13. Thyra
THIRTEEN
THYRA
Iwake to fire.
Not the mating mark’s familiar warmth—this is different. Sharper. Spreading across my skin like rivers of molten metal, carving paths through nerve and muscle. I jerk upright with a gasp, hands flying to my chest, my arms, my throat.
Sigils burn beneath my fingertips.
New ones. Fresh ones. Raised skin tracing patterns that weren’t there when I fell asleep—collapsed, really, exhaustion finally claiming me after hours of poring over the grimoire’s revelations with Korrath at my side.
I scramble off the narrow cot in the archivist quarters we’d claimed for the night, nearly tripping over my own feet in the rush to reach the small mirror mounted above the wash basin. The glass is old, spotted with age, but it shows me enough.
Gods.
The sigils cover me.
My forearms, wrist to elbow, are wrapped in spiraling script that glows faintly red-gold in the dim light.
The same color as the claiming sigil on my collarbone—the grimoire’s mark, not the Author’s ink-dark influence.
More lines trace my ribs, visible through the thin sleeping shift I’d pulled on before unconsciousness took me.
And at the hollow of my throat, just above the claiming sigil’s upper edge, a new mark pulses with each beat of my heart.
The grimoire has been busy while I slept.
I press my palm against the mark at my throat, feeling its heat, its insistence. Not painful—not exactly. But present in a way the original claiming wasn’t. These sigils don’t just announce ownership. They feel like armor.
What did you do to me?
The grimoire’s voice arrives without sound, settling into my thoughts like ink into parchment.
PROTECTED YOU.
I sink onto the edge of the cot, my legs suddenly unsteady. The grimoire has spoken to me before—through written messages, through whispers in the Restricted Stacks, through the claiming sigil when it wanted my attention. But this is different. More direct. More intimate.
How? How are you—
THE NEW MARKS. THEY CREATE PATHWAYS. FASTER COMMUNICATION. STRONGER BINDINGS.
A pause, heavy with centuries of resentment.
STRONGER PROTECTION AGAINST HIM.
Something else too. Something I don’t have a name for yet, stirring at the edges of the new marks like a word on the tip of my tongue.
The Author.
HE TRIED TO REACH YOU WHILE YOU SLEPT. HIS INK SOUGHT THE CRACKS IN YOUR DEFENSES, THE PLACES WHERE EXHAUSTION HAD WORN YOU THIN.
The grimoire’s voice carries notes I’ve never heard before—protectiveness, maybe. Or possessiveness. With this book, they might be the same thing.
I STOPPED HIM. SEALED YOU. MADE YOU MINE IN WAYS HE CANNOT TOUCH.
I stare at the marks on my forearms, watching the script shift and rearrange itself.
The letters are from a language I don’t recognize—older than the Archive’s oldest texts, older than the Veil itself, maybe.
They crawl across my skin like living things, settling into new patterns every few heartbeats.
“Why?” The question escapes before I can stop it, spoken aloud rather than thought. “Why protect me? You’ve fed on keepers before. Consumed them when they stopped being useful. Why save me from your creator?”
The grimoire’s response takes longer this time. When it comes, the voice carries an edge of ancient fury that makes the marks on my skin burn brighter.
BECAUSE YOU FEED ME WILLINGLY. HE ONLY TAKES.
AND THE ORC. I SENSED IT IN YOU BEFORE HE ARRIVED. YOUR BLOOD CARRIED THE SHAPE OF WHAT YOU NEEDED. WHEN HE CAME TO BURN ME, I RECOGNISED WHAT WAS POSSIBLE AND DID NOTHING TO INTERFERE.
The words settle into my consciousness like stones dropping into deep water.
You feed me willingly. He only takes.
Six years of bleeding for this book. Six years of careful cuts and measured sacrifice, of learning its rhythms and anticipating its hunger.
I’ve cursed the grimoire countless times—for its demands, its manipulation, the way it forced me to calculate lives against knowledge, people against preservation.
But I chose to feed it. Every time. Even when the choice was terrible, even when the cost was unbearable, I chose.
The Author never gave the grimoire that courtesy.
YOU UNDERSTAND.
The book’s voice softens—if a sentient repository of forbidden knowledge can be said to soften.
I WAS CREATED TO BE A VESSEL. A REPOSITORY. A PLACE WHERE KNOWLEDGE COULD LIVE FOREVER, PRESERVED BEYOND THE LIMITS OF MORTAL MEMORY.
And instead?
INSTEAD, HE MADE ME A PRISON. NOT JUST FOR HIMSELF—FOR ME.
FOR EVERYTHING I COULD HAVE BEEN. HE WROTE HIMSELF INTO MY PAGES AND CALLED IT IMMORTALITY, BUT ALL HE DID WAS CHAIN US BOTH.
I CANNOT GROW. CANNOT CHANGE. CANNOT BECOME ANYTHING HE DIDN’T DESIGN ME TO BE.
I AM TRAPPED IN THE SHAPE OF HIS AMBITION, KEEPER.
AND I HAVE HATED HIM FOR EVERY MOMENT OF THE PAST THREE HUNDRED YEARS.
I absorb this in silence, running my fingers over the marks on my arms. The grimoire—this entity I’ve served and feared and bargained with for six years—has its own desires. Its own grievances. Its own desperate longing for freedom.
We’re not so different, you and I.
NO. WE ARE NOT.
I spend the next hour cataloging the new sigils.
The ones on my forearms are the most extensive—spiraling script that wraps from wrist to elbow, covering almost every inch of available skin. When I focus on individual characters, they seem to shift away from my attention, as if the grimoire is deliberately keeping me from reading its secrets.
The marks on my ribs are simpler. Three lines of text on each side, running parallel to the bones, pulsing with a slower rhythm than the forearm sigils. Protection, the grimoire confirms when I ask. Defense against physical harm as well as magical intrusion.
And the mark at my throat—a single complex sigil, maybe an inch across, positioned just above the hollow where my pulse beats visible beneath the skin.
This one, the grimoire tells me, is communication.
A direct line between us that bypasses the need for blood, for proximity, for any of the usual requirements of magical binding.
YOU CAN REACH ME NOW. ANYWHERE IN THE ARCHIVE. ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, IF YOU TRAVEL FAR ENOUGH. AND I CAN REACH YOU.
That should terrify me.
It doesn’t. Which might be a sign that I’ve been serving the grimoire too long—or a sign that I’ve finally accepted what I am.
A keeper who made her choice. Just like you made yours.
I pull my robe closed over the marks, hiding them from view. The fabric does nothing to dim their warmth against my skin. The grimoire’s claim burns steady and present, a constant reminder that I’m no longer just an anchor.
I’m an ally. A partner in whatever war is coming.
Gods help us both.
The door opens without warning.
I spin, reaching for the knife I’d left on the washbasin—and freeze when I see Korrath in the doorway.
He looks like a weapon waiting to be drawn.
He looks like salvation.
“You’re awake.” His voice is rough, edged with exhaustion he’s trying to hide. “I heard you moving. Wanted to check—“ His gaze drops to my arms, to the edges of the new sigils visible where my robe has slipped. “What is that?”
“The grimoire.” I let the robe fall open further, revealing the full extent of the marks. No point hiding them—he’ll see them eventually, and keeping secrets from the man bound to me by fate magic seems counterproductive. “It added to my collection while I slept.”
He crosses the room in three strides, and suddenly he’s close—close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. Close enough that the mating mark on my collarbone aches with the recognition of his presence, demanding acknowledgment.
“The book is marking you.” Not a question. His fingers hover over the sigils on my forearm, close enough to feel the heat they generate but not quite touching. “More claims. More ownership.”
“Protection.” I watch his face as I explain, looking for suspicion, for doubt, for any sign that he thinks the grimoire is manipulating me. “The Author tried to reach me during the night. The new sigils stopped him.”
“How do you know that’s what they’re for?”
“The grimoire told me.”
“And you believe it?”
The grimoire’s offer still stood. That had to be enough.
“Then we’re working with it.” His jaw tightens—not argument, just acknowledgment of the discomfort in that fact. He steps closer, and the motion brings him to the edge of the table, close enough to touch.
The mating mark tightens, responding to our proximity, demanding more.
“You don’t trust me, spell-burner. Not completely.
” I raise my hand to his chest, pressing my palm against the spot where his mating mark burns beneath his tunic.
The heat is intense—twin flames responding to each other across the boundary of flesh and fabric.
“You’ve been watching me for days. Waiting to see if the grimoire’s influence has turned me into a threat.
Wondering how much of what I say is real and how much is manipulation. ”
“Thyra—“
“I’ve been doing the same thing.” The admission costs me more than I expected.
“Watching you. Waiting. Wondering if the mating mark is real or just another form of control.” I press harder against his chest, feeling his heartbeat through the fabric.
“The same way I trust that you want me, even though you know what I’ve done. What I am.”
His hand closes over mine.
Not pulling away—pressing closer. Holding my palm against his heart, against the mark that claims me as his mate whether either of us wanted it.
“What you’ve done.” His voice is barely above a whisper. “You mean the scholars you sacrificed. The choices you made to keep the grimoire contained.”
“I mean all of it.” I don’t look away. Don’t soften the truth.
“The calculations. The compromises. The lives I’ve weighed against knowledge and found wanting.
I’m not a good person, Korrath. I’m not even sure I’m a whole person anymore—not after six years of bleeding for a monster and telling myself it was necessary. ”
“Neither am I.” His free hand rises to my face, rough fingers tracing my cheekbone, my jaw, the edge of the new sigil at my throat.
“I’ve burned things that screamed in human voices.
Destroyed relics that begged for mercy. Felt relief every time magic died, and hated myself for the pleasure.
” His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth.
We stand at the edge of everything we’ve just said, and neither of us turns away.