Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(75)

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.