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KLEOS

I t wasn’t the first time I dreamed of burning. It wasn’t even the first time this week. But the screaming nightmares were supposed to be over after I opened my eyes.

Not this time.

I woke, safe and sound in my bed, not hunted through the thorny grove by a hooded figure, but this time, the horror had followed me into the real world.

My skin was on fire.

Not on literal fire, there was no trace of flames, but an all too familiar burning sensation covered my neck, shoulder, arms, spreading farther and farther down as I writhed and bit back a scream.

I had to do something. This couldn’t continue another second; any half-brained witch knew that. Whatever spell, jinx, or curse had been cast against me needed to stop before it could do more damage.

Determined, ignoring the agony as much as I could, I sat up, ripping my clothes off my shoulders, wincing at every movement.Pain aside, my body seemed reluctant to obey my commands.

What the fuck is happening to me?

I wasn’t used to pain, per se. Well, I had been burned just like this once before, almost fifteen years ago, but other than that one instance that fueled all my nightmares since, my life hadn't predisposed me to torture, yet there was no doubt I was being tortured.

Who did this to me?

I would find out and I would rip their eyes out with my own nails. Rage and fury grew inside me, dangerous in any magic user, me in particular, but I used it, clinging to anger rather than my suffering to do the next necessary thing: think. Reason my way out of it.

Something was tearing through my skin, burning it at each cut. Marks were slowly appearing lower on my shoulders, reaching my elbow, inching down to my wrists. Runes .

I was no stranger to runes. My eyes tried to analyze them through the haze of agony, but I couldn’t read these. The lines and circles and angles made as little sense as the rest of what happened to me.

I'd have screamed for help if it were any use, but the house was silent and still, as usual.The main reason I never saw the point in arguing when my parents insisted I stay at home through my training was that neither of them spent much time here. The soft light out the window suggested it couldn’t be later than four or five in the morning; the sun hadn’t properly risen.

The housekeeper wouldn’t be there yet. And even if she were, I doubt she could have helped.

Think, think, think. You're a witch, dammit, and a healer to boot.

But it was hard while being cut open, my skin sliced before my eyes. No blood fell. A cauterized wound, which explained the burning.

All right. All right. First, handle the pain. You know how to treat the symptoms, at least, even if you have no clue of the cause.

What would I do if I saw someone getting cut open by a burning blade?

Cooling charm. A degree of numbing magic if I could, but I needed to keep my wits so that wasn’t an option.

My golden magic surrounded me, lighting the dim room and easing some of my panic.

I got this.

The pain faded little by little as I forced my energy to turn inward.

It wasn’t natural; healers are meant to take care of other people, not themselves.

I wasn’t nearly as efficient at healing my own wounds as other people’s.

But I could handle a basic charm. Freezing the air was water magic more than anything.

Water was always the easiest element for me to summon.

Certainly not healed, but no longer in an amount of pain too debilitating to function, I could properly make use of my brain, as well as my unwilling limbs.

This was complex, nefariousmagic. Someone was deliberately doing this to me, which raised three questions: who, why, and how could I fucking stop it?

The fourth was how I was going to make them pay for it as soon as I found my torturer, but I filed that one to currently unimportant—it would be soothing to reflect on later.

"Salt," I called out loud, lifting my hand.

I didn’t usually have to voice anything for a simple levitation charm, but magic required precise focus, something I was currently not capable of. Helping it along with my voice was the best alternative.

The next instant the iron pot of salt in my dresser burst through the white furniture and into my hand.

I was never going to hear the end of it.

Couldn't you will the damn drawer to open rather than destroy a priceless antique while you were trying not to get murdered by blood magic, Kleos?

I wished I was exaggerating, but that would be the exact reaction if any of this ever reached my mother’s ear. Which was why I firmly intended to keep it all to myself. I’d have to fix the dresser, though craft certainly wasn’t my forte.

My trembling hands weren’t going to perform precise work right now, so I didn’t even try for the manual approach. Another reprimand came to mind.

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 the fuck ?

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.

I could 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.