After a pregnant moment, he reaches over his head, grabs a fistful of his tunic, and strips off his shirt. With the fabric wadded in his hands, he leans forward again, elbows on his knees, and pulls his long hair to one side.
His back is beautifully made, wide and tapered like wings, like I noticed at the stream. But the skin from his shoulders to his waist is marked with scars, rough and raised, like those on his chest, though these form a large circle with a center scar adjoining them by lines, much like a wheel and its spokes.
The firelight catches on the silvery skin, shimmering. Emboldened, I drop the blanket from my shoulders and move to my knees. There, nestled between Alexus’s legs, I touch one of the runes on his shoulder blade. He flinches at first, but chills rise the more I admire.
Because itisadmiration. His marks look like they were painful to receive—branded or carved—but they’ve left him looking like an artifact, something to be studied, understood, deciphered.
I want to know the history behind each one.
“Do you recognize them?” He looks up, searching my face for some response that I clearly don’t have to offer.
I shake my head.“Only that they are old Tiressian runes.”
“How closely have you examined the knife?” he asks.
“I know it by heart.”
“I am not sure you do,” he says, slipping the God Knife free from its sheath. “Let me show you something.”
He hands over the knife. Once again, the blade is so warm to the touch. It feels so good in my hands.
“Look into the stone,”he signs.“Hold it to the light.”
I’ve held the God Knife near the candles on my worktable a few times, enough to know what it looks like. I’ve never stared deep into theamber, though, and when I do, I’m more perplexed than ever. Faint markings I’ve never noticed before hide inside the stone. I peer harder and twist the hilt toward the firelight, rolling it between my fingers. A dozen or more runes are either etched into the pommel itself or forged into the stone.
My hands still, and a rush of awareness hits me. The marks are the same as the ones on Alexus’s body.
“Those are runes, yes,”he signs.“Old Elikesh runes. The young man who forged that knife used runes and his own blood to bind him to the blade. Runes can act as”—he pauses, like he’s hunting for the right word to sign—“an enclosure,”he finally says.“They trap necessary magick within objects, like a knife. Or within…people. They can also forge a connection between people or people and things.”
I’ve heard of this but only in lore. I’ve even seen runes—they were engraved on old stones inside Silver Hollow’s temple. But those methods of magick are archaic, practiced when the last gods still lived.
Sitting back on my heels, I touch the mark over Alexus’s right breast. He takes the knife, re-sheathing it, and clasps my hand in his, pressing my palm against his naked, fire-warmed skin.
“The God Knife calls to Un Drallag, Raina,” he whispers.“It’s been trying, all these years, to return to its maker’s hands. Its haven. Its home.”
A question flutters across my mind, chased by an answer I’m sure I already know.
Heart racing, I ask anyway, my fingers faltering around my words.
“And has it?”I sign.“Finally found home?”
A lump builds in my throat and tension in my fingers as I wait for his reply.
He lifts a hand to my cheek and traces the curve of my jaw, looking at me with those otherworldly eyes. “Yes.”
Alexus Thibault is Un Drallag.
The sorcerer who forged the God Knife.
An Eastlander from the Tribe of Ghent.
A three-hundred-year-old man.
My head aches from all the thoughts ricocheting across my mind. His life threads. They must be so frayed because they’re tattered with age. And the Summerlander magick on the blade—he could see it because he’s old enough to have learned to read it, possibly in the Summerlands. Andnowit makes sense why the God Knife warmed against my thigh in the minutes before he charged the green and every other time he was around.
Because itknewits maker was near.
I sit so still, staring into his stormy eyes, unsure what to feel. In some way, I’d sensed his antiquity. He exudes permanence, sure and unceasing as the stars in the sky. I’ve been drawn to that part of him from the moment our eyes first met.
