Chapter 6 Kielyne #2
Blorjorn has me kneel across from him, the fire between us reduced to glowing embers. He produces a knife—not his battle weapons, something smaller, older, the blade etched with symbols I don’t recognize. Orcish, probably. Ancient orcish.
“The words must be spoken in the old tongue.” His voice is low, formal. Different from his usual rough growl. “You won’t understand them. That’s... expected.”
“What do they mean?”
He hesitates. “Blood to blood. Shadow to shadow. Bound until released.” His jaw tightens. “It’s an oath of protection. The magic won’t work if I don’t mean it.”
“And do you?”
His eyes meet mine. Dark. Steady. “Yes.”
I swallow hard. “Then let’s get this over with.”
“Give me your hand.”
I extend my left hand, palm up. His fingers close around my wrist—warm, careful, surprisingly gentle for hands that have killed so many. He turns my arm, exposing the soft skin of my inner forearm.
“The mark will appear here.” His thumb traces a line across my forearm. The touch sends a shiver through me that has nothing to do with cold. “It will hurt. I can’t... there’s no way to make it not hurt.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Possibly.” His voice roughens. “But not like this.”
Before I can respond, he draws the knife across his own palm. The blade bites deep, blood welling dark and thick. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t make a sound. Just watches the blood pool with an expression I can’t read.
“Your turn.”
He offers me the knife. I take it—the handle still warm from his grip—and press the edge against my palm. The metal is cold. Sharp. I can feel the bite of it against my skin before I even apply pressure.
One breath. Two.
I cut.
Pain flares, sharp and immediate. Blood wells from the wound, dripping onto the dusty ground between us. I clench my jaw against the urge to hiss through my teeth.
Blorjorn reaches across the space between us. His bleeding palm presses against mine.
The contact is electric. His skin against mine—rough, warm, alien and intimate, all at once. Our blood mingles between our pressed palms, hot and slick.
He starts to speak.
The words are old, guttural, rolling, nothing I’ve heard before. They don’t sound like language. They sound like thunder. Like the grinding of mountains. Like something that existed before words were invented and will exist long after they’re forgotten.
The shadows around us shiver.
I gasp. Something builds in the air—pressure, heat, the taste of metal on my tongue. The fire’s embers flare brighter without fuel. The stone walls seem to lean inward, watching.
Blorjorn’s grip tightens on my hand. His voice rises, the old words tumbling faster, and I feel something gathering. Feel it coiling around our joined hands, sinking into our mingled blood.
Blood to blood. Shadow to shadow. Bound until released.
My forearm ignites.
I scream.
Can’t help it. Can’t stop it. Fire sears into my flesh—not spreading through my body, but concentrated, focused, burning a pattern into my forearm with surgical precision.
I can smell my own skin charring, see smoke rising from the wound, watch in horror as something—some mark, some brand—carves itself into me in lines of white-hot agony.
Through the haze of pain, I see Blorjorn.
He’s not screaming. But his jaw is clenched so hard I can see the muscles straining, and the same mark is burning into his forearm, black against his dark-green skin, smoking in the dim light.
The burning peaks. Holds.
And then, slowly, begins to fade.
I slump forward, gasping, my vision blurred with tears I don’t remember shedding. My hand is still locked with Blorjorn’s, our blood still mingling, but the fire is gone. Just the throbbing ache of fresh burns, and something else—a faint awareness, like a weight I hadn’t noticed was missing.
Not his thoughts. Not his feelings. Just... knowledge. A sense that he’s there, across from me, real and present.
I look down at my arm.
The mark is angular, harsh, unmistakably orcish. Lines and curves that form a pattern I don’t recognize—not quite language, not quite symbol. Something older. More primal. It stands out against my skin in raised scarring, pink and raw and still faintly smoking.
I look at Blorjorn’s arm. The same mark. The same pattern. Burned black into his dark-green flesh.
“It’s done.” His voice comes out hoarse. Strained. “The oath is bound. This was the first binding. Not the sealing. That required a different fire.”
I try to speak. Can’t. My throat is raw from screaming, my body trembling with aftershocks, my mind struggling to process what just happened.
Blorjorn releases my hand. He produces a strip of clean cloth, wraps it carefully around my burned forearm. His touch is gentle. Careful. Nothing like the brutal efficiency I’ve come to expect from him.
“The pain fades quickly.” He doesn’t look at me. His gaze is fixed on his work, on the bandage he’s tying around my wound. “Within a day, it won’t hurt at all. Just... be there. A reminder.”
“A reminder of what?”
“That you’re protected.” He finishes the bandage. Finally meets my eyes. “Your life-signature is hidden now. Masked beneath mine. The trackers will search for you and find nothing. You’re invisible to their magic.”
“Invisible.” I look at the bandage on my arm. At the matching mark on his. “That’s one word for it.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Is it?” I meet his gaze. “I’m hidden from them. But I’m tied to you now. Bound by magic I don’t understand, to an orc I barely know.”
Something flickers in his expression. That raw thing again—discomfort, maybe. Or something deeper.
“You’re still yourself.” His voice drops. Roughens. “I said earlier, the oath doesn’t change who you are. Doesn’t make you less. It just... binds our fates. If you’re dying, I’ll know. If I’m dying, you’ll know. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” I repeat flatly.
“That’s all.”
We stare at each other across the dying fire. Two people bound by blood and magic and desperation, neither of us sure what we’ve just become.
“Neither can you run.” His voice drops. Roughens. “From this. From whatever comes next. We see it through together, or not at all.”
The words hang in the air. A warning. A promise. Maybe both.
I should be angry. Should be terrified. Should be anything except what I actually am—which is strangely, horribly, relieved.
Because for the first time since Torvin cornered me on the corpse road, someone stands between me and the hunters. Someone who can’t abandon me without performing another ritual. Someone who’s literally bound his fate to mine.
It’s not freedom. It’s not safety. It’s not anything I ever wanted.
But it’s something.
“Then I guess we’re stuck with each other.” I try to make it sound flippant. It doesn’t work. “For better or worse.”
Blorjorn’s mouth twitches. That almost-smile again, there and gone in an instant.
“For better or worse.” He rises, towering over me. “Get some rest. Tomorrow we move. And whatever comes next...” He glances at the matching marks on our arms. “We face it together.”
He walks away. Disappears into the darkness beyond the dying fire.
I sit alone in the ravine, the mark on my arm throbbing in time with my pulse, and I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream.
So I do none of those things. I find my bedroll. I lie down. I stare at the narrow strip of stars overhead and think about what I’ve done.
Blood to blood. Shadow to shadow. Bound until released.
For better or worse.
I close my eyes.
And for the first time in fifteen years, I have an ally I can’t lose. Whether either of us wants it or not.