Page 42 of Orc’s Grimoire

The thought isn’t mine.

I don’t know if any of my thoughts are mine anymore.

“Choose, keeper.” The Author’s voice wraps around me like chains made of text. “Choose, and let us begin.”

The gallery waits.

The Inscribed watch.

And in my chest, the mating mark burns steady, the only anchor I have left to prove that any part of me is still my own.

TWELVE

KORRATH

The mating mark screams.

Not a sound—a sensation. Fire and ice flooding through my chest, centered on the mark, demanding attention. Something is wrong. Thyra. The mark burns hotter when she’s in danger, and right now it’s blazing against my ribs like a brand pressed to flesh.

I abandon my patrol of the perimeter and run.

The iron gates blur past. The manor’s dead garden becomes a smear of twisted branches and bone-white flowers. I hit the entrance at full speed, shoulder checking the heavy door hard enough to rattle its hinges, and plunge into the darkness beyond.

She’s in danger. She’s afraid. Move faster.

The mating mark pulses directions against my ribs. Left. Down. Through the gallery level.

I follow the burning compass in my chest and pray I’m not too late.

The gallery doors hang open.

I slow at the threshold, blade drawn, brand ready. The scene inside stops me cold.

Thyra stands at the center of a circle of kneeling figures—archivists, scholars, people I’ve seen moving through the Archive’s corridors. Their heads are bowed, their hands pressed to the floor, their postures radiating devotion. And behind their eyes, visible even from here, script scrolls in patterns that make my teeth ache.

The Inscribed. The Author’s willing servants. Seventeen of them, maybe more, surrounding the woman I’m apparently supposed to die for.

And facing Thyra, close enough to touch her, stands a figure that doesn’t belong in any world I understand.

Tall. Gaunt. Robed in fabric that crawls with living text. His face is handsome in an ancient, terrible way, and his eyes—his eyes are filled with words. Thousands of them, scrolling behind his pupils, a library given flesh and hunger.

The Author. He’s manifested fully. And his ink-dark fingers are pressed against Thyra’s collarbone, against the claiming sigil the grimoire burned into her skin.

She sees me over his shoulder. Her eyes widen—relief and fear and warning all tangled in a single glance.

Don’t. Don’t attack. Not yet.

I read the message in her face as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud. Her eyes plead for patience, for restraint. Not yet. Don’t attack yet.

I have never been patient. But for her, I freeze at the threshold and wait.

“Ah.” The Author’s voice carries harmonics that scrape against the inside of my skull—dozens of tones speaking in unison, layered and wrong. “The spell-burner arrives. I wondered when you’d join us.”

His hand doesn’t leave Thyra’s chest. His eyes don’t leave mine.

“Let her go.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Whatever game you’re playing, it ends now.”

“Game?” The Author’s smile carries three centuries of patience. “This isn’t a game, spell-burner. This is cultivation. Your mate has been feeding my grimoire for six years. She’s already half mine—she just hasn’t accepted it yet.”