Page 35 of Orc’s Grimoire

My hand closes around her wrist.

The contact sparks through me like lightning striking bone, flooding heat through my chest, straight into the mating mark. She gasps—a small sound, involuntary—and I feel her pulse hammering beneath my fingers. Fast. Unsteady. Matching my own.

“Korrath—“

“Stop fighting.” My voice is rough, barely recognizable. “Every moment I spend near you, the mark demands more. Touching you makes it worse. Not touching you makes it unbearable.”

“I know.” Her free hand rises to my chest, palm pressing against the marks beneath my shirt. The heat is intense—her touch and the magic and the pull between us, all of it merging into a single overwhelming sensation. “I feel it too.”

“Then you know we can’t keep fighting it.” I pull her closer, and she comes willingly, her body fitting against mine with an ease that feels predestined. “The mating mark won’t let us resist forever. Eventually, it will take what it wants.”

“And what does it want?”

You. It wants you. It wants to claim you completely, to bind us so tightly that nothing—not the grimoire, not the Order, not death itself—can tear us apart.

But I don’t say that. Don’t trust myself to speak with her this close, her scent filling my lungs, her body warm against mine. The addiction that normally screams for destruction has gone quiet, replaced by a different craving. A different need.

Her. You need her.

I release her wrist. Step back. Put distance between us before the mating mark takes the choice out of my hands entirely.

“We should focus on the research.” My voice sounds strangled. “Find the solution before Midori arrives.”

Thyra watches me retreat with an expression I can’t read. Disappointment? Relief? The sigils on her collarbone pulse brighter, responding to my withdrawal.

“The solution.” She turns back to her scattered scrolls, movements stiff. “Right. The solution.”

Running footsteps echo in the corridor.

We both turn—Thyra reaching for the knife at her thigh, me dropping my hand to my blade. The Scriptorium door bursts open, and one of the younger archivists stumbles through, face pale with terror.

“Keeper.” The word comes out in a gasp. “Keeper, there’s—a messenger—from outside⁠—“

“Slow down.” Thyra’s voice carries that calm authority I’ve noticed before, the soft control that can quiet a room. “What messenger?”

“From the spell-burner camp.” The archivist’s eyes dart to me, then away. “He says—he says the High Purger’s advance scouts have arrived. She’s not two days out anymore. She’s⁠—“

“How long?” I step forward, and the archivist flinches back. I make myself soften my voice. “How long until Midori gets here?”

“Tomorrow.” The word falls like a death sentence. “She’s been traveling through the night. Her scouts say she’ll reach the Archive by dawn.”

Dawn. Three days, gone in a single word. Less than twelve hours now. Everything we thought we had—the time, the planning, the desperate hope of finding a solution—vanished in a single word.

Thyra’s face has gone grey. “That’s not possible. The Order’s base camp is four days’ ride from here.”

“She didn’t come from the base camp.” The archivist swallows hard. “She was already en route. Had been for three days. The Order sent her before you even arrived, Commander. Before you sent word about the delay.”

Before I arrived. Before I delayed the purge. Before any of this began.

They never trusted me to handle this alone. They sent me as a test—to see if I’d burn everything and walk away clean. They sent Midori as the one who would, regardless.

The realization burns. Twenty years of service. A hundred libraries destroyed. Countless relics reduced to ash in the Order’s name. And they still didn’t trust me to complete a single mission.

“Commander.” The archivist’s voice trembles. “The messenger is waiting. He needs a response.”

“Tell him—“ I stop. What do I tell him? That I’ve been marked by the grimoire? That the mating mark has claimed me for the keeper I was sent to kill? That I’ve delayed the purge because I can’t bring myself to burn the woman I’m apparently destined to love?

Love. Is that what this is?