25. Thyra #2
One of them pauses at the top. Grey at the temples. Scars mapping twenty years of service. Bren looks back once—just once—and the look on his face isn’t betrayal. It’s something that might, in better circumstances, have been called respect. Then he’s gone.
Bren will report. He’s too good a soldier not to. The Order will know we survived, know we killed Midori, know we’re somewhere in the Veillands. The bounty clock starts the moment his boots hit Order ground.
We’re alone.
Korrath stands over Midori’s body for a long moment. His face is unreadable. The blade hangs loose in his grip, dripping blood onto the grass.
Of the two younger Elders—Maeven and Sorrel—there is no sign.
They slipped away before Midori’s forces breached the outer wards, before the worst of the fighting.
Whether they refused the Author’s offer from the start or simply fled when they saw which way the tide was turning, I don’t know.
But they never raised a hand against me.
That has to be enough. Of the eldest Elder, there was no sign. There never would be.
I go to him. Press myself against his back, wrap my arms around his chest, feel his heart hammering beneath my palms. He’s shaking—fine tremors that he’s trying to control, the aftershock of killing someone who shaped him.
“She was wrong.” My voice is soft against his shoulder. “About all of it.”
“I know.” His hand finds mine, presses it tighter against his chest. “That’s not why I’m shaking.”
“Then why?”
“Because part of me wanted to prove her right.” His voice drops. Roughens. “Part of me wanted to burn you. When she said you were contaminated—when she said the magic had spread into your blood—part of me wondered if she was right. If I should end you before you became something worse.”
The admission should terrify me. Should make me pull away, recalculate the danger of standing so close to a man who considered killing me.
It doesn’t.
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” He turns in my arms, cups my face with blood-stained hands. “Because she was wrong about the important thing. Magic isn’t poison. Destruction isn’t salvation. And whatever you are—whatever the grimoire made you—it’s mine now. For better or worse.”
I rise on my toes. Press my mouth against his. Taste blood and smoke and the bitter tang of grief.
“For better or worse,” I whisper against his lips.
KORRATH
We find shelter in the ruins—a groundskeeper’s cottage at the edge of the property that escaped the worst of the destruction. The roof holds. The walls keep out the wind. It’s enough.
Thyra sleeps.
Her breathing is slow and peaceful, her face relaxed in a way I’ve never seen before. The grimoire’s hold is gone. The Author’s shadow is gone. For the first time in six years, she belongs only to herself.
And to me.
She survived. That’s still the fact I return to, hours later. She should have died three separate times, and she didn’t.
Dawn breaks over the destroyed Archive. I watch through the cottage window as the sun rises, painting the smoke-filled sky in shades of orange and red.
Thyra stirs beside me. Her eyes flutter open, awareness returning slowly.
“Morning.” Her voice is sleep-rough. Warm.
“Morning.” I press a kiss against her forehead. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been turned inside out and reassembled by someone who lost the instructions.” She stretches, winces at muscles that protest the movement. “But alive. That’s more than I expected.”
“The grimoire gave you something before it died. Power, I think. Enough to keep you alive when you should have bled out.”
“It kept its promise.” She’s quiet for a moment. “It hated the Author. Hated being his prison. When I gave it the chance to destroy him, it gave me back what I needed to survive the destruction.”
“A book with honor.”
“A book with spite.” Her mouth curves. “Spite is a powerful motivator.”
Something shifts in her voice when she says it—like she’s beginning to understand what I’ve known for twenty years.
I laugh. The sound surprises me—rough and genuine, the first real laughter I’ve managed in days. Maybe weeks. This woman, even half-dead and covered in scars, can still make me laugh.
This is what I chose. She’s the one thing in the world I don’t want to burn.
Thyra goes rigid against me.
“What is it?”
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes have gone distant, unfocused, staring at nothing I can see. The scars on her arms—the ones left by the grimoire’s feeding—are glowing faintly. Pulsing with light that has no source.
“Thyra.”
“The grimoire.” Her voice is strange. Layered with harmonics that don’t belong to her. “It’s dead. Gone. But it wasn’t alone.”
Cold settles into my chest. “What do you mean?”
“The Author created other books. Other grimoires. Siblings, scattered across the Veillands.” She blinks, and for a moment I see script flickering in her pupils—remnants of the power the grimoire gave her, waking in response to something distant.
“They felt their brother die. Felt the Author die. And now they’re… responding.”
“Responding how?”
“Waking.” The word carries more than meaning. It carries certainty—the knowledge that we haven’t ended anything, only begun it. “The Author may be gone, but his books are still out there. And now they know someone can kill them.”
“How many?” My voice is rough. “How many other grimoires?”
“I don’t know. The glimpse was too brief. But…” She meets my eyes. There’s fear there—not for herself, but for what this means. What we’ll have to face. “Enough. There are enough.”
I pull her closer. Press my lips against her hair. Feel the mating mark burn on my chest, answering the matching mark on hers.
“Then we’ll burn them.” My voice is steady. Certain. “Every single one. We’ll find them, and we’ll destroy them, and we’ll make sure the Author’s legacy dies with him.”
“The Order will hunt us. The Inscribed survivors will want revenge. We’ll have enemies on every side.”
“We’ll have each other.” I tilt her chin up, make her meet my eyes.
“I’ve destroyed relics that could have changed the world.
Killed sentient texts that begged for mercy.
Killed my own mentor because she tried to burn the woman I love.
” The words come easily now—easier than they’ve ever come.
“A few more grimoires won’t stop me. A few more enemies won’t change what we are to each other. ”
She searches my face. Whatever she finds there makes her relax, her fear easing into hope.
“You called me the woman you love.”
“Did I?” I pretend to consider. “Slip of the tongue.”
“Liar.” She pulls me down into a kiss. “Terrible liar.”
I kiss her back. Wrap my arms around her. Hold her against me as the sun rises over the ashes of everything we’ve destroyed.
The books are waking.
And Thyra Vire knows exactly how to burn them.