Page 57 of Orc’s Hex

He looks at me.

The distance between us is ten feet of carved stone and the Bondmark burning on both our wrists, and his eyes are on me with everything that was in them in the antechamber—everything that was in them a minute ago—and the crypt’s amplification field makes it louder in a way that registers in the center of my chest.

He crosses to me instead.

I don’t move.

He stops within reach—the same distance as a hundred other moments in twelve days, except none of those were this. His hand finds my hip. He tilts my face up and he looks at me for one moment and what’s on his face is not gentle and it is not asking and it is exactly who he is.

“After,” he says. Low.

“After,” I say.

He kisses me hard, the way someone kisses when they know what comes next and intend to make it back from it but are not willing to bet everything on that, and I pull him closer by the back of his neck and the Bondmark on my wrist burns so hot it should scar and doesn’t because it’s Blood Law and Blood Law doesn’t damage what it marks.

It’s not long.

It’s enough.

He pulls back. His hands stay on my face for one more second—both of them now, his palms against my jaw, his eyes on mine—and then he steps back.

Walks to the center of the carving.

Kneels.

No hesitation. No ceremony. He places both palms flat on the carving and he looks at me across the chamber.

The sigil ignites beneath him.

A clean, deep glow rising from the channels under his palms, moving outward through the carving in concentric rings—the sigil recognizing its own bloodline, the source it has fed on across centuries, finally in direct contact with the mechanism.

The warmth travels from his hands to the floor to the walls.

The Bondmark on my wrist burns.

He is enormous and still and lit from below, and his eyes are on mine across the room and they don’t move.

I have read everything about him that matters. He is the most capable person I have ever worked alongside and the most difficult to look at directly and I know exactly what it is and we are going to be on the other side of this and I am going to make sure of that.

We begin.

FOURTEEN

ZIVA

The first thing I do is breathe.

One breath—deliberate, full, the kind that clears everything else out. I’ve done this before every major curse work of my career.

He is across the chamber, his hands on the carving, watching me. The sigil is lit beneath him and the glow of it reaches his face from below and I do not look at his face more than I have to, because we already said what needed to be said and what comes next requires everything I have.

I begin.

I pull the curse out of myself first.

This is the part most curse-eaters don’t survive. Not the absorption, not the draw—the ripping. Taking what has been living inside your own body and yanking it back out before it can anchor deeper.

I’ve done it twice before. Both times, what I drew was less than what I’m carrying now.