Runebreaker

by Alex R. Kahler

  And when he screamed, he gave all that pain, all that agony, all that hatred the voice it craved.

  Fire exploded.

  Everything went white. White and red. White and red and screaming.

  Jeremiah’s screams.

  Aidan’s screams.

  As the world around them burst into flame. As the flames burst from his body. As the skin ripped from his bones. As he flared in the face of humanity’s rage. As his voice charred his lungs and burned through the corridors. As the flame burst from the building, stretched across the expanse of London.

  As the rage spread. As the rage consumed.

  As he burned atop his own funeral pyre.

  As he burned the whole world down with him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  “Yes, my Hunter,” the Dark Lady said. “You have done well.”

  He knelt before her in the void. She shifted. Now his mother. His smiling mother. Crowning him with a coil of flame and shadow. He remembered what he’d done. Reading the runes of the shard. Speaking the runes. Words he shouldn’t have known.

  Words even she hadn’t known.

  Words that broke the world.

  Words that built it anew.

  He remembered the flame. The explosion.

  He remembered burning all of London to the ground.

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “You did. And you did so perfectly. You have done greater than I could have ever dreamed. My child. My son. I am so, so proud.”

  He had wanted to spite her. But how could he spite her? His own mother?

  She touched the side of his face. Wiped the tears that slid from his eyes. Kissed his forehead, his crown burning with cinders and sin.

  “You will continue my work,” she promised. “And at the foot of your throne, even the reaper will kneel.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “What have you done?”

  Tomás’s words pulled him from the depths of Hell.

  No, he was still in Hell. Fire burned around him, everything hot and charred, orange and red and black, and as he stared at the night sky, embers floated into the heavens, charred stars falling in reverse.

  Tomás towered over him, demonic in the hellfire.

  “The shard,” Tomás demanded. “Where is it?”

  “Gone,” Aidan said. He looked to his hand. His palm was bloody and raw, and when he turned it over, he saw that his knuckles, too, were ripped and bleeding, burned apart from liquid stone. He laughed, a sudden bubble of giddiness at the sight of his bloodied flesh. “I melted it.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” Tomás knelt. Grabbed Aidan’s hand, pressed open his palm. Aidan was so numb, he couldn’t even feel Tomás’s fingers prodding the wound. “What have you done?” he roared. “I told you to get the shard. Not burn down all of London.”

  Aidan tilted his head to the side, scalp rolling against hot ash. Hot ash, but cool beneath his smoking skin. As far as he could see—which wasn’t far, through the flame and falling cinders—London had been leveled.

  Aidan giggled, heady with power. His brain in flames.

  He had done that.

  He hadn’t just burned down London. He’d burned down the whole world.

  Or, if he hadn’t, he would.

  The thought seared him with elation.

  “Maybe I don’t need you after all,” Aidan said. Giggled again. So much power. All his. All his.

  “I should kill you for—” Tomás stopped. Stared out at the horizon with narrowed eyes.

  “What?” Aidan asked.

  Tomás glared at him. “We aren’t finished, Hunter.” He squeezed Aidan’s hand. “Remember that you are only important so long as you are useful to me. And this makes me doubt your usefulness greatly.”

  Then, with a flash of magic, he was gone.

  Aidan closed his eyes. Waited for Kianna and Lukas to appear. They were out there, surely, running back. To make sure he was okay.

  He was okay. He was okay.

  And that meant they were okay. He just needed to let them know where he was.

  He reached for Fire, but the Sphere still eluded him. It didn’t matter, though. Calum’s power still rode through his veins. The elation of so much heat, so much magic. He needed to let them know where he was. Send up a flame. A brighter flame.

  He must be a brighter flame...

  Another magic. A flare of power, of blue light. A power that was not his.

  “Where are we?” came a voice. Masculine and strong. American.

  What were Americans doing here?

  “I don’t know,” came another man’s voice.

  Someone coughed, and with another flare of magic a breeze blew around him, chilling him to the bone as the flames swept aside.

  Aidan looked over.

  Four people. Three guys. One girl. She was very pale. A ghost. Not Kianna. Not Lukas. He didn’t care about Lukas. Just Kianna. Where was she?

  “There is a survivor,” not-Kianna said.

  The tall guy raced over, dropped to Aidan’s side. Aidan’s eyes flickered closed. None of them were important.

  Where was she?

  “He’s lost a lot of blood,” the guy at his side said. “And he’s horribly burned.”

  “And naked,” came the first guy.

  Aidan tried to open his eyes. Saw the other three figures standing above him. A guy with blond hair. The ghost girl. A guy with a crimson scarf around his neck.

  And the one at his side. Aidan rolled his head to the kneeling boy. Dark hair. Washed-out skin. Water and whispers swirling around him in waves.

  The boy from his dreams.

  The boy who would try to destroy him.

  Tenn.

  “You—”

  “Shh,” Tenn said. “We’re here to help. I’m going to heal you, okay? This may hurt.”

  Dimly, Aidan felt hands against his arm. Where his Hunter’s mark should have been.

  He felt nothing else.

  Moments stretched.

  “Impossible,” Tenn whispered.

  “What is it?” asked the girl.

  “I can’t heal him,” Tenn said. He looked up. Then back down to Aidan, his eyes creased with pain. “Magic has no effect.”

  It took a moment, through the cinders of Aidan’s mind, for the words to connect. When they did, he thought he must have misheard. Must have.

  He couldn’t be healed.

  Magic couldn’t save him.

  Something bubbled up inside of him. A sob? Despair?

  But no. He felt none of those things.

  Surrounded by the flames of his destruction, staring up at the boy he had promised to kill, Aidan began to laugh.

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No book is created in a void, even though at times it may feel like it. Countless people have helped shape the world of Runebinder, and I’ll try to hit them all. But Runebreaker isn’t your average book, so I’m not going to do the average list of thank-you’s.

  Yes, I want to thank my amazing agent, Laurie McLean of Fuse Literary. And my endless gratitude goes to the team at Harlequin TEEN/Inkyard Press, with special kudos to my editor, T.S. Ferguson, for stepping up to bat, and Mark O’Brien for making this book sing. My thanks as well go to the friends and editors who have supported this series from the very beginning: Patricia, Asja, Michael, David, Bea and Will.

  But mostly, I want to thank the people who probably don’t even know this book exists.

  Aidan has been called “difficult” more times than I can count. Unlikable. Narcissistic. Anger-driven. Over a decade ago, when Runebinder first came to light, I poured a great deal of my own emotions onto the page. As I struggled with what it meant to be gay, as I yearned for a world where I didn’t have to constantly explain myself, a wo
rld where I could be heroic, so was Tenn born of fear, of sadness and of the great desire to be normal. To be important to someone. And to something.

  Aidan is more than the opposite end of that spectrum. Aidan is the next step in the narrative.

  In that vein, my thanks go to the countless beautiful creatures who allowed themselves to feel and further the burning passion to overcome, to overturn. The revolutionaries who knew that being queer didn’t pigeonhole our narrative, who knew that we could be so much more than a foil or fodder. We weren’t put here to become normalized, to hide away, to be ashamed or snuffed out.

  We were put here to burn.

  This book is for the many who have lit the way, both for me personally and for the world at large. For those who—every day—fight to show that we have a place in history, and it is as glorious and beautiful as we are. For those who show that it is okay to be angry, that it is okay to be driven, that it is okay to be fierce and ferocious and yes, most definitely yes: fabulous. We must always temper that flame, lest we become what we fight against, but we must never, ever let our spark wink out due to fear.

  Which means, dear reader, that my deepest thanks go to you. Not only for falling in love with this world of magic and monsters, but for carrying the torch inside of you, for being the change and the hope we so desperately need.

  You are the light in our current darkness. You are the flame that will burn evil away.

  Resist the urge to sink into despair.

  Resist. Forever Resist.

  ISBN-13: 9781488095283

  Runebreaker

  Copyright © 2018 by Alex R. Kahler

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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