Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(86)

She looked back up to him. “I mean, what happens to us if you die in there?” She sighed, as though the words she was about to say were painful. “We can’t do this without you.”

“Of course you can,” he said. He shrugged and looked back to his work.

“No.” It was Devon, not Dreya, who continued the argument. He had pulled his scarf down, so his voice rang out in the night, low and deep like a mourning bell. “Rhiannon told us the spirits had chosen you. You are the one they will work through. You are the one who will change the world. If you die, that change dies, too. You are no longer responsible for just your own life. You never were.”

Tenn wanted to punch him. He wanted to shut Devon up for saying all the things he’d been trying to ignore since the very beginning. The idea that he was different. Important. The sheer, crippling weight that he had the world riding on his shoulders. He knew without a doubt that, if he’d been a Fire mage, he would have exploded. Instead, Water filled him with doubt. What if you fail?

Tenn looked toward the compound and tried not to sink to his knees.

“Do you have a better idea?” he asked.

Silence.

“I’m doing this,” Tenn continued. “With or without your help. I’m saving Jarrett. And then I’ll save anyone else in there. Why else were we sent on this mission if not to wipe out the Howls? Well, here’s our chance to start. Leanna runs the Howls in America. We take her down, we’re one step closer to freedom.”

Dreya sighed. She looked at Devon, who looked both angry and bewildered.

“Dawn, then,” she finally said. “If we do not hear from you, we will attack at dawn.” She fingered her wrist, the spot where he had marked her with the tracking rune. “We will watch out for you. But come back to us before then.”

Tenn nodded. “I will.”

He scratched the last of the runes into the ground and watched his only friends wink out of sight.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

TENN TOOK A few steps from the circle, the snow immediately enveloping his shins, nearly reaching his knees the farther down he stumbled. A few steps away, he used the one surprise he had left up his sleeve.

He opened to Earth, and just like he had with the tracking runes, he traced the runes of hiding into his skin.

The whispers that had accompanied the runes were louder this time, billowing through his senses like a whirlwind of smoke. He nearly toppled with vertigo. He propped himself up with his staff, watching the snow spin at his feet. Skin burned. But he kept going, kept tracing the runes over every inch of flesh even though it felt like dragging a knife across his skin. The completed marks tingled. Glowed.

After all, flesh was Earth. It should be enough to power the runes.

He hoped.

When the last rune was finished, he stood and waited for the sensory overload to pass. It seemed to take ages. Even the stars above danced. He could still see his shaking hands and his clothes and his weapon. He just prayed no one else could. He prayed even that small amount of Earth hadn’t weakened him too much.

I should have asked the twins. But he knew that was a terrible idea. If it hadn’t worked, if they had known that this was his supposed ace, they never would have let him leave.

Finally, he felt well enough to continue on, even though his stomach rumbled with Earth’s hunger. He did his best to run down the hill, shoving through snowdrifts and trying not to tumble. Every few yards he swept the snow behind him with Water. If he failed, he didn’t want anyone tracing him back to the twins. Besides, with Water filling him, he could ignore the biting cold. It meant he had to force down the images playing on repeat in his head, but that had become habitual, images of his friends dying and burning, Jarrett’s final kiss before leaping to his death, and worse—illusions of the life he thought he could have, him and Jarrett in a house together, cooking or laughing and completely numb to the horrors of the last few years. The ache of that loss filled him with need.

The slope eventually flattened out into a valley crossed by a highway. Farther on and past an exit ramp, the colony glowed orange and unawares.

The wall surrounding the city was easily three stories tall, made of earth and steel and concrete, a strange amalgamation of magic and rusting technology. Spikes jutted from the top, twisted iron spires preventing anyone from scaling the wall either within or without. Coal smoke filled his nostrils, combined with a nasty undercurrent of human refuse. The factories in which the remaining humans were forced to work were mysteries at best; no one had been inside and escaped. But Tenn had no doubt that the conditions were worse than the sweatshops from before the Resurrection. If someone passed out or died from poor work conditions, they just became the next meal for the bloodlings and kravens waiting outside. Nothing lost.

He paused an arm’s length away from the wall, staring up at the structure. The rusted steel was the color of blood, and the scent of inhumanity was stronger the closer he got. He pressed his fingertips to a patch of wall that looked like it was hewn from soil and stone. His Spheres stirred.

Earth and Water opened in his gut, and through them he felt it all.

He felt the blood that had seeped its way to the bedrock of the place, the tears that had salted the soil and made it barren.

He felt the warren of crumbling houses and makeshift lean-tos that spread along the length of the wall. He felt the humans struggling to keep warm within.