Chapter 26
The next day, Safi wasn’t doing well.
On the bright side, she hadn’t suffered a single headache since leaving the hunting lodge. Her brain felt keen, her body a thousand pounds lighter. And only in the absence of that pressure and that pain could she fully grasp how much agony she’d been living under.
On the shitty, not-so-bright side, Safi’s arm felt like a volcano bleeding lava, and it was basically the only thing she could think about. The sharpest heat radiated from the hole in her arm, where the iron shot had pierced skin. But the pain wasn’t contained there; she hurt all the way from her left ear down to her left fingernails. And while she was pretty sure she’d stopped bleeding now, she was also pretty sure she might die.
Because what she hadn’t told Iseult—or Aeduan either—was that it wasn’t a normal iron shot that had pierced her. It had been a Firewitched pistol, and the shot itself had been Firewitched too. As in, bewitched with a magic that would create flames inside her body, slowly burning her from the inside out.
She’d learned of such weapons as a child. Habim, after all, was a Firewitch and such weapons were a favored tool of the Marstoki Empire. Safi had also seen plenty of these Firewitched weapons up close during her time in the Marstoki Empire as Empress Vaness’s personal Truthwitch.
In other words: she knew when she was screwed.
Each jolt of Dandelion on uneven terrain made Safi’s brain melt. Each gust of wind across the plains made her skin burn. She was boiling inside her furs, but she knew the fever was a lie. If she took off her clothes to relieve the heat, she would freeze . . . and she wouldn’t even feel it happening.
She did lower her scarf out of desperation, savoring each icy gust of Arithuanian winds. Pretending that those winds were cooling her, healing her, helping her.
At lunch, she was half tempted to take the Painstone Iseult offered again . . . but if things were this bad now, then she had to assume they were only going to get worse. So Safi gritted her teeth, forced out a smile—false, false, false—and refused the magical relief that was offered to her.
By midafternoon, she was starting to worry that losing consciousness might actually be the greater risk. In fact, she was quite certain the only reason she hadn’t yet collapsed was because the Cahr Awen souls inside her wouldn’t allow it. They were so close to the Air Well; they would not let her turn back. It literally felt like they solidified her muscles, her spine and limbs. You will stay upright and you will keep riding. That pain is unimportant. All that matters is the Well.
Yes, Safi agreed—although only because she had to agree with them. And to keep herself distracted and awake, she made herself turn all of her attention onto Aeduan. The monk rode diagonally behind her, his posture unrelenting on Surefoot’s back. His white cloak a billowing, intimidating thing around him and his face hidden inside his hood.
Really, Safi had no idea what Iseult saw in him. He was bad at cards, worse at smiling, and worst of all at conversation. Admittedly, he’d stayed true to his word last night and said not a thrice-damned thing about Safi’s fever or her weakness or all the agony he must be smelling on her blood. But still, he was so boring. The only way to get any glimmer of character out of him was to pester him until he cracked.
“You tried to kill us,” Safi said, nudging Dandelion up to Surefoot’s side. “Several times, in fact.” Each word that came out was stronger than the last. “I think you owe us an apology. Me and Iseult, I mean. I’m sure the horses are fine.”
“No.” This was all Aeduan said.
“Come on now, Knifey—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“—it isn’t hard to admit wrongdoing. They even say it’s good for you. Healing for the soul, apparently.” Safi pressed her uninjured hand to her chest. Her clothes were slick with sweat, but at least she was having fun. “I don’t know how true that is since I myself have never done anything wrong, but I do trust advice shared by the general they.”
“No.” This time, Aeduan rolled his wrists—and Safi couldn’t help but smile.
“You tried to kill us.”
“I tried to capture you.”
“Which almost resulted in our deaths, making it the same in the end.”
Aeduan’s fingers tightened on Surefoot’s reins. “It is not my fault you were inept.”
“Inept?” Safi gasped. “You do recall that Iseult and I are the Cahr Awen, so by default, we are the opposite of inept. We are . . . ept.”
“I don’t include Iseult in my assessment.”
Safi scoffed. It came out weaker than she wanted, and her vision smeared with the effort. Not good. “If you won’t apologize,” she made herself continue, “then how about a thank-you? I am, after all, the one who introduced you to Iseult, and you two seem to like each other very much.”
Now Aeduan’s eyes flashed red. An excellent development. “No.”
“Knifey, you have to work with me on this. We’re going to be together a long time, I think. Assuming you and Iseult really are—”
“Leave him alone,” Iseult barked from Cloud’s back. She yanked her scarf down to give Safi the full severity of her death glare.
And Safi hoisted her eyebrows innocently. “Well, why don’t you thank me then, Iz? Someone here owes me some gratitude. At the very least, these are all my horses from my imperial stables.”
“I take it you’re feeling better?”
“Much.” Lie, Safi’s magic scraped—and as if in agreement, the flames in her arm fanned hotter. She had to fight to keep her face from changing. She prayed her Threads wouldn’t give her away.
A frown tightened on Iseult’s forehead.
“I am ravenous, though,” Safi continued. Lie, lie, lie. “When do you think we’ll stop to make camp?” She batted her lashes. Innocent. Pure. She was not dying by degrees, but rather a hungry Truthwitch who liked the beating wind against her face.
Iseult glanced at Aeduan, and he—to his credit—stared straight back with all the enthusiasm of a dead fish slowly rotting on the Veñaza City harbor. Well done, Knifey, Safi thought at him. Iseult might not trust Safi’s reactions, but she definitely trusted Aeduan’s.
And while part of Safi felt dishonest, manipulative, and generally terrible for lying to her Threadsister, most of her was simply glad that Aeduan was willing to ally with her in this. They had to reach the Well.
“We should travel as far as we can before nightfall,” Iseult answered eventually, gesturing to the horizon. “That storm is getting closer, and I’d like to reach the forests east of Poznin before it breaks. Can you ride any faster, Safi? The hills ahead are less overgrown. We could pick up the pace.”
No! Safi wanted to scream. My gods, no! But she couldn’t scream that, couldn’t scream anything at all. They had to keep moving forward; she couldn’t—wouldn’t—be the reason they slowed enough for more raiders to ambush them.
“Yes,” she gritted out. “Let’s ride.” She waited until Iseult had turned her attention to Cloud before looking again at Aeduan. He drew back his hood, just enough that Safi could more easily see his face in the grayness of the day.
“Well?” she said with more edge than he deserved. “Are you going to help?”
He blinked—a movement Safi was starting to recognize as an acknowledgment. But rather than do as Safi expected, with his eyes glowing and his magic taking hold of her, he simply leaned toward her, hand extended.
A small chunk of rose quartz glittered on his palm. A Painstone. He must have snuck it from the healer kit when Iseult wasn’t looking. “Use it,” he commanded softly. “And I will save the other measures for later.”
Safi swallowed. Somehow Aeduan’s arm was completely still beside her, even though Surefoot ambled beneath him.
The Painstone flashed and shone.
Safi yanked it to her and shoved it down the front of her shirt. The quartz touched her damp skin. Relief soared through her. Up her chest, into her shoulder, and then down, down into the flames. The magic wouldn’t heal the injury, but it would deplete the fires of air so they couldn’t blaze quite so brightly.
“Go,” Aeduan now ordered. “Before Iseult notices us.”
Safi nodded. She didn’t say thank you, she didn’t say anything. Her voice was caught somewhere in her abdomen, the relief from pain so great she thought she might start crying. She dug her heels into Dandelion and let her gelding shoot her forward. Jolt, jolt, jolt.
Behind her, the Bloodwitch followed, Iseult trailing last.
Iseult knew Safi was lying. She wasn’t a fool; she could see Safi’s Threads, for one, and for two, she knew Safi’s false bravado as intimately as she knew her own. Where Iseult would become more stoic, more centered to push through pain . . .
Safi just got louder.
Iseult had seen Aeduan give Safi the Painstone, just as she’d seen when he took it from the healer kit. Why Safi would accept it from him and not Iseult, Iseult decided not to ask. For now, she was simply grateful that Aeduan apparently had greater powers of persuasion than she, since there were two potential paths Iseult saw before them: they could continue going slower, stopping often to accommodate Safi’s pain. Then the storm would almost certainly crack down right overtop their heads. Or else the raiders that must be hunting would catch up.
Or their trio could push through Safi’s pain and try to reach the safety of a distant forest before the storm unloaded and raiders arrived.
Option two was clearly better, and now that Safi’s Threads had changed—gone were the skittering, frantic lightning bolts of pain, replaced by something muted and calm—Iseult felt as if they could finally push hard.
So she rode them all as fast as the terrain would allow. Each league their horses carried them, the closer they got to the storm clouds. The winds bared their fangs. The temperature plummeted. When Iseult finally spotted a darkening line on the horizon—a shadow to disrupt the endless grass and snow—she cried out with a sound of uncharacteristic exuberance. Because there. There. They would make it, and they could finally pause their relentless, ruthless ride. Safi could rest properly. The terrain would protect them from storm and raiders alike.
Cloud’s hooves churned over the grassy earth. A thunderous beat. Faster, faster. The horse saw what was ahead; she understood that in the forest she too would find relief and rest and safety.
But the wind fought against Iseult and Cloud. It brought tears to Iseult’s eyes. It threatened to rip her scarf from her face. She glanced back to check that Aeduan and Safi were coming. That they too rejoiced in the forest ahead—
A funnel of wind tackled her, so hard it almost knocked her from Cloud’s back. The horse veered like a drunkard.
And that was when Iseult finally sensed it: Threads hurtling toward her, not from the Windswept Plains, but from the sky. She looked up, time sagging. Her vision smearing. Again? They would be ambushed again?
“Windwitches!” Aeduan roared, and yes. He was right. Two shadows streaked this way.
Iseult had been so focused on avoiding raiders in the grass like yesterday, she had failed to keep vigil on the sky.
For half a moment, Iseult gazed at the forest—so near, yet still impossibly far. If she pushed their horses to the brink, could they reach those trees ahead?
Logic quickly thrust in: You cannot outrun a Windwitch.
“Control their bloods if you can,” she commanded Aeduan, yanking Cloud to an unkind stop. Then Iseult was on the ground, frozen grass snapping beneath her.
Aeduan dismounted too. Safi did not. Her Threads were past suffusion by pain and verged on unconsciousness. It was a wonder she was still on Dandelion’s back.
Iseult reached with her magic, latching her focus on to the Windwitches. Four sets of Threads, each vibrantly yellow from their magic. She spread her fingers, teeth grinding against the heat she knew would come when she grabbed their lives, their emotions, their powers . . .
It had been a month since she’d last done this; she had sworn never to do it again. But sometimes Threads made decisions the mind could not. Sever, sever.
Her fingers twined into Threads. One Windwitch, two. Both were fully visible now, and their arms high. Their Threads bright with an imminent attack.
Iseult hauled the Threads to her mouth and chomped down.
There was the heat. There was the skittering from the wild electricity of their power. And oh Moon Mother, there were the Severed Threads of the slow cleaving. These people too were dying. Fire cut into Iseult’s teeth, into her gums. Through her eyeballs and down to her toes. These Windwitches were so close to cleaving on their own, she barely had to bite to finish the job.
Except now, as Iseult tried to hold on to them—as she tried to claim some of their witcheries as her own so she could fight any other forces that might be coming this way—she found she couldn’t. The Threads wouldn’t obey her. They wouldn’t stay woven around her fingers. Instead they were shriveling, burning like fuses downward.
And these two fully cleaving Windwitches were about to crash into Iseult, Aeduan, and Safi. “RIDE!” Iseult roared at Safi as she slapped Dandelion’s hindquarters.
The horse bolted—and Cloud too, just behind. Only Surefoot stayed back, seemingly unafraid of the hot, unnatural winds tornadoing this way.
Aeduan stood beside Iseult, his eyes aflame as if he searched for their blood scents. The winds had ripped back his hood, and now shadows slid across his face from the snow and debris carried on unnatural winds.
But he had no more success than Iseult did. The Windwitches arrived: two women dressed in furs not so different from Iseult’s own.
Nomatsis, she realized as she watched them crash to the earth . . . then writhe back to their feet. Somehow, this was the worst thing to have happened so far. To be faced with two women of her heritage. Two women who prayed to the same Moon Mother.
Iseult couldn’t look at them. She lowered her head, pressed herself into their winds, and unsheathed her mismatched moon scythes. She charged the two Cleaved as they rushed her. Pustules erupted on their faces, spewing tar into their winds. Their lips curled back like they were feral animals, desperate to feed. And that was what they were, weren’t they? They were hungry for pure magic, good magic.
Just as their goddess was.
Iseult reached the taller of the two Nomatsis and swung at the woman’s throat. The furs split apart, then the throat split apart too. But Iseult didn’t get all the way through to the spine before the second Windwitch was upon her.
Iseult toppled to the earth. So fast, she didn’t have time to withdraw her claw scythe from the first Windwitch’s neck. Snarls filled Iseult’s ears. Oil and heat razed her skin. She grappled and fought, both with her body and with her magic. Maybe she could control the Threads. Maybe she could still run.
The woman went completely stiff atop Iseult. It took her several booming heartbeats to notice—to see that the woman was choking and her eyes were losing clarity.
The Windwitch died like that, on top of Iseult. Her winds sliced off, and for half a lung-crushed breath, there was no sound but the wavering grass to fill Iseult’s ears.
Then Aeduan was there and dragging away the woman his magic had ended. “We can’t stay,” he said. His eyes blazed red as a funeral pyre. “More witches are coming. Raiders too.”
Iseult flung out her magic, grasping across the earth and hills and sky. He was right: at least a hundred people marched this way, clearing paths through the grass and snow.
Panic clogged her throat. She felt as she had when the Marstoks had taken Safi away in Lejna. When Emperor Henrick had carved away Safi’s magic to make her a Hell-Bard. When Corlant had looked at Iseult beside the Solfatarra and crooned My daughter.
She was helpless. Completely helpless, no matter how wicked she let herself be. The Threads would not be twisted. She could cleave, but she could not control. She could kill, but she could not dominate.
“I c-cannot control them,” she said as Aeduan helped her stand.
“Then let’s ride.” He tried to pull Iseult toward Surefoot, but she resisted.
“Safi,” she told him. “Go after Safi and keep her safe. I will buy us time.”
His head reared back, eyes widening. The blood within them draining in a single heartbeat. “No.” He reached for Iseult with more urgency. “There is no reason for that. Come, and we can both get away.”
“No, listen to me.” She clutched his bicep and pressed her face close to his. His eyes were such pure, icy blue, she’d once thought them the color of Threads of understanding.
She needed him to be understanding right now.
“I can’t c-control their Threads, Aeduan. I can’t force them to fight for us. All I can do is cleave as many as possible, then h-hope they attack each other.”
“No.” He fumbled for her face. His fingers were so cold. “I won’t leave you, Iseult.”
“And I won’t give you a choice.” Winds thrashed harder; Iseult felt the charge of untamed magic on the way. She touched her forehead to his. “Go, Monk Aeduan. I command you: find the light-bringer and keep her safe until I can come after you.”
Aeduan didn’t move. The war brewing inside him was visible in the quaver of his pupils. In the hardening of his touch against her cheeks. He wanted to disobey Iseult. He wanted to fight with all he had inside him to keep her safe.
But in the end, he had taken his vow. He had named the dark-giver his master. He knew he had to let Iseult claim his Aether and guide his blade.
She laid her hands over his, feeling the frozen skin. The muscles below. His hands had held her in so many ways. As enemies, as allies, as friends.
“I love you,” she said. “Te varuje.” She kissed him. He stiffened for half a moment against her . . . then he leaned into her lips. One hand clutched the back of her head, fingers curling in her scarf. He held her tighter, tighter against him. A panicked kiss with clashing teeth and no time—no time.
Iseult broke away first. “I love you,” she told him again.
“I will find you” was all he replied.
Chapter 27
When Safi had been young, she’d gone swimming in a lake near the Hasstrel estate. The night had been hot, and there’d been guests at the estate she hadn’t wanted to deal with. So after sneaking out of the family castle, she’d hurried through the nearby evergreens and embraced the shadows.
Once at the lake, its surface a perfect mimicry of the starry sky, she’d stripped off her clothes and dived in. Down she’d swum. Down, down, savoring the silence. Relishing the cool. The pressure increased against her skull. Her eyeballs were compressing and her lungs felt like bursting.
It was a good feeling. A living feeling after too much time indoors hiding her magic.
Until something brushed against Safi’s leg and terror lashed through her. Then she writhed and kicked. She’d still been young enough to believe in the tales of mountain bats, and everyone knew they sometimes liked to swimwhen there were children nearby.
But Safi was too deep for the stars’ light to reach her. She saw nothing.
So she tried to surface, tried to swing her arms and haul herself upward . . . but she only made it a few strokes before she realized she had no idea which way was up. She’d swum so deep and lost so much air from her lungs, she wasn’t floating. For all she knew, she might be swimming toward the night or she might be swimming deeper.
Panic really set in then. It was as if the Void itself had swallowed her, and now she was going to die. Who would find her body? Would it be eaten to bits by a mountain bat? Would anyone even notice she was gone?
Her toes hit something hard. She stretched longer, and yes. That was substrate. Rocky, glorious substrate.
Without another thought—there was no time—Safi kicked hard at the lakebed and swam. No mountain bats ate her, and soon, the shadows shifted as bright mountain stars cut through the water.
When she surfaced, her lungs were a conflagration. She gulped. Her vision spun. There was a very real danger she might pass out, so she made herself flip upward and lie on her back. Breathe. Breathe. Float. Float.
Eventually, Safi made it back to shore. Eventually, shivering and broken, she hauled herself onto the rocky edge and lay there until the stars stopped shaking and her lungs stopped aching. She hadn’t needed Habim or Uncle to inform her how stupid she’d just been. For some reason, Lady Fate had opted to spare her that night, and Safi never—not ever—swam alone or swam that deep again.
Yet now, here she was, trapped in the same shadowy unknown, and with no substrate to guide. True, true, true.She was in a forest with soft earth and barren winter beech trees. There was almost no snow here and even less undergrowth, and Dandelion listed and zagged so much in his panic, Safi had no idea which way would get them out of here.
Worse, her arm was on fire again. The Painstone’s numbing powers were finished, and the blaze was so much hotter than before—no longer confined to just her left side but sparking into her skull, into her chest and abdomen.
Safi squinted upward, trying to ignore how it made bile rise in her esophagus, but there was too much winter gray for the sun to pierce through. She couldn’t gauge which way was north. There could be no desperate final kicks to guide her home.
You can’t pass out, the Cahr Awen clamored. You’re so close to the Well. Just a little bit farther. But even those souls were not as powerful as the Firewitchery that had claimed Safi.
With a groan, she hauled herself off the saddle. Her left arm jostled. Pain stabbed, dazzling and fresh. She had to screw her eyes shut and wait for the wave to pass.
When she lifted her lids again, Dandelion was staring at her expectantly. His breaths whitened the air; he looked as lost as Safi felt. And Cloud—she was no better. She had moved closer to Dandelion, her ears swiveled forward as if she awaited her next command.
No, Safi thought as Dandelion’s ears also swiveled. They hear something. Iseult and Aeduan—it had to be Iseult and Aeduan. They had followed her tracks and were here to rescue her.
Except when no sounds actually reached Safi’s ears, she realized that whomever approached was moving with such quiet care, they could not possibly be an ally.
Cloud whinnied, and Dandelion’s tail flipped in a way that said, I don’t feel safe here.
“Me neither,” Safi croaked, and for several moments, she felt stronger. Clearer. She unsheathed her blade. It sang with such truth that for several seconds, it was the only sound she heard. An empowering echo that shivered inside her ear canals.
Another whinny, this time from Dandelion, and when Safi spun toward him, she spotted four figures rushing her way. They were dressed in gray, faces hidden behind scarves like her own, and they moved with the concerted strength of trained military. Gone was any attempt at quiet. Now they were coming for her.
Shit. She could not fight four soldiers. Even on a good day, those would not be odds for a betting woman like herself. And on a bad day? Hilarious to contemplate.
Safi dropped her blade and lifted her good hand. “I surrender!” she shouted. “I surrender. Take me to the Raider King.”
Aeduan’s worst fears had come to pass. He’d failed again, and now the consequences were so much worse.
He should have sensed the witches approaching. He should have killed that Windwitch before it could attack Iseult. He should have moved faster, thought faster, reacted better. And he should not have been born the son of the Raider King. It was that, above all else, that haunted him. Where had his father gone so wrong? Why had he, Aeduan, served his father for as long as he had without seeing it?
One need not be evil to become it.
Aeduan thrust all his power into Surefoot, pushing the mountain horse to speeds she could never sustain without his help. It was not a magic he used often, if he could help it. For one, animals’ blood was a challenge to control. The freedom in their bloods ran wild; it took twice the effort to manipulate an animal as a human.
For two . . .
Well, that same freedom sparkling and alive only ever served to remind Aeduan that what he did was wrong. Demon. Monster.
He thought of Boots.
He thought of crocodiles.
Then he squeezed the reins more tightly on Surefoot’s blood and told her where to go. She trusted Aeduan; she didn’t resist his magic and she didn’t resist the speed he pulsed into her muscles.
In some ways, it was good that he was on her back. It meant he had to focus so completely on propelling Surefoot faster that he couldn’t look back or second-guess Iseult’s command.
No one followed him toward the forest.
He hadn’t thought they would. After all, Aeduan’s father wanted the Cahr Awen. His son was merely a disappointment who now stood in the way.
There was a part of him that wondered if he should try to return to his father again, claim he had been serving the cause this entire time. Then he could do the one thing Iseult so badly wanted to protect him from: he could kill his father.
Except going to Ragnor was not the command Iseult had given Aeduan, and Safi would die from her wound if Aeduan didn’t find her. His jaw ached. His knuckles too. He gripped Surefoot’s reins as if they were driftwood in a storm. Go after the light-bringer and keep her safe. That was all he had to do. He did not have to plan ahead. He didn’t have to debate whether he should be here or he should have followed Iseult instead.
I love you. Te varuje.
Why hadn’t he said the words in return? Why was he obeying her instead of chasing after? Coin and the cause, coin and the cause. She’d been right: he had no idea how to live without someone else to command him.
The forest ahead was a black haze across pale grass. Never had he seen trees look less welcoming. The storm that hung above siphoned all light. All life.
Distantly, he wondered why this storm never broke.
At last, he and Surefoot reached the trees. The ground softened and flattened into a forested floodplain. The winds stopped their constant howl, and Aeduan was able to ease his control over Surefoot’s blood.
She slowed. Then stopped entirely.
Aeduan slung off her back, worried she might collapse. That he’d pushed her too hard, and it would be one more creature he had failed to save. But when he studied Surefoot’s face, he found her unharmed. Her breaths were overloud in the sudden silence of this forest, her eyes were wide and terrified . . . but she was all right.
She was all right.
Aeduan lifted his nose, forcing his magic to rise again. He wanted to reach for Iseult’s silver taler first—then he would reach for Safi’s blood. But that was when the six old wounds decided to awaken. Spasms of torture across his chest. He cried out. He slumped over, eyesight crossing and ears ringing. And the fire—the flames. They started in the wounds but didn’t stay there. They lanced outward like wildfires spread by wind.
He imagined he saw arrows with fletching poking from his ribs. He tried to grab one. To yank it out. But of course, there was nothing there.
Surefoot’s face butted into Aeduan’s. She snuffed; her hot breaths steamed. Slowly, the ringing receded. The pain and cold too.
He rasped in air. Again, again, feeling how his heartbeat shuddered through him. Into his lungs pierced by arrows, down toward his abdomen. What was this weakness? This curse? Safi had said it wasn’t cleaving, but it waswrong. Was it some lingering effect from the old one, Nadje? Or some new ailment he would never escape?
You’re bound to the Void, a cursed beast with ’Matsi poison running in your veins.
Aeduan grappled once more for his magic.
This time it obeyed. Weakly, sullenly, but there for the commanding—and Aeduan’s command was to search for the silver taler. He reached until he felt the faintest stirrings of his own blood smeared on silver.
Iseult had moved. In fact, she was aimed for a different part of the forest at this precise moment. That was all Aeduan could sense—not if Iseult was alive, safe, running, or fighting. But it gave him energy and hope. She was near; he would find her after he found the Truthwitch. Then they would all leave this awful forest together.
For Aeduan understood now why this place might have been left unguarded by his father. There was something else at work here. A different danger. An uncanny force he didn’t want to reckon with.
Surefoot whinnied quietly, as if to say Hello? Human? What are you doing? He stroked her neck. Then forced himself to straighten and turn away from the silver taler, away from the dark-giver . . . and toward the light-bringer.
The Truthwitch could not have ridden far in her current state. She had a vibrant blood, made all the more unmissable by her wound and blooming fever. Yet when Aeduan sent his magic stretching out again, he sensed nothing. Yes, Safi had left traces of her blood. Remnants floating like moths. But the physicality of her was nowhere nearby.
Aeduan swallowed and let his hand fall from Surefoot’s warmth. He let his magic fall too. It shrank inward, tail between its legs. I am too tired for this. Give me rest and peace!
He couldn’t do that. He had sensed Safi’s scent to the east, so east he aimed, guiding Surefoot with him. Once at the spot where he’d sensed Safi’s blood, he hauled out his magic anew. Reach, stretch, find. There. He let his magic hide again; he resumed his tired trek with Surefoot.
Twice he wondered if it would help him to dig out the Truth-lens. Maybe it would sense its creator; maybe its magic was still somehow threaded to Safi.
But Aeduan resisted. He didn’t like the way that witchery felt. He didn’t want to have to stare directly in the face of truth.
So on and on he and Surefoot traveled, and bit by bit, they made progress. The undergrowth vanished in some places to reveal hoofprints that must have come from Dandelion or Cloud. Or he would snag a taste of the Truthwitch’s blood scent and know she’d gone this way.
He lost sense of daylight. The forest and its ever-present storm felt beyond the passage of time. Here, it was gray whether night had fallen or not. Here, the wind did not reach and the world did not change. Only the river, expanding and growing and sinking into the porous, hungry earth had any power.
It made Aeduan think of his time trapped and drowning inside his own body. When Nadje had ruled him and he’d felt no hope. Could that Exalted One be the source of this bloodied weeping from his chest?
A sound reached his ears: horses huffing, stamping. A clink like tack. Then a soft whinny to curve and slide around beech and pine trunks.
The Truthwitch.
Aeduan shoved ahead, leaving Surefoot behind as he kicked into a run. He grabbed hold of his magic, yanking it out with almost painful cruelty. There are the mountain ranges and cliffsides, there are the meadows filled with dandelions and the truth hidden beneath snow. The blood scent was weak, but then Aeduan was weak too.
He spotted shapes in the forest ahead. Two horses. One a splash of brown, the other a smear of gray. They both nickered, and one reared slightly as Aeduan stomped through the undergrowth toward them. He was close enough now to see their eyes widening and ears perking. He was close enough to know they were afraid of his rapid, wild approach . . .
And then he was close enough to see the clearing held only Cloud and Dandelion. There were markings and boot prints in the snow, but no Safiya.
Aeduan cast his magic wider. He grasped and felt . . . but Safi was gone.
The gelding reared as Aeduan came to halt before him. His eyes rolled, and Aeduan lifted his hands. “Whoa, Dandelion. Whoa.” His voice was much too loud. The horses were much too loud. This was not a place for hope or life. Here, everything drowned.
Surefoot trudged into the clearing. She needed rest. So did Cloud and Dandelion. Aeduan would have to continue alone. His worst fears might have come to pass—and Lady Fate’s knife might have turned against him—but he couldn’t abandon the cause yet. The light-bringer needed him. The dark-giver needed him.
Hope dies last, he thought, knowing instantly that it was not his own thought, but a ghostly memory from Nadje. Hope dies last.
Aeduan set off again.
Chapter 28
After binding Safi’s hands, Safi’s captors hauled her onto a horse—one of their own, since they left Dandelion and Cloud behind.
For some reason, this made Safi want to weep. She’d thought she could feel nothing but magma right now, yet an oceanic hole split her chest. She had to fight the tears, had to pump false authority into her voice: “How far are we traveling?” She spoke in Marstoki, of course, for these raiders spoke Marstoki—and she had to assume that meant they were Baedyeds.
The woman riding with Safi blatantly ignored the question.
“I only ask,” Safi continued, “because I’m in a lot of pain. I got shot in the arm—by a Marstoki one-shot pistol, actually. And you know how much damage those can do. This one was even Firewitched, so not only have I lost a lot of blood, I seem to be cursed as well.” She paused here, having to suck in a breath. “It’s quite unpleasant.”
False, her magic laughed. It is so much more than unpleasant.
“There should be a healing kit in my gelding’s saddlebag,” Safi added. “As well as some Painstones. If we could just go back to get him—”
“Shut up,” barked the Baedyed riding at the fore. He glared, his eyes dark holes surrounded by pale scarves. First he looked at Safi. Then at the woman riding with her. “If she speaks again, gag her.”
Safi grimaced. A gag would not do right now. She was already on the verge of vomiting; a gag would make that worse. So she bit her tongue and tried very hard to focus on what little horizon she could see through the forest. The trees were beeches, the underbrush mostly moss over peat. But the ground, she couldn’t help but notice, was softening, eating up each hoof fall.
They must be moving west toward the river, toward Poznin.
And therefore toward the Raider King.
Gods below, everything had gone to goat tits, hadn’t it? Clearly the intel on the Raider King’s forces had been wrong. Or else, her brain prodded with surprising clarity, the Raider King was simply being smart.
An old lesson from Habim percolated to Safi’s mental surface: If the enemy is too small to target, then restrict their range of movement. Make them come to you. This was a battlefield tactic for dealing with stealth units that larger battalions struggled to fight—and it would seem it was precisely what Ragnor the Raider King had done to Safi, Iseult, and Aeduan. He had attacked them from one direction, which had sent them running into a trap.
Safi frowned, her gaze fastening on the Baedyed riding ahead. Then on the raider walking across the earth in front of him.
When Habim had taught her and Iseult about battlefield tactics, he’d used real-world examples from the battles he had led. Against Baedyed raiders in the Sand Sea. These raiders right here.
She compressed her lips. It was one thing to learn lessons about faceless, distant enemies. It was quite another to ride with those enemies and realize that not only did they, in fact, have faces . . . but the reason those faces were here, in Arithuania, was because of the strategies General Habim Fashayid had used against them.
Do not vomit. Do not vomit. She fell forward. Her arm burned, her stomach revolted.
“She is fading,” her companion barked. Then arms slid around Safi to hold her upright.
The man walking at the front called back, “Ride on. We will catch up to you.”
The horse beneath her kicked into a fluid gallop, and the entire forest bled into a hazy, dreamlike blur. The pain was so intense in Safi’s arm that it felt as if her consciousness had simply given up and said, Nope, this is too much for me. But rather than drag her into darkness, it clambered outside her body and watched the scene unfold from a distance.
Tree trunks muddled past, the barks shifting from shapeless beeches to shapeless alders. The ground sucked up all sound. The canopy overhead thickened, not with leaves but with branches that wove and braided until they were almost a ceiling.
And onward the horse galloped. Steady, true. A three-beat rhythm that rocked through Safi in a disconnected unreality. Even the flames in her arm seemed to fade, until she found herself cold. So, so cold.
This is what we call death, she thought, but she lacked the strength to escape its widening arms—even as the Cahr Awen souls were waking up again, were shouting and jostling and clamoring: NO. YOU NEED TO STAY ALIVE AND REACH THE WELL.
It was only when the Baedyed reined their horse to a stop that Safi realized she was no longer in a forest. That snow no longer covered the ground, but only mossy peat and mud. And that the shapes and shadows surrounding her were not trees but instead makeshift tents and hovels.
And people. So many people. They were dressed in all manner—some in Purist gray, some in Nomatsi-style furs, and others with no discernible faction to mark them. They watched Safi pass, aggression on a few faces, but most only wearing fear.
The Baedyed woman dismounted, and a different woman, her blond hair in thick braids, strode up. She hauled Safi down, not roughly but not gently either. Safi’s vision crossed. She doubled over as soon as her feet sank into the earth. She was so cold. She was going to collapse onto the welcoming moss of this strange settlement and then she would never wake up again.
NO. YOU NEED TO STAY ALIVE AND REACH THE WELL.
Safi’s left arm was limp and agonizing. She wished the thrice-damned Cahr Awen souls would shut up and let her sleep. She wished she could vomit or pass out. Anything to end this pain.
Then, as if the souls were actually listening for once, they did quiet. Abruptly. They scattered from her skull like flies from a corpse, and Safi felt their fight drain from her body. The world around her silenced. She swung her gaze upward, stars flashing, to find a path had cleared through the people so a single man could pass. He was cast in shadow, but Safi didn’t need to see his face to know who he was.
The Raider King, she thought. Finally we come face-to-face.
He was not a towering man—the Lusquan woman stood taller—and he was thin. Rangy, even. He wore no crown, no adornments to glitter in the dim light. He was just a man, and distantly Safi appreciated that.
Her eyes sank shut. She let her head loll down, let the mossy earth take her. She wanted to fight, but there was nothing left in her to fight with. The Raider King had won, and this was how her story would end.
She didn’t even have the energy to feel grief or regret anymore.
The Raider King’s boots reached her. Worn brown leather that blended into the dark peat. A chime like buckles clinking. A huff like someone who was tired and . . . of all things, amused.
Then the man crouched before Safi and warm skin brushed her chin. “Domna,” he said softly. “Stay awake. A healer is on the way.”
For several moments, Safi didn’t understand what she was hearing. Domna? The Raider King must have heard I am no longer a domna. She dragged her eyes open. Forced her pupils to find the king’s face. It was veiled by such deep shadows that it had become half shadow itself. His hair was dark and cropped close, his eyes . . .
Ah, his eyes.
“Prince,” she rasped, her voice a tragic, dying thing. “Is it really you?”
“Hye,” he murmured as her magic suddenly woke inside her and sang with a warm, blissful truth. “It’s me, Safi.”
That was the last thing she heard before Merik’s arms scooped beneath her and blessed unconsciousness swept in.
Oh my gosh!! It's happening ❤️ So epic!! Cannot wait!
Next week can’t come soon enough!