Page 80 of Scorched
"He looked at the baby," I say.
Ignatius's hand presses flat against my lower back. His fire magic pulses once—that slow, deep rhythm I felt when he first discovered the pregnancy in the main keep. The caldera answers beneath the floor.
"He sees the pattern," Ignatius says. "The bond, the arsenal, the child. All of it connected."
"The child is not a chess piece."
"No." His hand tightens at my back. "The child is the future. Oberon sees futures the way I see fire—not as potential, as shape. Something already forming."
I turn from the workbench. Face him. The forge is dim now—the fire-thread settling from its flare, the caldera easing, the blades quieting to their usual hum. His golden eyes are bright in the low light. His face is the face I've been learning for six weeks—the sharp angles, the ancient patience, the fire burning beneath skin that has held it for nine centuries.
"Six bonds," I say. "We are the sixth."
"Yes."
"And what does the sixth bond mean?"
He's quiet. His hand at my back, his fire magic pulsing against my skin. The forge dim and warm around us. The blades humming their chorus.
"It means the Bloodwork heritage is sealed to the Ember Court. It means the arsenal is legitimate—not a rogue weapon hoard but a bonded court's sacred forge-work, protected under the same laws that protect every other court's magic. It means the other courts cannot move against you without moving against the prophecy itself." He pauses. "It means Oberon has declared what we are. That carries weight that even the Combined Court Assembly cannot dismiss."
"Good." I step closer. Press my palm flat against his chest, over the brand I left there—the sigil, mine, burned into his skinthe way his brands are burned into mine. The fire magic surges under my hand. "Then the courts can wait."
His eyes narrow. "Wait for what?"
"For us to finish what we started."
The fire-thread flickers. His hand tightens at my back. I feel the shift in his fire magic—the temperature climbing, the specific quality of heat that is not anger, not the forge, not the caldera. The heat of the male who has been holding himself in check for three days of forge work while I poured my blood into metal and pressed my body against his in the rhythm of the craft and pretended not to notice what it was doing to both of us.
The forge work has the rhythm of a claiming. I said it to myself on the second day and pushed the thought away. Three days of blood and fire. His hands near mine. The forge hot around us. The brands on my skin burning brighter with every blade we made together.
"The phoenix brands," I say again. "Not in the forge. Not as craft. As a claiming."
The caldera roars. The fire-thread blazes. The blades sing.
He picks me up. His hands under my thighs, lifting me against him, my legs wrapping around his waist and the fire magic pouring through every point of contact. The brands on my body light up—throat, heart, shoulder blades—the patterns blazing through my shirt, through my skin, the unfinished wings on my back burning with the heat of a fire king who has been asked for the one thing he has been waiting to give.
He carries me from the forge. Through the corridor. The fire-thread lights before us, wall by wall, the mountain's fire racing ahead to prepare the way. The blades in the vault sing louder as we pass above them. The caldera pulses with that deep, slow rhythm.
The door to his chambers opens at his touch. Fire magic in the handle, fire magic in the walls, the room already hot—the bed remade with fresh sheets that won't survive the night.
He sets me on the bed. His golden eyes above me. His fire magic burning at a temperature I can feel through the air between us, through the brands, through the bond.
"This claiming completes the brands," he says. His voice is rough. "The phoenix wings. Once they are set, they cannot be undone. You will carry my fire in your bones for the rest of your life."
"I already carry your fire," I say. "I have carried it since the first night. Finish it."
The fire-thread blazes. The door closes. The mountain holds its breath.
35
SOPHIA
He strips me with his hands, not his fire magic.
Slow. Deliberate. The way he works metal—each movement precise, unhurried, the patience of nine centuries applied to the buttons of my shirt, to the laces of my trousers, to the fabric that peels away from skin that's already flushed, already hot, the brands on my body blazing before he's touched bare skin.
I let him. I stand at the edge of his bed in the chamber that smells like volcanic stone and cedar and the fading scent of his fire, and I let the Ember King undress me the way a king undresses a woman he's about to claim for the last time.
