Chapter 40
Rune
“You… you took my power.” The words scraped out of Rune like broken glass.
Alora stared back, chest heaving, her skin lit with threads of white fire and shadow twining over her limbs. Wearing them like a mantle.
A cold quiet blossomed in his chest, sharp as winter steel. He reached out and tried again to summon them, harder, tension clawing up his throat.
Still nothing.
The shadows drifted around her affectionately as if he weren’t there. As if they had chosen another.
Choose her.
Rune swallowed, throat painfully tight. He’d never feared anything in all his existence. But the sight of his shadows draped over her shoulders like they belonged there…like they always had belonged there.
That shook him.
The floor tilted and he stumbled. He felt… hollow. As if she had carved out his center and left him a husk without bones.
Then his gaze flickered to the mirror on the wall and his posture went rigid. The glow was gone from his eyes, now soft copper. His skin no longer pale but flushed by mortal warmth. His markings had vanished. He looked down at his clawless hands.
Rune’s voice dropped to a rasp. “What have you done to me?”
Alora took a step toward him and the shadows drew protectively around her legs in a sinuous sweep, tightening as though preparing to strike.
Noticing she was nude, Alora wrapped her arms around herself, looking around for her dress.
Tendrils of darkness coiled upward obediently, sliding over her bare skin.
Where they passed, fabric appeared. Black lace unfurled like frost at midnight, shaping itself into a nightgown as if the darkness itself wished to clothe its new mistress.
In moments she stood draped in shadow-silk, ethereal and devastating.
He exhaled shakily, unable to stop staring. Had his magic responded to her needs instinctively or had she unknowingly commanded it?
“Rune…” Alora whispered. Her hands trembled as she looked down at herself, at the dark tendrils coiling around her wrists like affectionate serpents. “I didn’t mean… How did I…”
He didn’t know.
It was clearly unintentional, but that did little to ease the panic ripping through him.
After adjusting his clothes, Rune pushed to his feet slowly, every motion feeling foreign. Weak and wrong. His strength was still there, but muted. And his heart beat a little too loudly in his chest.
“How did I take your power?” Alora asked.
Even with her visible fear, everything about her was dangerously beautiful. Made of light and shadow and something ancient awakening beneath her skin.
Wholly divine.
“You’re a Reigani,” Rune replied faintly, the truth raw in his chest. “A goddess. Not by marriage but by design.”
Which was unbelievable.
The gods were shaped from the stars. Demigods were children born of a union between them and humans. But she was neither of those things. She was made. A divine power, ancient and powerful, blood of the old gods and new lived in her veins.
He could feel it.
Her power was beyond him, to simply absorb his own magic and make it her own. She had siphoned him. The one thing he had been desperate to do before and terribly failed—yet she had done so with a kiss.
Alora’s eyes widened and light shone around her quivering body. “A goddess…?”
The ground shook and the wind outside rattled the cottage, threatening to tear off the thatch roof. Shadows lashed around the room violently. Darkness swarmed, swallowing the firelight in the hearth.
“Alora.” He lifted a hand toward her. The shadows reared tighter around her protectively, warning him to stay back. “Calm yourself.”
But she was gasping for air.
Rushing to her, Rune took Alora’s chin, making her look at him. “Breathe.”
She forced herself to intake a shaky gasp. Two more and the room settled, the candlelight flickering brighter.
He let go once she was calm.
Alora backed away and sat on the edge of her bed, breathing hard until the room stilled. “Gods, I… I don’t know how to … control it.”
He managed a weak smile. “You will.”
The air grew taut.
Thick. Electric. Crackling with magic that was no longer his.
Rune braced his hand against the broken doorframe to steady himself. The weakness infuriated him. Mortal. Vulnerable. Stripped bare of every weapon he had ever wielded.
And still, when he looked at her—glowing, trembling, wrapped in his power like a second skin—the sight strangled the air in his throat.
He was inundated with wonder.
Devotion so violent it left him shaking.
Rune picked up the crimson spindle where he had dropped it, the point coated with his dried blood. “What did you manage to learn here?” he asked.
Alora blinked at it then glanced at the broken table where he imagined she had sat with the Thornbearer.
“Lady Zinnia said my mother descends from the Mortal God.”
“Eitan…” Rune arched a brow. “I assumed my brother only preferred males.”
She blushed. “Your brother?”
“You are familiar with the Seven Gods of the Seven Gates.”
She blinked. “Of course. Belief is highly regarded in Argyle. We know that each god rules a Realm and is responsible for a facet that created our world. Though we aren’t familiar with their names.”
“Well, Eitan is the god of the Mortal Realm, and his abilities lie in the creation of nature. The sun and the moon and the seasons, primarily spring.”
“And my mother is from the Spring Court…” Alora’s eyes widened.
“Yes.” Rune clenched his jaw. “But that doesn’t explain your ability to siphon my power.”
She took a hesitant step toward him, shadows following her like loyal hounds. “Rune… I’m sorry—”
He lifted his gaze to hers, and everything inside him—rage, desire, fear, awe—bent toward her like a tide pulled by a new moon.
“Don’t come closer,” he whispered.
Her breath shook. “Why?”
“You’ve not yet acclimated to my magic. It’s untamed and reacts to your every emotion. If you touch me right now, I may crumble under your might.”
He watched her swallow hard, watching the war in her eyes. She was frightened of herself. He was frightened of what he might do to keep her.
Alora wrapped her arms around herself, luminous and trembling, shadows folding over her shoulders protectively. “What are you now?”
A question he had not let himself wonder.
Rune looked down at his hands first. Hands that once carried night itself were now… human. No ink swirling beneath the skin. No smoke threading between his knuckles. His claws had been replaced with dull nails. His body was cold, bones frail.
He meant to punish her, yet he was the one stripped bare.
A tremor slid through his spine with an unfamiliar sensation. A feeling he hadn’t felt for an age.
Frailty.
His reflection in the mirror behind her showed a face he barely recognized. Long black hair. Dark mortal eyes. No glow. No power.
He pushed to his feet and the world tilted for one humiliating heartbeat. The movement sent a sharp ache across his shoulder blades. A deep, familiar wound that never quite healed. The absence of his shadows made the old pain howl.
The world pressed harder against him. Or it had merely shown him what it meant to be mortal. His legs trembled as he braced himself against the wall.
He could feel everything. Pain. The cold. The weariness. It was suffocating.
Panic roiled in his chest. He crushed it immediately, but Alora saw the tightening of his jaw.
He wiped the clammy sweat on his brow and laughed airily.
“I am,” he took a breath, “exactly who I have always been. The King of the Netherworld. The God of—”
The words dug into his tongue like shards of glass, lodging in his throat. The vow to never lie to her seared in his veins. His lungs rattled with a shaky exhale.
“I am still… Rune.” He winced and swallowed, closing his eyes briefly.
Rune. That was the name he had long accepted and it would always be true.
He stepped toward her, not too close, not with the room still spinning beneath his feet.
“I do not cease to be myself simply because the shadows have… taken a temporary leave.”
Yes.
Temporary.
He clung to that word like a raft.
Alora’s gaze flicked over him, taking in the subtle tremor in his hands, the cold sheen of sweat on his skin.
He felt everything too sharply now. The rawness of his voice. The sting in his joints. The pounding in his chest. No, even mortal he refused to show any weakness. This was merely another difficulty he would resolve.
Rune crossed his arms, forcing his stance into lazy confidence. “Do not mistake this for mortality,” he drawled. “I am not so easily undone.”
A sharp ache ripped across his back again. He ignored it. He had endured worse. He would never say that aloud, but from her expression, Alora saw through him anyway. Saw him for what he was now.
A powerless, mortal man.
The balance between them had shifted.
Catastrophically. And he fought the instinct to instantly rip back what was his.
Alora paced the small cottage, her steps uneven. “Gods, how can this happen? How do I give your powers back?”
The air around her rippled like an iridescent haze, raw magic unsure of itself.
With every movement, the candle flames bent toward her like flowers to sunlight.
Her steps left behind scorched imprints on the floorboards.
The shadows, his shadows, clung to her now.
They coiled at her wrist like smoke answering a master’s call.
Rune glowered at them. “If I knew, it never would have occurred in the first place.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to take it.”
“Stole,” he corrected with a faint smirk.
“I find you far too unruffled for a Demon King who’s been robbed of his magic!” She threw up her hands. “Aren’t you livid that your wife stripped you of your power? Don’t you have the urge to kill me and take it back? Don’t you fear what your court will say?”
Rune’s smirk grew into a full smile.
“What?” Alora frowned, touching her cheek as if she feared the magic had also changed her features.
“You called yourself my wife.”