Page 82 of Orc’s Grimoire

“That sounds perfect.”

She laughs. The sound is weak, exhausted, barely more than a breath—but it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. After everything we’ve been through, after the blood and the fire and the dying book, she can still laugh. She can still find something worth smiling about in the ruins of everything she knew.

This woman.

I pull her closer. Press my lips against her hair, her temple, the corner of her mouth. She turns into the kiss, her hand fisting in my ruined shirt, her body pressing against mine with an urgency that has nothing to do with the mating mark and everything to do with choice.

I kiss her until the sun is fully risen. Kiss her until the smoke from the Archive has faded to a thin column on the horizon. Kiss her until the world starts demanding our attention again, with all its complications and consequences and the uncertain future we’ll have to face.

The world can wait.

Right now, there’s only this.

Only her.

Only us.

TWENTY-FIVE

THYRA

The kiss ends when the world intrudes.

I hear them before I see them—boots on stone, the clink of weapons, the harsh breathing of soldiers who have been running. The spell-burners have found us.

Korrath is on his feet before I can react, pulling me up with him, positioning his body between me and the approaching threat. His blade—the one he stole from a dying construct—is already in his hand.

The mating mark on his chest burns with heat I can feel from a foot away.

Six spell-burners crest the hill. Their black armor is scorched, their faces streaked with soot and sweat. Behind them, the Archive still burns, sending columns of smoke into the brightening sky.

And at their head, pale eyes burning with fanatical fire, walks High Purger Midori.

She looks worse than I expected. Burns mark the left side of her face—backlash from the grimoire’s death, probably. One of her three execution brands is missing. Her movements are stiff, favoring her right side.

But her eyes. Her eyes are bright with the certainty of a zealot who has finally found her target.

“Korrath.” Her voice carries across the hillside, rough with smoke and rage. “I wondered where you’d gone. When the book screamed and the portal opened, I knew you must have escaped.”

Korrath doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move. Just watches her approach with the coiled stillness of a predator waiting for the right moment to strike.

“It’s done.” I step forward, beside Korrath rather than behind him. “The Author is dead. The grimoire is destroyed. The Archive is burning. Everything you came here to purge—it’s already ash.”

Midori’s gaze shifts to me. The contempt in her eyes hits me like a blow.

“The keeper.” She spits the word. “The woman who fed that abomination for six years. Do you expect gratitude? Mercy?”

“I expect nothing from you.”

“Good.” Midori draws her remaining brands. The metal glows cherry-red, hungry for magic to burn. “Because the contamination isn’t gone just because the book is dead. It spread. Into the Archive. Into the scholars who served it.” Her eyes lock onto the sigil scars on my arms, my chest, the marks the grimoire left on my flesh. “Into you.”

“She’s not contaminated.” Korrath’s voice is flat. Dangerous. “The grimoire released her. Whatever hold it had⁠—“

“Whatever hold it had is irrelevant.” Midori advances another step. The spell-burners fan out behind her, forming a semicircle. Professional. Practiced. They’ve done this before—surrounded targets and waited for the killing blow. “She fed a sentient book with her blood for six years. She’s saturated with forbidden magic. Every instinct I have says she should burn.”

“Your instincts are wrong.”

“My instincts have kept me alive for thirty years.” Midori’s eyes narrow. “Longer than you’ve been burning, boy. I trained you. I taught you what magic does to people—how it seeps in, how it twists, how it turns good soldiers into monsters.” She gestures at me with one brand. “Look at her. Look at the marks on her skin. That’s not natural scarring. That’s magical contamination made visible.”