Page 55 of Demon Bound

Right. The magic. That was the whole point of this.

She wiped the sheen of sweat from her brow and quickly dressed. She dug in her bag for the things she’d need for the enchantment: ink, a paintbrush, and her notebook.

“Take off your cloak,” she said. He did so without comment, letting it drop to the floor. He settled onto his knees again, which put his face just below hers.

She held her notebook open in one arm, studying her runes and annotations. They were an ugly mixture of a few languages and odd combinations of spells. A few of the combinations were ones she’d used before and knew worked, while others were brand new, built from the components of other runes she knew and ones she’d found in the library’s books.

A real enchanter would probably have fainted at the sight of her work. She was certain this wasn’t the ideal method for removing the binding, but she hoped that it would still work, even if it was a little rough.

She’d never built an enchantment into aperson, either. Normally, they were put into inanimate objects. That added another unwanted layer of complexity.

“What are you going to do?” Azreth said. She heard a hint of apprehension tightening his voice.

She dipped the brush into the ink pot, dabbing off the excess on the rim before raising the point of the brush to Azreth’s stony chest. “May I?” she asked. He nodded. “Eunaios painted the runes onto your skin. I’ve never done this before, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t use the same method.” Azreth’s chest rose and fell slowly as she slid the brush over his skin. “When I’ve placed all the runes, you’ll activate them with your magic.”

“That’s all?”

“I hope so.”

She painted a line of runes down his chest, branching over his heart, and then another down his arm and onto his palm, over the runes Eunaios had spelled onto his flesh. When she’d finished, she looked them over again several times, making sure not a single stroke was out of place. A mistake could be deadly.

It occurred to her that Azreth was putting a lot of trust in her. He did not read runes, and for all he knew, she could be enchanting him with something worse than what Eunaios had done. His eyes had followed her while she worked, but he seemed more curious than suspicious.

She set down her brush and plugged the ink bottle. She swallowed hard, mentally preparing herself for whatever would come next.

“It will work,” she said.

Azreth just nodded.

“Go on,” she said. “Charge the enchantment.”

Chapter 17

Azreth didn’t hesitate. Magic flowed into the runes Raiya had painted, illuminating them one by one until they all shone with a glittering, iridescent sheen. Raiya’s heart leapt as she watched her work come to life. Azreth looked down at himself, studying the glowing runes covering his skin, and as he pumped power into them, the spell activated with an audible snap. The runes glowed so bright that Raiya had to look away.

And then Azreth cried out in shock. The air filled with a miasma of negative emotion, bright and sharp and violent. Raiya could feel it seeping into her skin, into her bones. Magic sparked at random around them as Azreth lost control of his power—or perhaps he was struggling to cast something in his desperation to make the pain stop.

“What’s happening?” Raiya cried. “What’s wrong?” She’d made a mistake. She’d expected that undoing the binding might be painful, but not like this. She was hurting him.

She rubbed furiously at the ink on his chest, but the runes wouldn’t budge. The magic was helping to hold them in place. Azreth dropped to the floor, writhing.

Raiya spun to grab the bottle of ink, sloshing half of it out of the container as she rushed to uncork it. More of it spilled out when Azreth knocked into her as he shuddered. She climbed atop him to try to hold him still, which was a fruitless endeavor. It was all she could do to keep from being thrown off him. In sheer desperation, she dumped the rest of the bottle on him. She smeared it over the runes on his chest, marring the shapes of the lines, then rubbed her ink-soaked hands over the marks on his arm, too.

Azreth’s movements slowed, then stopped. The runes stopped glowing. The terrifying atmosphere that he was emitting began to recede.

He slumped, breathing hard. When he held up his palm in front of his face, Eunaios’s runes were still there.

“I’m so sorry,” Raiya whispered, covering her mouth with her hands. “I didn’t think it would be so bad if it went wrong. I’ve never tried enchanting a person before, and I didn’t know…” There was a reason it was not usually done without the input of a healer. But she hadn’t expectedthis.

Perhaps she had also forgotten that it was possible for Azreth to be hurt. He seemed almost too powerful to be damaged.

She raised her hands to touch him, and he recoiled a little. No one had ever flinched from her like that. Was that what she looked like to Nirlan? Or to Azreth? How could anyone live that way, having people recoil from them in fear and disgust?

She climbed off of him and knelt at his side. “I’m so sorry, Azreth.” He didn’t recoil this time, but he looked at her like he was still dazed, his eyes intense. Suddenly he sat up, reaching out to grab her by her chin. Raiya flinched, but he held fast.

“Why—” He shook his head, frustrated and perplexed, as his eyes bored into her. “Why are you this way?”

She stared at him. “What?”

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