Today’s Early Access chapter is a big one.
A really, really big one. So if you don’t want some serious spoiler-ing before the release in a month—if you want to savor all of Witchlight in one go, then don’t read on.
But if you just can’t wait—if you’re so tired of waiting, Sooz!!!, then read on. Because your moment has finally come.
(And if you’re just not yet caught up to appreciate the next two chapters, then make sure to start reading the entirety of the Early Access chapters at the button below.)
Also, we’re less than ONE MONTH until Witchlight hits stores! So be sure you’ve not only pre-ordered, but have also submitted your receipt and VOTED in the short story polls…
Now onto the moment so many of you have been waiting nine years for… 😌
Chapter 19
Aeduan didn’t need to be told twice. He had smelled the prince near—both of the man’s blood scents—and if Leopold was the one who had set off the explosion . . .
Then Aeduan would destroy him.
With nothing more than a nod of obedience for Iseult, Aeduan abandoned the stream. His muscles flamed with strength, pumped there by his magic. Faster, faster through the trees. He sprinted and veered. Any direction his witchery sensed the prince, Aeduan followed. Two bloods to track.
Leopold fon Cartorra: New leather and smoky hearths.
And the Rook King’s: Clear lake water and frozen winters.
There it was, the Paladin scent. Paces away, but to the left. Aeduan halted so hard, his cloak cracked like a whip. Then he turned and followed Leopold anew.
He knew that he was once more that broken bear from Saldonica, and Leopold was forcing him to stomp and spin wherever he desired. Yet what else could Aeduan do? He couldn’t rest if the prince was here. He couldn’t rest when he knew Leopold might try to hurt Iseult again.
Wind slammed against Aeduan, dismantling snow drifts. Singeing his eyes. He almost missed when the forest changed. The trees went from spaced and natural to a tunnel of nearly locked branches. Footsteps tracked inside.
Aeduan swerved after them.
Faster, harder. Not his mind. Not his body. A collection of seamlessly interacting parts—although . . . He was also inexplicably flagging. Worse, his old were pricking awake.
But the prince was so close. Aeduan could feel the imminence of capture. The lure of prey that could not get away. Any rising pain was a mere distraction. Not his mind, not his body.
Exept halfway into this uncanny tunnel—with the clear lake waters and frozen winters right there—the highest two wounds on Aeduan’s chest erupted with such fire, he gasped. He stumbled.
Run, my child, run, came his dead mother’s voice.
Aeduan’s vision wavered. His rib cage felt as if it were collapsing, and he could do nothing but gulp for air while Leopold’s scent sidled away. Aeduan had had these wounds since childhood, yet never had they tortured him with such brutality. It was as if his dead mother had fallen atop him all over again. As if the six arrows that had punctured her were now puncturing into him again too.
Run, my child, run.
The pain eased. Reluctant, sluggish. Then urgent and freeing. Aeduan regained his footing. Resumed his forward hunt.
Not that it mattered; his prey had flown, and soon the stink of the Solfatarra snaked into Aeduan’s nose. Flickers of rotten eggs and acid before the fog, thick and deadly, rolled into the branch-woven tunnel.
Leopold’s boot prints strode right into the fog.
So Aeduan strode in after him. His chest wounds still ached, but with a throb he could once again ignore. Especially since the acid mist that trawled over him ate at his face wherever his fire-flap didn’t cover. It ate his hands too, and any other part of him not protected by salamander fibers—although even the cloak couldn’t resist this acid forever. And as fast as Aeduan’s magic healed the blistering parts of him, it would never be fast enough to outrun the Solfatarra forever.
Water splashed beneath Aeduan’s boots, a sign he’d reached the poison lake at the heart of the mist. He had no choice now but to stop and abandon his pursuit.
Yet again, the prince had won.
Yet again, the Rook King would fly free.
Run, my child, run.
For several seconds, Aeduan stood there, listening to the silence of the Solfatarra. Feeling the acid burn, scrape, carve into his lungs . . . Then it came: a laugh. Soft, ghostly, unreachable. A mocking sound from a Paladin who lived for mischief and games.
Aeduan’s fingers moved to the sword at his hip. Come, he dared the prince. Come so I may end you. His lips ached where a hole was forming in the flap. His eyeballs were on fire.
But the prince never came, because in the end, he was a coward. Forever working from the shadows. Never stepping into the light. He might make the bear dance, but he would never dare face it head-on.
No man could avoid Lady Fate’s knife forever, though. It would come for Leopold eventually. It would exact all payments owed.
And Aeduan only hoped it would be his hand holding the knife when the prince finally paid up.
None of the supplies survived the blast. All of the carefully accumulated food, kindling, blankets, weapons—all of Iseult’s and Safi’s things, right down to the crates, had been destroyed. Only embers and splinters remained, and scraps from a salamander blanket that would not burn.
Somehow, Iseult preserved her calm as she limped through the tower, searching for anything that might be salvaged. In the end, only the Nomatsi pack from Alma was still intact, thanks to the Nomatsi shield attached to it. But even that was now pocked with holes along the top, where the shield had not protected it.
Perhaps the worst blow of all, though, was Eridysi’s diary. It was gone. Not because the flames had claimed it, but because Leopold had. And in its place was a new book, hidden by rubble. A History of Arithuania’s Rise, Iseult read as she wiped off melted snow and ash. It was an old book, written from before the plague had wiped out the entire Republic—and now it was filled with handwritten notes and drawings.
Leopold clearly wanted Iseult to have this. And given how he’d left it where it could have been easily destroyed, he also clearly hadn’t expected to almost kill Iseult in the blast. He might have known about her and Safi’s supplies, but he hadn’t known about the firepots.
Grim as it was, Iseult was almost satisfied by his miscalculation. What would he have done if he had killed her? How would he have proceeded then? And how much more would he have hated himself for such a vast mistake?
Iseult held the new book toward what few flames still burned. She’d seen Leopold’s neat scrawl before, and now it was crammed so small she had to squint to read it.
One page in particular was thick with annotations: a fold-out map of Poznin, except it was the city as it used to be fifty years ago, before the roads and buildings had been flooded, then eaten away by despair. Leopold had marked all the locations that the Raider King might utilize in his favor. Streets where Ragnor would probably move troops, where he would probably reinforce walls, where he would probably guard most heavily against an attack.
And it was clear the Raider King could defend Poznin and the Air Well for weeks, if not months. The only thing that could possibly defeat such strength and such magic (for Ragnor had many, many witches at his disposal) were numbers. Exactly as Leopold had told Iseult in the Dreaming.
And Leopold had also laid out exactly where to direct such numbers. While the bulk of the Cartorran and Carawen monk forces could attack head-on in a dizzying, aggressive onslaught of bodies against a siege, in the hidden background, the Cahr Awen could infiltrate the city using ancient tunnels that the Raider King had not yet discovered.
In other words: with one hand the armies would distract while the other hand cut the purse.
It was a good plan; Iseult couldn’t deny that. From the arrangement of Cartorran forces upon the field to the use of long-forgotten passages beneath Poznin. But as Iseult had told Leopold less than an hour ago: the cost was too high. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it. And destroying all of her and Safi’s supplies was not going to force the Cahr Awen to change course.
Iseult clenched her eyes shut. Her fingers moved to a Threadstone that was no longer there, and for half a moment—on a pause between smoky breaths—she felt the Threads that bind. She felt Safi miles away inside the hunting lodge.
Or at least, that’s what Iseult imagined she was feeling.
And she imagined too that she wasn’t here. That instead, the heat sweeping against her was from sun-baked cobblestones in Veñaza City. That it was just her and Safi, two Threadsisters facing off against the world. The only thing they’d wanted in those days was to get enough money to forge out on their own. For years, they’d had adventures and made mischief and cared for nothing but what the next day might bring.
Now here they were, hundreds of leagues and countless lifetimes away. So much had changed in the last few months. And yet nothing has changed at all.
At that thought, a plan assembled in Iseult’s mind, slicing through her brain as clearly as Leopold’s drawings upon the page—except these were her thoughts and her visions of a terrain that waited ahead. Planning had always been her greatest strength. Logic, organization, careful strategy. These were the skills she used to complete all the wild, impulsive schemes that Safi initiated them into.
And while Safi might not have started this particular scheme, that didn’t mean Iseult couldn’t find a way to finish it.
Her hand fell from her collarbone. She closed the book on Poznin history. It was thinner than Eridysi’s diary, but only by half an inch. Otherwise, its dimensions were nearly the same—meaning it slipped easily into the case at Iseult’s hip. She fastened the buckle with a click, then crouched over to grab the now-pocked Nomatsi pack. The weight settled across her shoulders with creaking ease. The shield, however, was no use anymore, so she left it behind. One more artifact for this tower to claim.
Threads raveled at the corners of Iseult’s magic. Hell-Bards and soldiers, she assumed, wondering why an inferno had erupted into the night. She didn’t want to explain, and she certainly didn’t want to be caught with this pack upon her shoulders or crates of supplies aflame.
So she left behind the tower where she had almost died—more than once now—and she felt no regrets over the wreckage. Instead, she felt only cold fury and hard, indomitable determination.
Safi awoke thinking that war had come. Cannons, she thought. I hear cannons.
But there was no follow-up boom, and she was not on a battlefield or trapped on a warship. She was simply in her room, the shadows complete because someone had banked her fire and blown out her lamps.
She felt drunk as she tried to rise. Why did I hear cannons? The bed spun. She was still dressed.
A knock at her door. “Come,” she growled, her throat fighting her as much as her mind and body did.
A Hell-Bard shoved in. “There’s been an explosion in the forest, Your Imperial Majesty. About half a mile from here. We don’t know if it’s an attack or something else.”
Something else? Safi wanted to demand. What the tits else causes an explosion? But she only waved at the man and barked, “Update me as soon as you know.”
He bowed. He turned to leave.
“Wait. What is the hour?”
“The twenty-third chimes just sounded.”
So late? Safi waved at him again. The word, Dismissed, was beyond her current capacity—and he seemed to understand, for he said, “Should I send for Monk Evrane?”
She shook her head. Then regretted that movement. Then waved even more emphatically for the Hell-Bard to go. This time he obeyed.
Once her door clicked shut, Safi gulped in air and probed at her head with her fingers. The Cahr Awen were still in there, but so was Evrane’s magic. It wanted to suck her back into sleep. It wanted to roll her out to sea on the tide.
But if it was almost midnight, then it was almost time for Safi and Iseult to leave. So Safi dragged herself from her bed. Surely whatever had just happened in the forest would not affect Iseult. Surely at any moment her Threadsister would shove in wondering why Safi wasn’t ready for the road.
Except . . . Cannons. War. Explosion in the forest. Safi’s stomach plummeted. Her breath punched from her lungs. Suddenly she knew exactly what could set the night on fire.
As did the Cahr Awen souls. Already, she could feel them reawakening. The barrel of bees stirring, wanting to sting and buzz and shove back into the cracks of her brain. You must leave. Do not let this stop you! Do not stay here!
“Yes,” she snarled, staggering toward her closet—and toward the clothes she had already chosen to keep her warm on the road.
Her fingers moved for her Threadstone. But it wasn’t there, because it hadn’t been for weeks. Safi still felt incomplete without it.
Gods below, she hoped Iseult was all right. And gods below, she wasn’t about to wait here to find out. She let her hand fall. She had a secret way out of the castle—one she and Iseult had used whenever they needed to evade Caden and his Hell-Bards.
Thinking of Caden made Safi’s ribs hurt.
Thinking of Iseult made them hurt far more. But the girls did have a backup plan in case the worst happened. A spot to meet, where they could regroup, recalibrate, and reevaluate without the controlling eyes of Eron or Evrane.
In minutes, Safi was dressed. All beige, all wool or fur or leather meant to withstand the Windswept Plains and their ire. A scarf cloaked her face, gloves warmed her hands. She was boiling in her bedroom, but she’d be glad for the extra heat as soon as she slid through the hidden doorway tucked in the closet’s back corner. It was a spot Henrick had told her about because why not? It was no use to him anymore.
Once she’d strapped a sword and a parrying knife at her hip, Safi tugged the final piece of preparation she needed for the night. It was not intended for the road; it was nothing more than a letter folded over and sealed with Hasstrel blue wax—and the Hasstrel mountain bat stamp. Love and dread, she thought for the second time that day as she placed the letter on her desk.
Cold air coiled off her window. Snow billowed and spun outside. And in the hall, a three-beat rhythm that heralded Uncle Eron and his cane stomped out. “Let me in to see Her Majesty.”
Sorry, Safi thought. You’re just a few seconds too late. She spun from her desk, reaching her closet just in time to hear the bang-bang-bang of a furious fist against the door. She slunk into her closet, wedged behind a shelf, and found the hidden bump that marked a hole in the stones.
Knock, knock, she thought as she tapped out the secret rhythm. The stones vanished. Frost billowed against her. Her bedroom door cracked open and Eron called her name, an edge to his voice that meant he suspected what she was up to.
But he was too late to stop her. His empress had escaped. The night and freedom had claimed her.
Chapter 20
Iseult went to a new spot in the forest. It was beside the same stream where Aeduan had left her, but a different clearing. A mere patch of shore where trees hadn’t grown. This was the secret backup spot to meet Safi, in case things went wrong.
And things had gone very wrong.
Here, there was no hole in the ice to reveal dark waters. Here, the snows had not banked quite so high.
Iseult dropped the Nomatsi pack, reaching for the taler at her neck. This was her chance to slip away. She should have removed it at the tower . . . but she hadn’t. She should have removed it at the tribe, but she hadn’t. She should have removed it at any time in the past week, but she hadn’t.
For all that she had criticized Safi, Iseult was absolutely no better. And even now, she didn’t remove the taler.
The night was too quiet around her. Too real after the sensory overwhelm at the tower. Iseult’s senses were so keyed up, she felt raw. Overly receptive to the wind’s bite, the stream’s burble, the snow’s talons. She heard Aeduan long before she saw him. And she felt how incensed he was, as if Threads really did weave above him, revealing all he felt while he stalked from the trees.
She just hoped it was not with her that he was incensed. He would have every right to be.
“I lost Leopold,” he told her once he was near enough to be heard. “I am sorry.” He came to a stop beside Iseult on the shore, his cloak swishing around him. His cheeks were red with exertion, his eyes red with magic. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
His gaze flicked to the pack. Held there for three breaths. Then flicked to Iseult’s face again. “Why did Leopold try to kill you?”
“I don’t think he meant to. He was . . .” Iseult wet her lips.
“Trying to keep you here.”
“Yes.”
“You were going to leave for Poznin.”
“Yes.”
An expansion of time. A stilling of Aeduan’s chest as he studied Iseult. His witchery drained from his irises; the usual pale blue returned. “And now? Will you still go?”
“Yes.”
His nostrils flared, but he said nothing more. He didn’t ask if he could come, he didn’t insist that Iseult should stay. In the distance, a crow cawed into the night. Ice popped and groaned on the stream, while the overwhelm of Iseult’s senses ratcheted up another notch.
The snowflakes were too cold on her cheeks. Her breath was too big in her lungs. Her clothes were too constrictive across her body.
And Aeduan . . .
Aeduan felt too dangerous. There would be no escaping him now, and she couldn’t believe she’d ever wanted to. That she had ever convinced herself that leaving him would be the right course. There is no we, there is no us. He had said that to her in Tirla, and it had broken her heart.
Now she had planned to do the same—and standing here, facing him in a clearing made of winter, she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t known it would cut him. That even though his face wore no expression , inwardly, he was bleeding.
“I . . . did not want . . .” Iseult bit out each word. Carefully. Clearly, so there could be no confusion. “To leave you. But . . . I saw no o-other way.”
Aeduan didn’t reply. The exerted flush from his cheeks was fading, blending the pallor of his skin into the pallor of his eyes into the whiteness of his cloak—and into the snow tangling around them.
“You should not have to face your father,” Iseult continued. “I d-don’t want you to have to choose.”
“I have already chosen.”
“Yes, but . . .” Iseult gritted her molars. “No one should have to kill their parent. And wh-what if it comes to that in Poznin?”
Aeduan’s jaw clenched. His eyes glinted red. “Then I will choose exactly what I chose before.”
Yes, and that is the problem. For Iseult could not deny one powerful thing: she was glad she had not killed Corlant. She was glad Leopold had shoved that blade through her father’s spine so that she wouldn’t have to. Wretched as it was, it had been a gift.
And Iseult wanted to give the same to Aeduan.
“I will stay here,” he said flatly, “if that is what you want from me.”
Iseult’s eyes screwed shut. She could feel Aeduan retreating into himself. Closing off emotion as adeptly as a Threadwitch. She understood that instinct because it was a match for her own: reject that which might reject you, for it hurt less if you were the one to act.
You can lie to yourself, she’d told him in Tirla. But you cannot lie to me.
She opened her eyes. “I don’t w-want this. Of course I don’t want this, Aeduan.”
A pause. A gnarl of fogged breath. Then: “So do not do it.” Fabric rustled, snow crunched, and in a sweep of speed, Aeduan closed the space between them. He knelt before her on the snow. “Please, Dark-Giver. Please . . . Iseult. My blood I offer freely.”
Iseult reached for his face.
“My Threads I offer wholly.”
Yes, she wanted to say.
“Claim my Aether.”
Yes. She ran a knuckle down his jaw.
“Guide my blade.”
Yes. She gripped Aeduan’s chin and forced his head to rise. Forced his icy gaze to meet hers as he uttered the final words: “From now until the end.”
Yes. Iseult sighed. Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch. The words pulsed through her in time to her heart. In time to her blood. How had she ever thought she could leave him behind?
“Come with me,” she finally offered in Nomatsi. Quiet as the fireflies that had once floated with them beside a different stream in a different forest far away. “Come with me, Monk Aeduan, to Poznin.”
Now his eyes were the ones to shutter, and he was the one to sigh. He sank into her hand. “Yes. I will come.” He slid his fingers around Iseult’s wrist, and pressed his thumb into the place where her pulse did not flutter so much as boom. Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch.
She softened her grip on his chin. His breath was warm against her fingertips, so at odds with the winter night around them. Iseult’s muscles moved without conscious thought. Her thumb stretched long. She touched Aeduan’s bottom lip. Stroked down.
His eyes snapped wide. His breathing ceased, as did hers.
Then he tugged at her wrist. More request than command, but it made Iseult’s legs collapse all the same.
Her knees hit the snow. Her eyes came almost level to his, and there was a look on his face she’d never seen before. As if he were afraid to hurt her. As if he feared he might break her if he made any further move.
But didn’t he know Iseult better than that? Didn’t he know she had gone through seafire to save him and broken a Well to heal him? This frozen moment could do her no harm.
Then it struck her: Aeduan didn’t fear she would break at his touch. He feared that he would. So she leaned in. An inch. Then two. Closer, closer, slow enough that he could pull away if he wanted to, needed to.
He didn’t pull away. Their lips grazed. Their breaths mingled. And at last, the Threads of the moment gave way. The red strands that bound them snapped taut.
At the touch of Iseult’s lips, Aeduan broke in two. A stiletto in his heart. A breaking of his spine beside a lighthouse. He felt his magic surge. Inexplicably, because he’d never been able to sense Iseult. Never felt his witchery respond to her nearness. Yet it swelled and burned all the same. No pain in his old wounds, nor even an awareness of the wounds in the first place.
There was only Iseult, pulsing and here.
A moan unraveled from her. The vibration of it curled into Aeduan’s mouth, into his chest. His fingers dug into her wrist; her fingers turned to claws against his chin.
She swiveled her hand in Aeduan’s grasp—a move he had taught her months ago, in one of their many sparring sessions across the Sirmayans. It broke his grip and forced his entire arm to follow wherever she led it.
Which was above him. Then behind him, so that he abruptly toppled backward onto the snow. Iseult toppled with him, bracing her legs on either side of his body with such ease Aeduan would have been vexed by her win—if he weren’t so transfixed by her above him. Had she always looked so powerful? Had she always felt so strong, with her face of shadows and moonlight? Her lips shuddered with each breath. Her hair flew on the breeze, and her thighs trembled against his waist.
“I will stop,” she murmured, “if you want me to.”
“Te varuje,” he replied.
And there was that smile of hers. Subtle and disarming. It sent a thrill into Aeduan’s gut. Made his witchery and his desire respond in turn. He flipped her.
She saw it coming, of course, but he was much too fast for her to stop. His hips bucked; his right leg swung out; she fell. Yet before her back could hit the snow, Aeduan caught her and eased her down. She grabbed his baldric in two white-knuckled fists. Then he settled her onto the cleared patch of snow his body had left behind.
“You shouldn’t waste energy,” she told him, “on showing off.”
“And you should not challenge someone more skilled than you.”
“Then teach me,” she replied, and she yanked Aeduan to her. Their lips touched a second time. Their teeth and tongues too, while Aeduan’s mind, Aeduan’s body, and Aeduan’s magic shattered all over again.
I hope you enjoyed that.
I spent actual days trying to make it perfect, going back again and again to their most pivotal interactions throughout the series so I could echo that language and help build the scale of resonance I felt their first kiss deserved.
More chapters to come soon—and more ships to sail too. 😘
💚 - Sooz
Can’t wait for the 4th!!!
Aghhhhh SOOO excited