23. Rune
TWENTY-THREE
RUNE
“I’m glad you’re all right,” Vale tells me as we enter the twenty-seventh level corridor. I’ve been back in the Tower for a few days now, but this was our first chance to break away unnoticed.
A blackened sky watches us from the elongated windows, and this section of the Tower is blissfully quiet. According to Vale—who heard from Alven—the Committee is meeting tonight regarding Harrick’s broken betrothal. He gave me a curious glance as he told me, but he didn’t push for information like I expected. I’m sure Alven told him many things about our trip, like the fact I rode in Harrick’s carriage and shared his room, and that he saved both of us from hunters.
If Vale is suspicious or confused by any of it, he doesn’t say.
“Me too,” I say, realizing it’s been a beat too long. “Yeah, I’m feeling much better now.”
“Alven was sure you were going to die,” Vale says. “He saw you when Harrick brought you back and swore you might already be dead.”
“Did he remember the number?” I ask, trying to change the subject. I don’t know what to say about Harrick. I can’t tell Vale how gentle he is, or the fact he risked his life to save my own. I’m definitely not ready to admit I’ve felt strange ever since Harrick brought me back to life. Even now, I stretch and flex my fingers, half-expecting magic to appear.
“He did,” Vale says. He glances sideways at me. “Wouldn’t have done me much good if you’d died though. I still don’t know where we’re going.”
“We’re almost there,” I say, rather than admitting I don’t really know either. Once we find Berg’s hidden elevator, I have no idea what waits for us.
Minutes later, we stop at the end of the final hallway at a locked door. It’s identical to several others, but I’m sure we’re in the right place. That being said, I have no idea how old Berg’s information is. He certainly didn’t appear like he’d lived in the Tower recently. Whatever secret he thinks we’ll find here might be long gone.
I suck in a lungful of air. Hesitating isn’t going to do us any good. If anything, it might get us caught. I type the number before I lose my confidence.
846538.
I open the door, fingers trembling. I don’t allow myself to look at Vale or even over my own shoulder. I’m too busy moving, through the door, onto an all-metal lift. It smells like iron and the air is stale, like oxygen doesn’t often get circulated here.
There’s another keypad, and as soon as Vale’s closed the door behind us, I am again typing Berg’s code. It feels almost too easy, the way the lift rumbles at the final number and sinks us deeper into the Tower. I glance at Vale, and his expression mirrors my own worry.
“Do you think it’s a trap?” I ask. My voice echoes in the tiny space, and I flinch at the sound.
“No. Berg’s good,” he says. I pretend I don’t hear the nervousness in his voice.
We don’t speak for the rest of the ride. By the time the lift settles at our destination, my stomach is tangled in knots, ugly and ravenous. The metal doors slide open, and an instantaneous chill blankets around us.
I can barely think straight. Between my nerves and this unheated dungeon, I’m shaking where I stand. I clutch my arms, rubbing heat into them, before leading the way off the lift. Thankfully, Vale is only a step behind. He remains a shadow in my peripheral, head tilting as he takes in the black room around us.
“What is it?” I ask. My voice sounds more awed than I’d like, but I can’t help it. I’ve never seen so many lights in one place. There must be hundreds of tiny lanterns in here, all dyed red to imitate glimmers of magic. They float in symmetrical rows, stacking back as far as I can see. Forget hundreds…this room has thousands of red orbs floating through the dark.
“I think…” Vale starts, only to swallow the rest of his sentence. He takes a few more steps, finally bypassing me. Aside from the red lights, it’s pitch black in here, leaving us silhouetted in the dark. “I think it’s magic .”
I blink wordlessly at the nearest shelves, trying to process Vale’s words. Magic. Not mimicked, but real.
If that’s true, if this is bottled magic lining the hundreds of shelves before us…there has to be enough to save Savoa. Enough to fertilize the farmlands, to fatten the livestock, to mine for every jewel and precious metal, to rebuild the destroyed city. There’s enough to cure the sick, to feed the starving, to free every servant from their debt.
“No,” I say. It comes out as a cracked sob because there’s no way. It’s impossible. No one would do this—but Harrick …Harrick would never .
We stand in silence for far too long. I keep waiting for Vale, or maybe even me, to snap. To charge the nearest shelf and shove at the towering metal until one structure collapses into the next, into the next, and so on. Until all the bottled magic has been released into the air. If it had somewhere to go, I might do it. If I could send all of this hoarded magic into Savoa, toward people who need it, I would.
If I do it now, it will sit in this room, impossible for anyone but magic casters to absorb. Still, I step toward one of the shelves anyway. I place my hand, my shaking cold fingers, on the lowest shelf. I don’t touch any of the black bottles. I wonder if it would burn me. I wonder if I could hide it in my coverall and smuggle it into the Tower.
“What do you think it’s for?” I ask. The awe is still there, clinging to my words like foolish hope. The things we could do with this…
“We need to go,” Vale says. His voice is unexpectedly steady, and when I look back at him, he’s already walking for the lift.
“What are you talking about?” I demand. I grab his arm, forcing him to turn. “Look at what we’ve found. We can’t leave .”
“We have to,” he snaps. His words bristle against my skin. “What do you propose we do instead? Break the bottles? Steal them? Try to use them?”
I run my tongue over the inside of my teeth, dropping my eyes to the floor. I hate that he’s correctly assumed my thoughts, and I hate more that he’s right. There’s nothing we can do about this now.
“We’ll come back,” Vale says. He steps farther into the room, head shifting as he takes in the endless rows of greed. “Knowing it’s here, knowing they’re choosing for their people, their land to suffer…We don’t know what we’re up against. We need to make a plan before we do anything drastic.”
Another shiver rolls through me, my thoughts returning to Harrick. His entire family should pay for this, but I don’t want to imagine it. I don’t want to think of him suffering.
Maybe he doesn’t know .
I don’t realize I’ve spoken the words out loud until Vale leans in front of me.
“Who?” he asks.
“Berg,” I say. My cheeks flush at the pathetic lie. It doesn’t make any sense, and I’m not sure what I’m going to say if he questions me.
Luckily, he only starts walking toward the lift again. This time, I am quick to follow.
“We’re going to die,” I say. It’s a bizarre realization, one I am having not for the first time in the past few days. The first time, I was right, so I have no reason to think I’m not right now.
We’ve been sitting in this lift for an hour, staring at each other and the ceiling and out at the glowing magic. It’s taunting us, as if to say, you knew it couldn’t be this easy.
Without magic, the lift might go down, but it doesn’t go up.
“Just let me think,” Vale says, which is approximately the fifteenth time he’s said it.
I sigh and get to my feet. I pace the floor in front of the lift, counting the steps it takes to get from one side to the other. This area is even bigger than I originally thought. Fifty paces to the left, eighty to the right. With all this time, I’m tempted to count every single bottle of magic. Just how much have they stolen from Savoa? And what exactly do they plan to do with it?
Hoarding magic to decimate Savoa’s population and resources doesn’t make sense, even if the crown is evil. There has to be something more, something bigger at play.
“Maybe I need to enter the code backward,” Vale says when I pass him next. As he once again crouches in front of the gray numbers, I continue to the right.
It doesn’t matter if the crown has a sinister plan. I’m going to be a rotting corpse by the time it happens. I wonder what will kill me first: the thirst, the hunger, or the guards that eventually find us.
“Dammit!” Vale screams as I reach the end of my pace.
I hesitate at the wall, craning my neck toward the ceiling. This room, unlike the low servant levels, has a distant, vaulted ceiling to accommodate all its shelves. There’s nothing to indicate a way out. No bits of light or openings that could be an escape.
I walk down one of the elongated rows, letting Vale’s muttered curses fade behind me. My eyes have been burning since we first realized the lift was stuck, but only now do the tears start to fall. The acrid taste of salt drips into my mouth and I press my hand over it to keep from sobbing.
Harrick gave me a second chance at life, and this is what I’ve done with it. I wonder what he would think of me now. I roughly swipe at my face, smearing tears over my cheeks. I don’t deserve to cry.
“Ah, fuck!” Vale shouts, followed by the distinct sound of glass breaking.
I run up the nearest aisle, skittering to a stop in front of Vale and a pile of shattered black glass. Red mist swirls around broken fragments, magic floating with nowhere to go. It bobs slowly, easy to avoid in such a small quantity. Vale clutches his hand, the edges already welting.
“What were you thinking?” I hiss. I dodge around the magic, careful not to let it touch me.
“I don’t know,” he groans. He holds his palm to his chest, teeth clenched as he speaks. “We’re running out of options here! I thought, maybe , the black bottles kept the magic fully contained. I was just going to pour it…And now I’ve left a nice fucking mess for someone to find.”
He drops to his knees, letting his head hang.
“That was my last idea,” he says, voice bitter. “I think we’re fucked, Rune.”
I swallow. Rather than respond, I stare down at the magic. It looks the same as it always has in its raw form: transparent and wispy, more like fog than anything tangible. I’ve been burned by it enough times to know not to touch it, especially not in its raw element. Vale touching the black bottle was stupid enough.
And yet, my fingers tingle. That impulse to stretch my fingers takes over, and I step forward without meaning to.
“Get in the lift,” I say. I don’t look at Vale—my eyes are locked on the magic. “I want to try something, but you need to be ready.”
“Try what?” he demands. He dips into my view, blocking the loose magic. “Burning your hand like I just did? Breaking another bottle?”
“I’m not going to grab a bottle,” I say, finally looking at him. “I’m going to grab the magic.”
“Are you crazy?” he asks. I don’t realize he’s gotten up until he’s suddenly at my side. “Don’t?—
“Just…trust me,” I say. “If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. Like you said, you’re out of ideas, and we’re going to die if we can’t get out of here. I want to try.”
Vale purses his lips, studying me. Finally, he shrugs and waves a hand toward the loose magic, as if officially giving his blessing. I resist rolling my eyes. Once he’s back in the lift, I move for the swirling magic.
I don’t let myself overthink it. I bend and stretch my fingers, channeling whatever magic I hope Harrick has left within me. Surging forward, I sweep my hands toward the mist. They go right through it. I frown and try again. My fingers touch nothing but air.
I’ve never tried to grab magic in its raw form, but I know that should have hurt. It should have burned my fingers, blistered my skin like Vale’s is now. I might not have claimed the magic like I hoped, like it was my own, but it didn’t hurt me either.
Stepping away from the fog of magic, I grab a black bottle from the nearest shelf. I’m careful, barely lifting it in case it burns me. The glass is as cold as the air down here, and shock bursts through me.
I was right .
Maybe not completely. I can’t claim this magic as my own, but I am suddenly sure that it recognizes Harrick in my bones. It knows I am not a god myself, but it must sense I’m not fully mortal either.
I grasp the bottle and don’t allow myself to overthink it. I run for the lift, legs pounding, as if the bottle might suddenly burn me as it should. It doesn’t.
“How is that possible?” Vale asks, his jaw dropping.
Without answering, I crash against the back wall. My heart pounds, hard enough I can feel it everywhere and not just against my ribs. I tilt the bottle toward the control panel, not fully sure if this is how it works. Vale slinks against the far wall, and once the gray buttons flash red with magic, I type 846538.
Vale hollers as the lift surges upward, and I grin back at him. For the first time, freedom feels like more than just a lie I tell myself.