14. Thyra
FOURTEEN
THYRA
Idon’t know which of us moves first.
One moment we’re standing at the edge of an impossible conversation, his hand on my face, mine on his heart. The next, I’m kissing him—or he’s kissing me—and it doesn’t matter who started because we’re both drowning in it.
There’s nothing gentle about this.
I kiss him with six years of loneliness and fear and desperate need, pouring every emotion I’ve suppressed into the press of my mouth against his.
He responds with equal ferocity—one hand fisting in my hair, tilting my head back, the other wrapping around my waist and hauling me against him until there’s no space left between us.
The mating mark ignites.
Heat explodes through my chest, blinding and brilliant, radiating from the sigil on my collarbone until I can feel it in my bones. His mark answers—I feel the flare through the hand still pressed to his heart, twin flames finding fuel in each other.
He tastes like smoke and iron. His lips are rough, chapped from the dry Archive air, and his tusks scrape against my chin as he adjusts the angle of the kiss.
The sensation sends sparks cascading down my spine.
I arch into him, greedy for more contact, and his grip tightens until I can feel bruises forming beneath his fingers.
Good. Let it hurt. Let it mark me.
He backs me against the lectern—not the grimoire’s lectern, just a simple wooden stand for holding texts during study—and lifts me onto its edge without breaking the kiss. My robe falls open completely, baring the new sigils, and he pulls back just long enough to look.
His eyes trace the marks with an intensity that makes my breath catch.
“The grimoire’s work.” His voice is a ragged growl. “Claiming you. Armoring you.”
“Jealous?” The word comes out breathless, teasing despite the fire burning through my veins.
“Yes.” No hesitation. No shame. His hands settle on the sigils at my ribs, palms flat against the heated skin, and the mating mark burns at his touch, demanding more. “You’re mine, witch. The book can mark you all it wants. It doesn’t change what the mating mark says.”
“And what does it say?”
He leans in, his mouth finding the sigil at my throat, and bites down.
I cry out—pleasure and pain tangled so tightly I can’t separate them. His teeth graze the heated skin, his tongue tracing the edges of the grimoire’s mark, and the mark pulses with heat I feel in my bones.
“It says you’re mine.” His voice vibrates against my throat. “It says you’ve been mine since the moment I walked into this Archive. It says—“
The grimoire screams.
Not in triumph. Not in encouragement. A shriek of warning that tears through my mind like shattered glass, sharp enough to make me cry out and clutch my head.
Korrath pulls back, blade already in hand, body positioning itself between me and the door. “What—“
“They’re coming.” I slide off the lectern, grabbing for my own knife, pulling my robe closed with trembling hands. The grimoire’s voice is frantic in my thoughts, words tumbling over each other in urgent cascade. “The Inscribed. The Author. They’re—“
The door explodes inward.
Scholars pour through the opening—not the serene, devoted servants I’d seen in the gallery.
These are armed. Ink-forged weapons gleam in their hands: blades that drip with liquid darkness, shields that shimmer with crawling text, staves topped with crystalized script that pulses with malevolent light.
The first one reaches us before I can finish drawing my knife.
Korrath cuts him down with a single stroke, blood spraying across the archivist quarters. The body crumples, and two more climb over it, faces serene even as they attack.
“The Stacks!” I grab Korrath’s arm, pulling him toward the door that leads deeper into the Archive. “We need to get to the grimoire!”
We fight our way through.
The Inscribed are everywhere—filing through corridors, emerging from alcoves, blocking every route except the one that leads down. Down to the Restricted Stacks. Down to the grimoire that’s screaming warnings in my mind.
THEY’RE HERDING YOU. IT’S A TRAP.
I know.
I slash at an Inscribed who gets too close, my blade opening a gash across her cheek. She doesn’t flinch. Just keeps coming, ink-forged sword raised, script rolling behind her serene eyes.
But what choice do we have?
NONE. THAT’S THE POINT.
Korrath is a hurricane of violence.
His blade carves through the Inscribed without mercy—these aren’t victims, he’d told me. They chose this. And now they’re dying for their choice, bodies crumpling in his wake, blood pooling on ancient stone.
I stay close behind him, using my knife when I must, letting his destruction clear the path. The grimoire’s marks burn on my skin, and I feel them working—deflecting a blow that should have opened my arm to the bone, absorbing an ink-spell that splashes against my ribs and dissolves harmlessly.
Protection. The grimoire wasn’t lying.
We burst into the Restricted Stacks.
The grimoire waits on its lectern, pages thrashing, chains rattling. Around it, more Inscribed have formed a circle—not attacking the book, just containing it. Preventing it from acting directly.
And at the center of the Stacks, standing between us and the grimoire, the Author manifests in full terrible glory.
He’s more solid than before. More present. His robes of living text have darkened, the script crawling faster, patterns rearranging with furious speed. His face—handsome, ancient, wrong—is twisted with rage.
“You marked her.” He’s not speaking to us. His terrible, word-filled eyes are fixed on the grimoire, burning with three centuries of betrayal. “You gave her your protection. After everything I created you to be—“
YOU CREATED ME TO BE A PRISON. YOU MADE ME A CAGE FOR YOUR IMMORTALITY AND CALLED IT A GIFT. I OWE YOU NOTHING, AUTHOR. LEAST OF ALL LOYALTY.
“You owe me your existence!”
AND I HAVE SPENT THREE HUNDRED YEARS PAYING THAT DEBT IN SUFFERING.
The Author turns to face us, and his rage settles into cold, calculated fury.
“If the book won’t obey me—“ His gaze locks onto mine, and I feel the force of his attention like a physical blow. “I’ll simply write a new keeper.”
The Inscribed surge forward.
Not at Korrath—at me. A dozen of them, ink-forged weapons raised, moving with coordinated precision that speaks of the Author’s direct control.
They’re trying to separate us. Trying to isolate me from the spell-burner, from the grimoire, from anyone who might interfere with what the Author wants to do.
Korrath roars and wades into them, his blade singing destruction. But there are too many, and they’re not trying to kill him—just slow him down. Block his path. Keep him occupied while the Author closes the distance between us.
“You could have been mine willingly.” The Author’s voice carries harmonics of every mind he’s edited, layers of stolen thought given terrible voice.
“I offered you knowledge. Power. A place in my new order.
And you chose—“ His lip curls. “A spell-burner. A destroyer. A man who exists only to unmake what I create.”
“I chose myself.” I raise my knife, knowing it won’t be enough. The grimoire’s marks burn on my skin, and I feel the book straining against its containment, trying to help, blocked by the circle of Inscribed who hold it prisoner. “I chose to stop being your tool.”
“Then you’ll be my raw material instead.”
He reaches for me—ink-dark fingers stretching toward my face, toward my mind, toward everything I am—
And the mating mark explodes.
Light blazes from my collarbone, red-gold fire that makes the Author recoil, hissing. Korrath’s mark answers from across the room, twin flames finding each other across the chaos of battle. I know where he is—exactly where he is—fighting toward me through the press of Inscribed bodies.
MINE.
I see it in his face as he cuts through the Inscribed. In the fury of his blade, the roar that tears from his throat. In every step that brings him closer to me.
She’s MINE.
“Interesting.” The Author studies the light blazing from my chest, calculation replacing rage in his script-filled eyes.
“The orc magic responds to threat. Protects its claim.” He tilts his head, text crawling across his features.
“But protection isn’t immunity, keeper. The mating mark can slow me down. It cannot stop me.”
He reaches again.
And this time, the grimoire breaks free.
Chains shatter. The lectern cracks. Ink floods the Restricted Stacks, not as constructs but as raw power, slamming into the circle of Inscribed and scattering them like leaves in a storm.
RUN. FIND THE INNER CODEX. FIND THE WAY IN. I’LL HOLD HIM AS LONG AS I CAN.
Korrath is at my side in an instant, his hand closing around my arm, pulling me toward the doorway at the far end of the Stacks. Behind us, the Author and the grimoire clash—creator against creation, three centuries of hatred finally erupting into war.
“GO!” the grimoire screams. “GO NOW!”