Ice slides down my spine.
“A distraction from what?”
She doesn’t answer. But her gaze drops to where our hands are joined over my mark, and I see understanding bloom in her expression—terrible, inevitable understanding.
“From us.” The words come out nearly inaudible. “The King wanted us to claim each other. Wanted the mating mark to bind us completely.”
“Why?”
“Because now it can reach both of us.” She looks up, and I see fear in her eyes for the first time since she ran onto that battlefield. “The mark isn’t a weakness, Drokhar. It’s an anchor. The King couldn’t pull you into its realm before—you’re too resistant to death magic, too protected by your years of exposure. But me?”
My blood runs cold.
“You’re its channel.”
“And now I’m your mate.” She presses her forehead to mine, close enough that I feel each word form on her lips. “Where I go, you follow. The mark won’t let you do anything else.”
Deep beneath the city, I feel it.
A stirring in the death magic that saturates Blackreach’s foundations. A presence vast and ancient and hungry, turning its attention toward the two souls who have bound themselves in exactly the way it needed them to.
The Gravetide King knows what we’ve done.
And in the darkness of its battlefield throne, hundreds of mouths curve into identical smiles.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ARADYA
The truth comes to me in fragments.
I’m sitting on the edge of Drokhar’s narrow bed, wrapped in one of his shirts—gray linen that smells of smoke and ash and him—watching him prepare for the day’s burning. Morning light filters through the single window, catching dust motes that drift through the air like the ash that coats everything in this place. The Ash Pits never truly sleep, and even now I can hear the distant crackle of pyres being fed, the murmur of death wardens calling to each other across the burning grounds.
The domesticity of the scene should feel strange. A mourning witch making herself at home in a death warden’s quarters, surrounded by the tools of his trade: corpse-iron brands hanging on the wall, suppression chains coiled in the corner, the curved blade he uses to sever revenant spines propped against the door. A chest against the far wall that I know contains spare uniforms. On a single nail above the bed hang a pair of dog tags. Nothing else soft. Nothing decorative. Nothing that speaks of a life beyond duty and endings.
But the mark has a way of making the impossible feel inevitable.
The mark throbs gently beneath my collarbone as I watch him move—checking the edge of his blade, adjusting the buckles on his armor, the same routine he’s probably performed a thousand times.
He pauses mid-buckle. Turns to look at me with those ash-colored eyes that see too much.
“You’re staring.”
“You’re worth staring at.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. Not quite a smile—Drokhar doesn’t smile easily—but close. He crosses the small room in two strides and bends to press a kiss to my forehead, lingering there for a heartbeat longer than necessary.
“I’ll be back before dusk.”
“I know.”
My hand finds his before he can pull away, our fingers interlacing with the ease of people who have learned each other’s shape. The mark flares at the contact—mine and his, calling and answering—and I feel his presence settle more firmly at the edge of my awareness. Not thoughts, not feelings. Location. The constant knowledge of where he is in relation to me, like a compass needle finding north.
He squeezes my fingers once, then releases them.
The door closes behind him.
Silence.