TWENTY-ONE
IVALYS
Iland hard.
Paper cushions my fall—mountains of it, shifting and rustling beneath my weight. I tumble down a slope of crumbling contracts, voided debts, broken bargains. The impact drives the air from my lungs and sends pain lancing up my spine.
The Vault.
I’m in the contract graveyard Madame Viscera spoke of. The place where the Ledger Master discards what he no longer needs. Miles of failed collections rot in this pit, their yellowed edges catching the faint glow that seeps from somewhere far above.
The smell hits me—ink and decay. The air tastes thick, wrong, coating the back of my throat. Contracts brush against my skin as I struggle upright, paper-thin touches that feel like ghosts brushing past.
“Rathok?” My voice echoes through the vast space. “Rathok!”
No answer. Just the endless whisper of paper settling, shifting, rearranging itself in the dark.
I struggle to my feet, fighting for balance on the unstable surface. The contracts slide beneath me, pulling me deeper intothe pit. I can’t see the bottom. Can’t see walls. Just paper, everywhere, stretching into darkness.
He fell from higher. Fell first. If he’s alive?—
He’s alive. He has to be.
The mark glows—warm, insistent. I follow the sensation, picking my way across the paper landscape. My gift stirs with every step, responding to the debts surrounding me. These contracts are dead, voided, powerless. But they remember what they were. They whisper of promises broken, lives claimed, souls consumed.
I find him at the base of a paper mountain.
Rathok lies motionless, half-buried in contracts. Blood pools beneath him—black in the dim light, spreading across the pale documents. His face is turned toward me, eyes closed, one arm bent at an angle that makes my stomach clench. The massive body that shielded me, protected me, held me through the night in the deep catacombs—it looks small here. Broken.
“No.” I slide down to him, paper cascading around me. “Rathok!”
My hands find his chest. Press against the leather armor. Search for breath, for heartbeat, for any sign of life. The mark glows—my gift reaching for him, desperate to feel the soul I claimed in the darkness below the city.
There. A flutter beneath my palm. Faint but steady.
Relief floods through me so fast, my knees buckle. I catch myself against his shoulder, fingers curling into his armor, fighting the urge to shake him. To scream at him for scaring me. For falling. For being the only thing in this nightmare that matters.
When did that happen? When did an orc enforcer who came to collect my brother’s debt become the center of my world?
I don’t have time to find the answer. Don’t have time for anything but this moment, this pit, this man.
“Rathok.” I brush blood-matted hair from his face. “Wake up. I need you to wake up.”
His eyes open.
A sound escapes him—half groan, half growl. His good hand reaches up, finds my cheek, cups it with surprising gentleness for fingers that have killed more people than I can imagine.
“You jumped.” His voice is gravel and pain. “Damn fool, woman. You jumped after me.”
“Of course, I jumped.” I’m laughing and crying at the same time, the sound catching in my throat. “You think I was going to face him alone?”
He tries to sit up. Fails. Tries again, and I help him, supporting his weight as he hauls himself upright. His broken arm hangs useless at his side. Blood seeps from a gash above his eye, from cuts I can’t see beneath his armor. He’s pale—paler than I’ve ever seen an orc—and his breath comes in harsh, labored gasps.
But he’s alive. He’s alive, and he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in this pit worth seeing.
I kiss him.
I don’t plan it. Don’t think about it. I just lean down and press my mouth to his—tasting blood and dust and the familiar heat of him beneath it all. His hand tightens on my cheek, pulling me closer for one desperate moment. The kiss is brief, fierce, a promise and a prayer wrapped into one.
