Page 50 of Orc’s Grimoire

“I mean all of it.” I don’t look away. Don’t soften the truth. “The calculations. The compromises. The lives I’ve weighed against knowledge and found wanting. I’m not a good person, Korrath. I’m not even sure I’m a whole person anymore—not after six years of bleeding for a monster and telling myself it was necessary.”

“Neither am I.” His free hand rises to my face, rough fingers tracing my cheekbone, my jaw, the edge of the new sigil at my throat. “I’ve burned things that screamed in human voices. Destroyed relics that begged for mercy. Felt relief every time magic died, and hated myself for the pleasure.” His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth.

We stand at the edge of everything we’ve just said, and neither of us turns away.

FOURTEEN

THYRA

Idon’t know which of us moves first.

One moment we’re standing at the edge of an impossible conversation, his hand on my face, mine on his heart. The next, I’m kissing him—or he’s kissing me—and it doesn’t matter who started because we’re both drowning in it.

There’s nothing gentle about this.

I kiss him with six years of loneliness and fear and desperate need, pouring every emotion I’ve suppressed into the press of my mouth against his. He responds with equal ferocity—one hand fisting in my hair, tilting my head back, the other wrapping around my waist and hauling me against him until there’s no space left between us.

The mating mark ignites.

Heat explodes through my chest, blinding and brilliant, radiating from the sigil on my collarbone until I can feel it in my bones. His mark answers—I feel the flare through the hand still pressed to his heart, twin flames finding fuel in each other.

He tastes like smoke and iron. His lips are rough, chapped from the dry Archive air, and his tusks scrape against my chin as he adjusts the angle of the kiss. The sensation sends sparks cascading down my spine. I arch into him, greedy for more contact, and his grip tightens until I can feel bruises forming beneath his fingers.

Good. Let it hurt. Let it mark me.

He backs me against the lectern—not the grimoire’s lectern, just a simple wooden stand for holding texts during study—and lifts me onto its edge without breaking the kiss. My robe falls open completely, baring the new sigils, and he pulls back just long enough to look.

His eyes trace the marks with an intensity that makes my breath catch.

“The grimoire’s work.” His voice is a ragged growl. “Claiming you. Armoring you.”

“Jealous?” The word comes out breathless, teasing despite the fire burning through my veins.

“Yes.” No hesitation. No shame. His hands settle on the sigils at my ribs, palms flat against the heated skin, and the mating mark burns at his touch, demanding more. “You’re mine, witch. The book can mark you all it wants. It doesn’t change what the mating mark says.”

“And what does it say?”

He leans in, his mouth finding the sigil at my throat, and bites down.

I cry out—pleasure and pain tangled so tightly I can’t separate them. His teeth graze the heated skin, his tongue tracing the edges of the grimoire’s mark, and the mark pulses with heat I feel in my bones.

“It says you’re mine.” His voice vibrates against my throat. “It says you’ve been mine since the moment I walked into this Archive. It says⁠—“

The grimoire screams.

Not in triumph. Not in encouragement. A shriek of warning that tears through my mind like shattered glass, sharp enough to make me cry out and clutch my head.

Korrath pulls back, blade already in hand, body positioning itself between me and the door. “What⁠—“

“They’re coming.” I slide off the lectern, grabbing for my own knife, pulling my robe closed with trembling hands. The grimoire’s voice is frantic in my thoughts, words tumbling over each other in urgent cascade. “The Inscribed. The Author. They’re⁠—“

The door explodes inward.

Scholars pour through the opening—not the serene, devoted servants I’d seen in the gallery. These are armed. Ink-forged weapons gleam in their hands: blades that drip with liquid darkness, shields that shimmer with crawling text, staves topped with crystalized script that pulses with malevolent light.

The first one reaches us before I can finish drawing my knife.

Korrath cuts him down with a single stroke, blood spraying across the archivist quarters. The body crumples, and two more climb over it, faces serene even as they attack.