe, or the network of scars trailing down from the base of her throat to her knee. “You.”
I back away from her, from the mortal woman I love.
My knees threaten to buckle, and I reach blindly for the wall behind me, my palm meeting cold stone.
The room tilts, or perhaps I do. There’s a ringing in my ears, high-pitched and relentless, drowning out everything but the thundering of my own heart.
My flames—always there, always ready—sputter and die at my fingertips as though even they recoil from what I’ve done. “That’s not possible. I’d know. I’d—”
“Remember?” Saige says, shaking her head in disbelief, grief pouring through the cracks of her rage.
She presses her hand to her chest, her face etched in pain, as though her very heart hurts.
“All these years I suffered, all these years I questioned my own sanity, buried myself in debt in the hope of finding an answer. And here it is. You. The Black Flame burned half my fucking body. I crawled through fire and glass. I jumped out of a fucking window to get away. And there you were.”
My hands feel numb at my sides as the words spill from her in a devastating wave. So much of my life is fragmented. Bursts of sounds, flashes of imagery, the scent of burning trapped in my nose… I don’t remember. I don’t fucking remember.
“You were there, Archer. Just as you are now. Cloaked in black, those flames at your mercy. You said—”
“You weren’t supposed to be here…” the words leave my lips, finishing her sentence before I realize what I’m doing.
Saige’s eyes go wide, and I recoil from her.
How? How did I do that? How could I—my ribs feel too tight as the pressure in my chest intensifies and I taste the burn of bile at the back of my throat.
You weren’t supposed to be here… It echoes again in my mind, tasting so familiar on my lips.
“I saw you,” Saige’s voice breaks, a sob catching in her throat. She points to the mirror. “I saw you in there.”
The mirror.
The same fucking mirror that Caelyth used to show me the Black Flame for the first time.
The frame has been changed from silver to gold, but it’s the same.
I can feel it in my bones as I take a terrified step towards it.
It sings with my brother’s magic. The magic of water and reflection, once, the magic of truth.
“You weren’t supposed to be here…” I whisper, peering into its rippling surface, the memory slowly being pulled through the murkiness of my mind to the forefront, where it unfolds before me, as it happened thirty years ago…
I stride into the village on the outskirts of Hanniel, cleaning my bloodied sword with a rag.
When I’m done, I sheathe it at my back, ignoring the bustle of the mortals around me.
They can’t see me, they never do. Daylight is fading, and wiping the red stains from my hands, I make for the grain storage facility on the south end of the town.
The souldren elite I just broke in Morzanmyre told me many things in his final moments of torment, the most useful of which brings me to this mortal cesspit: Malevron has a stronghold here.
Even two hundred years later, from beyond the Wailing Wilds, he persists—turning the will of humanity to his own cause, twisting their minds against themselves, until they know nothing but his war mongering.
He feeds that hunger with warped mirror magic, showing them reflections of rich, powerful men that they’ll never become.
This stronghold will be the third in six months I’ve unearthed in my fleeting reprieves from Gravereach, and with none of my own kind able to see or hear me, it’s my responsibility to oversee its destruction. I have nothing if not time and fire to burn.
The building is exactly as the souldren elite described: decrepit, appearing all but abandoned from the outside.
But I slip inside to find twelve traitors to Lorevael, both Azkari and mortal kind.
All of them are followers of the Silver-Tongued Deceiver, as marked by the brand on their necks that match my own.
Only their brands were chosen out of loyalty, and corrupted notion of pride…
so easily twisted by the Prince of the House of Mirrors.
The traitors gather around a large table, maps spread out across the surface with pins marking Malevron’s latest recruitment targets.
They speak of activating dormant portals for the mirudytes and souldren.
They speak of which areas across the kingdoms they should move to next.
They speak of many things that all sound like the silken words of Malevron incarnate.
I do not draw my sword and set it aflame.
Instead, I let the fire spread from my fingertips to the timber beams of the stronghold, watching as the onyx blaze licks up the support structure and spreads to the roof, dancing to the screams of the mortals.
I stand inside to make sure they all burn.
And burn they do, clawing at the doors that have been soldered shut by the heat.
I was never a merciful man, and my time in Gravereach took the little compassion that remained from me.
Let them burn, I say, to anyone who aligns themselves with the Silver-Tongued Deceiver. Let them all fucking burn.
My fire consumes the building, smoke billowing, ash drifting into the wind. It’s only when I hear a window shatter that I’m satisfied the place is about to cave in, that there will be nothing left of this unit within the hour.
When I step outside though, I freeze.
The souldren told me the building was empty but for the traitors—no more than a storage facility.
But a little girl writhes in the dirt. Almost broken beyond repair.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” I murmur, crouching to her level, taking in the extent of her horrific injuries. Burns, more than I can fathom cover her frail frame, along with the remnants of my magic, black tendrils coiling within her flesh.
Nearby shouting startles me, but I do not move as the villagers come rushing towards the smoldering building, and the little girl on death’s doorstep.
I follow as she’s taken to the local infirmary by strangers—her home, and her parents inside, burned to ash.
I watch as she is tended to, as she screams and screams while the healer treats her horrific wounds.
It takes too long for her to pass out. Each of her screams carves itself into my bones, a sound I know I should remember but won’t allow myself to keep.
I want to press my hands over my ears, to leave, to do anything but bear witness to the consequences of my righteousness.
But I don’t move. The least I can do—the very fucking least—is watch her suffer what I’ve wrought.
My own flames simmer beneath my skin, agitated, as though they too recognize the little broken body before me.
For far too long does she suffer before she loses consciousness at last. It’s then I call to my magic, not the flames within, but the ancient Azkari powers buried beneath it all.
I can’t take away the pain, I can’t undo what has been done, but I can take away the memory, and I can veil the scars.
Whoever the girl grows up to be, she will not be marked by evil, she will not look upon the worst day of her life every time she sees her reflection.
I take away what I can, and then selfishly, I turn that same magic back on me.
I veil her scars, and I veil my memory. Relief floods through me as the magic takes hold, sweet and sick as rotting fruit.
I tell myself it’s mercy, that she'll be better off not knowing, not remembering. But my hands shake as I work, because I know the truth: I’m not doing this for her.
I’m doing this so I don't have to carry the weight of those silver eyes looking at me with terror every time I close my own.
The veil settles over my memory like a burial shroud, and I let it, coward that I am.
The parlor comes back to me in an assault. I can still feel the kiss of fire on my skin, I can still smell the pungent salves from the infirmary, I can still see the veil creeping over the raw wounds like a disease.
Only now, adult Saige is staring at me, her breasts heaving, torchlight catching in the silver of her scars. “Get rid of them,” she cries, violently motioning to the ruined flesh. “Make them go away. Veil me. Veil me again.”
I force myself to inhale a lungful of air. I try to ground myself by feeling the cold marble floor beneath my toes, by counting the books stacked on the side table nearby.
“Veil me, Archer,” Saige orders, her voice hard and commanding.
The words hit me like a physical blow, and I stagger back a step.
My stomach churns, bile burning the back of my throat at the thought of touching her with that magic again, of erasing her truth a second time.
Every instinct screams at me to give her what she wants, to make the horror in her eyes disappear.
But I can see it now—how that relief would be mine, not hers.
How I’d be stealing from her all over again.
“I won’t,” I rasp, finally letting my gaze meet hers.
Tears streak down her beautiful face, her silver eyes rimmed red, her skin blotchy.
“No,” I tell her, trying to close the distance between us. I can’t stand how she’s looking at me, full of horror and fear and resentment. I need to fix this. I need to make it right. “I won’t ever do that to you again, I swear it.”
She darts from the parlor to where her clothes lie in a pile by bed, shoving her feet into her breeches. “Stay the fuck away from me.”
I grasp for anything that will provide a reason, that might mend the broken thing between us. “You told me you used to wonder who they were… Your parents… They were followers of Malevron. They were traitors to the realm, that’s why—”
“That doesn’t justify your actions. What you did to me.”
“Saige—”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that again.” Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes wild with fury before she turns her back to me, tugging her shirt on over more scars, more remnants of black fire magic.
It dawns on me then. “That’s how you were able to see me in the prison, and in the alley all those years before… This is how you’re able to see my memories and I never see yours. You have my magic trapped inside you.”
“I never wanted your magic,” Saige spits. “Take it back.”
I shake my head. “It’s been in you for the last thirty years. In Gravereach, your presence must have unlocked the part of my magic that Malevron had trapped in that mirror. We’re connected. We’ll always be connected—”
“I don’t want to be connected to you.” She snaps her braces in place and stuffs her feet into her boots, not bothering to lace them in her rage.
“But we are connected. By bargain and by flame,” I tell her softly.
Even fully dressed, I can now see that scar peeking out from the collar of her shirt.
I can’t stop myself, I take a step towards her, reaching for her hand again. “Please. We have to be able to come back from this—”
“You nearly killed me,” Saige’s voice is cool and detached.
“You nearly killed me and then you got rid of the evidence.
You left me to suffer invisible wounds for thirty years.
You are the reason I have no parents. The reason Yevna had to take me in off the streets as a hurt, homeless orphan.
Tell me, Archer, how do we come back from that?
We don’t, the bitter truth forms on my tongue. There are no words to undo what has been done, nothing I can say that takes away the pain I have caused her, over and over. I didn’t know, I want to drop to my knees scream, I didn’t know! But I did once. I knew back then, and I chose myself.
Saige touches her fingers to the exposed scar on her neck, flinching at the texture she finds there.
“I forgave you once before, I won’t do it again.
” She shakes her head, schooling her features into a mask of ice, only her eyes belying the fiery rage and calculating mind at work.
As she walks away, the look she gives me is full of hatred, hatred so pure and violent that my power thrums in response, in defence.
I reach for her—my hand lifting of its own accord—but stop myself inches from her shoulder.
I have no right. Not anymore. Perhaps I never did.
Around the room, small fires spark to life along the curtains, the edge of the bed, guttering out just as quickly.
My legendary control, the iron discipline that survived two centuries in Gravereach, crumbles like ash between my fingers.
Even my flames don’t know whether to fight or surrender.
My voice is hoarse as I muster the only thing I can. “Please.”
Then, she wields my own words against me like a flaming blade to the heart. “How can you forget a past that’s carved into your own body?”