Chapter 6 & 7, Witchlight
And all the goodies you've missed in the readalong!
Since we’re ALMOST done with our Readalong on the DenNerds Discord, I wanted to share some of the latest extra goodies and content posted over there.
There’s more to come, but I couldn’t fit it all in one newsletter. Not since I ALSO have a whopping two chapters of Witchlight for you today. What a lucky Monday, eh? 😉
So stay tuned for more goodies, or pop onto the Discord and see what else we’ve shared.
And don’t forget, of course, to pre-order Witchlight!
Aeduan Poster & Pocket Baeduan
For the lead up to Bloodwitch, I commissioned art from Melie Scribbles, who works in game design. I wanted something that looked like gaming concept art, and BOY did she deliver!
I love this art so much, and I think it really meshes my own vibe as a gamer with the book’s vibe—not to mention Aeduan’s overall vibe. I mean, that blushing face! Priceless. 😂
This design also became Aeduan’s “official” outfit, and it was what Cliff Nielsen used to develop the Bloodwitch cover, as well as Nipuni in her official Witchlands art!
And for fun, here’s a PRINTABLE POCKET BAEDUAN!
Sightwitch First Draft Mockup
As I said on the Discord, I had such a clear vision of what I wanted Sightwitch to look like, but I was really struggling to explain it to my then-editor Whitney. So I made a 50-page mockup that I printed out and drew on by hand, then I literally put those pages in a three-ring binder and delivered it to Whitney by hand when I was in New York for BookCon.
The production team then used that to help guide the artist, Rhys Davies! And if you compare final draft to my mock-up, it’s actually pretty close!! (Good job, production team!)
In fact, check out the map below and the map that I made on p.5 in the mockup for comparison. 😉
Sightwitch Map Poster
One of the swag items I gave away on the Sightwitch tour was a poster of the map. On the poster’s other side was the cover, and it was nice to have something to give away—we’d had some issues with production being delayed and the book getting bumped a month. Which really stressed me (and the team) out.
So I appreciated that they pulled this together so we could give it to fans as an apology for the delay.
Now on to Witchlight, and like I said—stay tuned for more goodies soon!
💚 - Sooz
Chapter Six
The boy followed Merik, skittering and scurrying from shadow to shadow. Merik was careful to never move so fast the boy couldn’t keep up. It was hard to stay slow, though. The wind had burrowed deep into his bones. Hunger was so pressing, he felt his stomach eating into his esophagus.
What Merik did not feel were signs of the Puppeteer. She was as inescapable as the tides. Her power seeped into every stone, every branch, every inch of plague-ridden soil. But there was nothing here now beyond wind and cold and these bodies that should be dead.
Bodies like his own. And like the boy still following him.
It was that thought more than any that propelled Merik onward until, at last, he and Aurora reached an intersection he knew too well. This was the way to the Puppeteer’s tower, and if he lifted a numb hand to block the wind, he could see it right there: part crumbling relic, part testament to a history long forgotten.
Ancient things made new again. He’d thought that of the tower, where Esme had trapped him, tortured him, terrified him.
But she also had had a stove in there. Blankets too. And maybe, by some miracle, there would be food.
Years later, Merik would look back at this moment as one when the fissures in the ice had finally led him exactly where he needed to be—for there really were no coincidences. But in that moment, all he’d really known was that an unexpected peace settled over him. And it radiated stronger, stronger as he stumbled ever closer to the tower.
When he finally reached the gaping, open door, he paused long enough to look back. The boy was still there, although he’d stopped now. Which was fine; Merik knew eventually the boy would follow. Aurora certainly did, shoving past Merik to be the first into the tower.
She nosed at an old pile of kindling beside stone steps, startling several mice. She snapped them into her jaws; Merik winced at the sound. But then decided he’d rather she eat mice than people.
With a fresh surge of strength, Merik hurried upstairs to the top floor. The floor where Esme had made her home.
There was no one there now. There was only her desk, her books, her many slouching candles that hadn’t seen flames since her passing. And of course, there was the corner where Merik had existed, bound by the Puppeteer’s collar and her capricious, yet calculating whim.
The rags that had been his only warmth were still there. The collar that had blocked his magic was not. For several moments, a tightness gripped Merik’s chest. As if his ribs had become a fist, as if they squeezed inward, trying to stop his lungs and heart from working.
Aurora whined. The moment passed. And Merik inhaled, laying a hand on the storm hound’s warm head. “We should start a fire,” he murmured, though he suspected she might understand his desires even without words. “And then we should look for food, and try to make a bed for that boy outside.”
Aurora snuffed. Merik scratched. Ancient things made new again.
Hours later, Merik had found wood and coaxed a fire to life in the stove. He’d found salted meat that had frozen inside a barrel and a loaf of frozen bread that the mice had never reached. So, after melting snow, he made a sad attempt at stew.
Then Merik hugged a rough blanket around his shoulders and with Aurora behind him, he climbed the final steps to the top of the tower. The boy had not yet braved the doorway, but he was still out there. Merik heard him shuffling every hour or so.
He would come eventually.
Or at least, Merik hoped he would. Night had fallen; the cold would soon be deadly.
The wind beat stronger atop the tower, and the winter sky was crystalline in a way it never looked on the Jadansi, as if the cold sharpened each star and darkened all the spaces between. There was a full moon tonight, which meant months might have passed since Merik had fled a dying Puppeteer and been swallowed by the ice . . . or it might have only been two weeks. Two weeks seemed unlikely though, given the dramatic change in temperature and snow.
And given the dramatic change in what waited beyond the walls of Poznin.
When Merik had been here as a prisoner, there’d been nothing to the east but swollen river and marshes for miles. Wet forests of beech trees, and plains rolling toward Cartorra. That was unchanged; the very earth there was still a sponge.
But the north and west held a landscape unlike anything he could have imagined. The plains that stretched endlessly to the north, all the way to the Sleeping Lands, were now a clotted patchwork of fires and tents and figures moving through the night. Black smoke drifted upward across the otherwise unmarred night sky. One plume in particular swept across the Sleeping Giant, diffusing its three bright stars into hazy smears of shadow-light.
Merik surveyed the various encampments. Although dark, the stars and the fires were bright enough—and near enough—to see red banners that marked Red Sail tents. Yellow banners that marked Baedyeds. And then loose, shapeless tents that seemed beholden to no one.
“Purists?” he wondered aloud. They had loved the southernmost stretches of Nihar, where poison and fire had drained the land of magic. And they had loved to tell Merik he was cursed for the magic he bore.
Merik strained to see some central spoke to the encampments. Some clear organization that would suggest where, in all those campfires and tents, he might find the Raider King—and this must be the forces of the Raider King. It was the only thing that made sense. But Merik could find no coherence, no structure.
The only consistent detail Merik did notice was that all the tents stopped at a very sharp, very specific distance from the northern wall of Poznin. It suggested the raiders and Purists were forbidden from setting camp any closer than that . . .
Or perhaps were too afraid to.
Aurora wagged her tail twice. A heavy thump on icy stones that prompted Merik to absently pat her head. He’d look more closely at this view tomorrow—see if this Raider King was out there . . . and then decide what his next moves should be. Perhaps he should do as the two girls had suggested and simply approach the man directly. Why are these Cleaved still here? Can we do anything to help them?
It was a foolish thought that disappeared almost as quickly as it formed. Of course Merik would not approach the Raider King. He had already come too close to death; he had no desire to tempt Noden’s Hagfishes again.
Merik also would not stay in this place stricken by plague and shadows. These Cleaved weren’t alive—there was nothing he could do for them. The boy, though, he could help. He would get the child out of here, and together, they would aim south. Because Nubrevna was home, and Nubrevna was where Merik needed to be.
Chapter Seven
Heat roars. Wood cracks and embers fly.
“Run.” Blood drips from his mother’s mouth as she speaks.
It splatters his face.
With arms stained to red, she pushes herself up. She wants him to crawl out from beneath her. She wants him to escape. “Run, my child, run.”
He does not run. He does not move. He waits, as he always does, for the flames to overtake him and the world to burn alive.
The wounds on his chest scream.
Aeduan thrashed awake. Thirty paces away, the Earth Well burbled, steam rising off its moving waters. Tendrils that lifted into the night, circling past beech trees with summer plumage despite the winter nearby. No snow touched here; grass grew; and the air was warmer than it had any right to be. Which had made it a logical place for camping.
Overhead, the bright column of stars that Cartorrans called the Sleeping Giant sparkled down, almost bright enough to outshine the moon. It felt bigger this high in the mountains, and there was a sharpness to it from the cold, as if the moon’s yellow edges were chipped out of stone.
Aeduan’s horse nickered. Then pawed at the first stones edging around the Well. Surefoot was a squat gray beast with a constellation of white spots across her rump and a comfort with mountains unmatched by any man.
Aeduan trusted her with his life. She’d carried him without wavering for almost a month now, one mission after another, always in the name of the Cahr Awen.
“I hear you, girl,” he murmured as he hauled himself to his feet. “You’re hungry again. You need to pace yourself, though. These fresh offerings from the Hasstrels won’t last forever.”
As despairing as the main estate had been, the stables had been clean, warm, and fully stocked. The fon Grieg brothers cared about their horses—a reminder that even the worst humans usually had a good side. (And the best humans almost always had a bad.)
After offering Surefoot fresh apples to go with the grass she’d already cleared, Aeduan turned his attention to the Well. He had never been here before, although he knew of it. Iseult had come here; she had healed these waters with Safiya; and what had once been dormant for centuries now thrived again—all because they really were the Cahr Awen.
Without thinking, Aeduan reached out with his Bloodwitchery. It was a habit. An instinct. A need. Think of Iseult. Reach for the silver taler. But she wasn’t within the range of his magic, and Aeduan already knew that. She was a hundred leagues away, at a hunting lodge near the Solfatarra.
Aeduan ran his tongue over his teeth. One heartbeat passed. Two. Then he strode all the way to the Well’s edge and stared into the waters. Despite never having been here, never having seen this Well or watched its waters roil, there was a familiarity that seeped through the night.
And the waters, he was quite certain, stared back at him. Because long ago these waters had been alive.
A thousand years ago, they had been Exalted Ones—not that Aeduan had known that when suddenly one of their souls had been shoved inside of him. All he’d known was that one moment, he was himself. The next, he was drowning and a Paladin named Nadje had controlled his body.
Once, as a young boy living near Saldonica, Aeduan had seen a bear forced to dance by a Herdwitch. All life had been sapped from the poor beast’s eyes. There had been nothing left but broken resignation.
That was how Aeduan had felt when the Paladin had been trapped inside him. Nadje had been a Paladin of Aether before death had claimed him a thousand years ago. Now, fragments of Nadje still lingered inside Aeduan—not the man’s ghost so much as memories, hazy and illogical. Like a song from childhood in which the words are gone, but the tune still remains.
And that tune from Nadje had been one of pain. One of hatred and anger and, inexplicably, relief for when the end had finally come for him. What end that was, though, Aeduan couldn’t remember.
Nor did he want to remember. He wanted that cruel Paladin out of his mind, his bones, his blood. He wanted no memories or songs or fury to ever linger there. Iseult had told Aeduan that over time, these remnants of Nadje would likely fade. That these Threads, now unbound to him, would eventually drift away into the embrace of the Moon Mother.
But it hadn’t happened yet, and it wasn’t happening fast enough.
Aeduan sank to one knee at the Well’s edge. Nearby, Surefoot stopped her chewing and snuffed. Aeduan ignored her either way, dipping his hand down. Gently, warily.
The water lapped on a sudden wave. It splashed against his fingertips, warm and welcoming. No sentience or hunger or hints of a soul from a thousand years ago.
Now Aeduan was the one to snuff, in a harsh, almost hateful laugh. Because he was being a coward. Of course this Well could not possess him. Assuming any ghost still endured as Nadje’s had within the Aether Well, there was no Leopold the Fourth here to force such a being into Aeduan’s body.
He is Trickster, Iseult had explained weeks ago, from our legends. He can return souls to bodies just like the tale of the girl and her hedgehog.
Aeduan had been too embarrassed to admit he scarcely remembered the Nomatsi gods, much less the fables and stories his father had once told him. The only one he recalled with any clarity was the monster and the honey—and he hated that story. Collect the six pots of honey, little monster, and you can become a man. In the end, the monster didn’t become a man; because in the end, the Moon Mother broke her promise to him.
Aeduan swallowed. Wet his lips. Then, with an almost frantic speed, he stripped out of his clothes. Cloak, baldric, breeches, shirt, undergarments. Night air—winter laced with enticing heat—stroked his skin and raised chill bumps across him.
He dove into the Well. Water lashed into him, subsuming him with its wild churn. And with a sparkle that he had felt before, inside the Aether Well. One not of ghosts but of a healing embrace.
Within moments, Aeduan surfaced and let his legs float. He drifted on his back, the waters bubbling beneath him, sending him on a lazy course across the Well as he stared at the sky. At the Sleeping Giant, always pointed north.
A sky singing with snow, his magic murmured inside his chest. Meadows drenched in moonlight. Sun and sand and auburn leaves falling. It was not a scent Aeduan recognized, nor one he remembered ever having smelled before.
And it also was not a scent that was here. Instead, this was a memory plucked into being from the Old One, Nadje.
Inexplicably, the scent made Aeduan’s chest hurt. His heart hollowed out in one sharp twist as if he’d lost a piece of himself—the only piece of himself that really mattered.
Monster. Demon. I can smell it on you: you’re bound to the Void.
Run, my child, run.
Aeduan flipped onto his side. In four swift kicks, he reached the Well’s lip. He pulled himself free, water sluicing off him. Then he sat on the stony edge, legs still in the water, and crooked over to study his chest.
The six old wounds had reopened. For years, they had bled and haunted. Then they had seemed to heal—or at least stop their recurrent bleeding after Iseult had saved Aeduan’s life in the Aether Well.
But a week ago, the nightmares had returned and the wounds had begun their weeping again. They hurt too, as if the arrows from Aeduan’s childhood once more flamed through his mother’s body and into his own. He’d spent most of his life with that pain, just as he’d spent most of his nights with the nightmare of her corpse burning atop him.
Somehow, though, the intensity and cruelty of it all seemed far worse now after two months of freedom.
Fresh waves lapped against Aeduan’s calves, at odds with the cooling water that dripped down his chest and mixed with fresh blood. Dark rivulets gathered in the grooves of his abdomen and poured downward onto his thighs. Onto the stones.
Aeduan waited. And he waited. The wounds did not close up, but the echoes of his mother’s voice did fade, bit by bit. And the bleeding did slow. Then stanch entirely, while the pain eased into a softer heat.
Good. That was good.
After a quick scrub to clean away the blood, Aeduan stood. Winter air kissed and nipped against him as he strode to his discarded clothes. As he dressed, piece by piece, with Surefoot chewing audibly and watching him with drowsiness in her eyes.
“You can sleep, girl. I promise we’re safe here, and we won’t leave until first light—” Aeduan broke off. His bare toes had snagged on something unexpected. Something cold and slinking when there should be only stone.
A Hell-Bard’s noose, he realized as he hastily scooped a golden chain off the ground—and not one noose, but two. Both were split apart, no longer necklaces but simply strands of gold to glint across his hands.
Aeduan frowned, lifting the nooses and expecting his witchery to latch on to the fon Grieg brothers’ foul bloods. But no. These were different smells entirely, one of coastal storms and freshly turned soil. One of smokeless heat and a father weeping. Yet both scents also carried hints of the noose and cold iron.
Which matched the bloods of the two missing Hell-Bards: Zander and Lev.
For weeks, Safiya and Caden fitz Grieg—a bastard brother to Shitpants and Red—had been searching for these Hell-Bards. Aeduan himself had entered the Solfatarra three times to search for their bodies, since everyone had assumed they must be dead. They’d fallen from a flying machine; they could not have survived the acid lake waiting below.
But there had never been any corpses in the Solfatarra for Aeduan to find, and the mystery of Zander’s and Lev’s disappearance had stopped being his problem. He’d been sent away on errands. New coins, new causes, new Griegs with things the Empress needed.
Aeduan thrust both chains into a pocket on his breeches, and with hasty efficiency, he finished dressing. Already, his magic was peaking, searching, tracking. The Earth Well had left its mark inside his witchery; he would have no trouble tracing which way these bloods had gone.
After checking Surefoot possessed what she needed—a warm spot to sleep and a bucket of water—he gave her a scratch at the ears. Pressed his forehead to hers. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised. Then Aeduan set off, tracking the smells like the Bloodwitch he was, no matter what element he might be bound to.