9. Korrath
NINE
KORRATH
My squad waits in the dead garden.
Six spell-burners standing at attention among twisted trees and bone-white flowers, their faces hard with discipline and confusion.
They’ve been waiting since I emerged from the manor two hours ago—since I told them to hold position and said nothing else.
Now the sun is setting over the Veillands, bruising the sky purple and green, and they deserve answers I don’t want to give.
Bren steps forward as I approach. The oldest of my squad, grey at his temples, scars mapping twenty years of service. He’s earned the right to question me.
“Commander.” His voice is carefully neutral. “The men are wondering about our orders.”
“The orders haven’t changed.” The lie comes easier than it should. “We wait.”
“With respect, Commander—the original mandate was immediate execution. The Order doesn’t tolerate delays.”
“The Order will tolerate what I tell them to tolerate.” I meet his gaze, letting him see the certainty I don’t feel. “The situation is more complex than the reports suggested. The grimoire can’t be destroyed through conventional means.”
“And the keeper?”
The question hits harder than it should. My hand moves toward my chest before I can stop it—toward the marks burning beneath my shirt, the mating mark and the grimoire’s sigils pulsing in tandem.
The keeper. Thyra. The woman who’s apparently been branded as your mate by magic you can’t control.
“The keeper is… complicated.” I force my hand back to my side. “Return to the encampment. Prepare the pyres as planned, but don’t light them. I’ll send word when we’re ready to proceed.”
Bren’s expression shifts. Not quite suspicion, but close. “Commander, if there’s a problem—“
“There’s no problem.” Another lie. The biggest lie I’ve told in twenty years of service. “Just a delay. Two days. Maybe three.”
“The Order won’t like it.”
“The Order will understand when I explain.” I turn away before he can see the doubt in my eyes. “Go. All of you. I’ll handle things here.”
They go. I watch them file through the iron gates, their silhouettes dark against the dying light. Bren looks back once, his scarred face unreadable. Then they’re gone, and I’m alone in the dead garden with the burden of everything I haven’t told them pressing against my chest.
The marks burn.
Both of them—the mating mark over my heart, the grimoire’s sigils beside it.
They pulse in a rhythm that matches nothing natural, a counterpoint beat that thrums through my blood and bone.
I’ve been trying to ignore it since I left Thyra in the corridor.
Trying to pretend the heat is just residual magic, the awareness just battle-edge nerves.
I can’t pretend anymore.
I press my palm against my chest, feeling the raised flesh beneath my torn shirt.
The mating mark is familiar territory—I’ve seen them on other orcs, heard the legends since childhood.
A pattern of interlocking sigils that claims a fated mate, that binds two souls across any distance, that demands completion with an insistence that borders on pain.
What I’m feeling isn’t legend. It’s immediate. Overwhelming. Wrong.
The magic has rules. It chose wrong. And it doesn’t care.
The mark burns against my palm, and I know where she is. Thyra. An awareness that tugs at me like a hook beneath my ribs, telling me exactly where she is without needing to look.
She’s in the Archive. Deep. Surrounded by texts and scrolls and the creeping magic that saturates this place.
Researching. Looking for a solution. Doing her job while you stand here and try to pretend you haven’t been claimed.
I should go to her. The mark demands it—that craving growing stronger with every minute I resist, every moment I spend pretending I’m still in control of my own choices. The longer I wait, the worse it will get. That’s how mating marks work. They reward proximity, punish distance.
And they never, ever let go.
I turn toward the manor entrance. The iron-wrought doors stand open, darkness pooling beyond them. Somewhere in that darkness, the grimoire waits. The Author stirs. And a woman who has been bleeding for this place for six years is still looking for a way to save it.
Or damn us both.
I walk into the dark.
The Archive tonight is not hostile but watching—every shadow aware, the grimoire’s attention tracking me from the Restricted Stacks before I’ve crossed the entrance hall.
It knows where I am. Knows where I’m going. Probably knows what I’m thinking.
The thought should terrify me. Instead, I just feel tired. I’ve spent twenty years fighting magic, burning it, reducing it to harmless ash. Now magic has gotten inside me—claimed me in ways my brand can’t burn away—and all I can do is keep walking.
I focus on the pull in my chest instead. Let the mating mark guide me.
This is how it starts. You follow the mark. You stop thinking for yourself. You become what the magic wants you to become.
But I don’t turn back. I keep walking. And with every step, the need intensifies.
I find her in the Scriptorium.
She’s alone—the scribes fled or dismissed, their abandoned workstations covered in scrolls and open texts. Every surface is cluttered with research: charts showing containment patterns, histories of previous keepers, diagrams of magical bindings that make my head ache to look at.
Thyra sits at the center of the chaos. Her dark hair has come loose from its braids, falling around her face in ink-stained tangles. Her bandaged hands leave smears of blood on everything she touches—she’s reopened her wounds, probably without noticing, too focused on her work to care about pain.
She’s striking.
She’s the keeper of a monster. She’s killed people to feed that monster. She’s bound to you by magic you didn’t choose and can’t control.
None of that changes what I see.
I step into the Scriptorium. The motion draws her attention—she looks up, those dark eyes finding mine across the cluttered room. The sigils on her collarbone glow faintly through the collar of her robe, pulsing in time with the marks on my own chest.
“Spell-burner.” Her voice is rough. Exhausted. “I wondered when you’d come.”
“The mating mark.” I cross toward her, weaving between tables, stepping over scattered scrolls. “Do you feel it?”
She doesn’t answer immediately. Her gaze drops to my chest, to the marks visible through my torn shirt. I see her studying them—the mating mark’s sigils, the grimoire’s claiming script, the way they pulse in unison like twin hearts sharing the same blood.
“I feel…” She pauses, choosing words carefully. “Heat. Awareness. Like knowing where you are without seeing you.”
“That’s the beginning.” I stop at the edge of her table, close enough to touch. The tension between us is almost unbearable now—a physical force, demanding contact. “It gets worse. The longer we resist, the more it demands.”
“And if we don’t resist?”
The question hangs in the air. I can smell her from here—the burnt warmth of sigil-heat carried on her skin, and beneath that something unmistakably, infuriatingly alive. It makes my pulse quicken despite every rational thought in my head.
“Then we’re bound.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. “Permanently. Your life tied to mine. Your death tied to mine.”
She laughs.
Not amusement—bitterness, sharp and brittle. The sound echoes off the Scriptorium’s high ceilings, carrying notes of exhaustion and defeat.
“I’m already bound to a sentient book.” She gestures at the research surrounding her, at the blood-smeared scrolls and scattered texts. “What’s one more chain?”
“This is different.”
“Is it?” She rises from her seat, and the motion brings her close—close enough that I can see the dark circles under her eyes, the pallor of her skin, the trembling in her bandaged hands.
“The grimoire claims me. The mating mark claims me. Everyone wants a piece of Thyra Vire, but no one asks what Thyra Vire wants.”
“What do you want?”
The question surprises us both. I didn’t intend to ask it—didn’t intend to care about her answer. But the words are out, and she’s staring at me with an expression I can’t read, and the mating mark blazes over my heart with an intensity that borders on pain.
“I want to survive.” Her voice drops, loses some of its bitter edge. “I want to stop bleeding for things that will never be satisfied. I want…” She trails off, shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter what I want. We have two days. Maybe less.”
“Midori.”
“You think she’d burn me?”
“Look at your chest.” She doesn’t glance up from her work. “The grimoire’s mark is carved into your flesh. The mating mark ties you to its keeper. By Midori’s standards, you’re already lost.”
I know Midori. Trained with her, years ago—and what she was then was nothing compared to what the stories say she’s become.
She’s worse now. You’ve heard the stories. Seen the reports.
“Then we need to find a solution before she arrives.” I move to stand beside Thyra, looking down at the chaos of her research. “What have you found?”
“Nothing useful.” She pushes a stack of scrolls aside, revealing a diagram beneath—a complex pattern of sigils surrounding a central circle.
“The binding between me and the grimoire was established by the first keeper, three centuries ago. It’s been maintained ever since, passed from keeper to keeper, growing stronger with each transfer. ”
“Can it be broken?”
“Every binding can be broken.” She traces the diagram with one bandaged finger, leaving a smear of blood on the parchment. “But this one requires a specific condition. The keeper must die, or the grimoire must die, or…”
“Or what?”
“Or the Author must release the claim willingly.” She looks up at me, her expression grim. “And since the Author is a three-century-old consciousness trapped in his own creation, I doubt he’s feeling generous.”