“I heard she destroyed a palace?—”
“No, that was the Halfbreed?—”
“No,shedid it. I heard it from Uther.”
The voices overlapped, too many at once, and I stepped back only to bump into a chest plate. The warrior steadied me with a hand on my shoulder.
“Easy,” he soothed. “We just want to know if the stories are true.”
I cleared my throat. “Some of them.”
A broad-shouldered male cocked his head. “No human should’ve been able to do that. What are you, girl?”
Every face tilted toward me, waiting.
I almost laughed. A week ago, I would’ve saidhumanwithout hesitation, but that was information they didn’t need to know.
I shrugged. “Still figuring that out. But Icanbreak runes, which is more useful than knowing what to call it.”
A few warriors exchanged glances.
“Can you teach us?” a scarred female asked.
“I don’t think it works like that,” I murmured. “It’s not a skill you practice. It’s more like…I can see the threads, and I know which ones to pull.”
“So you were born with it,” someone said.
I nodded, smiling.
The crowd jolted as a massive blond warrior plowed through the circle. Two males stumbled aside, one swearing as he caught his balance. The blond ignored them, breathing hard, and thrust out his arm. His sleeve was yanked to the elbow, revealing a crudely drawn rune on his forearm.
“Fix this,” he demanded.
I bent closer, examining the jagged lines. “What is it?”
“Speed rune,” he growled. “I botched it, and now I can’t sleep. Can you get rid of it?”
I took his arm and rotated it. The lines overlapped in places they shouldn’t, and they were uneven. I pressed my gloved fingers to the rune.
Warriors gasped.
Blue threads emerged, as thin as spiderwebs. They barely resisted as I thumbed through the rapidly unraveling magic. One twist, and the rune dissolved like sugar in water.
I let go of his hand. “Done.”
The warrior blinked. “That’s it?”
“It wanted to break.”
He flexed his arm, then laughed. “Four months I’ve been dealing with this cursed thing. You fixed it in ten seconds?”
A ripple of awe swept through the warriors.
“What do you want for it?” he grunted.
My brow furrowed. “You want to pay me?”
He nodded firmly.
