Chapter 10 Ivalys
TEN
IVALYS
“How do you live with it?”
The question comes out quieter than I intended. More vulnerable.
He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand.
“I don’t.” His hold on my wrist adjusts. Not releasing. Shifting. “I exist. I work. I try not to think about the souls I’ve taken, the lives I’ve ended, the families I’ve destroyed because a piece of paper said I had to.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I have.” His thumb traces a slow circle over my pulse point. The touch sparks warmth spiraling through my veins. “I stopped believing I deserved better a long time ago. Stopped believing I was capable of anything except what the Ledger Master made me.”
“And now?”
The candlelight flickers. Shadows dance across the planes of his face, catching in the scars, pooling in the hollows beneath his cheekbones.
“Now, I’m not sure.” His gaze holds mine. “You look at me and you see something besides a monster. I don’t understand why. I don’t understand how.” His voice roughens.
The air between us thickens. Heavy with heat and unspoken things.
I step closer.
The movement brings me between his spread knees, so close I feel heat bleeding off his bare chest, his breath stirring the hair at my temple.
“Is that why you agreed to help me?” The question emerges rough. Challenging. “Because you’re a weapon who doesn’t care about the people he’s aimed at?”
His control cracks.
I see it happen—the careful distance he maintains shattering. His free hand shoots up, fingers closing around my other wrist. He pulls, and I stumble against him, my palms bracing on his shoulders, my face inches from his.
“You made me feel again.” The words are a snarl, torn from somewhere deep. “I hate you for it.”
My pulse slams against his grip. His fingers are hot around my wrists, his body a furnace beneath my hands. The sigil on my palm burns where it presses against his shoulder—not pain, but fire. Recognition. Something the magic knows that my mind hasn’t caught up to yet.
“Then hate me.” I don’t pull away. Can’t. Don’t want to. “But don’t pretend you’re nothing but what he made you. I’ve seen you fight to protect someone instead of collecting them. I’ve watched you break rules you’ve followed for centuries. That’s not a weapon. That’s a choice.”
His hand releases my wrist. Rises. Hovers beside my face—close enough that I feel the warmth of his palm without touching.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“I’m not asking for anything.”
“You’re asking for everything.” His fingers tremble. “And I can’t—I won’t—”
He stops. Pulls back. The distance opens between us like a wound torn fresh.
Cold rushes in where his heat had been. I feel the absence in my bones, in the suddenly-dim pulse of the sigil on my palm, in the hollow ache that has no name.
“Rathok—”
“Rest.” He stands. Moves to the far side of the room—as far as the cramped space allows. His back hits the wall, and he slides down to sit on the floor, knees drawn up, arms resting on them. Deliberately distant. “The passage won’t be easy. You’ll need your strength.”
I want to argue. Want to push. Want to close the distance he’s created and demand he finish what he started.
Instead, I sink onto the narrow bed. The mattress is thin, the blanket worn, but after everything—the crypts, the wraiths, the impossible revelations piling one atop another—exhaustion crashes over me in a wave.
I lie down. Close my eyes. Try to steady my breathing, to quiet the racing of my blood.
Sleep doesn’t come. But something resembling stillness does—a suspension between waking and dreaming where thoughts drift without anchoring.
I think about Gror. About the brother who made stupid choices because he wanted to help. About what the Ledger Master has done to him, is doing to him, while I lie here in the dark.
He was four when our mother died. He barely remembers her face, her voice, the way she made everything feel safe. I’ve spent my whole life trying to give him what she would have given us both. A home. Protection. Someone who believed in him even when he made it hard.
And now he’s in the Ledger Master’s hands. Being transformed into something unrecognizable. Because he wanted to help me.
The guilt twists in my chest like a blade.
I think about Rathok. About the orc who should have handed me over and didn’t. About the history of violence written on his body, the emptiness in his voice when he talks about what he’s done, the way his hands trembled when he couldn’t make himself touch my face.
He’s sitting against the far wall. I hear his breathing—slow, controlled, the rhythm of someone who’s trained himself to rest without sleeping. Guarding. Even now, even here, he’s positioning himself between me and the door.
Protecting me.
He feels something. The realization lands in my chest with unexpected weight. He’s fighting it. But he feels it.
I don’t know what to do with that. Don’t know what I want it to mean.
The marks on my arm burn.
? ? ?
The pain rips through me without warning.
I gasp, jackknifing upright, clutching my forearm as fire races beneath my skin. The mark glows white-hot, bright enough to cast shadows across the cramped room. The marks climbing my arm shift, rearrange, letters reforming into words that burn themselves into my flesh.
Rathok is at my side in an instant. His hands find my shoulders, steadying me as I convulse against the agony.
“What’s happening?” His voice is sharp. Urgent. “Ivalys—”
“The marks—” I can barely get the words out through gritted teeth. “They’re changing—”
The light peaks. The pain crests. And then—silence.
I look down at my arm.
New words have appeared below the original contract terms. Not the angular script of debt-magic, but something different. Elegant. Almost beautiful, if beauty could be carved from malice.
GROR VANE: DEBT TRANSFERRED. ORIGINAL DEBTOR: ARCHIVED.
The words pulse once. Twice. Then a new line appears beneath them, searing itself into my skin with fresh agony.
ARCHIVED STATUS: TRANSFORMATION IN PROGRESS.
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t do anything but stare at the place where my brother’s fate is written on my flesh.
“What does ‘archived’ mean?” My voice emerges hollow. Broken. “Rathok. What is he doing to Gror?”
His hands on my shoulders are firm. Grounding.
“The Ledger Master doesn’t only consume defaulters.
Sometimes—when he wants something specific—he transforms them.
” His voice is flat. Clinical. The voice of someone delivering truths too terrible for emotion.
“Archived means the Ledger Master is keeping him intact. Rewriting him. Turning him into something that serves.”
“Something like what?”
“A weapon. A tool. A creature of contract-magic that wears a human face but serves only the Ledger Master’s will.
” His hands haven’t left my shoulders. The pressure is the only thing keeping me from flying apart.
“Your mother feared it because truth-speakers are especially vulnerable to it. Your gifts—once twisted—become the Ledger Master’s most powerful instruments. ”
The Ledger Master is turning him into a monster.
The thought should break me. Should shatter whatever strength I have left.
Instead, it hardens into something cold. Something sharp.
“Then we don’t have time to wait.” I meet Rathok’s gaze. Let him see the fire burning behind my fear. “We go to the Hall, and we end this before he finishes destroying my brother.”
His grip on my shoulders shifts. Softens. Something that might be admiration flickers across his expression.
“You’re not ready.”
“I’ll never be ready. But I’m going anyway.”
He lets out a deep sigh. His thumbs trace slow circles on my shoulders—unconscious, I think, a soothing gesture he probably doesn’t realize he’s making. The touch steadies something inside me. Anchors me when everything else is spinning apart.
In a city where everything is obligation and debt, where contracts bind tighter than chains, he’s choosing. Freely. For me.
“Rathok—”
“No.” He releases my shoulders. Steps back.
The distance returns, but different now.
Chosen rather than defensive. “Don’t thank me.
Don’t read more into it than it is. I’m just an orc who’s tired of being a weapon.
” His gaze holds mine. “And you’re the first thing worth fighting for instead of against.”
I don’t have words. Don’t have anything except the ache in my chest and the fire in my veins and the knowledge that whatever happens next, I won’t face it alone.
He moves to the table. Starts gathering supplies—the remaining bandages, a waterskin, the amber bottle. Practical. Focused. As if he didn’t just crack something open between us that neither of us knows how to close.
“We’ll need to move through wraith-heavy territory.” His voice has steadied. Returned to the flat professionalism of an enforcer planning a collection. “The route I know avoids the worst of it, but there’s no safe route to where we’re going.”
“The dangerous one, it is.”
He pauses. Looks at me—really looks, the way he did when we first met, when he was cataloging whether I was worth the risk of helping.
“You’re different—” The words seem to surprise him as much as they surprise me. “—than you were in your brother’s apartment. Than you were even in the crypts.”
“Fear changes people.”
“So does hope.”
I don’t know how to respond. Don’t know if he means it as an observation or an accusation.
His eyes won’t meet mine. He says, “Rest. I need information before we continue.”