A Burning in the Bones (Waxways #3)

Chapter 16 Ren Monroe

16 REN MONROE

Ren’s eyes opened.

She was on an operatory table. Her hands and feet were bound with leather straps. Like a goat being prepared for sacrifice. To what god, she wondered? Did the city of Kathor count as a deity? Were the great houses minor gods in that imagined pantheon? The air in the room was heavy with magic. Sterilization spells. Some kind of visual enhancement charm. A table with medical supplies and instruments was set against one wall. Her eyes were drawn to her right.

Theo.

He was bound on an identical table. As she stared, his eyes blinked open. It took a moment for them to swing in Ren’s direction. An invisible force pushed against her senses. Racing across their bond. So powerful that Ren couldn’t help recoiling. Theo looked confused, small, vulnerable. She had seen that exact same look before. On Avy’s face just before Clyde dragged him under the surface of the water. Again, when the revenant seized Timmons by the hair, dragging her off the side of that mountain. It had been on Cora’s face too, just before the crossbow bolt found its mark.

This was how an innocent creature looked before it died.

Protectiveness and anger roared across their bond. She felt him try to pull her. The same magic he had used to drag her from the Brood estate and all the way to Nostra last year. But this time, counterspells thundered to life. Bright and brief and more than strong enough to keep them on their separate tables. Ren saw Theo open his mouth to speak. He tried again. The sound would not reach her. Magic, she realized, was muting his side of the room from hers. It was an unexpected blow. Tears began to stream down Ren’s face. Pinned as they were, she could not even reach up and wipe them away. Theo tried to send assurance across their bond, but that only brought more pain. He had no idea what was about to happen to them. Ren had no way of warning him.

Instead, she said the only words that mattered.

“I love you.”

Over and over, she shaped those words until Theo understood. He nodded, repeating the phrase back to her. Finally, those words belonged to them. After all they’d been through, Ren could say them without hesitation. Words she’d only said to her mother and father and a few close friends. I love you. Those three words should have been theirs to claim for years to come. Spoken just before falling asleep. Whispered before walking into parties. Gasped after making love. Scribbled in notes left on coffee tables. All she could give him now was the shape of those words. Not even their sound, their fullness. That realization brought more tears streaming down her face.

Dr. Horn arrived. Theo tensed as the man entered. He looked his question at Ren, but how could she possibly answer? How could she explain who this man was and what he’d come to do? The doctor circled. Judging some invisible quality in the air. Satisfied with what he saw there, Horn returned to the entryway.

“I’m ready. Make sure the assistants rotate every hour. Listen for three taps on the glass before entering. Never two people at the same time. Understood?”

Someone out of sight must have signaled their approval. Horn closed the door and strode to the heart of the room. The lights flickered out. Ren blinked against the sudden darkness. Terror gnawed at the edges of her mind. She found herself retreating deeper into their bond as silver light crept through the air. An eerie-looking substance coalesced in a perfect sphere around her.

In that light, she could just make out Dr. Horn. He wielded his wand like a baton, conducting the progress of the fog, shaping one sphere over Ren’s table and another over Theo’s. She could sense how detailed it was. A second layer, a third, a fourth. Until the air felt too thick to breathe. Horn performed a final sealing spell. Ren marveled at how each of his layers merged. Flawless precision. His promise from their last conversation echoed in her thoughts.

I am very good at what I do, Ms. Monroe.

Horn’s next spell was a pulse of darkness. It left her briefly blind. She could not see Theo. She could not even see her own hand held out in front of her. As if the world had ceased existing.

And then the most beautiful magic she’d ever witnessed. A lavender thread emerged from her abdomen. Followed by apple reds, stray silvers, fickle golds. The most curious one was a cord of bronze that looked half-there and half-not. If she focused on it too much, the thread would vanish from her vision. The threads reminded her of walking into an archive room. Magic made fully visible to the naked eye. Each of the threads extended out from her, reaching for the walls or the ceiling. She stared in wonder until the final thread emerged.

A river of white fire.

Our bond. It’s… beautiful.

She watched it course across the room, connecting her to Theo. It was hard to believe that was coming from her. She’d spent so many years with a fire burning in her chest that she’d assumed there was nothing left there but ashes. Seeing her bond, though, made her feelings for Theo undeniable. I really do love him. Those aren’t just words. They are the truth. Written in magic between us.

Her eyes found Theo’s again. There was enough light in the room to see him properly now. She was forced to watch as the joy on his face twisted into horror. Dr. Horn had set aside his wand. He lifted a small, silver tool. A scalpel. The room, their bond, the glinting silver. Those three clues pointed to a specific answer. Theo finally saw why they’d been brought to this place. All she could do was say the other words that he deserved to hear.

“I’m sorry.”

She was not sorry that she’d met him or that they’d bonded, but she hated that their tangled lives had somehow led them to this place. She hated that Cora and Avy and Timmons and Clyde had all been casualties of her efforts. Deep down, she’d imagined having decades to figure out a way to put their spirits to rest. She knew there was nothing she could do to make it right, but for all of this to end here and now? They deserved more. Theo deserved more.

Dr. Horn began his dark work.

Most of the other threads appeared to be bone-thick. Their bond was over four times that size. Wider, but also less contained. The edges spilled light outward, like a river on the verge of overflowing its banks. She realized it was still in the process of growing. Horn tested the edges of that thread, scraping here or there with his tool, searching as much with his hands as with his eyes.

Finally, he seemed to find what he was looking for. He hunched over a specific spot. Beneath the bright pulses, she saw a hairline fracture. Barely discernible at all. Horn set his scalpel to the spot and started to cut back and forth, back and forth. Their bond roared in response. Hungry and pulsing and defensive, but the counterspells quelled the magic quickly. Their vessels had been taken from them, which meant they were powerless to stop him.

Horn ignored the bright flashes and continued to cut .

Her view of the operatory vanished. Ren found herself seated before Landwin Brood. He was leaning back in a familiar armchair. On the table between them, a folder. Ren knew what was inside. The details of the waxways accident. The revelation that it had been Ren’s magic—her binding spell—that eventually stranded all of them in the Dires. It was the one secret she’d kept from Theo. The operatory flickered back.

Horn was still patiently sawing at that small break in their bond. She recalled what he’d said to Seminar Shiverian. When he’d assessed their bond, he’d claimed to have found an entry point. A weakness. Ren wept now, because she knew the one flaw he’d found was her secret. Her eyes swung to Theo. She expected shock or anger, but there was only an unspeakable sadness.

A boy on the verge of something worse than death.

The operatory vanished. She stood in ruins. Great piles of shattered stones. She saw books and broken furniture and an active fire burning some thirty paces ahead. Ren watched breathlessly as Theo picked his way through the debris. It was his memory this time. In the same location, but Landwin Brood was gone. The library had been demolished. The one consistent detail between the two memories was the folder sitting on the table.

Theo reached down and picked it up. Quietly, he began to read. Eyes drinking in every detail. Ren waited for that ancient Brood anger to surface. It would be fair. She’d lied to him. Instead, Theo closed the folder. He continued through the wreckage, knelt down, and set the evidence against her in the flames. They both watched as smoke curled into the air.

Theo looked back at her. She knew this was not a part of the memory. It was him, right now, telling her what had happened. He had already found her most damning secret. Her very worst fear—and he’d destroyed the evidence. Once again, he’d fought for the best version of her. It was the most devastating realization of all. The final secret—the only barrier left between them—was gone. There was someone in this world who loved her exactly as she was with no equivocations—and she’d discovered that life-altering truth just in time to watch that person be ripped away from her.

The operatory returned.

Horn was there, cutting deeper. As he did, new memories appeared. All the little moments that defined their relationship. Ren found herself with Theo in that dark alleyway. She grabbed his coat as he grabbed her waist as they pushed back into the archive room. Her blood was racing, his lips were soft, and the shadows cradled them both just so. Flicker.

Ren was dressed in black for Landwin Brood’s funeral. Theo stood solemn at her side. They were in the same church where they’d mourned Clyde Winters the year before. Her eyes traced the stained glass windows on her left until she found a scene depicting the founding of Kathor. There were small details intended to depict each of the major houses. The one for the Broods was a dagger that dripped with freshly drawn blood. She stared at that dagger until the ceremony ended.

Back to the operatory.

The dagger transformed into a scalpel. The hairline fracture had tripled in size. The place where Horn was focused on appeared lightless. Almost as if that was what Horn was severing. The light that existed between the two of them. More memories followed.

A party with Theo. Their duel with his father. A glimpse of Nostra, where they’d curled under a blanket together and watched the sun rise. She saw the argument they’d had in the cobwebbed library. The moment his father exiled him. Moment upon moment upon moment.

Ren was dragged like a prisoner through the halls of their relationship. And in between each glimpse of their tangled lives, she saw Dr. Horn—like the steady hand of a god—cutting it all away. Theo was being drowned by the same memories as her. Forced to relive all that bound them, good or bad. Horn had reached the halfway point when his scalpel broke. It was a small stab of hope. Ren watched as he retreated to the door. He was sweating profusely. Absolutely exhausted by the effort required so far. How long had they been down here? Minutes? Days?

Horn knocked three times. An attendant opened the door. They offered him a replacement tool—a toothed saw this time—and vanished as he set to work again. Ren found herself on the bridge where they’d fought a revenant. She walked through the dragon burial chamber with him. Huddled for warmth in a mountain pass. Between each gasp of memory, Ren whispered prayers. She begged gods that she’d never believed in: Please. Come. Save us.

The worst memories were the ones where she was in Theo’s perspective. Seeing his version of events. Often, they were the same memories, just shaded with new colors. In those, she was always the focus. And what could be more painful than to finally see herself through his eyes?

Beloved. Desired. Delighted in.

It should have been the greatest joy of her life to witness it, but Dr. Horn was there, severing every single glimpse—cut by precious cut. Ren saw that he’d reached the final clinging strands of the bond. A chasm of darkness had been left in his wake. Ren watched him stumble back in the direction of the door. He paused, bending over like a man who’d just run a lap around the city’s outer gates. Even with a foothold, their bond was no easy thing to kill. His entire shirt was soaked through with sweat. He’d replaced his gloves twice—and his tools as well. Ren saw a slight tremor in his hand as he lifted a glass of water to his lips. He drank the entire thing. Pausing, he went to the door. Three knocks.

“More please. Bring me more water.”

They returned—and he chugged the second glass. Horn shoved the glass into those waiting hands. He closed the door and crossed over to examine the final strands of their bond. Ren’s eyes found Theo again. She didn’t know what to say, what to do. And then she heard it.

The gentlest of thuds.

Dr. Horn was on the ground.