Chapter 21
Elodie
Leaving Rowan and Mara in the kitchen alone, the cottage is silent except for the soft whistling of the wind against the windows.
The distant sound of Rowan’s deep voice speaking in low, urgent tones carries through the hallway.
I couldn’t stay and watch Mara fall under the weight of her grief any longer.
Finding Bryn’s door at the end of the hallway, I knock softly before pushing it open.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor.
An array of notes, coal-smudged sketches, and loose parchment splayed out in front of her.
“Hi,” I mumble. She turns to face me, giving me an instant, warm smile. She is just like her brother.
“Come in, Elodie.” My eyes catch on the notes in front of her, symbols and markings all with handwritten descriptions.
“Are those the runes?” I ask hesitantly.
“It’s some examples, yes. Has Rowan told you much about them?” she says as I shake my head, perching on the edge of her bed.
“It’s old magic, not like casting a magic spell like you read in the stories.
That’s far too easy,” she says with a small grin.
“Runes are simply a trade. The world is a scale and the runes are how you tip it. There are so many things you can do with them. But each rune has a price. If you want to heal someone of a wound, you feel that person’s pain as if it were your own.
If you want to elevate your vision and see through walls, for every minute you spend with that ability, you will spend the same amount of time in blindness.
It’s a give and take. The runes can give you great powers, but the cost can sometimes be far too high.
” She looks away from me then, biting her lip.
“Is there not a way to grow the Widowsbloom using a rune?”
“No, rune magic can only enhance what’s already in the physical world. It can’t create life. You can increase a plant’s growth, but you cannot start it.” I figured as much. I suppose that would be far too easy, and if it were possible, we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
“So how do you know all of this? It sounded as though Mara doesn’t agree with it all,” I ask.
“My mother doesn’t agree with it since it’s illegal. They can kill you if they catch you using runes without the Aethel-Mark.”
“Aethel-Mark?”
“If you train under the king in the art of rune magic. Once you pass the assessments, you get the Aethel-Mark. It’s a pigment in the skin to prove you can legally practice as an Aetheling.”
“Why risk death for something that sounds so dangerous, anyway?” If it were me, I’d definitely not be messing with this stuff. I mean to grow a plant, what would it take from you? She goes quiet, her hands pausing amongst the sheets of paper as she takes a long breath.
“My father was an Aetheling.” I don’t even know what to say to her.
It makes sense now why she would want to involve herself in the dangerous magic.
I think of my own parents, the day I lost them, and how I would do anything to know what they would say if they knew me now.
My grandmother, would she be proud of me?
She’s the reason I fell in love with botany.
“I’m so sorry, Bryn.”
“It was a long time ago now. But he would show me all these different markings. His face would light up whenever he talked about the history of runes and the power they hold. Somewhere along the way, I found myself lighting up in the same way. He would sneak me all the books from the castle, let me try out really basic incantations with him. The first one I ever learnt to do was the Lumen Orbis.” She flips through the pages of a big leather book in front of her, pointing to a description of a symbol.
“It creates a single orb of light, permanent. It’s used in most of the lanterns you see around the castle. ”
“What does it take from you? To create that?” I ask.
“It’s nothing. An easy one to do. It takes a single memory from you. My dad used to tell me to think of something I wanted to forget or something useless like the colour of a ribbon you saw in a shop window.”
“That one doesn’t sound too scary,” I say with a small chuckle. Smiling at me, she releases a soft murmur of a laugh.
“None of it’s scary if you use it correctly,” she says.
“It’s only been made illegal since mistakes can be catastrophic.
If someone were to do it without training, it can cost lives.
” She looks away from me now, her smile disappearing.
“My father was experimenting with new rune magic. It was already too late before he realised what it would take from him.”
She doesn’t need to explain further.
The look on her face tells me all I need to know.
“But if he were here, he’d be doing anything he could to help get Kael back. So that’s what I’m going to do,” she says, releasing her shoulders and sitting forward, returning to her books.
“What is it you need to do to bring fire back?” I ask.
“The rune in place is a binding rune. It can be used for many things, for example, to seal gates. But the binding rune we are interested in specifically binds the element of fire. Any binding rune can be unbound,” she says as if it’s going to be easy.
By the number of notes she has out and the look on her face, she knows something that she’s not telling us.
“What is the cost to break a bind?” I ask. She hesitates, which makes me even more nervous before turning to me with a calm smile.
“It’s nothing, Elodie, you don’t need to worry,” I quirk a brow, hoping she elaborates further. “It causes temporary fatigue. At the worst, I’d be asleep for a day or so. It’s nothing, really.” I have no reason not to believe her, but why do I have this awful feeling building in my chest?
“The hardest part of this is actually going to be gathering the materials,” she rips a page out of her book, grabbing a pen and circling a section. “These are necessary for any rune cast. They are like the universal anchor.” She points to a tattered section of text.
Salt of the Earth: To ground the wandering energy of the Aether.
A Drop of the Caster’s Blood: To seal the contract of who is paying the price.
Earth: To act as a vessel
“Then, for an unbinding, there are specific ingredients related to whatever it is you’re trying to set free.
A stone gate requires crushed quartz, a wooden chest, inner bark,” she goes on.
“The only text I have been able to find on the Aethelguard — the fire seal — talks of a —” she narrows her eyes, bringing the text closer to her.
“It’s smudged, I can’t really make out what it says. It looks like ‘black hall’ but I’ve never heard of it before?”
“Black hall?” It’s not like I can offer much knowledge on the matter, but if I can help her, then I have to try. She’s in this because of my theory after all. “Like glass, maybe?” I ask. She shakes her head with a frown.
“No, the drawing of it makes it look more like … a rock?” Just as I lean in to inspect the illustration, there is a knock at the door before Rowan appears. His face is pale, and he looks angry.
“Is everything okay?” I ask him, sensing something is off. He takes a moment to answer, his face tightening as he fights back the sadness threatening to break through.
“Thomas is gone. He was the first one,” he says, his voice numb of any emotion. I can see the hurt behind his eyes, but he hides it so well now. “Griffiths is next,” he whispers.
Oh, my god.
Thomas.
While I’ve been sitting here, making zero progress, my failures led to the murder of the poor knight I once thought of as a friend.
“I’m so sorry, Rowan,” I say, but it changes nothing. Doesn’t bring back his fallen comrades. Murdered comrades. And by the hands of the person whom they swore to follow.
“There’s nothing more we can do,” is all he says, but his shoulders look heavier as he doesn’t meet my eyes. Anger hits me all at once.
“Why can’t you kill him? Why can’t the knights just overturn him? I know you said it doesn’t work like that, but why?” I ask, rising from the bed and facing him. He looks to Bryn, who simply shakes her head.
“We are oath bound, Elodie. The oath is rune-bound.” He pulls up the material of his top, revealing a faint ink mark on his wrist. “We cannot bring harm to the crown, even if we want to.”
This kingdom just gets worse the more I learn about it.
“So you’re all just… trapped?” I whisper, the anger in my chest curdling into a cold, hollow dread. “Even as he lines them up? As he takes Griffiths next?”
“The oath doesn’t just stop my hand, Elodie,” Rowan’s voice cracks, and it’s a vulnerability I never thought I’d get from him.
“It stops the heart.” Bryn reaches out, her hand landing on Rowan's arm.
The silence between them is old, filled with ghosts of the people they have both lost. She turns back to her sketches, grabbing the illustration from before.
“Well, we made progress on the incantation. I know how to remove the bind, but we can’t do it without this,” she holds the page out to Rowan, whose brows knit together in concentration.
I move next to Rowan, looking down at the drawing.
Something about the way the artist had drawn the light reflecting off the stones’ edges pulls at a memory I’d forgotten I even had.
“Wait. I know what this is.” They both turn to look at me.
“Sam used to use this all the time back home. He said it was his ‘good luck’ charm. I thought it was a load of crap, but he said it was ‘Black Heel Flint’.” I pull the drawing closer, checking the writing when I realise it’s not black hall at all.
It says Black Heel. “Here, look, Black Heel,” Bryn gasps.
“Elodie, you’re right!” she shouts, showing Rowan, who lets out a soft, vibrating huff, his eyes finding mine instantly. “Did Sam ever tell you where he got it from?” she says.
“No, but if it’s anything like the flint I know back home, it’s rare.
You can find it by riverbeds, or if you want a guarantee, anything that cuts deep into the earth is like a literal wound that just bleeds flint.
” Bryn lets out a long groan at my response, sinking onto the edge of her bed. “What? What is it?” I ask.
“It means we need to go to the Maw,” Rowan says, his jaw clenching.
“What’s the Maw?”
“It’s where we send the dead. It’s heavily guarded, highly dangerous. An open pit in the centre of the forest where the land itself has fractured.”