The first three drawings depicted a series of runes—the symbols of my dead family. A snowflake, the rune for the Snow family, and my mother, Eira’s, symbol, representing icy calm. A curling ivy vine for my older sister, Annabella, representing elegance. A delicate, intricate primrose for my younger sister, Bria, symbolizing beauty.

The fourth rune was shaped like a pig holding a platter of food. An exact rendering of the multicolored neon sign that hung over the entrance to the Pork Pit. Not a rune, not really, but I’d drawn it in honor of Fletcher Lane. The Pork Pit had been my home for the past seventeen years, since the murder of my mother and older sister. It and Fletcher were one and the same to me.

I held my lemonade up in a silent toast to the runes, to the family I’d lost long ago, and to Fletcher, whose death was still a raw, aching wound in my chest.

But the drawings on the mantel weren’t the only runes to be found in the house. I had a rune as well. Two of them, actually—embedded in my flesh.

I put down my lemonade, uncurled my palms, and looked at the silverstone scars that decorated my skin. A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays, one on either hand. My rune, representing a spider, the symbol for patience.

The rune had once been a medallion, an innocent charm strung on a silverstone chain—until the Fire elemental who’d murdered my family had tortured me by duct-taping the rune in between my hands and making me hold on to the metal while she superheated it. The silverstone had eventually melted into my hands, forever marking me with the rune. Forever branding me as the Spider in more ways than one.

And I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t forget the past.

I leaned forward, picked up a thick folder from the coffee table, and plucked a picture out of the file. A woman stared up at me. A beautiful creature, with blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, and rosy skin. But her eyes were cold and hard, her mouth a tight slash in her face that detracted from her delicate features. A rune hung off a chain around her neck. A primrose. The symbol for beauty.

Bria. My baby sister.

For seventeen years, I’d thought Bria had died that night, along with our mother and older sister. Thought that she’d been crushed to death by the falling stones of our burning house. That I’d caused her death by using my Stone magic to collapse the house in order to try to escape my torturers and save her.