Page 38 of Scorched
17
SOPHIA
The rational mind comes back in flickers.
Between the third and fourth knotting—the heat banking low, my body given a few hours of reprieve before it builds again—I get pieces of myself back. Short windows. Ten minutes where the assassin looks through my eyes and sees clearly before the heat swallows her again.
I use those ten minutes to watch him.
He's in the forge. I'm sitting on the stone floor wrapped in a sheet, my back against the wall, the caldera's heat pressing up through the stone into my bare legs. The fire-thread in the walls is bright tonight—pulsing in time with a heartbeat that's not mine, the mountain's veins lit up with Ember fire, orange light tracing the seams of the dark stone.
His brands burn on my throat and over my heart. The sigil over my heart is new—two days old—and it aches with a dull, persistent heat that matches his heartbeat from across the room. I can feel him. Not emotionally. Physically. A thread of fire connecting his chest to mine.
He's making something.
Not a weapon. I know weapons. I've watched smiths work since I was six years old and I know the difference between a blade being forged and a piece of art being born. This is the second thing. He's bent over the anvil, his bare chest sheened with sweat, the muscles in his arms moving with a control that makes my pussy clench despite the exhaustion. His horns catch the forge light. His golden eyes are focused on the metal under his hands.
He works the way I work. That's the thing I see in my ten clear minutes. Not with technique—with his whole body. His feet shift to accommodate each strike. His breathing matches the rhythm of the hammer. The fire magic in his hands flows into the metal and the metal responds not to his skill but to his presence. The iron knows him.
The way it knows me.
I see this. I take it in. The iron responds to him the same way it responds to me. The same instinct. The same conversation between blood and metal that my grandmother told me was talent and nothing more.
I'm beginning to think it's more.
"What are you making?" I ask.
He doesn't look up. "A cage."
"For what?"
"The singing blade you made yesterday." He strikes the metal. Sparks fly. "It was humming loud enough to wake the guard this morning. It needs containment."
I stare at him. "My blade needs a cage?"
"Your blade was trying to cut through the forge wall." He glances at me. Those golden eyes. "Whatever you put into the metal, it's still active. Still moving. It needs something to hold it that won't degrade."
The heat flickers in my belly. Low. The window is closing. I have maybe three minutes before the need swamps me again.
"Tell me about the phoenix brands," I say. Fast. While I can still think. "The ones on my shoulders. You said there was a third mark. Wings."
He sets down the hammer. He looks at me the way he looks at the metal—with absolute focus, every surface visible.
"The wing brands are the final claiming mark. They burn onto your shoulder blades during the last knotting of your heat. They start as patterns—forge-work, like the others—but the patterns are functional. In time, they respond to your will."
"Respond how?"
"Fire control. Immunity to Ember Court magic. And—" He pauses. Not from hesitation. From the precise care of a male choosing his words. "Flight. Eventually."
I'm quiet. My shoulder blades itch. They've been itching since the second night—a low, persistent itch under the skin that no amount of scratching reaches.
"My shoulders have been itching."
"Yes."
"Since when?"
"Since the first knotting."
