Page 84 of Orc’s Grimoire

“No.” Korrath pulls his blade free. Watches her crumple to the ground. “I’ve become something that chooses.”

Midori’s eyes find mine. There’s hatred there, still—hatred and certainty and the unshakeable conviction that she’s right. That I’m the reason her student fell. That the magic in my blood reached out and twisted him into something he was never meant to be.

She’s wrong. But she dies believing she’s right, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.

The light fades from her eyes. Her body goes still. High Purger Midori—thirty years of spell-burning, countless libraries destroyed, a lifetime of absolute certainty—ends on a hillside overlooking the ruins of her final mission.

The spell-burners don’t attack.

They stand in their semicircle, watching their High Purger’s blood soak into the grass. Watching Korrath wipe his blade on his ruined shirt. Watching me, the keeper who started all this, lean against a man who just killed his mentor to protect me.

“Go.” Korrath’s voice carries across the silent hillside. “Report what you’ve seen. Tell the Order that the Archive is destroyed, the Author is dead, and High Purger Midori fell in the purge.” A pause. “Tell them I’ve gone rogue. Tell them I’m beyond saving. I don’t care what story you choose—but choose it somewhere else.”

The young orc who spoke earlier meets Korrath’s eyes. There’s fear there, and confusion, and what might be understanding.

“The Archive is destroyed.” His voice is steady. “The Author is dead. High Purger Midori… fell in the purge.” He turns to the others. “We’re done here.”

They leave. One by one, spell-burners disappearing over the crest of the hill, heading back toward the smoke and ruin of the Archive.

One of them pauses at the top. Grey at the temples. Scars mapping twenty years of service. Bren looks back once—just once—and the look on his face isn’t betrayal. It’s something that might, in better circumstances, have been called respect. Then he’s gone.

Bren will report. He’s too good a soldier not to. The Order will know we survived, know we killed Midori, know we’re somewhere in the Veillands. The bounty clock starts the moment his boots hit Order ground.

We’re alone.

Korrath stands over Midori’s body for a long moment. His face is unreadable. The blade hangs loose in his grip, dripping blood onto the grass.

Of the two younger Elders—Maeven and Sorrel—there is no sign. They slipped away before Midori’s forces breached the outer wards, before the worst of the fighting. Whether they refused the Author’s offer from the start or simply fled when they saw which way the tide was turning, I don’t know. But they never raised a hand against me. That has to be enough. Of the eldest Elder, there was no sign. There never would be.

I go to him. Press myself against his back, wrap my arms around his chest, feel his heart hammering beneath my palms. He’s shaking—fine tremors that he’s trying to control, the aftershock of killing someone who shaped him.

“She was wrong.” My voice is soft against his shoulder. “About all of it.”

“I know.” His hand finds mine, presses it tighter against his chest. “That’s not why I’m shaking.”

“Then why?”

“Because part of me wanted to prove her right.” His voice drops. Roughens. “Part of me wanted to burn you. When she said you were contaminated—when she said the magic had spread into your blood—part of me wondered if she was right. If I should end you before you became something worse.”

The admission should terrify me. Should make me pull away, recalculate the danger of standing so close to a man who considered killing me.

It doesn’t.

“But you didn’t.”

“No.” He turns in my arms, cups my face with blood-stained hands. “Because she was wrong about the important thing. Magic isn’t poison. Destruction isn’t salvation. And whatever you are—whatever the grimoire made you—it’s mine now. For better or worse.”

I rise on my toes. Press my mouth against his. Taste blood and smoke and the bitter tang of grief.

“For better or worse,” I whisper against his lips.

KORRATH

We find shelter in the ruins—a groundskeeper’s cottage at the edge of the property that escaped the worst of the destruction. The roof holds. The walls keep out the wind. It’s enough.

Thyra sleeps.

Her breathing is slow and peaceful, her face relaxed in a way I’ve never seen before. The grimoire’s hold is gone. The Author’s shadow is gone. For the first time in six years, she belongs only to herself.