Chapters 8 & 9, Witchlight
In which Vivia and Merik are just trying to get by...
First off: I’m sorry I missed YALLWest on Saturday. I would never have cancelled if I weren’t truly sick.
For anyone who was going to meet me and wanted a signed book, shoot me an email (susan at susandennard . com) or hit REPLY. Let me know how many you want + your mailing address! 😘
Second off: MORE WITCHLIGHT! We finished the Readalong on the Discord (but don’t worry! I know many of you are still reading and chatting—totally allowed and welcomed!), so I’ll share the latest extra content from that next week.
In the meantime, enjoy! We’re almost to the point in the story where Iseult and Safi finally weave in…
Chapter 8
The only light in the mountain room came from the hungry ice. It glowed its vicious blue, radiating in threatening waves—but not entering the room where Vivia, Cam, and Vaness had fled.
How long this room ran, Vivia couldn’t sense. Shadows laid claim so quickly beyond the door. She could see the room was tall, like the Battle Room in the Lovats palace . . . yet also oppressive. Claustrophobic. Closing in like a tomb.
She yanked her pack in front of her, and in seconds, she had their lone torch withdrawn. “Ignite,” she whispered.
Flames whooshed before her. So bright, so warm. And so revealing. On her left was Vaness, austere and silent. She looked different without her shackles—not weak, but certainly exposed. As for Cam, he was spinning. Muttering. Stalking two steps forward, then three steps back.
“I’m sorry.” He met Vivia’s gaze through the flames. “I’m so sorry. Empress Vaness was right: we should’ve never come here, but I’ll get us out. I promise.”
Vivia lifted a trembling hand to silence him. Her lungs hurt. Her face too, where ice had clawed. “You were not the one who made the decision to come here, Cam. And there is no use in regrets. All we can do is keep moving.”
“To where?” Vaness asked, her tone hissing and fanged. “I see no doors.”
“No, there is one,” Cam inserted quickly. “I remember this room—Ryber and I came right through it. It’s called the Past, and there was a broken blade and a . . . a broken mirror on an altar.” He pointed to the room’s center.
Vivia and Vaness both squinted—but if there was an altar there, Vivia couldn’t see it with only this one torch for light. By the Hagfishes, why did she bring only one torch? What other vital items did her foolish self leave behind?
She rubbed at her forehead. Stop. Breathe. Now was not the time for storm clouds to fill her chest.
“If we go past the altar . . .” Cam hurried forward three steps. “We’ll reach a door into a long tunnel that’ll eventually hit some stairs, and then . . . well, it’s a long walk, but it does get to the Convent.”
“And how,” the Empress pushed, “does the Convent help us, Cam? It’s in the middle of the Sirmayan Mountains, is it not?”
“Enough,” Vivia bit out. Her voice was weaker than she wanted, because her lungs were weaker. This wasn’t Cam’s fault—none of this was Cam’s fault and she would not let the Empress take such a tone with him. She, Vivia, had chosen to come here, so it was she, Vivia, who should be the target of Vaness’s rage.
“No regrets,” she repeated. “We keep moving. Lead the way, please, Cam.” Vivia lifted one leg to shuffle onward.
Until Vaness lashed her words directly at Vivia: “I refuse to move.”
“What?”
Vivia rounded the torch at her. Flames cast crude shapes on the Empress. On Cam. And on the walls, where carvings looked as if they scuttled and seethed.
“I refuse to move,” Vaness repeated, “unless I know that forward is the safest way out of here.”
“Well, we can’t go backward.” Vivia flung a hand at the ice. “It’s sealed off and certainly not safe.”
“We have supplies. We can wait for the ice to move again.”
“Unless it never does. Then what? Do you expect us to wait here for the rest of time? Be reasonable, Empress.”
“I was reasonable.” Her nostrils flared. “And you did not listen. Now here we are, in a dark, cursed room in a dark, cursed mountain with only one path forward that will probably lead to more ice for all we know.”
“Majesties,” Cam mumbled. Neither woman heard him.
“Is this because you lost your iron?” Vivia demanded. “Is that why you’re upset? Noden’s breath, here. Take my cutlass.” She unsheathed her blade.
“That is steel,” Vaness clipped out. “Not iron. It takes time for me to separate the iron from the charcoal and manipulate what I need. You know that I only do that for the most important—”
“Majesties,” Cam repeated.
“Take the cutlass anyway.” Vivia shoved it toward Vaness. “Then at least you’re armed. Or would you rather carry the torch? What would make you move from this room toward the other doorway—”
“Majesties!” Cam butted between them, his arms rising. Torchlight flashed on his dark eyes. “I forgot: the tunnel out of here has sleeping ice in it too. Although . . . maybe it’s not the hungry kind? There are all these shapes inside—which Ryber told me are the Sightwitches. So maybe, since the ice has already . . . been fed . . .” He trailed off, grimacing as both rulers gaped at him.
And there was the panic again, a thunderstorm in each of Vivia’s lungs. Always so stupid. Why did you come here, Little Fox? She wanted to scream at those words. Or maybe she wanted to hide. Vaness had warned her, but she hadn’t listened.
“Perhaps,” she squeezed out carefully, “the best course is to find out if this other ice is indeed hungry. Once we have an answer, we can make new plans.”
“And if it does try to eat us?” Vaness asked.
Vivia didn’t respond. Instead, she sheathed her sword—since Vaness wasn’t taking it—and met Cam’s wary gaze head on. “Lead the way, please, Cam.”
He gulped. Glanced once at Vaness. Then nodded and obeyed his queen. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as they strode side by side, leaving the Empress in blue-dappled shadows. “I’m so sorry, Majesty.”
“Hush” was all Vivia replied. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she could see the altar—although it was really nothing more than a simple table hewn from stone. Boring, empty, and with no sign that anything had ever been there.
“They’re gone.” Cam hurried toward it. “The blade and glass that used to be here—they’re missing.”
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.” He grimaced. “This is where we found Stix, though. She was staring at the blade like it was precious. Or more than that—like it was the answer to everything she’d ever needed. But Ryber told her not to touch it. That it would kill her in a way nothing else could. So Stix dropped it and we left.”
Vivia had heard this story before—weeks ago, when Cam had first appeared in Pin’s Keep babbling about raiders and Stix and danger in the under-city. But like everything Cam had shared, it had all been impossible to imagine. So much so that Vivia had even assumed most of it wasn’t true. Not because Cam wanted to lie, but because memories often got distorted by pressure, by fear, by chaos.
Plus, Stix had never come back. Two months later, and Vivia still had no idea where her longest friend and closest companion had gone.
Vivia clenched her jaw. Adjusted her sleeves. Thinking of Stix was not what she needed right now. Much like with the waves always shouting at Vivia, yhe little fox couldn’t go that way. The little fox had to resist if she didn’t want to drown.
The room’s end came into view, a black square in the center that must mark the door into the tunnel. But that was when a vibration ripped through the room. A rattle, a rumble, a surge side to side. Vivia fell; Cam too; and far behind them, Vaness screamed.
In seconds, Vivia was scrabbling around. Trying to reclaim her legs in a room that was now moving. And not just the room. The ice was moving too. A distant glowing shiver that oozeed into the room like blood from a scab.
Vaness ran this way. Her own stride was as wobbling and wild as Vivia’s. They fell into each other beside the altar. The ground shuddered. The ice throbbed closer.
“It’s moving.” The Empress clung to Vivia for balance. “The ice is coming into the room.”
“Not quickly,” Vivia said—which was at least true, if little comfort. Assuming they couldn’t leave through the ice tunnel, then they really were trapped here.
“Majesties!” Cam screeched. “Majesties, look! There’s a hole in the wall! It just opened up in the quake—I’ll go through! See where it takes us.”
Oh no, Vivia thought. She met Vaness’s eyes, huge and shining in the torchlight. Then as one, they leaped from the altar and chased after Cam’s figure, already vanishing into a sharp slash newly hewn thirty paces away.
When they reached that hole, having shouted after Cam as they ran—having bellowed at him to come back—Vivia pushed Vaness into the new tunnel ahead of her. Cam wasn’t answering them; they were going to have trust that was a good thing.
For the ice was lumbering this way, and with it came sounds. Ones that sang directly into Vivia’s brain, Come, come, daughter, let me hold you.
And there were other sounds too. Real ones that somehow felt more impossible than anything Vivia had encountered in this mountain yet: laughter. One voice, high-pitched like a child’s, followed by a second that echoed in strange angles around the room. There are no coincidences, the voices trilled. Except when there are.
“Stop,” Cam whispered. “I hear people.” This was the first thing anyone had said in ten minutes. Maybe twenty. Or maybe an hour, for all Vivia could tell. The “path” Cam had found was more like a fissure in the stone, following the grain. It slanted, it dipped, it shrank and expanded in a way that might have made sense to the mountain, but held no guiding principle Vivia could follow.
At least there was no quaking now.
And no ice.
Vivia took up the rear, her torch wavering in angles that often left Cam blind and calling out, “Can you shine it this way?” But the last stretch had been smooth. Not a true tunnel, but at least a straight line with only the occasional upthrust of stone to get in the way.
Now here they were, a hole in the floor visible thirty feet ahead—and voices most definitely coming through along with more orange firelight. Not children’s either, like Vivia had heard earlier, but adults’.
“They sound Cartorran,” the Empress whispered, her head cocked and fingers scrubbing at her Witchmark.
Vivia agreed, but said nothing. Her pulse was gaining speed, a stochastic drumbeat fueled by excitement and fear. If there were people ahead, that might mean there was an exit from this mountain.
But of course, people also meant potential enemies. Potential danger.
“I’ll move to the front,” she inserted after several moments of careful listening. She snuffed out her torch. “You take up the rear, Cam, and have your blade ready.”
“Hye, Majesty,” Cam agreed, squeezing himself against the frosted stone so Vivia could pass. Vaness did the same, her eyes holding Vivia’s. She was cast almost fully in shadow. It softened her.
Vivia handed Vaness the unlit torch.
“Be careful,” the Empress murmured, her fingers sliding around the grip.
“I always am,” Vivia replied.
Which earned her a quiet scoff that was unexpectedly bright in all the darkness. It made Vivia think of all she and Vaness had faced and fought together. And it gave her heart iron when she needed it most.
Ahead, the hole in the floor was just as jagged as the “path” they’d taken through the mountain. It too must have opened in the quake. Vivia crept closer; the voices pitched louder. Two people. A man, a woman, and speaking with an urgency that suggested panic.
“No,” the man said, his voice a warm, rounded thing. “I swear that’s the way we came. It just looks different after the quake.”
“Naw, naw,” the woman replied, her voice harsher. Less polished. “You’ve gotten twisted around. That rock hit you hard—”
“Not that hard.”
“—and if we head down the steps, we’ll hit the big cavern again. See, look. There’s a tunnel on this map.”
A map. Vivia’s excitement tripped higher. She hurried to the hole’s lip, craning her neck—inch by careful inch—until she could see the edge of a boot. Then a black-clad leg. Then a sheathed weapon and buckler with a double-headed eagle stamped upon it. Which meant these were Cartorran soldiers.
She yanked out of sight. The Cartorrans were in the midst of upheaval. And while Vaness swore the new leader, Safiya fon Hasstrel, would help the Marstoki cause and Vivia’s too, Vivia had yet to receive any actual confirmation of this.
“I wish the commander were here for this mission.”
“He’s a captain now, Lev, remember?”
“He’ll always be a commander to me.”
“Don’t let him hear that.” A snort. “And also don’t be so hard on yourself. I think you’re doing well for your first command.”
“Yeah, yeah. The prince wouldn’t have appointed me if he didn’t think I could do it. You keep tellin’ me that.”
“Because you keep doubting it.”
Noise rustled behind Vivia, the faintest shift of fabric and scrape of shoe. Then suddenly it was not Cam behind Vivia, but the Empress again. Her eyes were even bigger now. “I know those voices,” she whispered. “They’re Hell-Bards.”
Vivia scrabbled farther from the hole. “And that’s good because?” She was so quiet, she more mouthed these words than uttered them.
“Because these are the Hell-Bards who were with the Truthwitch when we were imprisoned in Saldonica. I could not have escaped without them—nor escaped Azmir during the coup, either.”
“But why would they be here?” Cam now thrust in, his voice as hushed as Vivia’s. “That seems like a real coincidence.”
There are no such things as coincidences, Vivia thought. Except when there are. She cleared her throat. The hairs on her neck pricked tall.
“I will go first,” Vaness said.
“No, wait.” Vivia grasped at her shoulder. “We should be cautious.”
“Of course. But we also have no reason to hold back. Especially since”—here she smiled and her eyes turned murderous—“they have iron on their bucklers and armor. So if I do not like what they say, I need not listen.”
She tugged free from Vivia, and with her usual grace, she dropped through the hole. Her feet landed a half heartbeat later. “Hello, Hell-Bards.”
Vivia didn’t hear what came next. She had reached the hole and was climbing through. Her pack scraped on stone. Her landing was decidedly ungraceful, and jolted through her ankles, her knees, all the way up to her teeth. By the time she’d wobbled to standing, Cam had plopped down beside her.
The Hell-Bards meanwhile ogled the new arrivals. The walls and ceiling were sharply square; the stairs worn but well carved. Firewitched lanterns guttered in sconces nearby, but twenty paces up and twenty paces down were shrouded in total darkness.
“Empress . . . Vaness?” the Hell-Bard woman asked, her green eyes so wide they pulled at scars fanning across her cheek to her ear. She was young with a heart-shaped, pale face. “Is this real? Is that really her, Zan, or am I seeing those nightmares the prince warned us about?”
“I . . . think it’s her, Lev.” The man’s eyes scrunched. He was a giant, his neck so wide it gave him the illusion of having no neck at all. Meanwhile, his short hair was the same color as his browned skin, while a new beard sprouting across his face gleamed fiery red.
“It is me,” the Empress said in Cartorran, lifting her hands appeasingly. “I am no nightmare. And these are two friends of mine. Cam.” She waved to the boy. “And . . . Livia.”
Well, Vivia supposed it was wisest to avoid revealing her true identity. However, as far as aliases went, Livia was blighted bad. And the woman Lev clearly agreed. Her eyebrows crooked high. “Livia, huh? And a Nubrevnan admiral too, who looks a lot like how the rightful queen is described.”
Vivia sighed. She was glad to hear the word rightful—and frankly glad she wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone she wasn’t. Her brain couldn’t handle any more tumult right now. “Yes, you’re right: I am Vivia Nihar, rightful queen of Nubrevna. Cam here, though . . .” She laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “He really is Cam, but he doesn’t speak Cartorran, so if you might be so kind as to explain why you’re here in the middle of this mountain, then I will translate the situation to him.”
“It’s simple,” Lev answered, shrugging at Zander. “We were supposed to use the magic doorways in the mountain to travel, but. Well, the ruttin’ mountain changed on us—twice. We’ve been wandering around ever since. It’s almost . . . what, two days now? Kind of impossible to tell, honestly.”
“Travel to where?” Vaness asked as Vivia translated softly. The boy, his mouth agape, just listened and wagged his head.
“Nubrevna, of course.” Lev said this in a way that suggested both Vivia and Vaness should have known. “Because we have letters. For you.” She looked at Vaness as she said this. Then twisted toward Vivia. “And for you.”
Vivia stopped her translation. “A letter? From whom?”
It was Zander who replied, his voice somber and practiced: “From Her Imperial Majesty Safiya fon Cartorra. She requests your aid immediately in Poznin, and in return, she will give you all the soldiers you need to reclaim your rightful thrones.”
Chapter 9
By the time Merik finished his pitiful but blessedly warm stew, he and Aurora had company.
The boy clung to the safety of the stairs, ready to bolt at the first sign of danger. But there was also an air of awe around him as he took in the sight of Aurora, tail wagging and drool hanging like ribbons from her mouth.
“She won’t hurt you,” Merik assured, still using Marstoki. “Her name is Aurora. It means dawn. What’s your name?”
The boy didn’t answer—nor did he flee. So Merik shifted back to his cycling of languages, just in case he had judged the boy’s clothing wrong. Cartorran. Dalmotti. Arithuanian. Marstoki. It was in Merik’s third attempt at Marstoki that the boy finally reacted.
“Revan,” he said, his voice surprisingly strong. “My name is Revan. What . . . is she?”
“She’s a storm hound. Just a puppy though. I found her much like I found you. She needed someone to feed and help her, so I did.”
Aurora’s tail wagged faster. The boy risked a smile, though it died almost as soon as it arrived when a shiver rattled through him. He was better dressed than Merik for these elements, but he was still just a child. “Where are we?”
Merik inhaled at that question. A drawn-out, audible breath to steel him against what he was about to say: “Poznin. It’s very far from where I assume you must have come from. Which is where, exactly?”
“Tirla.”
Very far indeed. And the boy must be son to one of the powerful merchant families there; it would explain the fine clothes and rings. “Do you remember anything?” Merik asked. Aurora meanwhile rolled onto her back.
It made the boy smile again. And in turn, Merik’s own attempt at a smile widened. “Have you ever had a dog?”
Revan shook his head.
“Then come. I think she’d like her belly rubbed, but it’ll take two sets of hands.”
Revan didn’t move. Merik’s smile wanted to falter, but he kept it pasted on. “Like this.” He demonstrated, and the scratching sound of his palms on Aurora’s belly—as well as her contented grunts—filled the tower.
Revan still did not come in. “There used to be a lady here, didn’t there?”
Merik nodded. Scratch, scratch, scratch.
“She was bad. She brought me here. And my mother too. But I don’t see my mother out there. Just all those . . .” He hesitated. Then uttered a word Merik had never heard before: Kyrestiri.
“Kyrestiri?” Merik repeated, letting his ministrations to Aurora pause.
“Ahtset,” the boy replied, his eyes drifting to Merik for half a moment. Then to the open window behind him. “The Kyrestiri. The ones that the mountain spits out. It is what we call them in Tirla. Sometimes, the mountain shakes and people change. So is my mother like that? Is that what happened to me?”
Merik was careful to keep his brow smooth. He knew he was prone to frowning, to letting dark thoughts play across his face. “I don’t know if your mother is Kyrestiri, Revan, but yes. You were. And I was too.”
“And . . . Rora.” Revan pointed at the storm hound, who had flopped back over to her side. She stretched one of her wings behind her and nudged it against Merik’s knee. “Rora was Kyrestiri too?”
“Yes,” Merik answered, even though this wasn’t true. Aurora had never been cleaved . . . yet she had been spit out by the mountain, just as Merik had.
“Would you like to come closer? I have stew—albeit not a very good one. But it’s warmer here by the stove, and then you can tell me everything you remember. Maybe we can find your mother.”
Revan inhaled, a furrow sinking across his forehead. Then, with a nod more for himself than for Merik, he finally stepped into the tower. “You never did tell me your name. Sir.” He added the title almost as a reflex.
Definitely the son of wealthy merchants. Tirla was certainly full of them.
“Merik.”
“Oh.” The boy’s eyebrows shot high. “Like the prince who died in Nubrevna?”
A soft laugh escaped Merik’s throat. It was a bitter sound that made his chest ache more than it had any right to. “Yes, just like the prince who died in Nubrevna. Luckily for both of us, though, I’m still alive.”
It was clear from Revan’s wincing that despite the hunger that must cramp inside his gut, he was accustomed to better fare than salted meat boiled in water.
“I’m sorry.” Merik offered a wince of his own as they sat before the hearth. He and Revan were alone now. Aurora had lumbered out of the tower once Merik had served the stew, and he’d felt her take flight in a combination of winds and wings.
He kept checking the window though. Looking for her in the gray skies. Would she be foolish enough to fly toward the raider encampments? Would she be foolish enough to go back toward the mountain and the hungry ice?
While Merik and Revan slurped the hot, salty water and gnawed at the slightly softened meats, Merik managed to pry more information from the boy. His family were wealthy merchants, and he actually spoke all of the languages Merik had tried on him.
“Why do you know so many?” the boy asked. He was pulling another face as he tipped back more “stew.” Or maybe the face was a commentary on Merik’s person, for the next thing he said was: “You don’t look like you’d know so many.”
Fair. Merik set down his empty bowl. “My clothes have seen better days. I was . . . what was the word? Kyrestiri? I was Kyrestiri for a very long time.”
This made Revan’s face fall. His shoulders slumped too, and he finished eating in silence. Merik left him that way while he moved around the tower and prepared sleeping mats for them both. He would need to get proper food—perhaps from the river to the east, where no raiders camped.
Or, he thought, as a memory struck, at one of the Nomatsi shrines. As soon as he thought the word Nomatsi,though, he could hear Esme snarling, No’Amatsi. Their shrines were all across the Windswept Plains, built for the ancient gods they still worshipped. And at two of those shrines, Merik had found food. It had been a different season then, the tail end of autumn, but maybe he could get lucky a third time.
He would go tomorrow night when he could fly without risk of being seen by the raiders. They must have lookouts; perhaps even this fire in the hearth was a risk . . .
A gunshot cracked through the city.
Merik lunged for the tower window to search outside. In the distance, a shadow trailed across the sky. It was Aurora, except her movements were ungainly.
“You have to help her,” Revan cried, coming to the window next to Merik. “That’s Rora!”
“Yes, but you—”
“I can hide if anyone comes, sir.”
Merik swallowed. There was no denying the white-hot fury sparking inside him. It made his winds come easily; it made him feel righteous and strong. But he’d spent too many years letting that temper be his guide. He was not that man anymore.
A second gunshot pierced the night. The shadow that was Aurora lurched downward.
“I’ll be back,” Merik said, and just like that, the decision was made. He took flight from the window in an eruption of magic and winds.
Revan barked surprise, and Merik had half a moment for regret to furrow in. He should have warned the child of his magic. Should have made a point to show him the faded Witchmark on his hand.
Too late now, though, and Merik’s regret was quickly swamped by anger. His winds had always been fueled by that temper, and now was no exception. Someone wished to harm Aurora. It was Merik’s job to stop them.
He flew higher and faster. A third gunshot ripped out. It missed Aurora, but only because Merik had already blasted her with his own winds, cocooning her as Kullen used to do with him. His magic mixed with hers. It was like a spark to gunpowder. A charge ignited; lightning crackled. She rocketed out of sight.
And now Merik was directly over the people who’d shot at her. Three dark shadows in the night-shrouded city. He dropped straight for them, his fury gathering more power for these raiders who would dare prey on a city filled with Cleaved innocents.
They spied Merik. The two with guns tried to reload, but their weapons were not Firewitched. It was a slow process—and Merik’s winds were so much faster. He swatted the weapons from their hands. He saw no reason to be cautious. No reason to quell his temper. There was nothing between him and the violence he wanted to unleash against these raiders.
But then three faces came into focus. Young faces almost as haggard and hollowed as the Cleaved—and not much older than Revan.
Noden curse me. Merik yanked in his winds. It was like wrenching the lead on a large dog, and it required sheer force and full-body power to pull, pull, pull these winds that wanted to attack.
The three people gaped at him in horror. Their guns had flung too far to grab, and other than a small knife in the hand of a scrawny young woman, they had nothing else to fight with.
She was just a kid, and like the other two with her, she wore Purist gray. They’re not even raiders, Merik realized, and the last of his winds deflated in an unquenched sigh that sent air roiling off his body.
Dead leaves rattled. Gray homespun flapped on the three teens’ hungry frames.
“You need food,” Merik said. He tried Cartorran, since most Purists seemed to be from that empire—and his guess was a good one.
“Witch,” the boy spat while the girl with the knife simply squeezed her hilt tighter.
The third teen, meanwhile, eyed Merik with a thoughtful look that reminded him very much of the way Ryber would gaze out at the world. With a wisdom that came from having seen too much.
“You got any food?” she asked, and at once, the other teens looked to her. A subtle movement that showed right away she was their leader.
“No,” Merik admitted to her. “But I can get you some. You have to put down that knife first, though.” He addressed this to the other girl. Then to the boy: “And no more shooting at my storm hound.”
“Your storm hound?” the leader asked. She seemed impressed by this, instead of horrified, and it occurred to Merik that although she dressed like a Purist, she didn’t seem to possess the prejudices of one.
“Well, Aurora is my storm hound in so much as any storm hound can belong to someone.” He dipped his head toward the other girl. “Now about that knife . . .”
The leader nodded at her, and the girl finally lowered her blade.
“Sheathe it, please.” Merik motioned to the leather case at her belt.
Her lips wrinkled back to reveal a chipped tooth. “No.”
“You can’t expect us to totally trust you,” the leader said. She shrugged with her hands, a smooth movement from a girl who seemed used to getting her way. And in that moment, Merik felt the slightest tug inside his chest. A little nudge that said, Oh, she’s reasonable. Do as she says.
Merik did not do as she said. Instead, he felt himself smile. She was a Wordwitch, and he’d wager she had no idea. Or maybe she did know and it was why she was not so viciously spiteful toward Merik as her companions were. After all, a Purist with a witchery was a Purist with a death wish.
“Knife gets sheathed,” Merik countered, “or you don’t come with me for food.”
“Come on,” the boy urged. “Just do it, Ulga.” He was practically salivating.
“I don’t listen to you, Birdy.” Ulga glared. Then turned to the leader. “Sky? What do you think?”
The leader, Sky, laughed, and it was a surprisingly buoyant sound. One that said, Ah, he won’t fall for my tricks then, will he? “It’s fine,” Sky delared. “Sheathe the knife, Ulga, and let’s see where this fellow might lead.”
SKY!!
I’m so excited you’ve just met Skyvenjetsa Drakora. She might be my most favorite new side character in a while…😌
💚 - Sooz