Chapter 18: The Warlord's Oath
The sea had stopped screaming.
Everly noticed it the moment she dragged Xander's body past the jagged mouth of the cave—the sudden, profound silence that fell over the water like a shroud. The waves still crashed against the cliffs below. The wind still howled through the rocks. But something had changed. Something fundamental.
The gulls were gone.
She didn't have time to wonder why.
Xander's corpse was heavy. Dead weight—literal and otherwise—and her arms burned by the time she hauled him through the narrow passage and into the cavern's throat. His skin was cold. Grey. The wound in his chest had stopped bleeding hours ago, but the edges were black and puckered, like meat left too long in the sun.
She'd killed him.
No. That wasn't right.
Fox had killed him. Fox Murder, with his knife and his silence and his fucking righteous vengeance. He'd put steel through Xander's heart and watched him fall into the sea, and he hadn't even blinked.
But Everly had let it happen.
She’d stood there while the fisherman drowned. She'd watched the light leave his eyes and done nothing.
She'd regretted it the moment his body hit the water. Because somewhere is her soul, she knew her fate and that of the fisherman’s was intertwined.
And Fox had taken him away.
The Codex floated above her palm.
It had been doing that. Rapidly moving on its own. Turning pages without her touch. Whispering in languages that predated language, in voices that sounded like her mother and her lovers and the screams of everyone she'd ever killed.
She'd stopped fighting it.
So this is what Leliana must have felt like, Everly realized. She must have felt drunk on power.
The cave opened up around her—a cathedral of stone and salt, its walls slick with moisture that caught the faint silver glow of moss. The light pulsed. Breathed. Like the rock itself was alive.
And the floor.
Gods, the floor.
The runes spiraled outward from the center of the cavern, carved so deep into the stone that they seemed to cut through to something beneath. Something older. Their edges were sharp enough to draw blood—Everly had cut her palm on them twice already, and the wounds hadn't healed right. They throbbed now, in time with the moss-light, in time with her heartbeat.
She laid Xander in the center of the circle.
His head lolled. His eyes were still open—clouded and grey, staring at nothing. The sea had taken his color. The sea had taken everything.
"You stupid bastard," she whispered. "You brave, fucking bastard."
The Codex turned another page.
Everly drew her dagger.
It was a simple blade—iron and leather and the memory of a hundred kills—but it felt heavy in her hand. Heavier than it should have been. The runes on the floor seemed to lean toward it, hungry.
She sliced her forearm.
The pain was sharp and clean and real. Blood welled up—dark and hot—and she let it drip onto Xander's chest. Onto the wound. Onto the place where Fox's knife had ended him.
The runes flared.
White-hot. Blinding. The light shot up from the floor like spears, impaling the darkness, and Everly threw her arm over her eyes and stumbled back. The Codex rose higher, pages spinning, and the cave filled with a sound like breaking bones.
Xander's body convulsed.
His spine arched. His mouth opened. His lungs—collapsed, waterlogged, dead—reinflated with a wet, sucking sound that made Everly's stomach turn. Bones snapped back into place. Flesh knit together. The wound in his chest sealed itself with a sound like lips closing over a wound.
And then he sat up.
And screamed.
The sound shook the cave. Shook the cliffs. Shook something deep inside Everly that she'd thought was long dead. It was rage and pain and drowning and the memory of falling, of drowning, of dying while the man who'd killed him watched.
When the scream finally died, Xander opened his eyes.
They were black. Not dark. Black—like the space between stars. And in the center of each pupil, a ring of ember-red burned like a dying sun.
He looked at her.
And smiled.
"Fox Murder," he said.
His voice wasn't his voice. It was deeper. Rougher. Layered with something that wasn't human—something that echoed like the Codex itself.
"I remember his knife in my chest." Xander touched the place where the wound had been. "I remember the fall. I remember the water filling my lungs while he watched."
He stood.
The movement was wrong. Too smooth. Too fluid. Like a puppet whose strings were being pulled by something that didn't quite understand how joints were supposed to work.
"I remember you," he said.
Everly's mouth went dry.
"You watched me die."
"I—"
"You stood on the cliff and you watched me drown." He stepped closer. The runes pulsed beneath his feet, flaring with each footfall. "You could have saved me with your ice magic. You could have killed Fox. And you did nothing."
"I couldn't—"
"You didn't want to."
The words hit like a blade.
Everly forced herself to meet his eyes. Those terrible, burning eyes. "You're right," she said. "I didn't. I thought you were the enemy fighting for Leliana.”
Xander laughed. It was a horrible sound—wet and rattling, like something drowning.
"And now?"
"Now I know better."
She knelt.
The stone was cold against her knees. The runes burned beneath her, but she didn't flinch. Didn't look away. She held the Codex against her breast—bare, exposed, vulnerable—and she offered herself to the thing she'd created.
"He took everything from you,” she said. "Leliana. Took your life. But I have given you a second chance."
She looked up.
"Serve me as my warlord, and we will hunt him to the ends of the earth."
Xander stared at her.
The ember-red rings in his eyes seemed to pulse. The Codex turned a page. Somewhere in the darkness, water dripped.
And then he reached for her.
His fingers were cold. Colder than the stone. Colder than the sea that had killed him. They closed around her wrist, and she felt something pass between them—something dark and hungry and alive.
"I will serve you," he growled.
He pulled her into his lap.
She went willingly. More than willingly. The Codex was singing in her blood now, and the runes were burning beneath her skin, and she wanted—needed—to feel something other than the cold.
Xander's hands found her waist.
His grip was bruising. His breath was cold against her throat. And when he spoke again, his voice was the voice of the drowned.
"But first I will have you."
He flipped her onto her back.
The stone bit into her spine. The runes flared around them, casting shadows that moved wrong—too long, too sharp, too alive. Xander loomed over her, his grey skin slick with seawater, his eyes burning like coals.
He didn't kiss her.
Didn't touch her face.
Didn't do any of the things a lover was supposed to do.
He just spread her legs.
Rough. Impatient. His fingers dug into her thighs hard enough to leave bruises, and she gasped—not from pain, but from the sudden, brutal reality of it.
He was inside her before she could breathe.
No warning. No preparation. Just the cold, hard length of him driving into her with a single, punishing thrust that made her scream.
It wasn't pleasure.
It wasn't pain.
It was something in between—something raw and primal and wrong. His cock filled her completely, stretched her, split her, and she clawed at his back and left red welts on his grey skin.
He didn't react.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't stop.
He fucked her like a machine. Like a corpse. Like a man who'd been dragged back from death with nothing left but hate. Each thrust was brutal. Rhythmic. Relentless. His hips slammed into hers, and the runes flared with every impact, and the Codex spun above them, drinking in their rage.
"You're mine," Xander growled.
"Yes—"
"Say it."
"I'm yours."
He fucked her harder.
The sounds were obscene—wet and slapping and animal. Everly's breath came in ragged gasps. Her nails raked down his chest, drawing blood that was black and thick and wrong. He didn't bleed. He just kept going.
"I died," he said.
"I know—"
"I drowned."
"I know—"
"Because of him."
"I know, I know, I fucking know—"
He grabbed her hair. Yanked her head back. Forced her to look at him—at those terrible eyes, at the hate burning inside them.
"Say his name."
"Fox," she gasped.
"Again."
"Fox—"
"Again."
"FOX!"
His hips pistoned into her. The runes went mad. The Codex screamed—or maybe that was her—and the cave echoed with the sound of the dead fucking the living.
She came.
Violently. Uncontrollably. Her body clenched around him, and she screamed her pleasure into the dark, and something inside her broke. Something that had been holding her together. Something that had kept her human.
Xander didn't stop.
He kept going. Kept pounding. Kept punishing. His face was blank—except for the hate. Always the hate.
When he finally finished, he buried himself to the hilt and let out a sound like drowning. His dead seed filled her. Cold and thick and wrong. And she took it. All of it. Because that was what she deserved.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then Xander leaned down.
His lips brushed her throat. Cold. Dry. Dead.
"Fox Murder dies," he whispered.
His voice was the voice of the Codex now. Layered and echoing and older than the rocks beneath them.
"Leliana dies. Everyone he ever loved dies."
He pulled back. Looked at her with those burning eyes.
"That is my oath."
Everly laughed.
It came out broken—breathless and triumphant and utterly, irredeemably insane.
"Do you know what he'll do when he finds out?" she asked. "When he learns I brought you back?"
Xander didn't answer.
"He'll come for us," she said. "He'll come with his knife and his silence and his fucking righteous vengeance, and he'll try to kill us both."
She reached up. Touched his grey, cold cheek.
"And we'll be waiting."
The cave echoed with the sound of the dead.
Outside, the sea had gone quiet.
The gulls were gone.
And somewhere in the dark, the Codex turned one final page.