Chapter 10 Ruined by Touch
Ruined by Touch
Rune
Ialways wake before the others. Sometimes, it’s the curse, prickling along my bones, itching for wing and feather and pain.
Sometimes, it’s the magic, humming beneath my skin like it’s alive.
Other times, it’s habit, just waiting to snap me out of dreams so I can watch the world and breathe without witness.
Fear is a good teacher, and I learned early that the first to wake is the last to die.
Tonight, it’s neither. Tonight, it’s Raisa.
She sits on a log by the fire, her arms wrapped tight around her knees, her face turned to the dying embers.
The rest of our brothers are scattered in their makeshift beds.
Shade is sprawled like a dark stain. Talon snores with his mouth open.
Onyx is curled around his own hands as if he’s afraid someone will cut them off while he sleeps.
Even Sable, who claims he never sleeps, is limp and slack against a mossy stone.
I watch her from under my blanket, pretending not to see.
But her body hums in the night, the leftover magic from earlier vibrating just below her skin.
It’s not subtle. I can smell it, taste it—the raw, bruised edge of power barely leashed.
Her pulse is as sharp and wild as the animal she’s becoming.
She thinks she’s alone.
I sit up, slow and silent, pushing away the blanket without a sound. The moss and needles are a cushion beneath my bare feet. I move through the dark the way water does, unnoticed, everywhere at once.
She doesn’t look up when I stop behind her.
For a moment, I let myself watch—the curve of her shoulders, the shiver running down her back, the way her hair falls forward in a tangle so black it eats the firelight.
There are scratches on her arms and bruises on her thighs, some from the forest, some from us.
I can’t help the way my fingers twitch, wanting to touch her, to trace the marks and memorize them.
She speaks first, her voice so soft it’s almost lost in the snap of cooling wood. “Can’t sleep?” she asks.
I consider lying, but what would be the point?
“Neither can you,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend.
She shrugs, pulling her knees tighter to her chest. “Everything’s so…
loud.” She glances up, her gray eyes catching the last licks of flame, and I see the shadow of what’s really inside her—the hunger, the grief, the bitter twist of too much change too fast. “I thought it would fade away,” she says. “But it’s worse now.”
I crouch beside her, my elbows on my knees, watching the little universe of sparks swirling above the fire. “That’s how it works,” I say. “The noise never leaves. You just get better at tuning it out.”
She snorts. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It’s not.” I pause, picking at a scab on my knuckle. “But you’re not simple either, Raisa.”
Her mouth twists, like she wants to argue but can’t quite get the words to cooperate. “You ever wish it would just…stop?” she asks, her voice small.
“Every fucking day,” I say, and that’s the closest to the truth I’ve ever come.
For a minute, we just sit there. The fire collapses in on itself, the last spark hissing out in the damp air. She shivers, and I realize she’s barefoot, the hem of someone’s shirt, probably Bran’s, barely covering her thighs.
Without thinking, I reach out, my hand hovering over her shoulder. I want to pull her in, but she’s brittle as glass right now, and I don’t want to be the one who cracks her.
Instead, I offer her my hand. Just that—a palm, open and waiting.
She doesn’t take it. Not right away. She stares at it like it’s a puzzle she’s never seen before, some strange artifact from a world where hands mean safety and not chains.
“You trust me?” she says.
“Do you want the honest answer?”
She almost laughs. “I want to believe you’re not just waiting for me to explode again.”
“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” I say. “I’m afraid you won’t.”
Her eyes narrow, searching my face for something, anything to hold onto. She finds it, or maybe she just gets tired of waiting, because she puts her hand in mine and lets me pull her to her feet.
Her touch is electric—magic, sex, violence, all wound tightly together. But there’s something gentler in it, too. Something that feels like a promise.
We walk away from the camp, our footsteps careful, weaving between the trunks in a silent dance. The moon is a slit in the clouds, enough to silver the ferns and make the shadows softer. The cold bites at my ankles, but I don’t care. All I can feel is her hand in mine, warm and alive.
Behind us, our brothers sleep on, oblivious. Maybe they’ll wake in an hour, maybe not until dawn. I don’t care.
Tonight is for us.
She doesn’t ask where we’re going. Maybe she knows, or maybe she doesn’t care. We walk in silence, her hand still in mine.
The forest is different this far from civilization.
The trees are older, their trunks gnarled and knotted, the branches stitched together in an endless tangle overhead.
The ground is soft, thick with years of fallen needles.
There’s no wind, only the hush of breathing things and the slow trickle of water somewhere ahead.
I lead her by memory, the way birds know north. Sable and I found this place while scouting earlier. The water in the spring was so clear we could see straight to the bottom. I knew immediately that she would love it.
I lead her up the ridge, the climb not as easy for her as it is for me. She stumbles once, and I catch her, steadying her with both hands at her waist. She doesn’t pull away, just lets me hold her for a second longer than necessary. Then we crest the rise, and the world opens out below us.
The spring is a deep wound in the earth, maybe twenty feet across, its surface glowing blue-green in the dark.
Steam rises in ribbons, catching in the moonlight and curling through the branches overhead.
The rocks around it are slick and black, worn down by centuries of animal feet and rain.
You can smell the minerals in the air—sharp and clean, like the inside of a stone.
Raisa lets go of my hand, walking to the edge. She looks down into the water, then back at me, her eyes wide. “It’s beautiful,” she says.
“It’s warmer than it looks.” I peel off my shirt, tossing it onto a flat stone.
She doesn’t blush or turn away. Instead, she watches with a kind of scientific curiosity, like she’s cataloguing every scar and tattoo and bite mark. She traces her own arms, as if wondering how the marks on me might look on her.
I toe off my pants, leaving them in a heap, and step into the water. It’s a shock at first—almost scalding—but I slide in up to my chest, letting the heat pull the ache out of my bones.
“Come on,” I say, holding out a hand for her.
She hesitates, glancing down at the oversized shirt she’s wearing. It clings to her body in the humidity, almost translucent, the dark shapes of her nipples and belly visible beneath. She looks at me, daring me to comment, but I just keep my hand out, patient.
She leaves the shirt on a rock, and wades in. The water comes up to her waist, then her ribs, and then she’s floating, her hair spreading around her. The moon turns her skin silver, every curve and scar illuminated.
She paddles over, finding me in the center, and lets me pull her in, her legs wrapping around my waist, her arms around my shoulders. Her weight is nothing. I could hold her like this forever.
For a while, we just float. The steam blurs the world, making us seem the only living things for miles. Her breath slows, her eyes half-lidded, and I wonder if she’s ever been this relaxed in her entire life.
I rest my chin on her head, her hair wet against my neck. “Are you okay?” I ask, the words almost swallowed by the water.
She shakes her head, a tiny motion. “I’m not,” she whispers. “Everything feels wrong. My body, my brain, the way you all look at me.” She pulls back enough to meet my eyes. “The magic feels like it’s alive, Rune.”
I nod. “It will. That’s how it works.”
She buries her face in my neck. “I’m scared.”
“Don’t be,” I say. “Or, be scared, but don’t let it own you. The fear isn’t the magic. It’s just the part of you that remembers what it was like before you knew it existed.”
She goes silent, her arms tight around my shoulders. I hold her as close as I can, letting the warmth seep in.
“My brothers don’t know this part,” I say, my voice low. “They see the power, not the price.”
She laughs, the sound bitter and beautiful. “I think I’d rather be powerless, if it meant being normal.”
I think about telling her there’s no such thing. “I felt the same way,” I say instead, “when I first discovered my magic.”
She pulls away, her eyes wide. “You have magic?”
I snort. “You think these are just for show?” I drag my wet fingers over the runes tattooed on my forearms, the marks that glow faintly in the dark when I’m angry or turned on or afraid. “I learned what I was when I was still shitting myself in the cradle.”
She blinks. “How?”
I consider lying, but she deserves better.
“I was four, running a high fever, and set part of the house on fire. It was the first time I realized what I was. My parents—my real parents—didn’t want a monster.
They tried to beat it out of me and then drown it out of me.
When neither worked, they left me in the woods and hoped I’d become food for the crows.
” I look at her, daring her to pity me. “Shade and Grim found me, instead. They weren’t much older than I was, but they protected me, made me one of them.
We were welcomed into our new family together. ”
She doesn’t flinch or look away. She just watches, as if seeing something in me she recognizes.
“I never wanted to be like this, to have magic,” I admit. “But I don’t think I could go back now. The magic protected me when nothing else did. It saved us, when nothing else could.”