Page 81 of Orc’s Grimoire

“Burning. It opened a door. Got us out before…” I trail off. There’s no good way to finish that sentence.

“It let me go.” Her voice is wondering. “I thought… I was part of it. I thought if it died, I’d die too.”

“It gave you something. Power, I think. Before the end.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Processing. Calculating, even now, even half-dead and covered in blood on a hillside somewhere in the Veillands.

“It kept its promise.” Her fingers trace the mating mark through my shirt. “It said it would release the binding if we helped it destroy its creator. And it did.”

I notice the scars on her forearms are still faintly luminous. Not the bright pulse of active magic—something quieter. Permanent.

“The marks,” I say. “They’re still glowing.”

“The binding is gone.” She looks down at her arms with an expression I can’t quite read. “But six years of blood leaves traces. The grimoire’s gifts—the communion, the sensing—those don’t sever with the chain. They’re mine now. Part of what I am.” A pause. “What I’ve become.”

“Is that…” I search for the right question. “Good or bad?”

“I don’t know yet.” She meets my eyes. “Ask me in a year.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been turned inside out and put back wrong.” She attempts a smile. It’s weak, but it’s real. “How do I look?”

“Terrible.” I press my lips against her forehead. “Beautiful. Alive.”

“Flatterer.”

“Truth-teller.” I pull her closer, feel her settle against my chest. “You almost died. You almost dissolved into a book. You carved yourself open to give a hungry grimoire enough power to rebel against its creator.”

“I had to.” Her voice is steady. Unapologetic. “It was the only way.”

“I know.” I tighten my arms around her. “That’s what terrifies me.”

We lie in the grass as the sky begins to lighten.

Somewhere to the east, smoke rises—the Archive, still burning. Midori’s pyres, consuming whatever the grimoire’s death left behind. The end of centuries of forbidden knowledge, reduced to ash on the Veillands wind.

Thyra watches the smoke with an expression I can’t quite read. Grief, maybe. Or relief. Or both tangled so tightly they’ve become the same thing.

“Six years.” Her voice is soft. “I gave that book six years of my life. Fed it twice a day. Learned its moods, its hungers, its secrets. And now it’s just… gone.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Parts of it.” She doesn’t look away from the smoke. “The knowledge it held. The secrets I never got to learn. The feeling of being needed, of being the only thing standing between the world and disaster.” A pause. “The grimoire itself… I don’t know. It was a monster. But it was my monster.”

“And now?”

“Now I have a different monster.” She turns her head, meets my eyes. Warmth flickers in her gaze—not the cold calculation I’ve grown used to, but emotion that’s softer. More vulnerable. “One that brands instead of feeds. One that burns instead of preserves.”

“One that’s yours.” I brush a strand of blood-matted hair from her face. “Completely. Permanently. Whatever that means.”

“What does it mean?”

I consider the question. Consider everything we’ve done, everything we’ve survived, everything we’ve become to each other in the span of a few impossible days.

“It means I’m not leaving.” My voice is rough. Certain. “It means wherever you go, I go. It means you’re stuck with a spell-burner who’s probably wanted by his own order now, and I’m stuck with a keeper without a book to keep.”

“That sounds terrible.”