TOMÁS STROKED THE side of Tenn’s face.
“It’s rare,” Tomás said.
“What is?” Tenn asked.
He sat before Tomás on a fur rug while the incubus lounged in a large leather chair, a fire crackling in the hearth behind him.
“To meet one like you. You’re a challenge.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
In the corner of the room, chains clinked together. Tenn looked over. Jarrett was there, chained to the wall like a dog, a thick collar around his neck. His naked body was smeared with blood.
“Let him go,” Tenn said. He looked back, but it was no longer Tomás. It was the necromancer Matthias. He sneered, his dark eyes burning like coal fires.
“Of course. He doesn’t matter. But you? You’re mine forever.”
Tenn glanced at the chains on his own wrists and ankles, felt the large manacle around his neck. Matthias held the other end in his hand. Matthias opened to Fire; the chains glowed red. Tenn smelled his flesh burning before the pain arrived. When it hit, his whole world went white.
* * *
“You’re still alive,” Dreya said.
Her words cut through the haze of his dream. He couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question.
He tried to move, but every single joint in his body ached. It felt like he’d been filled with acid—his very blood seemed to beat against him. When he opened his eyes, he found that it was morning. At least, he thought it was morning. The sun sat on a cloudy horizon, the world a pinkish wash of white.
“What happened?” Tenn asked. His throat was dry. So dry. He needed to drink.
He couldn’t remember anything, just pain. Then it began to come back to him in a haze. Heading out to the city, the army, the girl...
“Tori,” he said. Despite the pain, he pushed himself up to sitting. The world swayed. “Where is she?”
Dreya looked down, then pointed to her side. He followed her finger and found a blanket-wrapped bundle sitting at the edge of the clearing they were in, nestled against the trunk of a pine. Tenn’s heart sank and tears filled his eyes. How did he have moisture left for tears?
He couldn’t help himself. He started to sob.
“You tried,” Dreya responded. “What you did—”
“Didn’t help,” Tenn said through his tears. He wanted to believe the emotion was from Water, but he couldn’t bring himself to buy it. I failed. I failed. I will always fail.
“You saved our lives,” Dreya said. There was a note in her voice, something he’d not heard before. Awe. “I don’t know how you did it. I’ve never seen so much power. You stopped their hearts—such magic should be impossible.”
“But it was too late,” he croaked. He could barely remember what he’d done after Tori died in his hands. He just knew he was paying for it dearly. And it hadn’t even been enough. If only you’d found that power sooner.
Dreya slapped him.
And it wasn’t gentle.
“Stop being a fool,” she said. “Only an idiot mourns what he could not change. You saved our lives, and you tried to save hers. Let that be enough.”
He didn’t move, but he stared up at her, sniffing back his tears. His heart broke and he couldn’t tell if it was the ache of Water or the realization that it would never, ever be enough. Her eyes were set, and there was an edge to her voice that told him she’d be more than happy to slap him again.
“Where’s Devon?” he asked, rather than letting himself drown in images of what he’d failed to do.
“Searching,” she said. “Looking for survivors.”
“And?”
“None so far,” she said. Again, that note of awe. “How did you channel so much power? You took out the entire army in a single swipe. It should have killed you.”
“I don’t know,” Tenn said. Like so many things happening in his life right now, he didn’t have a clue.
She shook her head in disbelief and stared at him for a while.
“Here, I thought the world was done with surprises,” she said. Then she looked to the city on the horizon.
Smoke and red light curled up from the burning buildings. He swallowed harshly and shuffled over to a spot of untouched snow. With numb hands, he began scraping it up and putting it to his lips.
“Here,” Dreya said. She moved to his side and took the snow in her own hands, opened to Fire and Water and both melted the snow and turned the ice below it into a bowl. A crystalline bowl filled with water, beautiful as fine china.
“How did you do that?” he asked. He’d never seen such delicate uses of magic, and maybe it was the rawness of Water, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen something so beautiful.
Dreya gave a faint smile.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” she said. She handed him the bowl, water glittering against her pale, willowy fingers. He took it and drank. Dreya settled back and looked to the city.
“He will be back soon,” she said. “When he is, we will leave. But I’m afraid...” She sighed. “We are going to have to leave her body here. We have no way of carrying her.”
Again, the thought of driving crossed his mind, but there was no way, not in all this snow. They could melt it, sure, but even though he’d just alerted everything in a hundred miles of their location, he didn’t want to use any more magic. Not if it meant drawing more eyes to the clan.
“I can’t just leave her out like this,” Tenn said. “Especially if I didn’t get them all.”
“We hoped that you could bury her. A pyre seems too... I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”
He nodded, but he didn’t answer. It wasn’t a job he looked forward to. Especially since Earth would force him to feel everything.
Devon appeared a while later, as promised. A bag was slung over his back Tenn had never seen before. Tenn didn’t have to ask. Although the Howls didn’t need food, their human slave drivers did. The spoils of war were small, but they were spoils nonetheless. They didn’t speak as they sorted through the bag and made a hasty breakfast. There was nothing else to say anymore.
They had tried, and they had failed. Even eating, his stomach turned against him. Matthias hadn’t been in the city, that much was obvious, both from the lack of seeing him in the battle and Devon’s scouting of the corpses. It felt like he’d sprung a trap. It felt like he was still being played. But he couldn’t for the life of him imagine what the game could be.
Finally, they gathered their things and moved Tori to the center of the glade. Tenn’s body hurt like hell and his blood burned with acid, but the water and food had helped. A bit.
The three of them stood over the wrapped body, the twins with their heads bowed. Tenn didn’t know if they were praying or just being respectful. He closed his eyes and tried to pray for the girl he didn’t know. But as much as he hated himself for it, he couldn’t help but find himself praying for Jarrett and the funeral he would never receive.
He had wondered if there would be a cue, some perfect moment to pull the girl down into the earth. He figured the twins would say something, maybe the funeral chant he’d seen from Dreya’s past, but they didn’t. Instead, after a few moments of silence, they began to sing.
The song was just a melody, but it was deep and sorrowful and sent chills down his spine. The quiet woods seemed to go even more silent, as if every particle of creation had paused to listen in. And that, he knew, was the cue he was waiting for. He opened to Earth and reached deep.
The ground in front of them rumbled. Like quicksand, the snow and dirt became fluid. The body—no, Tori—sank into the soil. Tenn could feel her tiny, birdlike body drawn down into the depths of the earth from which she’d come. He wanted it to be beautiful, that final embrace. He wanted to block out the sensation of her bones snapping under the weight of stone, the fluid that spilled from her flesh. But he couldn’t. Magic was a curse. Magic would always be a curse.
Finally, when she was at least six feet under, he cut himself from the power and the awareness of her twisted body. His limbs shook from emotion and Earth’s drain, and he slumped against his staff. The twins finished their song. They gave him a solemn look, then bowed before the freshly turned dirt and walked off. Tenn hesitated.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the snow.
He wasn’t certain who he was apologizing to.
They gathered their things and began the long, slow walk back to the clan in silence. Tenn couldn’t wash the feeling from his bones, the uncleanliness of the magic he had done. Even that small amount of magic made his legs shake and stomach rumble. At least, sometime during the night, one of the twins had pulled the blood from his clothes. Not that it made him feel any cleaner.
It was midday when they stopped for lunch. And it was midday when they realized something was wrong.
Devon stiffened, his chunk of bread forgotten.
“What is it?” Dreya asked.
He didn’t respond at first. But then Devon’s lips parted, and he whispered one, weighted word.
“Impossible.”
“What?” Tenn asked. His heart began to race, and he opened to Earth, scanning the countryside for anything moving, any sign of Howls or Inquisitors or worse. He felt nothing.
“The rune,” Devon said. He looked at Dreya, his eyes wide. A second passed, and then she hissed in a breath.
“It is moving,” she whispered.
Tenn didn’t ask more. He closed his eyes and visualized the tracking rune. He could feel its location. It was right in front of them, pulling them on. And that’s when he felt the slight shift, the tug.
Devon was right. The rune was moving. Fast.
“What the hell?” he said.
They all shared a glance. Then, as one, they grabbed their things. When they started back down the highway, they were running.
* * *
Despite their haste, they didn’t reach the woods until just before dusk. Tenn pushed his senses through the trees. For a moment, nothing seemed amiss. The woods were empty. Still. Except...
“I can feel the trailers,” he said. He looked at Dreya.
“The runes,” she said. “They must have been compromised.”
They ran into the trees at full speed. They didn’t hesitate to examine the marks on the trees that they passed, the lashings that seemed less than random. They all knew the marks of kravens when they saw them. And Tenn knew without a doubt that these slashes were cut across the runes themselves, rendering them useless. No one should have even known about them.
That’s when it clicked. Matthias could follow his dreams, read his thoughts. And if that were true, Matthias had seen everything Luke had shown him. The runes on the trees. And the tracking rune that would have led him straight to the Witches.
“It’s my fault,” Tenn gasped. He nearly collapsed in disbelief. Matthias hadn’t taken Tori to try and kill him. Matthias had taken her to lure him out and take the Witches. Matthias didn’t want him learning more about the runes.
Either that, or Matthias just wanted to prove that no one was safe around Tenn. Not even those Tenn turned to for guidance.
Neither of the twins said anything. He knew they wouldn’t lie. He knew they were drawing the same conclusions he was.
“There might be survivors,” Dreya said instead. He could tell from the waver in her voice that she didn’t quite believe it.
But when they reached the camp, the trailers were silent. Empty. Earth and Air told them as much.
The fire in the center had burned out, and more than one trailer door stood open, swaying gently in the wind. They stepped into the midst of the encampment, feeling for all the world like they were entering a ghost town.
“Search them,” Tenn said. Even his words seemed too heavy in the emptiness of this place. “Maybe they fled. Or left a clue.”
They split up and did precisely what he commanded, though he knew it was from protocol and not actual hope. He ducked inside Rhiannon’s trailer. The curtains were drawn and bowls of cold porridge sat untouched on the table. The scene reminded him of the dining room, where he’d first encountered emotional transference, but no shades of the dead ran through him. He glanced to the cabinet holding the singing bowl. It was open, the door dangling from a single hinge. Empty. Whatever happened, Rhiannon had had the foresight to grab the bowl with the rune. She wanted to be followed.
Someone yelled. He bolted outside.
It was Devon.
Devon stumbled backward from a trailer, his hands over his face. He tripped, fell into the snow. Dreya was at his side in an instant. Tenn was right behind.
Dreya smoothed his hair, whispering soothing sounds into his ears. His eyes were wide and he gripped the arm she wrapped around him.
“What happened?” Tenn asked.
“Go...” Devon stammered. “Go look.” He pointed a shaky finger at the trailer he’d just left.
Tenn looked at Dreya for support, but she was focused entirely on her brother.
He stood, doing his best to steel himself for whatever was waiting inside. If it had been enough to scare Devon...
He crept up to the trailer, Earth blazing in his stomach and his grip on the staff tight. The door opened with the screech of hinges.
The interior was dim, barely illuminated by the dying light outside. But it was enough.
The trailer was perfectly intact—the bed made, clothing folded on the nightstand, a cold mug of tea on the counter. Everything looked normal. Everything, save for the lump on the edge of the bed. At first glance, he’d thought it was a pillow. Only pillows didn’t drip crimson.
It was a body.
Half of one.
And there, splattered on the wall in the corpse’s blood, in Matthias’s jagged script, were two words.
your move