“Wait.” A realization strikes.
“Morvakar could tell she had your brother’s blood in her body? How?” Even Myko couldn’t sense that—it’s the first thing he would’ve told me if he did.
She finally lifts her gaze from her legs. “I can… um… I know runes. Well, more like runes call to me, and I activate them.”
She’s getting nervous, lost in her own explanation.
Runes call to her?
“How’s that connected to your brother’s blood?” My voice lowers—I’m trying to understand.
She frowns, studying my face like she’s unsure how much I actually understand.
“You’re the great Depthborne and you still don’t know?” she mutters, squinting now in disbelief.
“Your whole body is covered in runes, and you can’t even tell?” She gasps the question when I don’t answer right away—probably realizing just how clueless I really am.
Wait.
Her words click.
I glance at my marked arms. “The pod marks… are allrunes?”
Even Bay gasps, nearly slamming into a U-turn sign before turning back into the street Roran ran off into.
“Bay. Eyes on the road.” I bark, then twist my body fully toward Onyx.
“Did you know that?”I ask Myko. Not sure why the hell he would hide something that big from me.
“That they’re runes? Yes.”He sounds utterly unbothered.“Why does it matter? The ancient runes began with the first five royals. That’s why the royal marks hold power—that’s why they’re connected.”
“And you’re only telling me this now?”I snap.
“Morvakar felt merfolk blood in her body. I sensed the Kolox rune,” Onyx adds, but I don’t let Myko off the hook just yet.
“How’s that even possible? I thought runes were ancient symbols—a language. They started off with only five?”
Onyx tilts her head, trying to read my expressions as I talk to Myko.
He snorts, like I just asked the dumbest question alive.“The first son was a Rune Whisperer. He shaped, created, and activated runes, helping forge mixed bloodlines with new runes—to limit each house’s power to their domain. That’s why I told you—without the Coral of Life to stabilize it, and me tomaintain it, the wild magic will spiral out. Into chaos. Into war.”
Bay curses under her breath as she pulls up on the street Roran ran into. She’s hearing that for the first time, too.
“I thought they just… mixed lineages to create new pods when others went extinct,” Bay mutters aloud, glancing at me before focusing back on the road, not sure where we should go from here next.
“Why do you think that’s not working anymore?”Myko snaps.“They tried, for a few generations, to create new pods. But no new royal house could form. No Rune Whisperer—no new runes.”
I rest my head on the window, watching the street fade in the golden light. It doesn’t make sense. My grandmother should’ve known.
Mal-El is a pure line descending directly from the first royal son.
“Your grandmother knows the marks are runes,”Myko says, like it’s obvious. I didn’t even say those thoughts to him.“But Rune Whisperers—Runjer’ar—aren’t common. If you never meet one, you won’t know they exist. They don’t need to be there. They forge a rune, and it just appears on the next fresh mixedblood born, limiting their power. That’s how it’s always worked.”
So Onyx can make new pods…
She’s forging runes. Controlling them.
And she has Morvakar.
