Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(57)

They were thoughts he shouldn’t have allowed himself to have. But there, it was impossible to keep them down. They were living, breathing things. They had teeth.

He pressed his hand to the cold doorknob. Then, before he could tell himself this was a horrible idea, he opened the door.

History washed over him in a waft of dust and desertion. The faintest light filtered through the window opposite him, casting heavy shadows on everything within. He didn’t need light or magic to see. His body knew every corner of this place—the cinder-block walls, the wooden shelves, the desk with his computer still sitting on it. He stepped slowly inside and felt the bile rise in his throat. Moonlight shone in from a space in the clouds. Photos still lined his wall—him and his few friends making sand castles by the lake or eating lunch at the mall; his family at Thanksgiving; the tree outside his old bedroom window.

He collapsed to his knees.

His heart was on fire, every fiber of that muscle tearing itself apart. He gripped his head in his hands and sobbed on the floor, tears pooling in the dust. Memories ripped through him, but it wasn’t Water at work. The Sphere didn’t need to do anything. The real wounds were all there—the pain, the history. This is where he’d lain awake for hours, wondering if Jarrett actually liked him. Wondering if anyone would like him. So much time wasted to worry. He would never get it back.

He curled in on himself, wishing death would take him. The fire from before, the burning desire for revenge, snuffed out. What point was revenge if there was no one to come home to? What was the point of pushing forward when everything he loved, everything he worked for, was continually ripped away from him? He couldn’t find any answers, and he couldn’t find any drive. All that was here was the dust of his past. The memory of what wouldn’t be.

He forced himself to kneeling and stared at his hands as they pressed into the linoleum. His hands were worn. Long, thin fingers, crossed with scars. They didn’t fit into this place. Neither did he.

He pushed himself up, grabbing the chair for support. He was about to make his way to bed when he stopped; something caught his eye.

The dust on his desk was lit up by the moon, a pale sheen of uniform gray. Save for one small patch.

Words had been written in the dust, a fingertip’s scrawl.

Three words, in a script he didn’t recognize.

Welcome home, Jeremy





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HE STARED AT the handwriting for what felt like hours, every throb of his blood the tick of a clock. He didn’t recognize the script, but he knew without a doubt that it was Matthias’s. Tomás would have just appeared in briefs and a smile to torment him. It wasn’t the fact that the writing was recent that made his heart clench but, instead, what it entailed. Matthias knew his name. Matthias knew his history. Matthias knew more about him than Tenn had given him credit for.

Which meant Matthias would be back. He expected Tenn to return here.

They weren’t safe.

He brushed the dust and the handwriting away.

Water resonated.

“We have to go!” his roommate yells. Greg shoves clothes into his backpack, but he’s barely paying attention to what he grabs. Tenn watches five pairs of socks and a scarf and two tank tops go into the bag.

Tenn can’t move.

If he moves, he’ll have to believe this is real.

He’d thought it was a joke, at first. Some part of their training. Handling emergencies or something like that. It started with a news clip on repeat, one that had taken over every single TV station, every radio signal, every internet channel: a woman in black in the middle of a basement somewhere, a man chained to a chair in front of her, marks covering his body. A grim smile was on his face like he wanted to be there. Like he volunteered.

The woman said that the time had come for a new savior. And she was the one to herald them in.

Them. Not him. Them.

Tenn had watched on the dorm TV with his classmates as she opened to Earth. As the man screamed and shook in the chair, as his body arched and snapped and bones shot from flesh and blood oozed down skin and then the screaming stopped. Changed. Became a howl that pierced Tenn to the core as the man’s face contorted and elongated and his jaw cracked and his teeth gouged and when it was over, when it was finally over, he was no longer a man.

“I give you the new era,” the woman said. She stepped forward. She wore black, but her face was pale. Almost angelic.

Blood splattered her cheeks.

“Join me,” she said. “Join me, and know eternity. Defy me, and not even death will release you from my wrath.”

The footage had cut off, repeated itself for at least an hour. But then the repetition stopped, and new footage appeared. Live footage. People running through the streets, screaming as monsters chased them. As mages set fire to buildings or boiled lakes or called down storms. It was coordinated. It had been planned.

The moment it started, the war was already won.

“Jeremy!” Greg calls. “Get off your ass and pack!”

Head reeling with memory of the footage, Tenn stands and begins slowly putting things in his bag. This is all just a dream, he tells himself. This is all just a joke. Water simmers in his gut, as if responding to something far away. The Sphere had been acting up the last week. It had been harder to control. More volatile. Had it felt the wrongness in the world?

Was that even a thing that was possible?