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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 to write 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. From destruction .

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.

Uruz first, 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.

Ansuz for magic. Fehu for wealth. Pethroth for luck. Tiwaz for 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 wrote gebo .

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.

The last rune came without hesitation, not to cover anything at all. Just at the edge of her wrist, the laguz didn’t have the same purpose as the rest.

“We’re done,” I announced before directly tipping the green brew into her mouth.

She unfroze almost instantly.

“It worked!” Kleos yelled, staring at herself at all angles, even attempting to look behind her shoulders. “By the gods, it worked!”

I smiled at her enthusiasm, but cautioned her. “It might not last forever. And if they started that ritual once, they can do it again. But for now, you’re clear of outside interference.”

Kleos did something that completely broke my brain next. The mad girl jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms around me.

She was hugging me.

Me .

That was…

Unprecedented.

Insane.

Dangerous?

“I—” What could I even say? “I’m not hurting you?”

She shook her head against my chest. “Not even a little bit. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you ! You can’t imagine how scared, how worried I was. I didn’t even let myself think how much those runes terrified me. And they’re gone thanks to you!”

I understood her excitement. She’d been dealing with that fear for days—weeks, really. It was natural for her to be glad. But I should have been the one thanking her. Getting to my knees and worshipping her.

She was hugging me.

She didn’t get it. How could she? She didn’t understand that my own mother never could have wrapped her arms around me like this while I was at full power.

I couldn’t help it. My arms circled her, and held her close.

I felt like myself, and I was touching someone who wasn’t Cassius Regis. I never believed this would happen to me.

Kleos was warmth and light and goodness and hugging me.

I would have to let go sometime. Soon. Too soon.

Fuck .

“It makes no sense,” I whispered. “My power comes from a literal titan—an elder god. I don’t understand how it’s not destroying you.”

“I think—I think that mine might have come from someone just like your ancestor.Someone powerful.”

“Come again?”

Kleos let go, and I wanted to punch myself for interrupting with my stupid questions. Who cared, really?

“When I was little, around seven, I opened a book—the wrong book. And it started to hurt me— burn me. But all of a sudden, I came to, and there was an old man writing runes here.” She touched her hips. “Three of them. They faded, but they saved me. I changed afterward.”

Finally, finally, I was getting to the bottom of the question that had plagued me since I’d first seen this girl. She was telling me what she was.

“I didn’t really know what happened—how it could have happened—for the longest time, but I was talking to a colleague, and she said…that gods visited the Hall sometimes. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Of course. Gods were welcome in the temples and the Hall of Truce. They’d just not visited for centuries, as far as I knew. But Kleos was right. It explained everything I’d sensed about her. And the fact that she could touch me.

She’d been remade.

Into what?

“The old Kleos couldn’t levitate a teacup,” she told me. “Which was normal, as a child. Most witches only get their powers at puberty. But after that, my nightmares made the whole house shake.”

“Who knows this?” I asked sharply.

I couldn’t be the only one to see it. This wasn’t a coincidence.

At seven, she was remade by runes, and now, someone was using runes to control her?

As far as I was concerned, our list of suspects got a hell of a lot shorter.

Unless her condition was general knowledge.

Somehow, I doubted it. The founding families would have heard about it, if it was widely known that a child had been blessed by a god.

By the sound of it, she only realized it recently.

“Just close family,” she said. “My parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle on my father’s side, and Gideon, of course.

My mother was adamant we shouldn’t speak about it to outsiders, not even her own family.

There are too many of them, and they like to gossip.

Silver knows too, but I think that’s it. ”

“Hm,” I said, all the while thinking fuck .

That made things more complicated. I couldn’t very well tell her the fact that was etched in iron in my mind.

Whoever had cursed Kleos knew that the one sure way to affect her was runes.

Which meant the complete list of potential attackers was every member of her family, and her best friend.