Kiss of the Black Flame by Helen Scheuerer

Here is a summary with spoilers for Kiss of the Black Flame by Helen Scheuerer

Saige Grayson is a thirty-five-year-old bookbinder living in Hanniel. She inherited The Awl & Cradle from her late master, Leofric Bergmunn, and has been trying to establish herself as a master bookbinder while struggling with considerable debt. Saige has also spent most of her life dealing with unexplained chronic pain that affects the left side of her body. She has repeatedly sought medical help, but because there is no obvious physical cause, she has been dismissed and told that her pain is psychological or exaggerated. She has developed her own methods of managing it, including peppermint oil, grounding herself through her other senses, medication, and, when the pain becomes overwhelming, hurting another part of her body to give herself something else to focus on. Her closest support system consists of her aunt Yevna, her best friend Raven Lockhart, and Yevna’s wolfhound Grim. Yevna and Raven are part of a larger network of tradeswomen called the Consortium of Difficult Women, who regularly help one another when men, debts, employers, or other threats make their lives more difficult.

At the same time, Archer has spent approximately two hundred years imprisoned. He is an immortal Azkari warrior and former general who became known as the Black Flame. During the ancient war known as the Reckoning, Archer fought against Malevron, a powerful Azkari prince who became a tyrant and is also known as the Silver-Tongued Deceiver. Malevron was believed to have been defeated, but his followers still exist, identifiable by a mark associated with him. Archer was eventually captured and subjected to prolonged torture and imprisonment. A curse left him in an almost incorporeal state in Gravereach, where most people cannot see, hear, or touch him. Only people carrying Malevron’s mark can normally perceive him.

Saige’s problems with her debt eventually catch up with her. Ivor Thorne, the man who controls her debt, discovers that her abilities as a bookbinder are worth more to the people looking for her than the money she owes. He has connections to the marked servants of Malevron, who are searching for a particular ancient book called the Confluence. The book contains information about the origins of the Azkari and their magic, meaning that someone capable of restoring it could potentially give Malevron the information necessary to alter or destroy the existing magical order. Thorne has Saige taken and uses Yevna and Raven as leverage to make sure Saige cooperates.

Saige is taken to Gravereach and placed in a cell beside an imprisoned Azkari known as Ke-Vor. She soon realizes that she can actually see him, despite the fact that the other prisoners and guards cannot. She can also touch him. Her touch begins restoring his physical form and, more importantly, allows his dormant black flame magic to return. Archer immediately realizes that Saige is the same golden-haired mortal he encountered years earlier. When they first crossed paths, Saige had attacked him with a paring knife, leaving him with a scar. Archer still carries that scar among the many others left by his imprisonment and torture. Saige recognizes the mark associated with Malevron and realizes that Archer is connected to the people who serve the godlike figure she has been taught to fear. Archer explains that his connection to Malevron is not one of loyalty. He fought Malevron and was imprisoned because of that conflict.

Archer needs Saige because he needs the Confluence found and restored before Malevron's forces can obtain it. Saige needs to escape Gravereach because Yevna and Raven are being held as leverage against her. Archer therefore proposes a bargain: he will get Saige out, help rescue the people she cares about, and protect her while she helps him locate and restore the Confluence. The bargain is an Azkari magical oath, and Saige knows that such bargains are dangerous. The final and most binding form of an Azkari bargain is sealed with a kiss. Saige agrees, and when they kiss, the bargain becomes physically and magically sealed in black flame. The bond prevents her from simply walking away from the agreement.

Archer takes Saige’s place when she is subjected to the prison's torture, then uses his restored black flame to help them escape. Once they are out, they return toward Hanniel so they can rescue Yevna and Raven. Archer disguises his Azkari appearance with illusion magic, while Saige and Grim accompany him into Thorne’s compound. Archer kills the guards using his black flames, but he is injured while protecting Saige, taking arrows in his back. They find Yevna and Raven and get them out. Archer also captures Reid Farrow, Thorne’s associate, and forces information from him about the Confluence. Reid reveals that the book is hidden in the Temple of Truth within the House of Reveries.

With the immediate threat to her friends dealt with, Saige and Archer begin traveling toward the Temple of Truth. Grim goes with them, and the journey forces Saige and Archer into prolonged close proximity. Archer is intensely guarded and refuses to discuss his past. Saige, meanwhile, keeps trying to get him to talk. She is naturally open, talkative, and curious, while Archer is accustomed to silence after two centuries of isolation and torture. For days she attempts to draw him out with questions and conversation while he gives her as little as possible. He is also irritated by how easily she continues to find humor and small pleasures despite everything happening around them. One time things start to change is when Archer has a massive outburst and yells at Saige. He returns the next day and apologizes, which shocks Saige.

Saige eventually has one of her severe pain flare-ups while they are traveling. She has been terrified that it will happen while she is away from home because she normally has her own routines and supplies for managing it. When Archer discovers what is happening, he does not dismiss her or tell her that the pain is imaginary. Instead, he helps her concentrate on her surroundings, directing her to focus on what she can smell, hear, feel, and otherwise sense. The exercise helps her get through the worst of the attack. Archer's willingness to believe her and treat the pain as real becomes one of the first significant changes in their relationship. He also begins allowing her to ask questions about him, provided she does not push too far.

The two gradually begin establishing a fragile friendship underneath the bargain. Archer teaches Saige practical survival skills, including how to set snares, while Saige learns more about his quieter interests. She discovers that the terrifying Black Flame general spends his private time drawing with charcoal and that he has an unexpected appreciation for plants and flowers. Archer's body is covered in scars, with tattoos and drawings of flowers incorporated around them. Saige becomes increasingly interested in understanding who he was before his imprisonment and what happened to him during the Reckoning.

When Saige starts asking too many questions about Archer's childhood and the people who hurt him, he becomes defensive. During one particularly charged encounter, he deliberately pushes their attraction to the surface. He corners her against a tree, acts as though he is going to kiss her, and allows her to believe for a moment that he might finally act on the attraction between them. He then abruptly backs away and tells her that nothing can happen between them. Saige is humiliated and angry and calls him an asshole. She withdraws afterward and stops trying to draw him into conversation. Archer initially convinces himself that this is what he wanted, but after a few days of complete silence, he realizes that he misses her companionship and the constant conversation he had previously found irritating.

The silence between them turns out to be dangerous for another reason. Archer realizes that the forest has become too quiet and recognizes the silence as the sign of an approaching ambush. Their pursuers attack, and Saige is taken down and separated from Archer. He initially believes she has been captured or killed. His fear turns into rage, and he begins killing the attackers. He is badly injured during the fight, and one remaining enemy manages to gain the advantage and tells Archer that someone else is coming for him. Archer expects to die, but his primary concern is still Saige. Before the final attacker can kill him, a knife appears in the man's neck. Saige has come back and killed him herself. It is the first time she has ever killed someone.

After the fight, Saige treats Archer's injuries. He apologizes for the way he handled their earlier encounter, acknowledging that deliberately provoking her and then rejecting her was cruel. Saige is surprised by how calmly she is able to process having killed someone, especially given that she had never done it before. The attack changes the dynamic between them because they have now fought beside and protected each other rather than merely traveling together because of the magical bargain.

Their physical closeness also increases. Saige has repeatedly struggled with the cold while traveling, and eventually Archer offers to let her sleep beside him so that she can use his body heat. The arrangement gives Saige one of the best nights of sleep she has had in years. The two continue to share sleeping space and spend increasing amounts of time physically close without immediately acting on the attraction between them. Their forced proximity gradually becomes something neither of them wants to give up.

Archer's brother Daemos eventually finds them. He has not seen Archer since Archer was imprisoned and arrives with information that the enemies pursuing them are still searching for both of them. Daemos joins the group and helps protect them as they continue the journey. His presence also gives Saige additional information about Archer's past and his family. Daemos is considerably more open than Archer, and Saige begins piecing together the fact that Archer is far more important within Azkari society than he has allowed her to believe.

As the journey continues, Saige and Archer's attraction becomes increasingly obvious. They repeatedly find themselves in situations where they have to sit, sleep, ride, or hide together in close physical proximity. Neither is able to completely ignore the attraction anymore. Archer also begins seeing more of Saige's hidden struggles. At one point he discovers that she sometimes deliberately injures herself in order to distract from or redirect her chronic pain. He is disturbed by the discovery and becomes more protective of her. Around this same time, Daemos accidentally lets loose that Archer is betrothed. She is angered by it, but then eventually confronts him. Archer claims they are no longer betrothed. Saige also learns that Archer's black flame has limits. There are moments when the magic begins to overwhelm or burn through him, leaving him exhausted and close to losing control. She stays with him and helps him through one of these episodes, reversing some of the emotional distance he has maintained.

Eventually, Saige and Archer return to her home in Hanniel. Their stop is brief, but it gives Saige a chance to reconnect with the life she has been forced to leave behind and to work on the bookbinding portion of their bargain. By this point, the emotional and physical tension between her and Archer has become impossible to ignore. They finally kiss again, this time because they genuinely want to rather than simply because the bargain requires a kiss. Their relationship becomes physical, although Archer continues to carry significant emotional reservations because of what happened to him and because he believes his past makes him dangerous to Saige.

Their journey then takes them deeper into Azkari territory. Saige begins realizing that Archer has been concealing an enormous part of his identity. People react to him with suspicion because he has been absent for roughly two hundred years, but they also recognize him as a member of the Azkari royal family. Archer is not merely an ordinary general. He is Prince Archeron Dawnstrider, a ruler of the House of Desires, and Malevron is his eldest brother. Saige is furious that Archer withheld this information from her. She has already been forced into a magical bargain with him, and now she discovers that the man she has grown attached to a prince with centuries of history and political power. She retreats into her work on the Confluence rather than immediately resolving her anger with him.

Archer also reveals the complicated history of his brothers. He has three brothers, but he only considers some of them truly his brothers. The most important betrayal came from Malevron, his eldest brother. Malevron was once someone Archer loved and trusted, but he eventually became the enemy responsible for the war and for Archer's imprisonment. Another part of Archer's past involved Isindrel, the woman he had once been betrothed to. She betrayed him and aligned herself with Malevron. Archer has spent two centuries carrying the consequences of those betrayals.

Saige struggles with the revelation because she no longer knows how much of Archer's relationship with her was genuine and how much was manipulation connected to the bargain. She worries that the man she has fallen for may have been using her from the beginning. Archer tries to explain his past, including why he made the choices he did and why he originally needed Saige specifically. He eventually shows her a memory from two hundred years earlier, allowing her to see part of the history between him and his family rather than simply hearing his version of it. The memory gives Saige a better understanding of the betrayal and the war and helps her see why Archer has become so closed off.

Saige then throws herself into completing the Confluence. The book is badly damaged, and restoring it requires extensive specialist bookbinding work. She disassembles it, repairs its damaged sections, replaces and reinforces portions of the binding, and works on restoring its decorative elements. She needs particular materials, including gold pigment, and obtains what she needs through the Underhill Exchange and the color merchant Indigo Jack. The restoration takes an enormous amount of time and concentration, and Saige's expertise becomes essential because the Confluence cannot simply be repaired by magic. Her knowledge of books and physical materials is what allows the ancient tome to be restored.

While Saige is working, the truth about Leofric is also revealed. She had believed that her former master died naturally, but she learns that he was actually murdered because he refused to restore the Confluence for Malevron's followers. Thorne and Reid are involved in the events surrounding the debt and the attempts to force Saige into doing the work. Archer confronts them, and his response is violent. He uses his black flame against them and permanently brands them, mirroring some of the treatment that was inflicted upon him.

Eventually, the danger surrounding the Confluence becomes impossible to contain. Malevron's forces continue pursuing them, and the group is attacked by mirudytes and a Souldren Elite. Archer transports Saige, Raven, Yevna, Daemos, and Grim to safety in Ignizar. Saige is now surrounded by people who recognize Archer's true identity, and she begins seeing the extent of the political and magical conflict he has been hiding from her.

Despite the tension between them, Archer and Saige eventually stop resisting their feelings. Archer tells Saige that he loves her, and the two spend the night together. Their relationship has moved from an arrangement created under coercion into a genuine emotional and physical connection, at least from Saige's perspective. The following morning, however, the truth that Archer has been withholding finally catches up with them.

Saige encounters a truth mirror in Archer's chambers, and the mirror removes an illusion that has concealed part of her own history for decades. She suddenly remembers events from her childhood that she had been unable to consciously access. Her childhood home was destroyed in a fire involving black flame. Saige remembers Archer being there during the destruction. The revelation is devastating because Archer was not merely connected to the tragedy through the ancient war. He was personally present when Saige was a child.

The truth is worse than Saige initially understands. Archer had been sent to destroy a cult connected to Malevron, and Saige's own parents were involved with that cult. During the attack, the village was burned by Archer's black flame. Saige survived but was badly burned. Archer found her afterward and, out of guilt and remorse, used his power to conceal the burns and suppress her memories of what happened. The magical concealment also affected her body, leaving her with the chronic pain she has experienced throughout her life. The pain that Saige spent years being told was imaginary is therefore connected directly to Archer and to the events of her childhood.

Saige is devastated by the revelation. Everything she has learned about Archer is suddenly filtered through the knowledge that he was responsible for the event that permanently altered her life. She also feels betrayed because Archer knew what had happened but never told her. The fact that he loved her while withholding the truth makes the situation worse rather than better. Saige rejects him and tells him that she cannot forgive him for what he did.

The restored Confluence is eventually brought before the Meeting of Minds, where the various powerful figures attempt to claim it. Instead, the book rejects them. The Confluence reacts violently when others attempt to take possession of it, leaving Saige as the only person who can safely carry it. Her ability to handle and restore the book therefore turns out to be more important than anyone initially understood.

Saige believes that she has finally completed her side of the bargain. She restored the Confluence as Archer demanded, and she intends to leave. Archer stops her by surrounding her with a ring of black flame. He tells her that the agreement is not actually finished. The Confluence still has to be taken to Anwyn, the ancestral home of the Azkari, where it must ultimately be dealt with. Saige realizes that Archer has once again withheld an important part of the bargain from her.

Trapped inside Archer's black flames and furious over everything she has learned, Saige touches the scar on her neck and confronts him. The bargain that originally connected them has now become the thing preventing her from walking away from him. She has learned that the man she trusted concealed his identity, concealed his history with her, concealed his involvement in the destruction of her childhood home, and allowed her to fall in love with him while knowing the truth about her pain.

Instead of accepting Archer's explanation or forgiving him, Saige turns her anger toward him. In front of the court, she makes it clear that whatever relationship existed between them has been fundamentally changed by what she has learned. She vows that before the war is over, she will break him. The Confluence remains in her possession, the magical bargain remains active, and Saige's understanding of both Archer and her own past has been completely overturned.