Page 51 of Scorched
He meets my eyes. I can see it—the answer forming behind his face, the walls coming down, the decision landing like a hammer on an anvil.
"You're Bloodwork," he says.
The word hits me in the sternum. Not because I don't recognize it—because I do. Because the word has been sitting in the back of my skull for weeks. Because every blade I've made,every hum in the metal, every time the fire leaned toward me—it was all leading to this word.
"Explain."
"The Bloodwork Fae were a people. A court within the courts—smith-Fae, forge-Fae, the only Fae who could make metal sing. Their weapons could break wards. Their tools could shape magic. They were the most powerful crafters the Fae world has ever produced."
"Were."
"Were."
He isn't flinching. Not looking away. Those golden eyes holding mine with the steady weight of a male who's carried this particular truth for a very long time. The fire-thread is still dim. He's holding it down. Controlling the mountain's fire the way he controls everything—with force, with patience, with nine centuries of will.
"What happened to them?"
"They were destroyed. Six hundred years ago. The other courts decided they were too dangerous. Their forges were extinguished. Their lines were ended."
The forge is very quiet. The caldera hums beneath the floor. The god-killer blade on the workbench is still pointed at the nearest shield. My hands are cold in my lap. Cold in a room that was ninety degrees five minutes ago. Cold because he pulled the fire back and the mountain obeyed and my body is telling me something that my mind hasn't yet caught up to.
"Which courts decided this?" I ask. My voice is steady. The assassin's voice. The voice that doesn't shake when it asks hard questions.
He doesn't look away.
"All of them," he says. "I gave the order."
The words land in the forge like a blade landing on stone. Clean. Final. No echo.
The fire-thread goes out.
Not dims. Goes out. Every thread of fire in every wall of the forge dies at once. The room plunges into grey—just the dawn light through the high windows, just the faint glow of the caldera through the stone floor, just the brands on my skin burning in the sudden dark.
I don't know if I did that or he did. I don't know if the mountain's fire responded to him or to me or to the space between us that has just filled with six hundred years of dead.
I look at him. The Ember King. The male whose brands are burned into my throat and chest and shoulders. The male whose cock I took four nights running. The male whose praise makes me come.
The male who destroyed my people.
I don't speak. I don't move. I sit on the forge floor with my hands in my lap and the fire-thread dead in the walls and I look at the male I belong to and the male who made me an orphan of a people I didn't know existed until thirty seconds ago.
The caldera hums. The blade hums. The mountain breathes.
I stand up.
"Sophia—"
I walk past him. I pick up the blade. It goes quiet in my hand—still, the hum fading to a whisper. I tuck it into the belt of his shirt. The metal sits against my hip.
I walk out of the forge. I don't look back.
Behind me, the fire-thread in the walls flickers once—a single, weak pulse, like a heart trying to restart—and then it blazes. Every wall. Every corridor. The entire court lit up in a flare of fire that I feel against my back as I walk and I know it's him. I know it's his fire answering the fact of my leaving. I know the mountain is burning because its king is burning and I don't stop walking.
The god-killer blade hums against my hip. The brands on my skin glow. The corridor walls are bright with his fire and I walk through them like walking through the throat of a furnace.
I don't stop.
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