AIDAN
Aidan knew it wasn’t going to work the moment Tenn started drawing the runes in the carpet. They weren’t right. He couldn’t place it, but they seemed incomplete.
He kept thinking about what the Dark Lady said, about her already being a goddess. That entire tirade had been convincing, but it also had the note of a lie. She had attuned to Maya without fear of failure. She was brave, but she wasn’t stupid.
If there had been any chance her return would be thwarted, she wouldn’t have done it. If Maya was so unreliable, she wouldn’t have attempted attuning. She would have forced someone else to do it. She had spent too much time trying to become immortal. She wouldn’t have risked death or madness the day she came back to life.
“Wait,” he said.
Devon was already settling in, his eyes closed and his scarf draped over his lap. He opened an eye and glared at Aidan the moment the word left his mouth.
Aidan ignored him. He crept off the bed and onto the ground, peering at the runes intently.
“What?” Tenn asked.
This close, and Aidan couldn’t deny that there was a pull to Tenn. Not an attraction, but a gravity. A power.
He’d underestimated Tenn. Had thought he himself was the strongest one here. Now, he was starting to realize Tenn was on par, even with Aidan’s new runes. Aidan might have been fire and fury on the surface, but Tenn’s power was still, deep and deadly. Just like water.
He almost rolled his eyes at how perfect it was.
“These aren’t right,” Aidan said.
“They’re the ones she showed me.”
“I know.” They’re the ones I stole.
The runes made sense. In a way. But as Aidan looked at them, he realized what seemed wrong. They felt like half an equation.
“The Dark Lady...” he said, but he didn’t finish the sentence. The Dark Lady spent four years half-dead, surrounded by the true dead gods, hearing voices we could only dream of. She had to have learned something. “She wouldn’t have spent four years floating around. She would have been trying to find Maya on her own—she wouldn’t have just been waiting for someone else to do the dirty work. What if...what if that’s why you were sent to find me?”
“I don’t follow,” Tenn said. Which was fine, because Aidan’s thoughts were going so fast, he could barely follow them.
“You said the spirits told you to find me. And we know the Dark Lady serves different gods. What if Maya requires the language of both? The, I don’t know, good ones and bad ones. What if that’s how she was able to attune so quickly, when the Violet Sage and all the Prophets never could? They were listening to only part of the story.”
Tenn nodded along. Even Dreya looked at him like he might not be mad.
“What do you suggest?” Tenn asked.
Aidan didn’t know. But he thought he had a way to find out. The spirits had always spoken to him through Fire, so he opened himself fully to the source, let the heat wash through him as his chest blossomed open. He let it burn through him, let himself succumb to the heat and the darkness. He let the flames speak.
And as it had earlier, at the Dark Lady’s command, the words began to flow. Embers at first, then sparks and flame, whispers that grew to roars.
Behind his closed eyes, he saw the tendrils of fire appear, dancing before him in serpentine swirls. Runes from a darker language, from more devilish gods, harsh and cruel. And yet, somehow, necessary all the same.
He burned the runes into the carpet, filling in blanks, making small manipulations in the ones Tenn had left. Then the power left him, and Fire winked out in his chest. He sat back, suddenly exhausted, and stared at his handiwork.
Even though he could only truly read half of the runes, he knew this was correct.
“You’re sure?” Devon asked. Not of Aidan, but of Tenn.
Tenn looked at Aidan. Aidan knew that glance—Tenn was trying to decide if they should trust him. Trust that he had fixed the runes, not sabotaged them. Aidan just stared back. Either they trusted him or they didn’t. There wasn’t much he could do now to persuade them either way.
Eventually, Tenn looked back to the runes and nodded.
“They seem right.”
Devon took a deep breath. “All right, then. If I go mad, make sure to kill this one.”
“Done,” Dreya said, staring straight at Aidan.
Then Devon closed his eyes and fell silent.
Seconds passed, slow as blood, and Kianna shifted.
“Shouldn’t you all attune to that shit? If that’s the magic lottery ticket, wouldn’t it make more sense to have everyone attuned to it?”
“It can take hours to attune,” Tenn said. Aidan couldn’t help but notice him glancing his way. “If it even works.”
“Still—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence.
Aidan felt it right before the tremors ripped through the Guild. The sickness. The wave of disorientation, like a bad high. It didn’t leave him as he rolled back against Kianna, as Dreya reached out to keep her brother from falling over, as well.
“It’s too late,” Aidan whispered. “She’s here.”