Page 28 of Until the End of Ever
“You tell me.”
I opted not to tell her furniture was one of the many areas where I’d dabbled when bored. I hadn’t bothered charmingallpieces in the house, but those I used were spelled to adjust themselves to the preference of the person sitting on them.
Kleos flopped onto the sofa and moaned.
Down, boy.
If she could stop making noises like that, that’d be great.
“After yesterday, I’d say we should shelve research about the ritual in itself. It doesn’t matter much, in the end. It’s taken care of for the time being, and you weren’t cursed last full moon. Our focus ought to be on thewhoin order to stop them from cursing you again.”
“All right,” she agreed slowly, “but they left no trace. Where would we even start?”
“My prevalent theory, sort-of confirmed by our new friend yesterday”—I was reluctant to overuse godly names now, even here, protected, shielded and warded—“was that whoever cursed you withruneswas aware that runes are the only thing likely capable of affecting you. Someone aware of your history.”
Kleos pressed her hand to her hip, frowning. Was that where she’d been marked originally? I noted it was deliberately far from her neck—the area where her recent curse had started. “Not many people are.”
The fact that my theory mostly implicated close members of her family was why I hadn’t voiced it yet. “There could have been a leak. Or maybe whatever god is behind this told their puppet. My guess? We figure out who healed you that day, years ago, we’ll know who’s against you.”
“I don’t think I follow.”
“I think your original runes are the beginning of it all, and only true hint we have. A shame we can no longer see them. You remember what they were?” I guessed, doubting that was the sort of information one could forget, no matter how young she was when they’d appeared.
“Certainly. But you can see them,” she told me, surprising me.
Kleos lowered her silk pants under her hipbone, and lifted her shawl and the tank top underneath up, uncovering her belly, before bringing her hand to it. Golden magic coating her fingers, she pressed it against her flank, down to her hip, revealing slender, bright blue lines behind.
Their glint dimmed, and started to fade back to smooth skin.
“Kenaz, hagalaz, thurisaz,”I read, from top to bottom.
They were the original runes, unaltered and clear, and yet I’d never seen any quite so impactful. Powerful.
I could have written these three runes over and over, on any surface, on my own skin, and they would have never reached the power of the three on Kleos’s skin.
I couldn’t make sense of it at first. And then, I whispered, “Fuck.”
“What?”
I had to be wrong. I hoped I was wrong.
“If you wrote those three runes, what would you expect as a result?” I asked, hoping she’d follow my train of thought and come to a completely different conclusion. Tell me I was mad.
“Depend on what, I guess. It could be a protection spell—a shield?”
I nodded slowly. “But it didn’t protect or shield you. It resurrected you, Kleos.”
“I know. It doesn’t really make sense.”
That was just it. Runes were a language that spoke directly to the universe, cutting away all subtle, easily mistaken formsof communication to tell the energy of the world thatthisand nothing else was the intent. “When translated correctly, runes always make sense. How would you translate these?” I prompted.
I was glad she had a ready answer, and relieved it was different from mine. “May the knowledge change her, by my power.That’s how I interpreted it when I first saw them.”
I nodded. She had to be right. She was the one who could read pages and pages of Elder Futhark like it was just a fairy tale.
“Why, how would you have translated them?” she asked.
I chewed on my bottom lip. “Doesn’t matter. I’m wrong.”
