Colter moved to catch that end of the case, keeping the runes from tumbling out. He didn't
even look at the dead man, maybe didn't even realize what he'd done, until cries of shock
and outrage bounced through the onlookers.
Questions started flying between friends, witnesses filling in those who'd missed it in hushed
voices. Numbing disbelief spread through my chest. I felt my mouth fall open and couldn't
command it to close.
Colter tossed aside the case and clutched the runes in careful fingers, looking down at last
when someone rushed in to take Mark's pulse. Colter went very still, blinking at the
runesmith's misshapen head.
"No vitals," said the inspecting ardent, shaking his head.
"He… no, he's…" Colter's throat tensed, and he looked around. "He provoked me. It was an
accident. You all saw it."
"Yeah. Still gonna be a hell of a lot of paperwork on that," grumbled Leon, shaking his head.
"Are you kidding?" someone cried. "He's not even Conglomerate. His bosses are going to
ask questions, and I, for one, am going to have answers for them." The speaker, Darrel,
pushed to the forefront of the growing huddle. He had a buzz cut, a flame red beard, and a
splatter of freckles across his nose. He glowered at Colter. "You're a murderer," he boomed,
jabbing an accusing finger. "I saw what you did to Braden, you bastard."
My stomach knotted. He'd seen it too…
Mutters rippled through the crowd, ardents and auxiliary staff alike turning to one another for
assurance they'd heard correctly.
The freckled ardent faced his fellows. "Colter pushed him right into that monster's mouth so
he could get the killing blow!"
A suffocating quiet fell, a few soft gasps sucking up what little air was left.
"Knock it off," Rhea said, not having to raise her voice to draw eyes from every direction as
she moved between Darrel and Colter. "It wasn't intentional. He didn't use a weapon; he hit
too hard, that's all. Lost control of his raden. It could happen to any of us, and you know it."
"What about Braden?" Darrel snarled, matching her lowered tone.
"You're mourning your friend. I get it," said Rhea, skin pinching around her eyes. "But don't
start pointing fingers. This is a warzone. People die. They take one false step and don't
come home. It's nobody's fault."
"That's bullshit," snapped Darrel. "You didn't see what I saw ".
"Are you sure you even saw it?" she countered. "Do you really want to file a complaint
against Colter Valera with no evidence?"
He studied her hard and said in gruffer tones, "Do the right thing here, Dunn."
"I am," she countered. "We need to stick together. One overblown accusation and you'll not
only ruin his life but all of ours. You want those kooks who tried to register us as deadly
weapons and monitor our every move to come back through the woodwork?"
"You've always been his lap dog. I never got it." Darrel shook his head, lip curled. "Step
aside. I'm going to escort Valera to Internal Affairs myself."
Rhea bent her head closer to his, voice dropping to a deadly octave. "You'll have to get
through me first."
Gawking boneforgers started moving backward with nervous glances as ardents formed two
camps on either side of the runesmith's body. Colter's team was at his side in an instant,
Priscilla slinking from the shadows to join Rhea, Leon, and the Calhouns. Darrel had three
with him. Four more ardents hovered at the edges, scattered, undecided, Matthew and
Arnold among them.
I spotted Taj with the retreating auxiliaries and started to shift that way when a familiar voice
cried, "Hey! Everybody, calm down."
Jace had stepped onto the line drawn into the sand, and fear for him constricted my lungs.
He had his hands up, turning to meet the eyes on both sides.
"Stuff it, Vargas," Gavin jeered. "Get out of the way."
"No," said Jace. "There's more important things going on here. A man is dead, and he's still
lying on the floor." He raised his voice toward the medics' station. "We need this man tended
and put in a body bag, please."
Two medics rushed to oblige, parting the crowd and letting me catch a glimpse of Seth,
sitting hunched over as the medic worked on his back. His head was swiveling toward the
commotion.
Jace turned to Rhea. "Nobody needs to drag Colter into the towers like a prisoner." He cut
over Darrel's protests and met his eye, saying, "When we file our reports, everyone gets to
voice their opinion, but I think we can all say no one meant to kill him. There's no need for
this to escalate." He gave Darrel a long, meaningful look, putting a hand on his shoulder.
"Let's just walk out of these rifts together, all right?"
Darrel stared hard into Jace's face. "Fine. We'll follow protocol."
Jace nodded. "Agreed." He faced the other way. "So, Colter, I think you need to put the
runes in the case, all right, man?"
Colter, who was busy manipulating the interlocked runes so their etchings were no longer
touching, barely glanced up and said, "Yeah… I don't think I will. Because, see…" A fine
sheen of raden spread over his fingers, and there was a snap and a tinkling sound as he
broke apart the base of the parasite rune, separating it from the dragon rune. "There's no
issue here." He pinched the parasite rune between two fingers, lip curled as he swiveled it
toward Gavin to take, then admired the dragon half. "This rune belongs to the Conglomerate,
which means it belongs to me. And the runesmith…" He licked his lower lip, nervous eyes
bouncing around the ardents gathered on his side. "I… I didn't mean to hit him." His restless
gaze steadied on Leon to his right. "Did I?"
Leon's stony face never even twitched. "Nope."
"In fact, I don't think I hit him at all." He glanced at Gavin over his shoulder. "Did you see me
hit that guy?"
"Nah."
Fintan's brows pinched together, but he didn't contradict his brother.
Alarms clanged in my head, and I wanted to scream at Jace to get out of there as he shifted
into Darrel's line.
"Didn't think so," said Colter as he slid one of Priscilla's daggers free of her crisscrossing
weapons belt and undid his vambrace. "Something else happened. We couldn't stop it.
Could we, Priscilla?"
Her eyes got teary, and her voice quivered. "It was just so sad," she keened one second,
then flashed a grin that bared too many teeth the next.
Colter rolled back the end of his leather sleeve to expose the veins on his wrist, making a
shallow horizontal cut with a quick press of the blade. As the blood welled, he pressed the
rune etching to it, and the bloodrune fluid began to leach out of the resin with a flare of
amber light that turned to the red-gold shade of an autumn dawn when it mingled with his
blood.
With a low exclamation, Colter's eyes went wide, basking in the light as he called out, "Who
else saw what really happened?"
The few ardents on the outskirts had been shifting on their toes and casting uncomfortable
looks around, but now they had to make a choice. Matthew, Arnold, and another ardent went
to stand with Colter. Only one joined Darrel's camp. I hovered just behind them, eyes glued
to Jace, unable to tear myself away.
As the rune's light faded, a halo of golden light flickered around Colter's irises. He dropped
his arm to his side with a satisfied sigh and said, "All right, here's how it really went down.
The parasite is what killed the runesmith…" He cast a pitying look over the opposing ardent
line. "Him and lots of other good men and women."
Colter's eyes next did a predatory sweep over the auxiliary teams huddled under the lower
part of the inner rift. Many had bits of the broken workstation in their hands, being stacked
into a makeshift construction to try and get through the red tear hovering above them.
"Colter…" said Jace, trepidation thick in his tone. "You can't do this. Think about it."
Arnold shifted on his feet. "Colter, maybe Vargas has a point."
Colter placed a pensive finger on his chin. "Vargas?" His eyes leveled on Jace and went
cold, the hint of a smile tugging his mouth too tight on one side. "Vargas didn't make it." A
sorrowful sham slid over his features. "We all thought the parabeast was dead," he
continued, half hidden behind Rhea. "Started going about our business, harvesting parts,
tending the wounded. The runesmith did his thing, got us those double runes." Colter shook
his head. "But just about the time he finished, that damn parasite reanimated the corpse.
Puppeted it around. It did a lot of damage."
This couldn't be happening. Colter had gone crazy, and his team was just… going along with
it? Who were these people? He couldn't really be threatening to kill a whole rift unit over this
rune.
"We were taken by surprise," Colter continued, talking faster as he nodded along with the
lies taking shape. "People were dying. I just barely had time to absorb the stronger of the
runes to protect everyone who was left."
Panic clawing up my throat, I instinctively looked for Seth but was unable to pick him out in
the clustered crowd.
"Colter, you've got the rune," Jace said, forcing my gaze back to the altercation. "You've got
your father's lawyers. If you walk away now, you can live your life almost like nothing
happened."
Colter considered him, and everyone fell still, waiting, hoping. But I didn't like the fevered
light in his eyes. "No…" he breathed at last. "Can't guarantee silence." He shook his head,
color high on his cheeks. "No, it's cleaner this way."
He nodded to Rhea.
She drew her axes and launched at Jace.
A dark blur leaped in front of Jace, shadowy tendrils rising from a cloaked outline. Seth
caught Rhea's axes on his sword before her crossed blades could take off Jace's head, their
collision swelling with all the force and ferocity of a hurricane. Seth's shadow swelled,
drinking in the force. With a shift of his wrist, he parried the right axe down, then danced
away from the counter swing from the left. He surged the pent energy down his blade as he
slashed for Colter, who barely dodged as Jace rushed in to block a retaliating attack from
Rhea. Colter got his spear unsheathed and met Darrell's oncoming sword.
As the two sides collided around their leaders, all was amber light and thunder booms.
I took off running, but the battle came to meet me, superhuman fighters lunging huge
distances, chasing each other down as fighters paired off. Priscilla was a banner of black
hair inside a maelstrom of slashing golden light as she drove another woman into my path to
the boneforgers. Her left dagger feinted a stab for the kidney, making her opponent
concentrate her raden there, while the right struck viper-quick into the other woman's throat.
She coughed blood and fell, clutching her neck, while Priscilla turned two-toned eyes on me.
Seth smashed into her like a freight train, his shadow outline exploding outward with the
force of the raden he'd already absorbed from other opponents' failed strikes. Priscilla's
raden aura shattered as she went rolling through the soil, Seth hot on her trail, sword poised
to kill. She came out of her roll in a runner's lunge, zipping away as raden fired beneath her
heels.
"Go!" Seth thundered at me without even looking.
If there was one thing he'd taught me, it was how to get the hell out of the way. I was already
on the move, redirecting through the chaos to the boulder I'd hid behind with the medic.
From there, I could wait for a straighter shot to the other boneforgers and a possible escape
through the rift.
As I skidded to a stop behind the rock, bracing my hands on its cool surface, a weird,
low-frequency sound fuzzed my head—a staticky crackle, distant but impossible to ignore. I
dug a finger in my ear as I peered around the boulder, needing to see Seth, to know he was
alright, that we were going to make it out of this.
His familiar posture and glowing eyes distinguished him from the tangle of bodies. He stood
back to back with Jace, both their swords parrying at least two others in a hectic series of
combos my eye couldn't track, but I did see Seth's shadowed outline growing, filling with
pent energy stolen from every clash with an enemy blade. He unleashed it down his sword in
a wide, cross-body slash that disarmed Arnold and sent Matthew staggering off balance.
But Gavin took Arnold's place, fighting with a raden-covered fist and a one-handed sword.
A quick scan showed why Seth and Jace were fighting so many. Colter and Rhea stood over
a dying Darrel, his cracked skull leaking a stream of blood over his freckled face. His allies
were either falling or already lying still on the ground. It was just Jace, Seth, and one other
man left standing.
I could no longer hear the clatter of blade meeting blade. The static crackle had grown
louder, its low tone vibrating through my teeth until I groaned and massaged where my jaw
met my ear. I tried to track the source, but the sound seemed to come from everywhere. The
flickering red glow of the rift deepened, tinging my skin. I looked down my arm, and my heart
stuttered. By my hand, on the rock, a thick clump of golden moss wavered and made me see
double. But no, that wasn't right. The moss was beside my pinky one second, then several
inches away the next. It bounced back and forth before my eyes until I jerked away my hand
and backpedaled, the gears in my head grinding together, unable to make sense of it.
Was anybody else noticing this?
I looked back to the battle, heart hammering.
Seth still slashed at Gavin, their struggle making them dance further and further from Jace.
Seth blocked a thrust from Gavin and kicked him in his bandaged ribs. Gavin went to one
knee, but Seth's finishing blow was parried by Fintan's glaive. Even as Fintan forced Seth's
sword upward, Seth drove his knee into Gavin's chin as he twisted to face Fintan. Gavin's
head rocked back, and he went down hard. As he shook himself from the brink of
unconsciousness, he lunged his upper body forward, hand chasing after something. Seth's
foot stomped down on Gavin's hand as his sword kept up a punishing assault on Fintan. He
knocked Fintan back, then ducked a swing of Fintan's weapon to pick up what Gavin had
been groping for. I saw golden resin and realized it must be the parasite rune. The one
Colter needed to sell his story.
Seth tucked it away and blasted both Calhoun brothers back from him with another shadowy
burst of his rune. He spun, searching. I followed his gaze to Jace, who was trying to keep
Colter and Leon at bay. His longsword made wide arcs as he was forced to constantly twist
front and back to keep them both in his sight. Colter struck low with his spear, piercing
Jace's foot, locking him to the ground as Leon brought his hammer down.
"NO!"
Jace's raden went dark as he crumpled into the dirt, an arm bent awkwardly beneath him. I
waited for a sign, a rise of his back, a twitch of a finger, but his familiar face was a wretched
ruin, his body broken and horribly still.
My legs wobbled, and I leaned against the boulder, just trying to breathe as Seth swooped in
too late. His grief-stricken roar carried through the rift, bounced off the cavern, cut through
the static, punched through my chest. Seth snapped Colter's spear with his first slash,
weakened Leon's aura with his second, cut his shoulder with the third, whirled around to
meet Rhea's axe, hooking it on his blade and flinging it away.
But he was surrounded. They were coming from every direction. His allies were dead.
Jace…
Jace was gone.
I didn't realize I was running until I was halfway to him, and my brain yelled at me to grab
something, anything I could use for a weapon. As I bent to pick up a rock, Seth called my
name, and the urgency in it stopped my pulse.
My head snapped up to meet his raden-haloed eyes between the encroaching forms of
Colter and Rhea. Seth's raden was thick around him, trying to stave off blades from all sides.
His arm cocked back, and the rune arced through the air. The perfect throw landed in my
waiting palm right as Gavin's blade severed Seth's extended arm at the wrist. Even as his
hand tumbled in a shower of blood, Seth rounded on Gavin, wielding his broadsword
one-handed. The diagonal slash aimed to take Gavin's head, but Fintan parried with his glaive, sending Seth's sword spinning. Priscilla dashed in low, and her dagger sliced through
his hamstrings. Seth captured Gavin's sword arm as his legs gave way, holding himself aloft
until he wrestled the blade from Gavin. As he sank to his knees, he twisted to slash at
Priscilla, drawing blood across her hip before she could dash clear. With a heavy thunk,
Rhea's axe dug into Seth's side. His raden flickered, his glowing shadow retreating. He didn't
look at Rhea, didn't look at the wound. Instead, Seth's eyes found mine right before Colter's
spare spear punched clean through his chest.
The sound that tore up my throat didn't belong to me. It couldn't. Because none of this was
real. There was no version of the world where this could be happening.
Seth let Gavin's sword slip from his fingers, still watching me, never looking away, steady
and constant and unbreakable. Like him. But there was blood everywhere, forming dark
blooms on his leathers and tattered cloak, spilling over his lower lip.
My legs failed me at the same moment his did, the two of us dropping together, staring over
a space that seemed to widen by the second. My vision blurred with tears I hadn't known I
was shedding.
Colter's teammates were dark, meaningless shapes, but I vaguely registered that they were
turning toward me, toward the auxiliaries and the rift.
Colter. The name stirred a beast in my gut. Colter had done this.
The resin bit into my flesh, reminding me of the rune clutched in my tightening fist.
Colter wanted the rune. If he got it, he'd get away with this.
"Seth," I cried, voice breaking. "What do I do?"
Though fresh blood poured down his chin, his voice rang out strong. "Survive." He swayed
forward, tried to catch himself, but his arm buckled, and his cheek hit the dirt. I watched his
chest rise once, watched the strength fade from his dark eyes, leaving behind a face that
looked like my brother but had none of him in it.
Ivory greaves blocked my view, marching toward me. "Hand over the rune, Torrin," said
Colter.
I opened my fist and looked at the quarter-sized piece of the snapped rune—the etching still
intact in the slim, pointed top.
All this death for a rune.
I looked up at him and his extended hand. He'd sheathed his weapon, knowing he wouldn't
need it to take the rune by force from someone like me.
I narrowed my eyes on him, lifted the rune, and shoved it in my mouth.