Runebreaker

by Alex R. Kahler

  “Don’t worry, I already ate mine. It’s not poisoned. Could use a bit of salt.”

  Aidan coughed again. Tried to gracefully hide the phlegm and blood that came up.

  “Though,” Lukas mused, “it doesn’t look like you’ll be tasting much of anything.”

  Aidan grimaced and shook his head. He didn’t reach for the spoon or the bread. Not yet. He could barely raise his hand, and he didn’t want Lukas to see him shake trying to achieve the most basic of human functions.

  “A few days ago I brought down the most powerful Howl in Britain,” Aidan said bitterly. “This wasn’t exactly the outcome I expected.”

  Lukas reached over and tore a chunk of bread from Aidan’s tray. Somehow, the guy managed to smell good. Aidan was mostly just impressed he could smell through the blood clogging his nose.

  “Karma’s a bitch,” Lukas muttered.

  “You saying I earned this?”

  He expected Lukas to backpedal. Instead, the guy chewed Aidan’s bread thoughtfully and stared at him. “Didn’t you?” he asked quietly.

  Aidan opened his mouth to say no, he didn’t.

  Then he remembered the way Vincent smelled when Aidan burned him alive. The harsh, choking rasp of his screams. Trevor’s eyes, right before they went glassy. Memory melted with the countless other deaths he’d been responsible for. The Howls who had been innocent and human, once. The necromancers who definitely had it coming. The bystanders who definitely hadn’t. They ticked through his brain, a barrage of marks against his soul. Too many to keep up with. Too many to remember. And yet, he felt every single one as sure as the cuts tracing his flesh.

  For the first time in three years, Aidan felt the abrasive, drowning pull of regret.

  He wanted to hate Lukas for being a dick. For saying what Aidan was beginning to think.

  Maybe Lukas had a point.

  Maybe Aidan was right where he deserved to be.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “You have everything written down, right?”

  Aidan rolled his eyes and held up his phone, showing Dad the screen of his full itinerary. “Who writes shit down anymore, Dad?” he asked. “It’s all on here.”

  “And what happens if you lose your phone?”

  “I ask Mom. Or find a computer somewhere since it’s all on the cloud. Besides, it’s only two weeks.” Aidan went back to looking at his phone, thumbing through photos on his feed. Everyone his age had already gone off on a dozen adventures. Now it was his turn to see the world, to get out of this backwoods New England hellhole.

  Now was his chance to actually live.

  The fact that he was doing it with his mother, well...not his first choice, but at least it meant he was getting out of the country. Finally.

  He was honestly surprised his parents had even come up with this idea. Take two weeks off of school? In a way, he almost felt bad. The entire reason they were going was to strengthen his relationship with his mom and get her away from the ghosts of this place. If they were willing to let him skip school, their relationship must have been truly failing.

  Then again, now that magic had been discovered, the entire field of education was shifting. Very few of Aidan’s classmates actually showed up to class anymore. It didn’t feel worth it.

  Dad grabbed his phone. “This is serious, son.”

  Son. His dad only used that phrase when he was pissed.

  “I’m going to Scotland, Dad,” Aidan replied. Were they really going to have this conversation again? “They have electricity there. And internet. They don’t all just live in castles by firelight.”

  “I know. I’ve been there. I just want to make sure you two are safe.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Aidan tried to level out his words. He and his mom left for the airport in a few hours. She was out running last-minute errands while Aidan finished packing.

  This was the last time he’d see his dad for two weeks. He might as well try to make it a pleasant memory. “Promise. I’ll call you the moment I get there.”

  “Liar,” his dad said with a grin. “You’ll text first.”

  “Calling is for old people.” Aidan smiled.

  “And yet you’ll call me when you get to the airport and let me know everything’s on time. If nothing else, so I know your phone still works.”

  Aidan groaned. “Yeah, yeah, sure.”

  His dad reached out, took his hand. Aidan tried to ignore just how bad Dad’s hand shook. “I love you, Aidan.”

  Aidan smiled and turned his hand up, clenched his dad’s hand.

  “I—”

  The door slammed open.

  Dad snapped back, shocked, as the Howls poured in. Kravens, putrid and decaying, their stench and gurgling filling the kitchen as they skittered forward on mangled legs, their flesh slopping across the floor.

  They reached for his father, yanked him from his seat, their talons digging red into his shoulders, their teeth gnashing. Aidan screamed. He tried to stand, but he couldn’t move. He was glued to the chair.

  “Aidan! Help me! Please, help!”

  His father’s voice. And his mother’s.

  But Aidan couldn’t move. And that’s when he realized he wasn’t stuck there. He was scared. He was too scared to move.

  He yelled out again as the Howls dragged his father out of the room. Screamed for his dad. For someone. Anyone. Anyone to help.

  He screamed.

  Only when the door closed behind them was Aidan able to move. He jumped from his seat. Wrenched the door open.

  The yard was empty. In the distance, he heard the bleating of sheep.

  “Dad?” he called, his voice trembling. Nothing. Fear clenched his chest. No. No, he had to find him. He couldn’t be gone, he couldn’t—

  “Dad!”

  Aidan jerked awake, covered in sweat in the deepest darkness.

  “Mate, calm down,” Lukas whispered. A hand on his chest, holding him fast to the bed. “It was just a nightmare. Your dad’s not here.”

  Aidan collapsed back on the thin mattress. Stared up at the darkness. Wished against everything else it would consume him, wished the pain that seeped back into consciousness would take him away. The pain, and the everlasting cold.

  For what he had done, he didn’t deserve anything better.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Aidan couldn’t fall back to sleep. He tried after Lukas went back to his own bed. He curled beneath his blanket and shivered, cold and aching, his body a mix of needles and ice cubes and frigid blood. He listened to Lukas snore in the cot beside him.

  He considered waking the guy up. Considered trying to make small talk, even though he hated small talk. Something, anything to pull his mind away from his thoughts.

  Because he felt like he was going crazy.

  As he stared at the ceiling, his memories collected and congealed, the thousands of shadows he’d been burning too brightly to see. But he knew the phrase—the brighter the light, the deeper the shadow.

  He’d spent three years ignoring what he’d run from. And now, that past was as thick as tar. It sloughed around his heart, made every pulse ache. He remembered.

  Deboarding the plane with his mom, that first glorious taste of Scottish air—the mist and the freshness, the taste of green and stone. Back when this country was an adventure. A chance to mend. To make things better.

  Calling his dad. Always calling his dad. When they got past customs. When they made it to their hotel. His dad had wanted a phone call every day. And Aidan had called him. Every day.

  Until they went to Skye. He’d planned on calling that evening. Honest. After he and his mom were snug indoors, maybe by the fire in the common room. By the time he tried, the phones were already down.

  He never heard his Dad’s voice again. Didn’t even know if he was alive, or had suffered the same
fate as his mom, or had been turned, or...

  No. He couldn’t go there. Not again. Never again.

  He squinted and rolled over, moaning against the pain. Not that this hurt more than the memories shifting around in his head. He didn’t know how Water users managed this, the constant despair, the depression sticking to his veins. All he wanted was to open to Fire, to burn the doubt and the regret and the shame.

  That was the greatest blessing of his Sphere. In its heat, there was no regret. There was no doubt.

  Now, he was wracked by both. The physical pain was just the icing on the damned cake.

  It wasn’t just the past that haunted him, but the present. Where was Kianna? Had she made it out alive? There was a chance she had slipped free of the Church. Wouldn’t be the first time she managed to sneak her way out of a bad situation. And if she had gotten free, there was a chance she had trailed them. A chance she was going to send help.

  He just had to hold on until that help came.

  If the coming day was anything like the one he just survived, the chances of that were slim.

  He almost felt bad that he didn’t care about Margaret and Gregory. He should care about them. He should be worried for their well-being.

  Trouble was, even now, even without Fire making him bold, he didn’t care. He just wanted out. Him and Kianna. He wanted out. Apparently, at his core, he was still just a heartless dick.

  With every tick of his thoughts was the looming dread that the only thing awaiting him was a cold, meaningless death.

  Death at the hands of a zealot in a shadowed room. Lost to history. Nameless. Forgotten.

  Exactly as he deserved.

  At one point, he even found himself whispering Tomás’s name, his body aching for any sort of heat, any sort of hope. But even that was in vain. Tomás never appeared, in dreams or in the flesh. Why had the Howl sent him down here, without warning him of the Church’s takeover? It was impossible that he wouldn’t have known. Was Tomás truly on his side?

  He knew he was an idiot for trusting an incubus. Just as he was an idiot for thinking he had the upper hand against a Kin.

  Those thoughts and worse cycled through his head for what felt like days. With no light, he couldn’t tell the time.

  When the door opened—jolting Aidan back to consciousness with a painful shock—he flinched away, suddenly wishing the night would go on forever.

  The guard said nothing. Just set two trays on the ground and stepped out, sending them back into near-darkness. The guard had been kind enough to leave a lit candle on one of the trays.

  For a moment, Aidan thought it was stupid for them to leave a weapon like that in a room with two prisoners, especially around a Fire mage. Then he realized he wasn’t a Fire mage anymore, and even if he used the candle to set his bed ablaze, all it would accomplish was burning him and Lukas alive. The walls were too thick for it to spread.

  At least he had an easy way out, if the torture got bad enough. At least there was one way to go out in a blaze. Even if not of glory.

  Lukas didn’t move, his breathing still heavy and deep.

  “Food,” Aidan said. He pushed himself to sitting and winced.

  Lukas snorted and rolled over.

  “Suit yourself,” Aidan muttered.

  He wasn’t hungry in the slightest, but he ate anyway, trying to restore some strength. It didn’t take a genius to know what today would entail: Jeremiah would bring him in for questioning again. The man had made it abundantly clear that Aidan was to be his entire focus until Aidan’s sins were gone. There was no hope of getting out of it. No hope of avoiding days or weeks of torture until death or the cavalry arrived.

  As he sat, eating tasteless porridge and some lukewarm water that was probably supposed to be tea, he once more wondered how Kianna was. He let himself think the worst—what if she hadn’t gotten away? What if she was in the cell beside theirs having the same bland breakfast? What if she’d been killed already?

  Something twisted in Aidan’s heart. A pang.

  This was all his fault.

  Kianna never would have gotten into this mess if it wasn’t for him. She had wanted to part ways, years ago, once she’d realized the resistance building in Inverness was in shambles. Wanted to leave him at the makeshift Guild and carry on by herself—especially after he’d used the opportunity to get attuned to Fire. He’d followed her out into the world anyway. She threatened to punch him, abandon him in the night, kill him if he didn’t get out of her face. But she never had. Somewhere along the line, they had become friends.

  Since then, he hadn’t left her side.

  Now, unless she had managed to get away, she was locked up somewhere in this mess. Getting tortured. Hopefully not tortured. She didn’t have a mark to burn off, didn’t have any magic to atone for. Though he doubted she would hold her tongue. She was smart, but she hated the Church with the same resolve that she hated magic.

  If anything, she was probably only making her sentence worse.

  He had to believe she was still alive, though. Giving the Inquisition hell. Making them work. Aidan almost felt proud, knowing she would never snap. Knowing she would sit there, bloodied and smiling and making them sweat for her sins.

  The smile slipped.

  Or, she could have told them that he had killed his commander. That he truly was a pawn of the Dark Lady. Was that how Jeremiah knew? Had they already gotten to her?

  You killed Trevor in cold blood, he thought. And this time, there was no hiss of Fire to convince him otherwise, no assurance that he wasn’t a murderer. There was just the darkness and the cold, the knowledge that what he had done was unforgivable. No matter what he told himself, he had killed Trevor solely because he wanted to rule. It wasn’t for the good of the country. Wasn’t for the good of mankind.

  Aidan was a murderer.

  He was, at heart, no better than the creatures he’d thought he was seeking to kill.

  Aidan tried, vainly, to reach for Fire. To burn the thoughts and emotion away. Every time he clutched at that hollowed space within him, he gasped in pain.

  Instead of fending off the thoughts, all he did was inflame them.

  Behind the dark of his eyelids, he saw Trevor’s face when he realized Aidan was going to kill him. When he knew in his heart that Aidan had betrayed not just the warmth between them, but the very cause they had stood for. And there, too, Aidan saw the other memories: waking up in Trevor’s arms, studying the guy’s face before slipping quietly away. His lips against Trevor’s neck, kissing down to his clavicles while Trevor groaned in pleasure. The nights spent in Trevor’s study, discussing tactics or how to manipulate the council.

  Trevor had done everything Aidan had ever asked. Had been everything Aidan could have wanted.

  Until Trevor had exiled him. Until Aidan let Fire speak for him.

  Aidan forced down the thought. Tried to. Tried to find the spark. Fire had been the only thing driving him forward, the only thing telling him that victory would make every sacrifice, every death worth it.

  Without Fire, he questioned everything.

  If this was what real life felt like, maybe he should just piss Jeremiah off and get this salvation thing over with.

  “You look sad,” Lukas said. Aidan jerked up.

  Lukas lay watching him, his pale eyes reflecting the candlelight, his hair a mop of flame. Something about Lukas’s freckles made him look, well, innocent. Even if that was belied by the scars and tattoos that crossed his pale skin, or the knowing, serious look on his face.

  Aidan felt like he was being studied. Not in the way that Jeremiah studied him. No. This was somehow more intimate. Lukas didn’t look at Aidan like a straight dude would—his expression was soft, open. A question or an offer. Or maybe that was just the lighting.

  “I take it you didn’t sleep well?” Lukas continued.

>   “You could say that,” Aidan muttered. He slid Lukas’s tray over with his foot. Tried not to make eye contact. The boy...even with his thoughts of desolation, Lukas made his blood warm. Made him want to go snuggle in closer. And seeing as they were locked in a cell surrounded by zealots filled with hellfire, that was probably not a good idea. The Church still didn’t look too kindly on the queers.

  “Nightmares?”

  “I mean, I did wake you up screaming.”

  Lukas nodded and picked up his tray. “Yeah. But I guess I’d hoped you slept a bit better after that. You know, knowing I’m here to protect you and all.”

  “I don’t need protecting,” Aidan said on instinct.

  “Clearly,” Lukas replied, not even looking up at him. “That’s why you’re locked in a cell and covered in bandages.”

  “’Tis only a flesh wound.”

  Lukas snorted. At least he got the reference.

  Lukas ate in silence while Aidan wondered what tortures would await him at Jeremiah’s hands today. He gingerly touched the bandages wrapped on his arms. The worst of the pain had died down, but the wounds were still tender.

  “You wanna talk about it?” Lukas asked.

  Once more, Aidan jerked at the noise. Jesus. Without Fire, he was twitchy as an addict. Maybe Kianna was right. Maybe he had gotten too dependent on magic. “Talk about what?” Talking about his feelings was definitely not his strong suit.

  “Why you think you’re here.”

  “I’m here because I was captured.”

  “You know what I mean. Jeremiah doesn’t torture everyone who comes in here.”

  “Says the boy who was tortured.”

  “For an hour,” Lukas said. He took a moment to sip his tea. “You were gone all day. And, judging from the way you look right now, I’m guessing you aren’t expecting the worst to be over, even after all that. So. Why are they spending so much energy torturing you?”

  “You’re awfully nosy for a stranger,” Aidan said.

  Lukas just shrugged. “Air user. Old habits die hard. Ended up having to attune to Fire as well because my friends said I was acting too cold.” He laughed bitterly. “And now look at me.”