Chapter 44
Chapter
Forty-Four
Oh my God. I worried that he was in league with them, but this is so much worse.
He’s one of them.
“You traitor,” I spit at him. “How could you do this? You lied to me!”
But the blood-soaked garden is already retreating, Cooper slipping through my hands. I’m sucked back down the aisle as the tide creeps higher and higher. Just like last time, the chairs are adrift in it. Just like last time, Donovan sinks beneath the surface, gasping for air, reaching out to me as he drowns.
Back through the door I go, and this time, it slams shut behind me. I sink into my body, sitting up in Donovan’s arms with a gasp that shakes both of us.
“Rune?” His voice cracks. “What the hell just happened? I thought—I thought you?—”
I look up into those depthless blue eyes. Unlike before, they’re anything but opaque. They’re dark with an emotion he isn’t even bothering to hide. Fear—for me.
Aside from Charlotte, no one’s ever been afraid for me like this before. No one’s ever cared enough to bother.
But does that even matter, if he’s working with the Blood Witches? If he bears their mark, a mark he was only pretending not to recognize in the gazebo?
Cooper said Donovan was innocent. That he didn’t have magical gifts of any kind. But then, why are his eyes a perfect match for the light that’s pouring through the fractured stones? The light that calls to me, even as I struggle to focus my eyes on Donovan’s worried face?
I could swear his concern is sincere. But people can be two things at once, can’t they? Like the monster, who coached Little League and went to church every Sunday and was someone else entirely behind closed doors.
“Show me your arm,” I say, taking hold of his shirt.
“What?” He jerks out of my grip, his brows knitted in puzzlement. “Are you delirious?”
“Not in the least.” I slide out of his lap, onto the stones, but that doesn’t help. Because oh God, I swear I can feel some kind of power seeping through them and into me, as if whatever’s emanating from those crevices is using them as a conduit.
Could it be that the fractures in the stones are… ley lines? And if that’s the case, was Cooper right about what Donovan and I have the power to do, even if he was lying about everything else?
My body buzzes, like I’ve been plugged into a supernatural generator. It takes everything I can muster to concentrate on what Donovan’s saying, to remember what I need to know.
“You passed out, Rune. I couldn’t wake you up. And then there was some kind of earthquake—did you even see?” He gestures around us, at the broken stones and the blue light. “I yelled for help, but no one showed up. This has to be some kind of worker’s comp suit in the making. It’s total bullshit, and I swear the moment I get out of here, I’m going to?—”
He keeps babbling, but I ignore it. “Your arm,” I say again, grabbing at his shirt, and this time, he’s not fast enough to get away.
I push his sleeve up as far as it will go, bracing myself. Sure, the scroll-and-dagger symbols only appeared on the witches’ arms once they’d drawn blood, but what if Cooper was telling the truth about Donovan not being gifted? What if he has the symbol tattooed on his arm permanently, since he doesn’t have what it takes to make it materialize through magical means?
I’m so certain of what I’ll see that, when the entirety of Donovan’s tattoo comes into view, I think I’m hallucinating. That I didn’t want it to be a scroll-and-dagger so badly that I’ve conjured something, anything else in its stead.
Because inked on his upper arm in ornate, looping print is a date, and beneath it, four familiar words.
Cavea ad tenebras continendas .
“Why do you have this?” I blurt, just as Donovan says, “What the hell are you doing?” He pulls away from me, rolling his sleeve down, but the damage is done.
“Your tattoo,” I say, breathless with relief and confusion. “What does it mean?”
“Seriously?” He gapes at me. “I thought you were dying. The world fucking broke. I thought this whole place was going to go to pieces. And you want to know about my tattoo ?”
“Yes,” I say, struggling to steady myself against the power that thrums through me. “Tell me. Please.”
His teeth sink into his lower lip. “It’s personal.”
I just eye him. Because…really?
We glare at each other, deep blue eyes into light gray. Once again, I can see the tiny reflection of the flames dancing in his irises. The power emanating from the cracks in the floor bubbles inside me, like my body is a well and that blue light is filling it up, up, up.
Donovan breaks first. “It means ‘a cage to contain the darkness,’ okay? The date is…when my father died. I…he took his own life, all right?”
Oh, God. “I’m so sorry, Donovan. I didn’t mean?—”
“No, Rune. You started this. I’ll finish it.” He swallows hard, the shadows from the flames flickering across the column of his throat. “If you want to know, I’ll tell you.”
I’m not sure I do want to know, anymore. Not when it seems pretty clear that this is a mere coincidence. And now I’m dragging Donovan back to what has to be one of the worst times of his life, making him talk about something he didn’t want to share with me, to satisfy what amounts to my own morbid curiosity. “It’s not what I thought,” I manage. “You don’t have to say anything else.”
He keeps going, as if I haven’t spoken. “I’ve always been afraid that the darkness inside him lives inside me, too. And so I…got that tattoo. To remind me that even when the darkness comes, I don’t have to let it devour every part of me. I can cage it, and go on.” His eyes meet mine, and now the flames don’t dance in them anymore. Now, his irises are pure blue fire. “Because I own it, not the other way around.”
The words echo between us, lingering in the air. I open my mouth to say again that I’m sorry for making him talk about such painful things. To apologize for doubting him, even though he doesn’t even know what for, and wouldn’t believe me if I told him. To insist that we have to find a way to escape this place, because if those are really ley lines, breaking through dirt and stone right in front of us, there’s no telling what will happen next. But all I get out is, “Donovan, I truly am so sor—” before a roar fills the air and the door behind the ring of fire slams open, so hard it hits the wall.
The flames flare brighter for an instant, towering above us. Then they dwindle, sucked back into the earth. Framed in the doorway beyond where they used to be stands Cooper, his chest heaving and his eyes wild. He takes in our surroundings—the fractured stones, the glowing blue light, my tattered shirt on the ground—and loses his absolute shit.
“What the fuck have you done?” he hisses. “I warned you to stay away from my brother. I told you what would happen! And where do I find you? Missing half your clothes in the middle of a preternatural goddamn disaster!”
“Cooper,” Donovan starts, but he might as well be spitting into the wind.
“She’s no good for you, Donovan, don’t you understand?” He tugs at his hair, looking crazed. “There’s only one place this ends, and it’s with you dead!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Donovan yells right back at him. “Why are you even here? How did you find us?”
“It’s my job to find you!”
“Oh, that’s your job?” The power bubbling inside me crests. I can’t back it down. I can’t turn it off. And right now, I don’t want to. “Because in case you forgot, I can see the future. This time, I saw a little more of it. And you want to guess who held the knife in my vision this time, Coop ? You wanna guess who’s to blame for everything, because he doesn’t have the spine to stand up for his own brother?”
Cooper’s eyes narrow, the blue gone so dark, it’s almost black. “Shut up about what you don’t understand, why don’t you?” He curls his lip, flashing his teeth at me, looking almost feral. “You’ve never had a family, Rune Whitlock. So you don’t know the first goddamn thing about standing up for your kin. All you know is how to burn your life and everyone else’s to the ground.”
For a moment I’m frozen, unable to believe what just left his mouth. Then the power roars through me, obliterating my ability to do anything but seek revenge.
“You absolute bastard,” I snarl at him.
And then I lunge for his throat.