A gleaming rune, a perfect duplicate of Mal’s, appeared on both her arms.
He scowled to cover his surprise as she turned her arms to inspect her work. “It’s meant to be a painful ordeal. You have to suffer for every rune and gain understanding through trial.”
Scarlet raised an eyebrow at him. “Yawen,” she said, and a second shimmering rune appeared at her wrist. “Is there one for protect?”
Mal showed it to her and told her the word. “You’re supposed to spend a week or more meditating over the order for your rune tattoos, because they will define you as a warlock forever.” He sounded sulky to his own ears.
“Do we have a week for meditation?” Scarlet asked scathingly as a third rune appeared on her fair skin.
“Probably not,” Mal admitted.
“I can rearrange them anyway,” Scarlet said, demonstrating by switching two of them and Mal couldn’t quite keep from sputtering in protest. “Is there a rune for turn-dirt-into-stone?”
“There is no single rune for that. You would build that out of words, like writing a sentence.”
“What other runes will I need to do this, then?”
Mal shook his head in wonder. “This one,” he said, rolling his arm over. “It translates as roots, though it can also mean ancestors. I think that’s particularly appropriate for you.”
They added protect, djek, and strength, rawen.
And at the very end, she whispered, “Sheln,” and when the join rune was on her skin, completing a circlet of her wrist, Mal felt a jolt of power settling into place.
This could work, he thought, full of optimism.
Chapter 20
It didn’t work.
Scarlet spoke the runes perfectly, touching each one, and... nothing happened.
“Is it because I’m touching them?” she asked, disappointed. “You just gesture a bit, should I also?”
“That usually comes with practice,” Mal explained. “I don’t have to touch them to activate them anymore, but I did when I was first learning.”
Mal walked through a simple shield spell that he’d started with as a young man and brought a flaring egg of glittering power around him to life. Scarlet tossed a pen at him curiously and it snapped and fell, charred, to the ground without touching him.
Scarlet rearranged her run
es, followed his steps, and mimicked his chant, with and without touching the runes directly... and still nothing happened. She couldn’t alter dirt, or move it at all, and she couldn’t bring up a simple shield.
Mal sighed in frustration. “I can feel the power,” he said, peering at her inert runes and stroking them with his thumbs, agitated. They were sitting together on his porch; they’d already set off the fire alarm once experimenting with Mal’s shields. “I can sense it. You’re saying the words correctly, I can even feel your will. By rights, this ought to work.”
“Who taught you?” Scarlet asked, putting her free hand on his shoulder. “How old were you?”
Mal’s strokes on her skin slowed. “My father taught me, when I was very young. He knew that I would be the next in line to battle the wyrm, and I spent my childhood learning to tap into my shifter power and fight.”
“You were close with your father,” Scarlet guessed.
Mal’s head bowed. “Yes,” he said simply. Scarlet gave him space and after a moment he went on. “I was a mage before I was a man, and I lost him shortly after that,” he said grimly, standing and walking to the porch railing. “But he taught me everything he... thought I needed to know. He was a brilliant teacher.”
“Don’t think for a moment that you aren’t, just because I can’t seem to wield power the way you do,” Scarlet said, aching to see him doubting himself.
Scarlet looked at the silhouette of him, gloomy against the brilliant sunset sky. When she’d imagined Mr. Moore, the lawyer, she’d pictured him as a shallow old man, set in his ways and stubborn, not willing to take her seriously as a woman.
Instead, he’d proved to be complicated, appealingly good, and dazzling handsome, with just a trace of silver in his hair to hint at his wisdom. And he listened to her, his brown eyes unexpectedly gentle, his hands warm and strong, his skin...
Scarlet shook her head and reminded herself to focus.