Page 30 of Orc’s Bones

She didn’t move. He crossed ten meters of dark stone and she didn’t move an inch.

He stopped closer than he should have.

“You went back to the Archive.”

“Yes.”

“Alone.”

“Yes.”

“After we established that you don’t move independently without authorization.”

She didn’t blink. “I know what we established.”

“Then you understand what you broke.” The voice he reserved for men who had cost him something. Flat and certain in a way that wasn’t loud. “I need to be able to trust where you are. What you’re walking into. What you’re bringing back. Tonight I didn’t have any of that.”

A beat. She absorbed it. Let him land it rather than deflecting.

“You’re right,” she said. Not an apology — she wasn’t built for performance. A statement. “I had a reason and I took it without telling you and that was a breach. It won’t happen again.”

He let the silence run another three seconds. Enough to mean something.

Her eyes didn’t move. No flinch. No performance of remorse.

“I found Malverek.”

The fury didn’t leave. It shifted.

“He arranged the meeting.” She set the research case down between them. “He was waiting in the lower stacks. He knew I’d go back. He showed me what he built — a miniature array, running, stabilized. He told me where he started and how he got from there to here. I got the relic’s location. I got the weak points in the transfer sigil. And I got his offer.”

“His offer.”

“He wants me to dismantle what he built carefully enough to know what’s worth keeping — and then build a corrected version. One that operates with consent, without stolen remains. He wants someone who understands the work to decide what survives.”

Thruk looked at her.

She’d walked into a meeting with a revenant who had spent months building a system to strip everything Thruk commanded, and she’d come back with his location, his vulnerabilities, and an offer that only made sense if Malverek had decided she was more useful as an ally than an obstacle.

Malverek had tried to turn her.

She’d refused.

She’d walked alone into that and come back with everything they needed.

She went in without telling me. She came out with what we needed. I don’t get to only be furious about the first part.

“He showed you the array running.”

“Yes. The arrays in the Archive casework were unstable at low power. This one held. He’s solved what I couldn’t.”

“What did he tell you about the relic’s location.”

“He didn’t tell me. His gaze moved south and down when I asked. He tried to recover but he’d already answered.”

South and down from the Archive — which put it in the lower Crypt levels, in the deepest tier. Back to where the Varyn anchor had lived. Where the bloodline pull was strongest and the array would find its best hold.

“The weak points in the transfer sigil.”