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Kleos, a witch ought to know how to perform simple tasks without magic, you know. What if you were drained? Chained in iron? Train yourself to use your hands.

All that was sound advice, but not today, Mother.

I waved, my finger tracing the shape of a circle, and the salt flew through the air before falling down around my bed in the perfect circle I couldn’t have drawn with my trembling hands.

And finally, the pain faded, just like that.

Fuck.

I could hear my heavy pants, feel the sweat on my skin, and I was still shivering all over, with panic, rage, fear and the echoes of lingering pain.

What thefuck?

The fact a circle of salt proved enough to stop the spell was both a relief and seriously confusing. It seemed…weak given the intensity of the pain. I certainly would have been harder to stop if I’d cursed someone. Not that torturing random people for fun was one of my favorite pastimes, but still.

I looked down at my arms, those red runes as angry and confusing as ever. All right. It didn’t go farther than my wrist, and whoever had tried to curse me clearly was stopped before they could finish whatever they intended. Yes, I was in pain, but I knew that rune carvings were capable of doing far, far worse. Icould be dead. I could have become someone’s living, breathing puppet. Or lost all sense of self, like a zombie waiting for a master’s call. I was still me. That meant I won.

This time.

I lifted my hand and a scalpel flew into it next, silently and without destroying furniture this time.

I should have hesitated. I should have certainly reported this to the Guard. But if I did, my parents would find out, and there would be no end to the lectures, the blame. I could already tell what my mother would say: if I’d bonded to a nice boy from a decent family sooner, no one could have attempted to bind my soul into slavery, could they?

So I brought a scalpel to my own skin and ever so lightly wrote out my own runes to end the progression of whatever spell this was—one on each of my wrists—then another on my belly to cast a protection rune at the center of my body. Thin lines of black blood faded fast, and all three marks disappeared, leaving no trace.

But the red runes remained.

My cleansing and protection runes should have done it. I should have been safe.

And the truth was, I didn’t need to consult anyone or report this, because I was good at runes. My type, the Norse ones, not the ones I can’t read on my skin.

As for finding the person behind this…well, perhaps an anonymous report wasn’t a bad idea, just in case I didn’t get to the bottom of it myself. But I knew the Guard well enough to realize they had very little chance of beating me to it. The inquisitors were overworked, their desks full of unsolved cases just like these. In a city full of paranormal creatures, it was nigh on impossible to keep track of all the petty crime. Big, major threats, they could handle. One asshole cursing some girl? That was harder.

It would be helpful to poke around, see if anyone else dealt with the same curse, but I wanted to look into it myself. They’d used my magical signature, or my blood, or a bit of my hair to get to me. I was the best person to hunt them down.

And when I found them, no one would stop me from making them pay.

People thought I was sweet. The healer thing immediately made them think I wouldn’t hurt a fly. Most of the time, they were correct. Someone’s core power did define their personality, to an extent. I had a hard time ignoring people and creatures suffering when I could help. My ability let me read their aches and woes and see just how to fix them. Then, they remembered I was the daughter of the high magister, of the white witch at the head of Zeus’s temple. Surely, that made me kind, patient, loving, obedient, right? According to the masses in any case.

They didn’t know me at all. No one truly cared to look under the surface.

But the person who decided to make me suffer in the safety of my bed in the middle of the night, potentially with a worse goal at the end?

They would see just who Kleos Valesco truly was.

Yes, I was a healer. That meant I knew just where to cut in order to make someone bleed out for the longest amount of time. That meant I could heal them at the brink of death, in order to do it all over again.

I knew these instincts—the need for revenge, violence and blood—scared those who’d peeked behind the mask I wore every day. Usually, I stifled them.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t kind.

Today, looking at myself in my beautiful ornate freestanding mirror, my top in shreds, torn by my desperate hands, with those angry red runes disfiguring my skin?

I didn’t care.

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LUCIAN