Page 68 of Until the End of Ever
“You can’t. It can’t be a—” She blushed.
That made me break into a slow smile, despite still very much wanting to murder a certain blonde bitch. “A what, love?” I prompted.
“You know,” she muttered, fidgeting.
“Do I?” I was torturing her and loving every second of it. But the conversation was too important, so I finally relented. “I won’t sign up myself. There’s a list of available guardians. Ronan has access to it. We’ll find you someone.”
I kissed her shoulder, finding bright blue eyes gleaming when I looked up. “Really?”
“Silly witch.Yes, really.” I couldn’t help adding, “As your whatever you meant, it’s my privilege to ensure you’re care for, safe and free. You won’t have to deal with your mother’s nonsense again.”
Hadn’t she yet worked out that there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her? Handling a little administrative matter was easy as pie. I was more than eager to get it sorted, given the fact that doing so freed her from the bitch and all her machinations.
“It’s not that easy. I live with her. I mean, she’s rarely there, and these days, nor am I, but trust me. She knows how to make my life as inconvenient as possible.”
“Ugh. You’re just never going to let me help you relax, are you?” Those shoulders were harder than concrete, various bumps and knots firmly stuck in all her tension points.
“Breathe,” I demanded. “Forget about Zenya Pendros andbreathe.”
I focused on my task, all the while attempting to summon a product from my lab, but closing my eyes and bringing my attention to my many shelves, I couldn’t locate the right one. A vague levitation charm without a clear direction could easily break my shelves and bring the wrong flask to me, so I gave up on getting a calming balm, relying on only my hands to massage Kleos’s defiantly rigid muscles.
It took a while, but with patience, the knots started to loosen one by one. I was so focused on the task, I didn’t even notice when Kleos’s warm body had slumped against mine, until an ungraceful snore disturbed the quiet.
I grinned at the sleeping woman in my arms, but my smile soon faded, as I remembered the reason why it had been so hard to make her loosen up.
Zenya Pendros was going to have to be dealt with. If it were anyone else, I’d jump to murder, but she was an active member of the council. I couldn’t kill any council member—not without the agreement of the council of elders. And that in itself wouldn’t have stopped me, if she wasn’t also Kleos’s family. The woman was amazingly accepting of everything I was, but assassinating her mother in cold blood might just exceed the limit.
If I couldn’t remove her from the equation, the simplest solution was to remove Kleos from her influence immediately, permanently.
I looked down at the red waves with four braids, each one twisted in a different style.
I’d warned her I’d kidnap her if she wasn’t careful. And Iwasa man of my word.
28
KLEOS
Iglared at the notes for the longest time, as if hoping they’d morph into something else if I stared hard enough.
Lucian came up with the idea to get Elias onboard. Without any hint from us, the young dragon wrote down what he believed the collection of runes Lucian offered him could mean.
The boy didn’t hesitate. “Fehucan be used for property. An inverteduruz? I’d say the opposite of freedom.Gebo—a gift?Nauthizon the side means to restrict, to take the willpower. Overall, all these together would make me think someone’s giving away livestock. Was it branded on cattle?”
I laughed, which was better than the alternative. “In a way.”
The livestock beingme.
The boy nodded with a distasteful grimace. “It’s not a nice combination. It would limit the beast’s freedom. Everyone knows free-range food tastes better. No responsible owner would do this. One of the runes, maybe. All these? It’s barbaric.”
A dragon who found the idea of his tribe eating him perfectly normal believed the ritual I’d been subjected to was barbaric.
And it was.Advanced Binding Magic,the eighteenth-century leatherbound volume recommended by Lucky did list a ritual including all of those runes, as well as some of the others,marked on the bodies found all over the city. It had been written and used in Salem, after the witch trials. The trials themselves didn’t result in many actual sup deaths—just the murder of any free-thinking woman of the time—but following the massacres, the youthful population of sups didn’t reproduce as much as their elders would have liked, afraid of a world where their descendants were unwanted or hunted. So, in some clans they were forced to, branded by rune magic and wed to whomever their parents chose.
Yes, barbaric didn’t even begin to describe it.
It always took a sacrifice, and the witches would generally choose one of their inquisitors to balance the scales.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I warned, waves of nausea clogged in my throat as my mind pictured what could have been.
