Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(97)

Dreya paused her singing, just long enough to call to Tenn, “Hold him!”

Tenn looked between the two of them, standing only feet apart. Then, before Justin could take another step, Tenn opened to Earth. The floor beneath Justin’s feet turned to quicksand, sucked him down to his ankles. Then he let go of the power, and the concrete solidified in an instant. Even that was enough to drop Tenn to his knees. Shock turned to hate on Justin’s face as he tried and failed to wrench a leg free.

“Oh, you are going to pay for that,” he said.

He inhaled.

If it weren’t for the sheer strength of Dreya’s magic, Tenn knew they would have both died in that instant. Justin pulled the air from the room. Tenn’s lungs burned, and even Dreya stumbled. But she didn’t cease her song, and her power filled the void with everything Justin tried to steal. Her song became a scream, one that matched pitch with the howl of wind, but it only fed the monster. All Justin had to do was wait for Dreya to become used up; then, a small gasp and he would have them both.

“Dreya,” Tenn said, hoping he could get them both out of there before she fainted. She glared at him, her eyes bright as azure stars, and he shut up. That was a look that said she knew precisely what she was doing. Whatever it was, it seemed insane.

He glanced back at Justin, still sunk in the concrete, still glaring at them as the wind whipped around him and his Sphere swallowed it whole. The water had risen, was now splashing around his calves. That’s when Tenn noticed something...different.

The darkness of Justin’s empty Sphere was lightening. The vortex of power that swirled around and into him flickered.

“I hear it hurts,” Dreya said, the song cutting off, her words slicing through the maelstrom like a knife. “I hear that the hunger is unbearable. That this is why you kill the very people you once loved, because it hurts too much to do otherwise. Consider this your final blessing, then. No. More. Hunger.”

She flung her hands forward, sending a blinding torrent of magic and wind at Justin’s locked frame.

Justin gasped. His hands shot to his throat.

And in that instant, with a roar of magic that sent shivers through Tenn’s very bones, Justin’s Sphere...healed.

There was no other word for it. One moment, the Sphere was a vacuum in Justin’s throat. The next, it was whole: shining, flickering, exuding. Dreya let go of her power. If Tenn hadn’t been watching her, he would have missed the way she slouched and steadied herself on the stair banister. She quickly righted herself, her chest heaving with exertion and her eyes wild.

“You healed him,” Tenn whispered.

He looked to Justin, who was just as shell-shocked as Tenn felt. The man had been cured of the incurable.

Dreya didn’t give him time to question. She grabbed him by the sleeve and began pulling him up the stairs, her breath loud and ragged even against the roar of leaking water.

“Wait!” Justin called out.

Tenn looked back. He was still stuck in the concrete, water quickly rising past his knees. The basement was small. How long would it take to fill? Water sent a chill through him. What would it feel like to drown?

“Don’t leave me like this!”

Dreya paused, perhaps from the panic in his voice, perhaps because she couldn’t move any farther. Her eyes were pale, and her chest fluttered as fast as a rabbit’s. She leaned against the wall and looked back to the Howl. She didn’t speak. For a moment, Tenn wondered if she even could.

“You saved me,” Justin said. He was frantic, struggling against the concrete that was lodged around his legs. “You can’t just leave me like this. I’ll die.”

“I did not save you,” Dreya said. Her voice was flat, emotionless, but it also had a breathlessness that made Tenn fear the worst. She’d drawn way too much, and they still had to find a way out of here. “You are still a monster,” she continued. “But you will die a human.”

She turned and walked up the stairs. Justin screamed.

Tenn didn’t move. There were tears in his eyes. Justin screamed at him, begged to be released. They couldn’t let him die—not when he was no longer a Howl. Not when he was human, and scared.

Dreya grabbed Tenn by the collar, pulled his face close to hers.

“Move,” she grated. “Before the Kin return.”

“But you saved him! You made him human again.”

Sure, Tenn had brought Jarrett back from the brink of becoming a Howl. But that wasn’t reversing the process and that wasn’t his power. That was the runes. Dreya had done the impossible, the task they’d come all this way to achieve.

Dreya squeezed her eyes shut. Her breath was fast, too fast, and when she spoke it was barely a whisper.

“It’s impossible,” she said. Another rumble shook the house, but neither of them flinched.

“But I just saw—”

“You saw nothing,” she said, her eyes opening in a flash of blue. Her voice was tired. “You cannot cure the disease that ails him.”

“But—”

Again, her eyes closed.

“One can only assuage the Sphere’s hunger for a time. When the Sphere is damaged to that degree, it cannot be mended, not by any human hands. Soon, that Howl’s Sphere will eat itself again. And when it does, he will be just as broken as before. He will always be a monster, Tenn. I just wanted him to remember how it felt to be a terrified human.”