Page 61 of Scorched
I stand up. The ledger is in my hands. My grandmother's name is in the ledger.
"I'm taking this," I say.
"It belongs to the Ember Court."
"It belongs to my grandmother. Her name. Her people. Your records of their murder." I hold the ledger against my chest the way I held the war-curve, the way I hold a weapon I intend to use. "Try to stop me."
He doesn't stop me.
I walk past him. Up the stairs. Through the forge. Through the corridors where the fire-thread blazes and dims as I pass, the mountain's magic uncertain, flickering between his fire and my blood.
Behind me, in the vault, the Bloodwork harmonic sings on. Louder now than it's been since I found it. Louder than it was before I came down the stairs. The dead aren't getting quieter.
I'm waking them up.
26
IGNUS
She comes to me at midnight.
Not to my chambers. To the throne room. She chooses the most formal, the most public, the most deliberately impersonal room in my court, and she stands before the volcanic throne with a ledger in her hands and the Bloodwork harmonic humming in her blood and she says: "Tell me everything."
I tell her everything.
Not from the throne. I come down from it because this conversation does not belong to a king on a seat of power—it belongs to a male standing on the same floor as the woman he has wronged. The obsidian is cold under my boots. The fire-thread in the walls burns low. I have pulled it down deliberately. I do not want the mountain's fire making this harder than it already is.
"The Sundering began as a political crisis," I say. "Six hundred and twelve years ago. The Bloodwork Fae had been building weapons for every court for centuries—they were the only smiths who could make metal that cut through magic. Every court depended on them. Every court feared that dependency."
She is standing ten feet from me. Close enough to see her face. Far enough that the god-killer at her hip is a real consideration.
"The Frost Court moved first. Aratus's predecessor—Lord Aethric—proposed that the Bloodwork forges be brought under centralised control. A single governing body that would regulate weapon production, limit output, ensure that no one court gained an advantage. It was a reasonable proposal. It was also a cage."
"The Bloodwork refused."
"The Bloodwork refused. They had been independent since the founding of the courts. Their forges, their techniques, their heritage—none of it had ever been subject to external authority. They told Aethric that their metal answered to blood, not politics, and that any attempt to regulate their work would be met with the full weight of their arsenal."
I pause. The throne room is very quiet. The caldera hums beneath the floor, a low, steady vibration that I feel in my feet, in my shins, in the old bones of a body that was standing in this room when the Sundering was announced.
"The other courts panicked. I watched it happen—watched the fear move through the Assembly like fire through dry timber. The Frost Court sealed its borders. The Stone Court began reinforcing its wards. The Thorn Court mobilised its army. Within a month every court on the continent was preparing for war—not against each other, against the Bloodwork."
I stop. The caldera beneath us shifts—a low, grinding sound, the mountain's bones adjusting. The obsidian floor vibrates.
"A Bloodwork arsenal turned against the court system would have been catastrophic. Their weapons could break every ward, cut through every shield, render every defensive position meaningless. A single master smith working for three months could produce enough god-killers to bring down everycourt on the continent. The Bloodwork Fae numbered fewer than eight hundred. The combined courts numbered hundreds of thousands. The arithmetic was simple. The conclusion was monstrous."
"You make it sound like mathematics."
"It was mathematics. That is part of what makes it unforgivable."
She looks at me. The Bloodwork harmonic is humming in the space between us, the frequency coming off her blood and the metal at her hip pressing against my fire magic. The two of us standing in the throne room in the middle of the night with six hundred years of dead between us.
"Why you?" she asks. "Why did you carry it out?"
"Because I was the only king with the fire magic to do it. Bloodwork metal is immune to most Fae magic—it was designed that way. But Ember fire operates at a frequency that disrupts the harmonic. My fire could silence their weapons long enough for my soldiers to reach the forges." I stop. I breathe. The air in the throne room tastes like iron and old stone. "I could have refused. I considered refusing. But the alternative was a war between the Bloodwork and the combined courts that would have destroyed the Fae world, and I believed—I still believe—that eight hundred lives weighed against the survival of the entire court system was a decision with only one answer."
"Children." Her voice is quiet. Controlled. The assassin's voice, the one that does not shake. "The ledger lists children. Ages. A three-year-old."
"The heritage passes through the blood. Through the hands. The council argued that any surviving descendant with active heritage would eventually produce weapons that could?—"
