Page 45 of The Stygian Crown

“I’m aware that you operate in matters of sword in, sword out, but I need to know the why before I can figure out the how.”

A low rumble emanated from Logan’s side of the room.

Salizar threw his hands up. “Bloody barbarians. This is why they kill you all in your cribs. Fine, we’ll do it your way. But she asked for this, you know! I shouldn’t be held accountable for her recklessness.”

“If you don’t stop talking, I am going to cut out your tongue. Piece. By. Piece.”

Kara wiped her clammy hands off on her pants. Judging by Logan’s anger, this was going to seriously suck.

Salizar cleared off a large work bench and gestured toward it. “The operating table.” He pulled a tattered book out from under a shelf and began flipping through it.

Kara laid on top of the table and rolled up her shirt until the entire mark was exposed. Logan took her hand in his and rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. He looked scared.

“You can’t do the spell to remove it?”

He shook his head. “It’s beyond my knowledge. I might hurt you. The sanguinata… I’d never used it before. I only dared risk it because you were dying.”

Kara gulped. She watched as Salizar drew a rune by the entrance to the room, one she recognized from the grimoire. It blocked sound from escaping a place. Her stomach churned.

“The strongest blood will have the greatest effect here. And hers is dampened at the moment.” He looked pointedly at Logan.

“I’ll do it.” Logan took the wooden bowl Salizar offered and cut open his arm with his dagger, dripping blood into the bowl until it was half full.

Salizar dipped his fingers into the blood and tasted them, his eyes going bright. His expression was almost orgasmic.

Logan stabbed his knife into the wooden workbench, and it stuck in all the way to the hilt. “I will cut your fingers off if you do that again. You only need one.”

Salizar rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath about Namirahns. He carried his grimoire to the workbench for reference and began painting runes onto Kara’s abdomen. He was slow, methodical. At one point he fetched a fine paintbrush to draw the small connecting lines between each rune.

Kara grew more uneasy as she watched him work. Some runes she recognized from her grimoire, but others were arcane and unfamiliar. The outer runes circled the dark mark in an eight-pointed pattern, and the inner web was convoluted knotwork that reminded her of the lover’s bowl.

Logan leaned on the edge of the workbench and held Kara’s hand as Salizar worked, keeping a keen eye on the mage’s design.

It took Salazar an hour to finish. Logan analyzed the finished runework for several minutes, tracing the lines with his eyes. “Why are you using a transport rune?”

Salizar let out an exacerbated huff. “Amateur runeworkers, think they know everything. It’s to help transport the magic eater from inside her body to outside it without having to mangle her flesh with a knife, likely killing her in the process.”

“If you try anything, mage, you will not live to regret it.”

“She’s going to need something to bite down on.”

Logan’s eyes shuttered.

Kara’s heart started to race, and cold sweat pooled between her breasts. Logan unbuckled his dagger’s leather scabbard from his belt and handed it to her. Kara slid the leather between her teeth. She was no stranger to pain, but the way they were acting was making her nervous. Just how bad did they expect it to be?

Salizar swiped his hands through the bowl of blood, coating his palms with it, and held them over the runework. He began to chant in an arcane language.

Nothing happened at first. Then the mark moved. Dark tendrils writhed beneath her skin, the edges of the black sun dancing. Looking at it made her want to puke.

Salizar raised his hands and pulled his fingers back, like he was drawing something towards him.

The tendrils lifted, causing a raised ripple. It felt like someone was tugging beneath her skin with an invisible rope. The rope drew tighter and tighter, the tendrils moving faster as they struggled to escape his pull. There were a thousand tiny barbs beneath her skin, all scraping against each other.

The rope snapped. The tendrils pulsed, and a small sliver of darkness lifted from her skin. Every muscle in her body seized as fire whipped through her. She tossed her head back and bit hard into the leather, grinding her teeth down on it as she tried to get control. She expected her pain to plateau as her body adjusted, for it to gradually become more bearable, but it just kept rising.

The rest of the tendril lifted from her flesh, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Blood welled beneath her fingers where her nails cut into Logan’s palm.

“Your body will want to pass out to manage the pain. I runed you to try and prevent it. It’s better if you stay awake to fight.”

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