Page 73 of Scorched
By the time I reach the forge entrance the entire wing is lit. Fire-thread blazing in every wall, every corridor, the mountain burning bright for the return of the blood it's been missing. I can hear the twenty-seven blades singing in the vault below—louder than when I left, as if they've been calling for me, as if the harmonic's been building in my absence, waiting.
I dismount. My legs shake—the riding, the cracked rib, the three days without proper sleep. I grip the horse's mane until the shaking passes. A stable hand materializes from somewhere, takes the reins without meeting my eyes. His hands are trembling. The Bloodwork harmonic must be pouring off me like scent—the blades in the vault answering my presence, the god-killer at my hip humming loud enough to vibrate the leather of the holster, the whole court vibrating with the return of the smith it's been missing.
I walk into the forge.
He's there.
Not on the throne. Not in his chambers. In the forge, where he goes when he needs to think. His back is to the door. He's bent over the workbench, working a piece of metal—something small, not a weapon, not a tool. The work of someone who needs to do something with his hands. His horns catch the low forge light. His bare back is sheened with sweat, the fire brands on hisskin glowing faintly. The caldera's heat presses up through the stone floor and the air shimmers around him.
He doesn't hear me over the hammer's ring and the caldera's hum.
I watch him work. His body moves the way it always moves—unhurried, precise, each strike deliberate. But the thing he's making isn't precise. It's rough. Unfinished. The metal under his hammer is being beaten, not shaped, the fire magic in his hands flaring without control, scorching the edges. He's not making something. He's punishing the metal.
"I came to finish what I started," I say.
He turns. The hammer stops mid-stroke. His golden eyes find me in the doorway—bloody shirt, scabbed throat, stolen horse behind me, god-killer at my hip. His face does something I haven't seen in the weeks I've known him. The mask breaks. Not cracks—breaks, the nine centuries of control shattering for one instant before he rebuilds it, and in that instant I see everything.
He's on his knees in front of me before I finish taking a breath.
Not submission. Not tenderness. The precise, controlled movement of a male who's been waiting and whose body has stopped listening to his mind. He kneels on the forge floor and his hands close around my hips and his fire magic flares through his palms and into my skin—hot, searching, the fire king's magic reading my body through the brands, through the blood, finding the damage.
"The rib," he says. His voice is rough.
"Cracked. Not broken."
His fire magic presses against the cracked rib through my shirt. Heat floods the bone—targeted, focused, the same precision he uses when branding. The pain eases. Not instantly—gradually, the fire knitting the crack, sealing it with a heat that sits on the edge of too much.
"The throat."
"Frost Court ice blade. Shallow."
His hand moves to my throat. His thumb traces the cut—the thin line crossing the claiming brand, the assassin's wound over the king's mark. Fire magic seals the skin. The scab falls away. Fresh, pink flesh underneath, the brand undamaged beneath the healed cut.
He's still kneeling. His hands are on my hips. His forehead drops to my belly.
I go still.
His fire magic is pressing against my abdomen. Not the deliberate, focused healing he used on the rib and the throat. Something else—a low, searching pulse, the fire king's magic reaching through skin and muscle and womb. I feel it the way I feel his fire during a claiming—intimate, invasive, pressing past every boundary into the places where my body is doing things I haven't given it permission to do.
The forge goes quiet. The hammer is on the floor where he dropped it. The caldera's hum is the only sound—that deep, tectonic breathing, steady, patient, the mountain holding itself still the way he is holding himself still.
He's quiet for a long time. His fire magic finds the spark. I feel the moment it does—a flare of heat, unbidden, his magic reaching for the tiny fire in my womb the way flame reaches for flame. His hands tighten on my hips. His breath comes ragged against my belly.
"Yes," I say. Because I know what he's feeling. Because the sigil connects us and the fire magic connects us and his hands on my belly can feel what the shadow guard reported and what my grandmother's eyes saw and what my body has been telling me for two weeks.
He lifts his head. Those golden eyes. The mask is still broken. Whatever he's feeling is written on his face in a language I canread because I've spent weeks learning the grammar of him—the set of his jaw, the color of his fire, the way his hands tighten or ease.
"How long?" he asks.
"Six weeks. From the heat."
He presses his forehead to my belly again. His hands spread flat against my hips. The fire magic pulses through my skin—slow, deep, the same new rhythm that the mountain has been beating since I left. I can feel the caldera responding beneath us, the whole court beating in time with his hands on my body.
"Three courts sent assassins," I say. His hands tighten on my hips. "Thorn, Stone, Frost. I killed them with Bloodwork abilities I didn't know I had and combat training you already knew about."
"I know. The shadow guard reported."
"I noticed the shadow guard."
