Runebreaker

by Alex R. Kahler

  Leaving only Trevor. Trevor, whose eyes ran with tears—from smoke or fear, Aidan didn’t know. Or care. Trevor and Kianna, who lay unconscious in the dust of her troop mates.

  “Why are you doing this?” Trevor asked. His voice hitched.

  “Because...” Aidan began. He pulled through Fire. Squeezed Tomás’s hand. The Kin’s skin was cold compared to his own. “...I can.”

  He made it quick.

  A burst of fire that filled Trevor’s lungs, seared through his heart. No great pyrotechnics, no pillar of flame.

  One moment, Trevor stood there. Alive and broken.

  The next, he crumpled to the ground beside Kianna, smoke curling like regret from his lips.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  There was a moment, briefly, when Fire let up and doubt crept in, when Aidan saw the ash and bodies of his comrades for what they truly were—crimes he’d committed, treason.

  Murder.

  But with Tomás burning at his side, that moment was barely a flicker in his consciousness. With Tomás, all sins were forgiven.

  All sins were encouraged.

  With Fire, all sins were glory.

  “I underestimated you,” Tomás said. “I thought I would have to kill them.”

  Aidan didn’t want to think about that. To think on that would be to look back. Fire didn’t look back. Fire burned.

  Fire burned.

  “What do we do now?” He looked away from the bodies. “You’ve given me the throne—”

  “But you want more,” Tomás interrupted.

  Aidan turned to face him; the heat between them could melt mountains. But Aidan knew he could be stronger. Should be stronger. Calum was just the start. Scotland was just the start. He knew as much from what he’d seen in the vision—there was more power to be had, power that he couldn’t even comprehend.

  The power to bring back the dead.

  “I want it all,” Aidan said.

  Tomás just smiled, his canine pulling on his lower lip. Aidan wanted to bite that mouth, to taste every inch of the Kin who called him king. Power rode through his veins, elation at having finally done what he had set out to do years ago. And that power refused to dam itself in the confines of this castle.

  “I will give you everything,” Tomás replied. He stepped in closer, looked down into Aidan’s eyes, traced Aidan’s lips with a burning finger. “Everything, and more. But we all have parts to play. And yours, my king, has just begun.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I am here to play a bigger game. As are you.”

  “What game?”

  Tomás’s smile widened. He leaned in closer. Threatened to burn Aidan alive.

  Which was all Aidan truly wanted.

  “I have given you what you desired,” Tomás said, his lips so close to Aidan’s he could taste the Kin’s tongue. “And now, you will give me what I seek.”

  “Which is?” Aidan asked breathily. Fire filled him. Fire promised to give the incubus anything he so asked.

  “I want the key to my brother’s creation.” His words a bedroom purr. His eyes sparking prophecies. Aidan leaned in.

  And Tomás stepped back. Pointed to the corpse at their feet. Even that distance made cold and need ache in Aidan’s chest.

  “Bring me the shard that brought him back to life,” Tomás said, “and I will grant you the world.”

  Visions flashed through Aidan’s mind—the flames, the power, the bloody graveyard. The Dark Lady and Calum’s corpse. The impossible resurrection.

  “Yes,” Tomás whispered. “I know you have seen it. I know her words speak to you. You have seen the truth.”

  Aidan shook the visions from his mind. Everything tumbled in his head, puzzle pieces without a board. Fire’s hum didn’t help; he was drunk on the power, and any direction felt futile.

  “Where is it?”

  “If I knew that, why would I ask you?” Tomás snapped.

  Aidan jolted at the anger in Tomás’s voice. Then Tomás shivered. Regained composure. Ran a hand through his hair with an elfish grin.

  “I would apologize,” he said. “But I feel you know what it is like to experience things...fiercely.”

  Aidan nodded, felt the curtains draw back over his fear, hiding the doubt and rationality.

  “Find me the shard,” Tomás continued, his voice dropping back to its purr. “Rule your kingdom. Then you will learn the rest of our game.”

  He wanted so badly to reach out to Tomás, to pull the incubus closer, to celebrate his victory with all the passion and pleasure Fire promised them. But Tomás took another step away, toward the shadows, toward the statues, and Aidan stayed rooted in place.

  He wouldn’t pine.

  He would make the Kin come to him.

  “I will be watching,” Tomás said.

  “I’m counting on it.”

  Tomás paused. As though that were not the response he’d expected. As though he didn’t think Aidan could be an equal.

  Then his eyes flickered to Kianna’s body.

  “I wouldn’t tell her about me, were I you. I don’t think she would approve.”

  Aidan laughed and looked back at his only friend. “She doesn’t approve of anything.”

  Tomás nodded.

  Then he opened to Air, a flicker of pale blue in his throat. The next moment, he was gone.

  Emptiness settled on Aidan’s shoulders the moment the Kin disappeared. It sank though his bones, curled in his gut. Emptiness, and cold, and purpose. He reached into his flame and forced it through his bones. He would not let Tomás’s absence sadden him.

  He refused to need the Kin for anything.

  He refused to need anyone for anything. Not anymore.

  Aidan looked around at the frozen sculptures, the humans Calum had twisted into some otherworldly art. At the blood-smeared wall—my gift, my king—and the broken body bleeding out beneath it.

  This was his home.

  His castle.

  He had earned it.

  And as he stared at the corpses, as he looked up into the shadows and cobwebs on the rafters, as he let his senses stretch out to the firestorm above, the battle slowly dying down in the city, he realized that he didn’t want this.

  The castle was too small.

  Scotland was too small.

  Calum had been content to contain his rule here. But not Aidan. This was a mausoleum.

  Calum ruled only the dead.

  Aidan would rule the world.

  He reached down and yanked the dagger from Calum’s chest, and set about the gruesome task of sawing off Calum’s head. He would need more than his word to make his fellow Hunters follow him. And what was a revolution without a little decapitation?

  Maybe he’d even get some cake.

  When finished, he walked down the aisle, gripping Calum’s hair in one hand, Fire burning with purpose in his chest.

  He would spread.

  He would devour.

  He would find the shard that Tomás desired, and he would in turn take everything the incubus could offer.

  And more.

  He pulled through his Sphere. The statues beside him burst into flame. One by one, he set the corpses alight. Their rising embers a swirling crown above him. The only crown he needed. A baptism of Fire was the only coronation that suited.

  When he reached Kianna, he gently looped her arm over his shoulder and carried her away from his comrades. Out the great doors into the frozen courtyard beyond.

  The Sphere of Fire smoldered in his chest. Guided him forward. Ever forward. Ever hungry.

  The moment the door closed behind them, he reached through that poisonous power and let the castle feel the weight of his might. Fire burst through the stained-glass windows, snaked its way over stone and frozen skin.
He felt Fire feed, felt it devour the statues of Hunters long past, the support beams of the hall, the corpse of Calum.

  The throne too small for him to occupy.

  He fed it all to the flames, and Fire delighted in the feast.

  That’s when Kianna woke up. Startled from the thunderous boom as the roof caved in and the sky burned bright with his power.

  “What...” she mumbled. She stood straighter. “What happened?”

  “It’s over,” he lied. He held up Calum’s head. “We won.”

  He knew it wouldn’t be explanation enough forever. But for now, it was.

  She stopped. Pushed herself off of Aidan to look back at the inferno.

  “We won,” she repeated, a whisper. A single tear slid down her face. “You bloody bastard. You did it.”

  “Aye,” he said. “I did.”

  There was a moment, watching the tears of pride and who-knew-what-else fall down her face, that he felt the twinge of shame. He had lied to her. He had killed his co-commander, his lover. He had agreed to help Tomás, and had promised to never tell Kianna about it. He was no better than the monster he had just ended.

  Kianna looked to him. Sniffed at the tears.

  “Less than ten minutes in command, and everything’s already gone up in flames. I guess I expected nothing less.”

  Aidan broke out in laughter, Fire curling back into his chest, burning the doubt and the shame away.

  “What can I say?” he asked. “I wanted to redecorate.”

  “You’re going to tell me everything,” Kianna said, turning away from the blaze. “But first, I need a fecking drink.”

  “Done.”

  Together, they walked down the path while Edinburgh Castle and all of its terrible secrets burned behind them.

  Behold, the reign of Aidan, he thought. He looked down to Calum’s head.

  Aidan smiled.

  “There is no perfect magic, no pure power.

  Only nature is perfect, only the gods

  are pure. We have toyed with both.

  And so

  we have damned ourselves twice over.”

  —Diary of the Violet Sage,

  5 Oct, 3 P.R.

  PART 3

  THE DEEPER THE SHADOW

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Aidan and Kianna sat around the bonfire, far away from the castle walls and the destruction they’d left behind, the city smoldering on the horizon, painting the night as red as the blood they’d spilled. Even from here, Aidan’s chest ached with the call of Fire.

  After Calum had fallen, it had been a pretty quick job sweeping up the rest of the Howls and necromancers that hadn’t died in the first few minutes of the attack. Without their leader, and with the Guild’s morale boosted, Calum’s forces fell like cards.

  The Guild had been hit heavily, but victory was all that mattered.

  Fire told him as much, and if he began to doubt that, he would need to doubt a whole hell of a lot of other things.

  Aidan had expected Kianna to grill him about what happened in the castle. His lie had come swiftly and succinctly—she’d been struck by a hidden guard, gotten knocked out. Trevor and a few others came in and helped take Calum down, but had sadly died in the process.

  He made sure to make his voice catch when he mentioned the last part.

  The surprising thing wasn’t the ease with which he came up with the lie, but the ease with which she accepted it. And when they came back down from the hill and helped destroy the last of the necromancers and Howls still fighting back, the troops had accepted the news, as well.

  It was a shame that Trevor had fallen in battle. But falling in battle was the name of the game, and to die killing Calum was the greatest of honors. Or so Aidan had reminded the troops.

  He hadn’t mentioned that he was—ignoring that whole “exile” thing—now in command. He didn’t need to.

  The moment he held up Calum’s head and claimed the title of King as his, his comrades had erupted in cheer. He was swept up in the tide. Regaled as a hero.

  As he should have been all along.

  Around them, the remaining troops laughed and drank. Aidan wasn’t certain which of them had decided to bring the victory booze, or maybe someone had found a wellspring of whiskey in a ruined house. They had set up camp about a mile from Edinburgh, in what seemed to be an old football field. A myriad of tents were scattered about, their colors sharp and shadowed in the firelight. The surviving Hunters had been healed by Earth mages, who were now mostly fast asleep, which meant everyone awake was celebrating. Somewhere in the camp, Calum’s head was being paraded around on a pike. What was left of it, at least.

  Turned out, there were quite a few people with a lot of unspent aggression toward the Kin, and bashing his head in was as satisfactory postmortem as pre.

  Even better, for the first time in what felt like months, it wasn’t raining.

  Maybe Aidan’s luck was finally improving.

  He took another drink of whisky and looked to a guy sitting across the fire from him. Pale Irish skin, curly black hair and beard, an angular face covered in dirt and recently healed scars. Aidan barely remembered the dude’s name. Gregory or something. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the fact that the guy kept looking over. A different fire sparked through Aidan’s chest every time he did. He fought down the blush that rose in his cheeks and turned it to something he could use, an anticipation, a desire to hunt in a different way.

  His luck was definitely improving.

  “I think he wants you,” Kianna said, following Aidan’s not-very-hidden stare.

  Aidan just took a swig of whisky and found solace in the fire that burned down his throat. “That doesn’t matter. The question is whether or not I want him.”

  He knew he should have felt bad about Trevor. For lying to Kianna. For making his own friend an unknowing accomplice. But that voice was small, and suffocating, and the more he fed his doubt to the flames, the less he feared retribution.

  He had killed Calum.

  Liberated Scotland.

  What did it matter, the casualties along the way?

  He stared over at Gregory and fed all the uncertainty into the fire, let the heat inside him grow with a different need. A different sort of victory. In that moment, he realized that yes, yes—he wanted, and would have, Gregory.

  “What about you?” he asked her. “Any lads or lassies you want to bone?”

  “Please never say ‘lad’ or ‘lassie’ again. You sound like a tourist.”

  He laughed and nudged her in the side. Gregory looked over at the sound. Aidan grinned at him, his heart flipping over with excitement. After his time with Tomás, he was horny as hell. If he couldn’t take the incubus, Gregory would be a fair consolation prize.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Aidan said.

  Kianna glanced over her shoulder, to another Hunter-ringed fire. “Maybe,” was all she said.

  “Och, c’mon. You deserve a victory shag.”

  “I deserve many victory shags,” she said. “Especially since I know this will only inflate your ego. I can’t even imagine how terrible dealing with you will be from here on out.”

  Aidan winked. “You flatter me.”

  She bit her lip, and her face shifted to concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?” It wasn’t a question she often asked him—it got too close to prodding, which they’d sworn against years ago. The first time he’d tried to get her to admit that she was upset, she’d broken his arm. Thankfully, they’d been near an Earth mage at the time. He told himself she had known that when she did it, but he wasn’t exactly convinced. “I know you pretend you’re a hard-ass, but I know Trevor meant a lot to you.”

  He looked to the fire. And even though that should have made him feel better, should have made his Sphere burn with recognition,
all he could see was Trevor’s face in the flames.

  He had to convince himself that this had been the only way. Trevor had seen too much. They all had. Aidan would have been questioned, or tortured, or worse. It was either him or them.

  When it came down to it, he would always put himself first. Him, and Kianna.

  He had to.

  “I will be,” he said. “It’s...it’s going to take some time.”

  She nodded. Leaned in a little closer. “You know...you know you can always talk to me, right? I’m your mate. I love the hell out of you.” She paused, and he looked over, watched her expression change in the flames. For the first time in all the years he had known her, she actually looked vulnerable. Maybe it was because this was the first time he’d ever seen her tipsy; she didn’t like the thought of being impaired, when an attack could happen at any moment. “You got me out of there. You saved my life. I should have thanked you. Just know...just know I’ll always be there for you. Always.”

  Guilt twisted in Aidan’s chest, and he had to look away. He hoped she would think it was because he was bad at dealing with emotions.

  Not because he was lying through his teeth.

  “Thank you,” he replied. “I’ve got your back, too.” That, at least, would always be true. For everything she’d done for him—for not abandoning him when everyone else had—he would always have her back.

  He just had to convince himself that right now, having her back involved lying. To save her from the harsh truth that her best friend was a monster.

  She leaned over then, and hugged him awkwardly. He flinched under her touch in spite of himself. He’d known her since the Resurrection, and this was probably only the fourth or fifth time they’d hugged. In that moment, he was reminded that she was just like him—young and fucked up and scared. Only she didn’t have magic to take off the edge.

  She didn’t have Fire telling her that weakness was death.