Page 132 of Revenant

But Moriah Carrow has chosen her.

I watched her choose. Watched her put her own body between Alicent and her blood, and a wolf doesn’t come back from a choice like that. Her motives are her own—they’ve always been slippery, self-serving in the way survival makes people—but whatever freedom she’s bleeding for, she’s gone and tied it to Alicent’s life now. I’ll take it. I’ve built alliances on far less.

The archives are quiet when I push through the side door, the long corridor greeting me with lit sconces that have no business still working after this many centuries. The air smells of paper and dust and, faintly, of oakmoss, because he hasn’t truly left his secret room in months. He came out for the wolf attack. That was the extent of it.

I round the second bookcase and expect to find him at his desk.

I do not expect to find him fucking someone against it.

Sage has both her palms flat to the leather inlay, her head pinned between her arms, dark brown strands fallen forward to curtain her face. Eryx is behind her with one hand fisted in the back of her sweater. The other is braced on the desk beside her wrist.

His eyes aren’t on her, though. They’re locked onto the portraits littering the wall. Bastardo.

I clear my throat. “Sorry to interrupt.”

Sage’s head snaps up, fangs already bared—newborn instinct, the kind she’ll spend at least a decade learning to leash—and the moment she registers it’s me, her shoulders drop a full two inches and her mouth twists into something sheepish.

Eryx, to his credit, doesn’t flinch. He pulls out of her slowly, tucking himself back into his trousers, and smoothing the back of her skirt down with a hand that’s almost tender, then steps away.

“Someone had to keep your little pet occupied,” he goads.

He’s been fucking with me for months. Every conversation is a baited hook I don’t bother biting.

“I’m not the one who turned her, if you’ll recall.” I lean against the end of the desk and cross my arms. “And I had my fill this morning. Courtesy of a certain witch.”

His eye twitches. Just once.

He covers it the way he attempts to hide any emotion he’s feeling—by reaching for the glass on the desk and finishing it in one pull—but I caught his reaction, and he knows it.

“Sage. Out.”

She goes without argument—straightens her skirt, fixes her collar and slips past me into the corridor. I follow her out.

She’s waiting a few feet down the passage, arms wrapped around herself, looking more delicate than she has any right to be. I know her shame is already curdling into something harder.

“Don’t,” I say, before she can voice her defense. “I’ve seen worse arrangements. I’ve been in worse arrangements. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

I’ve grown fond of her. I won’t pretend otherwise. She came out of that grave stronger than most do, and somewhere in the long, ugly months of teaching her to feed without painting a room red, she let me in on what her life was like before Veilcrest. Her coven had been worse than the dirt Eryx buried her in. So I don’t pity her the way others do. She doesn’t need to be coddled. Death was frankly a mercy she didn’t ask for.

What she doesn’t need is this. Eryx Deveraux. I just hope she doesn’t think she means anything to him. The portraits on the wall are the one complication she can’t choose to pretend isn’t there.

She laughs, albeit reluctantly, and I lean into the cold stone beside her. “I’m not stupid, Pryce, I know I’m just occupying his time.”

“You deserve better, Sage.”

She scoffs. “You make it sound simple.”

“It isn’t. Nothing about what we are is simple. But I spent a long time letting Eryx decide what I deserved, and I can tell you it’s a poor way to live.”

I know my admission makes her uncomfortable when she looks to the ground and picks a loose thread on her sleeve. As much as she has opened up to me, I know there are parts she’s not yet willing to face.

“Is she alright? Alicent?”

Her change in subject catches me off guard, and I push off the wall at the reminder of why I’m here. “She will be,” I say. “After tonight.”

Sage nods, not sure if she should believe me. “After the gala,” she clarifies.

Silence stretches between us, and just as I think she’s going to excuse herself, her brows pull together as if something’s been weighing on her mind. “You know, part of me resented Alicent at first. Especially in the beginning.”