Aeduan Sneak Peek ⚔️
More Witchlight for you to enjoy!
As requested on the Discord, I’ve got an Aeduan sneak peek from Witchlight for you! My goal is to truly share as much of this book with you all as I am allowed to before release. 😅
You all have been so patient for so long! I want to prove to you that it was worth the wait. Plus, I want to thank you for being here and supporting me for so long.
And hey, if you haven’t read the first five books in the Witchlands series yet, don’t forget they are all in Kindle Unlimited! So now is great time to catch up before the finale.
Now is also a great time to pre-order both Witchlight (Nov. 4 2025) and The Executioners Three (Aug. 26, 2025).
Past Witchlight Sneak Peeks
Chapter Two
There were few people the Bloodwitch Aeduan hated more than Purists.
Noblemen happened to be one of them.
Particularly noblemen who believed big swords made up for an absence of spines. “I have told you three times now,” Aeduan said without inflection, “this is not a negotiation. Give up the castle and swear fealty to her Imperial Majesty Safiya fon Cartorra.”
“Demon,” snarled one of the two men currently frozen in place before Aeduan.
“Monster,” hissed the other.
And Aeduan would have rolled his eyes if he were that sort of man. Around him, the ancient stones of the empty Hasstrel estate groaned. Wind shrieked through holes in the shutters; a rat scurried down a nearby hall, her blood singing of freedom and shadows. The two fon Grieg sons had been granted this estate when Eron fon Hasstrel had been arrested. Since the dom’s release and his niece’s ascendancy onto the throne, fon Hasstrel had decided he wanted his castle back.
Which was why Aeduan was here, instead of a hundred miles east with a silver taler that smelled of his own blood.
Sweet wine and lathered horses. Cut emeralds and sharpened steel. Both fon Grieg men smelled of wealth. And both bore the lingering cold iron scent of the Hell-Bard Loom, for although they were no longer bound to it, it would forever taint their blood.
Aeduan let his Bloodwitchery swirl into his eyes. Let his lips lift to reveal his canines while a fresh gust of winter wind flipped into his new Carawen salamander cloak. He might not be a dramatic man, but he was not above a bit of theater when the moment demanded. Left arm outstretched, he furled in his fingers.
And watched as less and less blood reached the two men’s brains. “I can kill you this way,” he said. “I just keep tightening”—another inch with his fingers—“and tightening until there is nothing left to keep your brains functioning. Or I can set you free.” He released, though only slightly.
Both men gasped. The right brother’s eyes shuttered.
“Your choice.”
“Our father,” rasped the one on the right. Redrick or Redris or something comparably bland and Cartorran. “Was given this castle—”
Aeduan tightened on the man’s blood again. Aeduan was tired, he was hungry, and he hated this part of his new job. “Your father,” he countered, “has already offered his fealty to the new empress. As well as all of his soldiers…which, I believe, include you.”
The brother on the left—whose name might as well have been Shitpants fon Grieg for all Aeduan knew—let his eyes close again. Defeat practically sang off his blood. Redrick or Redris or whatever he was, however, still would not relent. He pulled back his own lips, the snarl of an angry mongrel used to getting his way. “Demon,” he repeated with extra venom.
And this time, Aeduan did let his eyes roll. “Understood. I will leave you as you are, and maybe your smarter brother here can talk some sense into you.” He released Shitpants, letting the shapes of sweet wine and lathered horses fly free in the man’s veins.
The man promptly collapsed to the stone floor. A second rat chittered from the rafters. Aeduan lowered his hand. One, two, three…
There it was: Shitpants grabbled to his feet and drew a sword. A fine blade with rubies of Hell-Bard red to adorn the hilt. He charged Aeduan while his brother watched on, unable to move.
Aeduan let the man come, waiting until Shitpants was so close he could spot a patch of hair the man had missed shaving. Aeduan spun sideways. His cloak snapped. And in one movement, he unsheathed a blade of his own: small, sharp, always within reach at the top of his baldric.
He shoved the knife into Shitpants’s hamstring. The man collapsed again, but now with blood spurting and a scream ripping from his lips. It was the sort of sound that would have given Aeduan of a year ago no pause. The Aeduan who had never met a Threadwitch named Iseult or a child named Owl (who was not a child at all).
But the new Aeduan, the one who had met Iseult and had saved Owl and who had sworn his vows anew to the Carawen….
He did pause before this sort of thing.
Aeduan felt his molar’s grind. Felt his chest expand with cold breath. One need not be evil to become it. He’d thought that once about his father.
Now he, Aeduan, was no better.
With a strangled growl, he swiped the stiletto on his sleeve and resheathed it. Then he grabbed hold once more of Shitpants’s blood. Here were the lathering horses, here was the sweet wine. He froze both, although only in the places nearest to the hamstring wound, where the tang of fresh blood wanted to burst forth and taste air.
Meanwhile, twenty paces behind Aeduan, the other brother he decided he would simply call Red, was still frozen in place.
And the rat still chittered overhead. He was a hungry little beast.
Aeduan stepped in front of Shitpants. “You know you cannot win this.”
“You”—Shitpants spat the word—“are a symptom of all that is wrong with the usurper. She took away our noose. She took away our castle, and now she threatens us with a monster?”
“Your noose.” Aeduan glanced at Red. “Why would you want to keep that?”
Red didn’t answer, and Shitpants was only just gathering steam. A pot boiling off rage that had simmered for too long—certainly longer than this unfortunate moment inside a crumbling castle could have prompted. “It was an honor to serve Emperor Henrick. People feared us—and you would have feared us, for your foul, Void-tainted magic would not have touched us then. We would have skewered you.”
Aeduan gave up. With a sigh, he clenched his fist. The man’s blood froze, hamstring wound and all. His mouth ceased its spewing, his brain ceased its thinking, and he toppled over. Not dead, but deeply, stupidly unconscious.
Aeduan glanced again at Red. “Your turn. Make your choice.”
“You,” he croaked out, “are not a Bloodwitch.”
Aeduan tensed. Not because he was bothered by Red’s words, but because they were so unexpected, so illogical in this cold, stony hall with its whistling wind and scuttering rats.
Red continued: “Bloodwitches cannot do this. They cannot control people like this, freezing them. Killing them.”
Aeduan walked now, his magic still clasping the man’s blood as he advanced. “I assure you, I am a Bloodwitch. And I also assure you: I can kill you.” He came to a halt before the man. Unlike Shitpants, Red had a beard. Neatly trimmed, clean like his velvet suit and fur cloak—and all of it so at odds with this barely upright ruin around him.
“No,” the man insisted. “I am a Bloodwitch. Before the Loom, and after it. But my magic is bound to Water, and you—what are you?”
Now Aeduan frowned. The words remained unexpected, but now they were undeniably interesting. And undeniably unsettling, even if Aeduan thought he’d stopped caring about his witchery long ago. He’d never met another Bloodwitch. It was a rare enough magic that he’d never even heard of others like him existing outside of old tales.
Aeduan let his power rise, let his senses sharpen and prong deeper into the man’s blood. And yes, there was a coppery tang that he recognized. Bright and fresh like his own.
“I do smell it on you,” Aeduan admitted, his voice flat. “Which means you must smell it on me. But if you’re trying to call my bluff, you need only look at your brother to know I can kill you—and I will.”
Red swallowed. His eyes crawled with red, exactly as Aeduan knew his own did. “Oh, I know you’ll kill me, Monk.” His teeth bared just as his brother’s had. “Not because you are a Bloodwitch, but because you are a demon. A monster. I can smell it on you: you’re bound to the Void, a cursed beast with Matsi poison running in your veins. Tell me: was it your mother or your father who—”
Aeduan yanked upward with his magic. The muscles fired in his biceps and forearm. In his shoulder and chest. Then he snapped his wrist.
And the second fon Grieg son toppled down with a thump! that sent dust spiraling upward. Silence echoed. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Than the man’s feet twitched. Because, like Shitpants, he was not dead.
Aeduan’s nostrils flared. He inhaled all the way into his stomach, letting his witchery slide away like ripples on a pond. The blood off Shitpants’s wound still keened in Aeduan’s nose. The wind still tugged at his cloak. And nearby, the rats from the shadows and rafters were poking out curious noses. They were too hungry to be afraid, and there was a very real chance they would eat these brothers as soon as Aeduan got out of the way.
So Aeduan got out of the way.
Oh Aeduan. He can be so sassy, can’t he? (Also, I’ll have Vivia for you soon too!)
Thank you for reading, and until next time: safe harbors!
💚 - Sooz
If you’re wondering why this is such a high chapter number, it’s because Iseult’s POV doesn’t show up until thirteen chapters in. There are STORY reasons why (basically a timeline situation), and so the first twelve chapters are entirely Merik, Vivia, and Aeduan with some Ryber sprinkled in.
He is such a great character!! ❤️
Oh my goodness! What a chapter!!