Page 70 of Orc’s Hex

I look at the Bondmark on my wrist.

Warm. Steady. Not burning. Not the pressure-warmth of the sigil’s influence running through it. The actual warmth of what it has always been supposed to be. The Blood Law mating mark between two people, nothing else.

Just this.

He is still looking at me.

I have spent twelve days learning how to read that look. I know exactly what it means.

I put my hand over his, on my jaw.

“Brynna needs you to hold still.”

“In a moment.”

He stays there for ten seconds, his hand warm against my face, while Varek pretends to be examining the horizon and Brynna runs out of patience and comes to us regardless.

Behind us, in the mountain, the Foundation Crypt finishes settling.

The sound of it is very far away.

EIGHTEEN

ZIVA

The crack in the outer wall is visible from here.

It runs from the inner keep’s base up through the east-facing stone, following the oath channel the Betrayal Sigil used to carry possession threads to the garrison quarters. A structural scar. It will need attention from the Forge Quarter’s masons—months of work and deep knowledge of how this mountain’s stone behaves under repair.

I am cataloging it.

I know I am cataloging it. The part of my mind that assesses and plans and measures does not stop for crisis, does not stop for the fact that I am covered in blood and stone dust and the deep exhaustion of having done the most demanding curse work of my career while surviving multiple things that should have killed me. It just keeps going, noting the crack, noting the angle of it, noting that the arch above the main gate looks intact and the east rampart shows no structural compromise despite the shuddering it took.

The sky above Blackstone Range is iron going to gold at its lowest edge.

Dawn. We have been underground since before midnight.

Blackscar Hold stands.

I look at the Bondmark on my wrist. Warm. Steady. The same warmth it has been since we emerged—not the burning pressure of three weeks ago. Just the mark itself.

The curse is gone.

Not suppressed. Not dormant. Gone—the distinction matters and I am going to be writing research notes about it for months and I am aware, standing at the rampart in the first light of morning with stone dust in my hair and another person’s blood drying on my coat, that I do not want to think about research notes right now.

He is somewhere behind me. I know exactly where he is. That is apparently going to be my life now.

I decide I do not object to that.

DRAZHUL

The stone beneath his boots is quiet.

He has stood on this rampart more times than he can count. He knows the hum of it—the ambient presence of the Betrayal Sigil running through the oath channels three floors below, the background pressure of the mechanism that has been in the foundation since before his first breath. He has never known this rampart without that hum. He did not know, until now, that the absence would feel like this: not silence but space. Room in the stone that wasn’t there before.

Ziva is at the parapet.

She has her back to him and she is looking at the valley. The Bondmark on her wrist is visible where her sleeve has shifted and it is doing what he was told it would do when the sigil was gone: just being there. Warm. Present. His.