Resonance (The Soulren #1)

Chapter 1

One

My dead cat’s eyes snap open, and I know my life is over.

“Noxie?” I whisper, holding out a trembling hand to the cat extricating itself from the loosely packed grave.

He—it?—rubs the side of his face against my palm. The matted fur beneath my fingers is cold and there’s no telltale purr in his throat. No huff of breath from his nose. Yet a hum of energy, like static shock, jumps from his body and up my arm. I jerk back.

Noxie blinks at me, mewls pitifully, then drops dead.

Again.

Unnatural, cobalt-blue light crackles across his fluffy gray body before fading away.

I timidly prod Noxie’s corpse with a stick, half expecting him to jolt back to life at the contact. But his body’s stiff, the odd glow in his eyes extinguished as fast as it appeared.

A choked sob escapes as I scoop Noxie into my arms. Grave soil coats what used to be rabbit-soft fur. I clutch him, unable to stop the tears from streaming down.

It can’t be true. I’m no wielder of magick. I’m unremarkable in every way.

But the more I stroke Noxie’s dull, bristled coat, the more an iced-over numbness eats into my sorrow.

Everyone’s heard the warnings. Soulren who became addicted to their powers, who drained entire villages dry. Children whose nightmares manifested as misshapen creatures that hunted their own families.

With queasy breaths, I lower Noxie back into his shallow grave, vision blurred and wet. I scoop loose dirt over his elderly form with my bare hands, caked with earth and blood from my elbows down because of my frantic digging. I keep going until no trace of the disturbance remains.

Once finished, I sit back on my heels, dragging my filthy dress sleeve over my hand and knuckling the sweat and dirt off my face. But a glow searing through my closed lids makes me pop my eyes back open.

No!

Those strange blue wisps are dancing around my fingertips again.

I shove myself to my feet. Brush at my skirts, trying to scrub the light off my hands like it’s just more grave dirt. It doesn’t work. I press my palms flat against my thighs and hold them there until the glow dies.

Darkness between the trees seems to lengthen despite the midafternoon sun. A crow caws from a nearby branch, its head turning clockwise at my movements.

I need to return to the village. No one can suspect anything is amiss. I’ve just finished putting Noxie to rest, as I told Grandmother I would. Nothing unusual. Nothing alarming.

A twig snaps behind me.

I freeze, hoping it’s just a forest creature passing by and not one of those … other things.

Another snap, followed by the unmistakable sound of a male cursing.

I whirl around, nearly losing my balance in the process.

Edon, the village elder’s son, stands at the edge of the small clearing, one hand still holding back a branch.

His quick scan of the area pauses when he steps through the brush and takes me in—disheveled, wild-eyed, and standing over a fresh grave.

I quickly fold my traitorous, glowing hands behind my back.

Too late.

Edon squints at Noxie’s grave and the small wisps of blue traveling from it to my backside.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I croak.

“Really?” he drawls. “Because it looks like you just used forbidden Soulren magick, then buried it like nothing happened.”

He spits out the name Soulren like a curse.

“How long has your family been hiding this?” he asks.

I open my mouth to protest, to fabricate some innocuous explanation, but the words wither on my tongue.

Edon has eyes. Even though I haven’t been disguising anything until today, where apparently I can now summon blue wisps involuntarily, there’s no lie convincing enough to conceal the damning truth.

“You were following me,” I accuse instead.

“I saw you slip away from the fields early. Thought you might be meeting someone.”

His upper lip twitches, like he has any right to sneer at the possibility.

Last harvest’s stolen afternoons in his father’s barn seem like eons ago now.

That clumsy, urgent coupling that left hay in my hair and bruises on my hips.

What I do remember clearly is the gradual cooling of his gaze in public and how he’d begun discussing marriage prospects from neighboring villages as if I wasn’t standing right there.

“My cat died this morning,” I explain as calmly as I can. “I just wanted to say goodbye properly.”

“Goodbye doesn’t usually involve luminous vapor coming from people’s hands,” he counters, advancing toward me. “Verily, this is serious. If you’re a Soulren—”

“I’m not!”

The denial bursts from me with such force that we both flinch.

Edon lowers his voice. “You could get us all killed for hiding this for so long.”

He glances over his shoulder toward the village, then back at me. His pupils have constricted to pinpoints. “My father needs to know.”

“Please, Edon,” I reach out, then curl my hands into my chest when he recoils at the possibility of me touching him. “Don’t tell him. I’m begging you.”

He hesitates, the crease between his brows deepening, before his expression softens into the same look he gave me the first time he pressed a greyberry tart into my palm at last year’s harvest festival and led me into his private shed.

Then he blinks.

“I don’t want to believe it either. But I know what I saw.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “You know the law. Soulren have to be reported. It’s for everyone’s safety.”

“Even mine?” I ask, voice breaking. “After everything we’ve experienced together, you’d do this to me?”

“That was different. This is—” His nostrils flare as he inhales sharply. “I have to do what’s right.”

His expression hardens, and any trace of the boy who once looked at me with interest is long gone.

“You know what they say about Soulren,” he defends after reading my crestfallen face. “They’re unnatural. Dangerous.”

“They are also the sole reason Vehloria still stands,” I can’t help arguing. “Our realm would be nothing but Void dust if it weren’t for their intervention.”

His hand moves to his belt, where a length of braided rope hangs coiled from a hook, the tether he uses for his hounds. “I can’t risk you hurting anyone else.”

“What are you doing?” I back away, but tree roots catch at my heels.

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

“I’m not some animal to be leashed!”

He grabs my forearm. “Verily, I can’t just pretend I didn’t see this.”

“Let me go!”

“Hold still.” Edon attempts to loop the rope around my captured wrist. He presses me against the rough bark of a tree for leverage, and his familiar scent of sweat and woodsmoke makes me want to vomit.

My free hand claws at his face, catching his cheek with my nails. He hisses in pain, blood beading along three thin scratches.

His hold tightens, but not with malice. It’s practical and calm, much like the way he handles a spooked mare.

That’s what does it for me. Not the rope binding my hands, nor his bodily force. It’s the unhurried competence of a man managing livestock.

“You bastard.”

“It’s for your own good. They’ll help you at the academy. Fix whatever’s wrong with you.”

“Or sell me to the highest bidder!” I buck against him, but he holds strong. “Edon, you’re sending me to be tortured!”

“You don’t know that.” He wobbles on the last word, and for one hideous second I see the doubt on his face and remember the boy who used to press desserts into my palm and lead me into quiet places by the hand.

Then he knots the rope tighter.

“My father will know what to do,” he says, quieter now. “This is the right thing.”

My pulse thunders in my ears. Heat climbs up my neck. All my mind does is craft images of caged Soulren with their tongues cut out. Children strapped to tables, their bodies cut open to study the source of their power.

This is what awaits me at the end of Edon’s rope.

I scream.

And a tangled mass of lightning shoots from my heart and into my hands.

Cobalt fissures leap from my skin to his, hungry moonbeams burrowing through his flesh.

Edon’s veins illuminate into a grotesque map of gilded rivers.

His eyes widen, pupils blown as the magick consumes him from inside, tracing paths to his heart, his lungs, his brain.

His mouth stretches in a silent scream, teeth gleaming in the surreal light flooding from his throat.

“No!” I try to release him, but it’s like my hands belong to someone else. “Edon! I don’t know how to stop it!”

Edon holds my stare. Help me.

His lips form the two words before his skin pales, then peels away from his cheekbones like drying paper. Blood vessels rupture beneath his flesh as black webs spread across his jaw, throat, and chest.

The rope falls away. His strength flees, but the magickal strands keep him upright, feeding on him like a parasite.

I close my eyes and scream as a sudden rush of fragmented, unfamiliar memories floods my mind.

The taste of his first kiss. The sting of his father’s belt.

The sweetness of greyberry wine on my lips during the last harvest. His plans to turn me in.

His secret pride at capturing a Soulren.

His absolute certainty of righteousness.

Edon’s body shudders. His back arches, and one last sound escapes him that’s not quite human, but not quite animal, either, before his vocal cords dry and crack and his eyes sink into their sockets.

With a final, quivering gasp, Edon collapses. But not as a person falls, not limp and heavy. It’s something empty, brittle. His body hits the ground with the sound of dry kindling breaking.

The magick around his body dissipates, leaving only the sickening reality of what I’ve done.

Death stench permeates the air, mingling with the loamy smell of the grave soil caked beneath my fingernails. I press my hands to my mouth, choking back another scream.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, though I’m not sure if I’m apologizing to Noxie, Edon, or to myself. “I’m so sorry.”