Chapter 6 Rune #3
He didn’t see reality. He was somewhere else entirely, probably deep inside a memory. Not just any memory but a grief-loop. Only the loss of a fated mate could do this to someone. He was in a shattered place where his mate still whispered to him, even though she was probably long gone.
“I can try to heal his mind, but…” Koa knelt beside the snake-bound warlock, his expression carved in heartbreak.
“Try,” Eleanor encouraged him, her brown eyes filled with hope.
Gently, Koa reached out. The soft whoosh of his healing magic igniting whispered into the clearing. Pale blue flames curled from his fingers, tracing delicate tendrils across the warlock’s temples and into his skull.
For a moment, the flames danced. It was beautiful, almost hopeful. The warlock definitely did not have the same reaction I had to Koa’s healing.
The flames slowed.
The warlock twitched.
His eyes were open, but they were unfocused and hollow.
Koa drew back, his flames extinguishing mid-air. “He’s not in there,” he murmured, voice barely above a breath. “He’s shattered from the inside. His mind is gone. His soul’s broken apart.”
Snakey shifted his massive coils, tightening just enough to silence the warlock’s next rant. The man’s mouth still moved, muttering what had to be his mate’s name and pleas, but the sound barely passed his lips.
I stared at the warlock with pity. His pain hung in the air around him. I didn’t have to be a shadow demon to know that.
“Mirabelle…” the warlock rasped. “I…I did it right this time. I know I did. Come back. Please…”
He mumbled his story over and over again on a loop.
Eleanor was at his side, her arms wrapped around herself, as if trying to hold in the sorrow threatening to burst out of her chest as she listened, piecing his story together. Her throat bobbed, and her eyes shimmered.
“He doesn’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispered hoarsely. “He just…loved his mate.”
None of us knew what to say.
She dropped to her knees beside him. Her hands hovered inches from his trembling form, but she didn’t touch him.
“The ritual,” Eleanor continued, her voice barely stable as she translated his ramblings for us, “was to bring his mate back. She was a phantom. He tried to…use her last breath after he stopped her from being taken by humans in Kalista’s Second War.
He tried to use her fading magic as an anchor.
He wanted to rip her soul back from the Fates. ”
“He will be punished by the Fates for that,” Coralynn muttered her disapproval, and I agreed with her.
Eleanor inhaled sharply, fighting the tears burning at the corners of her eyes. “But it didn’t work. He just…stayed.” She looked up at us, eyes wet and wide. “He waited here for her. All these years.”
The truth settled around us.
Dimitri stepped forward, his jaw clenched. “He’s still dangerous.”
The warlock whimpered again, something between a sob and a laugh. His eyes glazed, unfocused, flickering with shattered gold light. “Mirabelle, I’m here. I’m here now. I stopped them. You can come back now. Please…”
“He’s broken, not dangerous,” Eleanor pleaded, her voice thick with emotion. “He just needs help. He’s clearly lost everything. We can send him to an infirmary or rehab.”
“Two things can be true at once,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “It’s clear he’s broken, but it’s also clear that he’s dangerous. I don’t think rehabilitation is an option now.”
And then, as if the Fates wanted to prove my point, he made his move.
In a blink, he twisted violently, slipping through Snakey’s loosened coils with a shriek that sent every hair on my body standing. His face contorted, no longer lost or pitiful. It was full of rage and grief.
He lunged for Aura, and she didn’t have any time to dodge before his hands clamped around her throat. “You killed her!” he howled, spittle flying in her face. “All of you!”
Aura choked, her eyes wide in shock, legs kicking as he lifted her like she weighed nothing. Her small hands clawed at his wrists, glowing faintly with imp magic that sparked and fizzled—bright bursts of red and pink fireworks popping in the air but doing nothing to help.
“Aura!” I shouted, taking a step forward as my rose-gold scales formed over my body, but Zuko was faster.
He blurred forward, appearing behind the warlock in a flash. His arms wrapped around the man’s torso as he sank his fangs deep into the flesh of the warlock’s shoulder.
A guttural sound ripped from the warlock’s throat. He arched backward, his body seizing as every muscle turned rigid. Foam spilled from his mouth as the venom worked fast.
Aura collapsed to the ground in a gasping heap, clutching her throat, coughing as her lungs fought to pull in a breath. Koa kneeled next to her, his blue flames glowing, healing her damn near instantly.
Once again, I realized, Koa’s magic did not have the same effect on her as it did me.
Why was that?
Before I could give it much thought, the warlock stopped seizing and slumped to the ground on his knees.
His chest rose and fell in ragged, shallow breaths.
Foam clung to his lips.
His hands twitched weakly.
Zuko let the man drop completely with a grunt, retracting his fangs as he wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. Blood smeared across his jaw.
That action shouldn’t have been as hot as it was.
“Didn’t want to do it like that,” he muttered. “But he gave me no choice.”
“You…” Eleanor’s voice broke. She took a shaky step forward, eyes locked on the crumpled form of the man she’d been pleading for. Her fingers trembled as she raised a hand to her mouth. “He’s—he’s not—?”
Zuko glanced at her, then rolled his eyes. “Relax, Eleanor. He’s not dead. We didn’t vote on that yet.”
Her breath whooshed out in a soft, shaken sigh. Her shoulders sagged, just slightly. “Still,” she whispered. “You didn’t have to bite him.”
“I did,” Zuko snapped, his irritation flaring in the way orange scales scattered his arms before fading back. “You want to know what it feels like to have this guy’s hands around your throat? Ask Aura.”
Aura was still sitting on the ground, rubbing her neck, face pale but jaw tight. She didn’t speak, but her silence was its own kind of statement.
“I think it’s obvious what we have to do,” Slater said with a shrug. Snakey coiled back into his shadow.
Dimitri nodded slowly, stepping forward and folding his arms. “This wasn’t just one attack.
He’s dangerous. Irrevocably. Look at this place.
” He gestured around us, at the decayed forest, the ground where the rot had spread, the village lost to time, and Aura and myself.
“He did this. With a broken heart and a broken mind, sure, but it doesn’t make it any less horrible. ”
Eleanor shook her head, voice rising. “But he didn’t mean to! He was grieving. His mate—he was trying to bring her back. That doesn’t make him evil; it makes him…lost. We have to try. The penitentiary. Psych eval. A healing ward. Something.”
“He strangled Aura not even a minute ago,” Dimitri said flatly. “And you want to rehabilitate him?”
Aura flinched.
“We are not executioners,” Eleanor snapped.
“Envoys aren’t,” I agreed gently, though even envoys knew when to eliminate a threat. Perhaps it was something she’d have to learn the hard way. “But there are agents who are. My mother is an executioner.”
“My dad kills shitty supernaturals daily.” Zuko shrugs. “He’s an agent.”
“Rune’s right,” Slater replied. “You think the agent coordinator would even let him live long enough to blink?”
“Enough,” Dimitri said, stepping forward. “We vote.”
The wind stirred the dead grass around us. The trees, barely clinging to life, creaked in the background. The magic in the air still felt wrong.
“I say we need to eliminate him.” I glanced at Eleanor with a sympathetic expression.
She turned her head, clearly in disagreement.
“Same,” Slater echoed. He didn’t look away from the warlock. I was sure he half-expected him to rise again. I did.
“Healing didn’t work,” Koa added solemnly. “There’s nothing left to reach. He’ll just be living this way. Elimination is a mercy.”
“Look what he just did.” Zuko just shrugged. “He needs to be put down.”
Dimitri grunted. “Agreed.”
“I agree,” Aura rasped, glaring at the man.
“I vote in favor of elimination,” Coralynn said softly. “It’d be cruel to keep him locked up for the rest of his life to miss his mate.”
All eyes turned to Eleanor. She wouldn’t look at anyone.
“He’ll only hurt more people if we let him live. The mercy you speak of would be cruel,” I told Eleanor softly.
Her lip quivered, and she looked at the man on the ground like he was already a ghost. “No,” she whispered. “I vote no.”
“You’re outnumbered,” Dimitri said, clear cut. “Seven to one.”
Tears welled in Eleanor’s brown doe-like eyes. Her hands curled into fists at her sides. For a second, I thought she might fight us on it.
But she didn’t.
She just closed her eyes and refused to watch.
“I’ll do it painlessly.” I glanced at everyone to make sure they were okay with it. When nobody intervened, I stepped forward and knelt beside the unconscious man.
His body still twitched from Zuko’s venom, his skin pale and lips parted. He looked younger up close.
One of my many fatal venoms glistened in my palm, but this strand would be painless and instant.
“I hope the Fates guide you to your mate,” I whispered, pressing my palm gently against his cheek.
His skin was cool against mine. His eyes fluttered open for a moment, unfocused and damp with tears. He looked right through me and smiled a broken, blissful smile.
“Thank you,” he croaked.
My venom did its job before his next breath could finish. His chest stilled.
His heart beat once more.
None after.
The air warped. The forest, the ruined village, all of it peeled away until we were standing on the polished obsidian floors of the simulation chamber.