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“Just ink.”

The pure calligraphy ink had come in handy in an array of ways since I’d purchased it, often related to runes. But I’d neverthought I’d actually use it on skin. That was a little barbaric for my taste.

Retrieving a seldom-used feathered quill, I sharpened the tip. “My plan is to use my core power, and write over the runes I want gone. It’ll destroy them. Mine will remain in place. The process—eliminating the former runes, and creating new ones—would be extremely painful, hence this.” I tapped the silver brew. “I’m not sure it’ll work. This is experimental. If it does, at the end you’ll have just as many runes, and in the same places as the current ones. But they’ll be mine.”

I was asking her towrite on her body, using a power meant to suck the life out of people, and trust that my intentions were honorable.

A sane woman would tell me to go to the darkest pit of the warmest hell. She nodded.

I was unsure if I should proceed or book her in with a shrink.

“All right. Drink up, love.”

I wasn’t sure of myself. Always one to try things, lack of certainty had never stopped me, but usually my only living guinea pigs were myself and Ronan. Experimenting on Kleos felt infinitely more dangerous. That she was letting me was fucking with my brain.

She shouldn’t trust me this much. The fact she was so very unguarded was likely why she was in this mess in the first place.

I brought the quill to her skin and pressed down.

“Any pain?” I asked as I broke the skin.

Her blood was as black as the ink. I wasn’t one to judge, but if it had been red, I would have been surprised.

She could barely move, but she shook her head a fraction.

Dark red mist flying from my fingers to the tip of the quill, I checked again, “And now?”

Another no.

I bit down my lip and let my core power out, not bothering with restraining myself. Kleos was immune to it. We’d already tested that. I focused the entirety of my attention on those runes, the power holding them there.

They weren’t part of Kleos, and I was banking on her body to acknowledge that, to not protect the foreign magic harming her.

The rune under the quill started to fade, the red dulling to a light pink.

More. Destroy. Annihilate.Kill.

I had never let that part of me loose the way I did now, not even when I killed. I didn’t want to get a taste for it. It felt fucking incredible, like a long wank after an extended period of celibacy. Shit. I was getting hard. Fromdestruction.

Before my eyes, the rune started to reshape, the red slowly getting brighter.

I wrote over it, using the most visible line to start my rune.

Uruzfirst, for vitality.

The red blotch underneath was eaten away by my power.

One by one, I systematically destroyed and rewrote each rune. Between marking Kleos up, I took notes, drawing the initial runes, what I replaced it with, and the depth of the carving. The paper of my notebook started to singe at the corners, too much power carved in one piece of paper. It occurred to me that the ink was also infused with her blood.

I tore down the paper, and stood to take a few drops of the solution brewing in the larger pots; it wasn’t finished, but it’d do for the purpose.

I applied the potion along the corner of the piece of paper, lathering it with the permanence charm, before continuing. I made sure each paper never contained more than five runes.

On her skin, the new words glowed red, too, but my runes were holding.

Ansuzfor magic.Fehufor wealth.Pethrothfor luck.Tiwazfor justice.

It didn’t matter which runes I used, so long as they replaced the remnants of the dark ritual. I didn’t let myself question those that came to mind—I did roll my eyes at myself when I wrotegebo. Yes, it meant gift. It could also mean sex, depending on the circumstances. But at the end, there were only so many futhark runes, and I was adamant I’d repeat them as little as possible, to avoid affecting her negatively.