TOUR UPDATE!
Before I dive into all the Witchlands stuff below, I want to make sure you all know that the FIRST EVENT ON MY TOUR HAS CHANGED DATES!
I will now be at Main Street Books in St. Charles on August 24th (instead of the 25th).
I’ve updated the dates on my main tour announcement, and you can find all tickets and info there! Just click the link below.
Sorry for the change and inconvenience. 💚
Witchlight Goodies Ahead
It’s been a bit since I shared Witchlight chapters—but don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten you, Witchlanders. I just have the imminent release of The Executioners Three, so that’s taking the bulk of my focus right now.
(And oh yeah, please pre-order? I’ve got links to all editions here!)
But to make sure you know that I know everyone wants more of our Cahr Awen girlies and their hangers-on…
Well, I’ve got two more chapters below! AND a poll, so you can decide what the next extra content release will be…
Enjoy! 😘⚔️
Chapter Fifteen
Caden was not at his post outside Safi’s bedroom.
On the one hand, Safi was glad for this—it would actually be easier to confront him outside the lodge. On the other hand, she was furious. Truly, furious. He dared to boss her about, but then he was the one sneaking out as soon as he had the chance?
She knew exactly where he was.
Through the veil of a snow-dusted evening, she could just make him out, riding at a brisk canter ahead. Ah, the hypocrisy, Safi thought as she nudged Dandelion faster—although never fast enough to catch up.
They were two miles west of the lodge when Caden finally left the road, as Safi knew he would. Cold bit her face, while snow gathered on her lashes. Her fingers and toes ached with numbness. But she did not slow, because Caden did not slow.
Another quarter of an hour passed before the first snarls of the Solfatarra reached Safi’s nose, strong in stench and barbed with acid. Another five minutes, and the acid was thick enough to choke. Her eyes watered. The Solfatarra’s sulfuric edge must be near . . .
Yes, there it was. If she squinted, she could just see a pallid fog erasing the forest and killing all it touched. And there was Caden too, no longer mounted but instead striding on foot toward it.
In seconds, the fog swallowed him.
Safi hopped off Dandelion in a wide clearing where gray sky frowned. Nearby lay Leopold’s ruined flying machine in splintered pieces. Snow covered what little had not been scavenged for wood and sailcloth. Soon enough, snow and the need for kindling would decompose it entirely.
Safi had come here since the crash, of course. The Bloodwitch had too, searching for two Hell-Bard scents he’d never found. So why Caden thought he might have better luck, why he kept insisting on walking into that acid fog . . .
Safi didn’t understand.
Liar, her magic frizzed. You would do the same for Iseult. You would do the same for Caden.
After roping Dandelion beside Caden’s horse—in the shelter of a towering pine—she marched to the flying machine’s corpse. It was on that Windwitched invention that Safi had realized Leopold couldn’t be trusted. She’d had inklings before, of course, but it was only upon the Eridysi that she’d realized just how much he was not on her side.
Her fingers fisted. How clever Leopold must have thought himself, bringing Safi and the Hell-Bards to his workshop. Showing them an invention the real Eridysi must have helped him design a thousand years ago, when he’d been the Rook King.
She hated him. Gods below, she hated him.
Footsteps stomped at the edge of her hearing. She whirled about right as Caden coalesced from the fog. He aimed for the pine tree with the horses. Then paused when he spotted Dandelion. Moments later, his gaze found Safi.
They stared at each other. He was covered head to toe in scarves that now bore holes, and a pair of lenses protected his eyes. She was covered simply in snow.
“Well?” she called.
“Well,” he replied. His head began shaking as he strode toward her. By the time he reached her and the crashed Eridysi, he’d removed his lenses and scarves. Acid had gotten him in multiple places, despite his defenses. There was a line of blisters around each eye, and along the bridge of his nose.
“Well,” Safi repeated. “What do you have to say for yourself, Hell-Bard?”
“Nothing, Heretic.” He shook his head again. “Only that you shouldn’t have left the lodge without a square of Hell-Bards to protect you.”
Safi snorted. “Let’s dispense with the horseshit, please. Why are you here? Again? As your empress, I forbade you from entering the Solfatarra. You do remember that, don’t you?”
“And as your Hell-Bard captain,” he countered, “I forbade you from leaving the palace without protection—”
“Don’t.” Safi stamped a foot. Snow kicked up around her. “Caden, we have to talk about this. Although, could we perhaps do so while returning to the lodge? I’m freezing.”
Caden winced. First at Safi’s request, then as snowflakes landed on fresh blisters. “You forget,” he offered eventually, “that I am a Firewitch now . . . or rather, again. I can get us warm and we can talk here.”
There was so much contained in that one sentence: the fact that Caden’s magic had returned, the fact that he still wasn’t accustomed to it . . . And the fact that he was subtly refusing to obey her because he wanted to remain beside this graveyard.
“Fine,” Safi said eventually. “Let us burn what remains of the Eridysi.” And let me finally have this conversation I’ve been avoiding.
It took Caden three times to get his magic to spark—and that was only after he and Safi had cleared away as much of the snow as they could. Then it took another three times before the Eridysi’s wood, damp and cold, would listen to his witchery and feed his magicked flames.
Now the wood burned like a funeral pyre, and Safi had to admit there was something healing about the flames. It must have cut Leopold deep to see his precious creation crash. She hoped this blaze could be another twist of the knife. A sprinkling of salt on a thousand-year-old wound.
Neither Safi nor Caden sat, but instead stood near the fire and let the smokeless heat roar against them. It added color to Caden’s haggard cheeks. It made his new blisters gleam orange.
Far, far in the distance, chimes clanged out the eighteenth hour. “I think you should leave,” Safi said. False,scratched her magic. “I think your time with me is done.”
He stared into the flames, silent.
“You want to search for Zander and Lev, don’t you? Beyond the Solfatarra? Because you must know they’re not here.”
Caden shifted his weight, and for the first time since being cornered, his posture relaxed. “I don’t know they’re not here or I wouldn’t keep searching. But yes, I would . . . like to look farther abroad.”
True.
“Why haven’t you asked for permission to do so?”
“Because.” Caden glowered at the pyre, his thumb tapping against his collarbone—where a golden noose used to hang. “I’m still a Hell-Bard captain. My duty is to protect you, and I take that seriously.”
False, Safi’s magic warned at the same moment it murmured, True. She moved toward him, and with gentle care, she pulled his hand from his neck. He didn’t resist, and so they stood there, hand in hand. “But that isn’t the only reason you’ve stayed, is it?”
For her, this was a conversation between friends, yet she knew that for him—no matter how close they might be, no matter how much hellfire they might have fought through . . . For him, it would always be a conversation between a captain and his empress. She might be his Thread-family, but he could not shed duty. He could not shed his vows.
Sometimes, she wondered what Caden had been like before his father had sent him to Hell-Bard Keep. She saw glimpses of that boy from time to time. Certainly the Chiseled Cheater who had first swindled her out of coins was part of that old persona—the same charming, almost mocking man who could navigate a fraught card game with an admiral in the Red Sails. Who could say Good enough even as the world literally burned around him.
It was a personality like her own. Someone who laughed easily and enjoyed a good drink; who reveled in mischief and teasing, yet would never intentionally harm.
But that person was not who Caden was any longer. The Hell-Bard Loom scraped people of their essence, stealing their color and their life. Safi had only been bound for weeks, yet she was forever changed by that Void magic. Small divots had been left upon her soul; they would heal and they would scab, but the scars would never go away.
Caden had lived as a Hell-Bard for so much longer. He’d been consigned to the Loom so much younger. And no matter how often he might say that phrase—Good enough—Safi didn’t think it was true anymore.
“I’ve crafted a mission,” she said, “which will allow you to search for Lev and Zander.” True, her magic whispered at the same moment that it whispered false. Because she had made a mission—but it was not merely so Caden could search. It was mostly so he wouldn’t be in the way.
“No.” Caden reared away from her. “You can’t give me special treatment, Safi. People disappear all the time, and we don’t go looking—”
“Of course we do.” Heat from the pyre licked against Safi’s side.
“Well, I won’t do it. I won’t accept the mission.”
“Even if I command you to?”
Caden set his jaw. The scar on his chin shone, a white line from some blade that didn’t quite hit. “You will have to discharge me, Safi. I will not obey.”
“And if I do discharge you? Then what? Will that make you search for them?”
His forehead cinched down.
“They are your Thread-family, Caden, and until you find them—or at least learn what happened to them—you’ll never be whole.”
His forehead sank lower. “You think me unwhole?”
“Yes.” She tugged him closer; he did not resist. Snow tumbled between them. “You’re gruff and withdrawn. You don’t sleep. You don’t enjoy the revelries like the other Hell-Bards, and when I offered everyone a chance to exit the service, you were the first to bark, No.”
“Because I want to protect you.”
“Lie,” Safi spat, planting her free hand over her heart. “I can feel it right here”—her fingers curled into a fist—“that this is a lie, Caden. One you don’t even believe. You stay here because you have no one else to care for and nowhere else to go.”
His eyes flashed with a spark she hadn’t seen in a long time. It wasn’t anger so much as insult. She had hurt him.
And that, in turn, hurt her. She needed him to leave—she wanted him to leave. And as much as Lev and Zander were deeply important to her, they were only a secondary motivation. A distracting left hand while her right hand cut the purse.
Caden tugged free from her grasp to stalk four paces away. “Most Hell-Bards have no one to care for and nowhere else to go.”
“And you are not most Hell-Bards.” She chased after him, matching his drawn shoulders and set jaw. “If I have to discharge you to make you search for your family, then that’s what I’ll do. But please don’t make me do that, Caden. You’ve done nothing dishonorable, so I’ll have to tell a terrible lie, and we all know how much I hate lying.”
This startled a laugh from him. His brown eyes softened. “Tell me: Does your magic catch you when you lie?”
Safi grinned—even if inwardly she grimaced. “I don’t want you to go.” True. “You must know that, Caden.” True. “But I think you have to.” She reached up and cupped his face.
He sighed and settled into her hand. Once, Caden had been her enemy. Now he was her Thread-family. Safi didn’t want to send him away. She didn’t want to be away from him. But Lev and Zander did need finding.
And where she was going, Caden couldn’t follow.
“If you won’t do this for yourself, Caden, then at least do it for me. Lev and Zander are out there, somewhere, and you need to find them.”
Another sigh. His eyes closed, and he leaned his forehead against Safi’s. She smelled the day on him: steel and snow, Solfatarra and horse. Above all, though, Safi felt the truth of him: strong, reliable, real. “Where do I even start, Safi?” Caden’s voice was gruff, and the crackling of the fire almost stole his words. “I have no leads.”
“No,” she agreed. “But Iseult has an idea—a good one that I can’t believe we didn’t think of sooner: Threadstones.”
Caden’s cheeks twitched. “You mean the things Nomatsis make?”
“Yes. Iseult’s mother and her apprentice Alma are both Threadwitches, and they’ve agreed to bind your Threads to stones. It will let you find your Thread-family.”
Caden’s breath caught. “And . . .” He wet his lips, his head still pressed to Safi’s. “Why would they do that for me? What must I do in return?”
“Travel east with them. To Saldonica. They could use a trained soldier at their side.”
“So you’ve already set this up, I suppose.” An observation, not a question.
“Yes, I have.” A whole week ago, in fact.
Caden didn’t answer, and for several dragging moments, Safi could see him mentally mapping out what all of this might mean. Traveling with Nomatsis; guarding them while they built him a Threadstone; using that stone to find Lev and Zander . . .
“So this is my mission? And I have to comply?”
“No, of course you don’t have to comply.” Safi cupped his face again. “But Caden, I want you to. I want you to find peace, and I don’t see any other way to give it to you.” Her eyes burned with tears as she said this, and her magic sang with truth. “I will miss you, Hell-Bard. You know that, right?”
Caden sighed and leaned once more into her touch. “And I will miss you, Heretic.”
“Does that mean you will accept the mission?”
He nodded against her.
“Good.” Relief poured through Safi now, mixing with her magic—and prickling more tears into her eyes. “Just promise that after you find Lev and Zander, you’ll come marching right back to me. After all, who else is going to nag me when I don’t have a proper escort?”
Caden didn’t laugh, nor even smile. Instead he laid his hands over Safi’s. “I will, my Empress.”
“Toward death with wide eyes,” Safi murmured as she pressed her lips to his forehead.
“All clear,” he answered softly. “All clear.”
Chapter Sixteen
Snow fell, thick and white. Iseult’s boots left tracks as she trudged through the forest toward the Nomatsi encampment a mile away. Caden’s too, five paces behind her. His Threads were alight with nerves, and she could hardly blame the man. Navigating a deadly trail toward a tribe of people who might decide to kill him instead of letting him join?
Oh, yes. She’d be nervous too.
Actually, Iseult was nervous. She had only visited the tribe three times in the last four weeks. Not merely because the Solfatarra breathed poison nearby and she had to follow this Nomatsi trail through it—a trail that was constantly changing—but because for all her newfound understanding of her mother, things were not suddenly easy.
Plus, there was Alma, and what was Iseult supposed to say to a girl who’d died by her hand and then come back to life by her hand too?
“Shit,” Caden yelped behind her. “Is that a bear trap?”
“It is.” Iseult wanted to laugh. Instead, she kept her face flat. “And there are more lurking in the shadows. Stay close, Hell-Bard.”
“Right.” He tugged his wool cloak to him. Then shifted so his heavy pack rested differently. Then seemed to realize Iseult was already striding onward without him, so he scooted after, plowing up fresh snow.
The encampment was quiet by the time they reached it. The sun was setting; most of the Nomatsis were in their tents, preparing end-day meals. Smoke coiled toward a snow-clouded sky. Horses snuffed and pawed, layered beneath blankets. Goats bleated.
Iseult had timed this arrival well. It had been challenging enough to convince Alma and Gretchya to accept Caden as a guard; she was absolutely not up to the task of convincing the entire tribe.
She found Gretchya’s tent, the largest at the center of the encampment. A fresh pot of borgsha simmered, oozing out spicy, fatty scents that slithered over Iseult as she shoved inside. Lanterns flickered near Gretchya at the clay pot of stew; Alma worked at a traveling desk covered in gemstones.
Both women looked up at Iseult’s arrival. Then their attentions quickly latched on to the man following just behind.
Caden looked absurd inside the tent. He was a tall man by Cartorran standards, and even more so by Nomatsi standards. His Threads, though, were what really shrank the tent down three sizes. The erratic newness of his magic, fiery and fierce. The sputtering pale discomfort of being in a place he’d never expected to be. The green determination encasing all the other shades because although he hadn’t expected to be here, he would make the most of it.
There were also bolts of white fear. A sign he knew perfectly well that his emotions were visible to these women. A sign he wished it were not so. He might be used to Iseult, but strangers reading his mind too?
Iseult couldn’t blame Caden for such feelings; it was how most people felt when meeting a Threadwitch and one of myriad reasons Nomatsis were so hated across the Witchlands.
“Welcome.” This was Alma, rising from the desk, because she was ever the diplomat—and also, the more adept at fashioning her Threadwitch face into the expected emotions. Were they her real feelings? Iseult still didn’t know. But at least now, Iseult no longer let her confusion bother her.
Alma swept toward Caden, her Threadwitch black gown twirling and sucking up all light. He had paused at the ring of stools that always fill a Threadwitch’s home. “I am called Alma,” she said in Dalmotti. “And this is Gretchya. Your bag—I can take it.”
Caden bobbed his head, the discomfort quavering toward a teal certainty in his Threads. “Caden fitz Grieg. And I can handle the bag. It’s heavy.” He did let it slide to his feet. Then squared his body toward Gretchya and did exactly as Iseult had taught him: with his hands at his sides, he bowed and said in smooth, lilting Nomatsi: “Thank you for welcoming me to your tribe.”
The reaction was instant. Alma smiled—a real one, Iseult suspected—and Gretchya’s posture at the pot relaxed. She had not wanted an outsider to join them. But the truth was Gretchya couldn’t say no. Caden’s presence here was a favor to Her Imperial Majesty of Cartorra, and that Imperial Majesty of Cartorra had thrust so much coin, food, weapons, and horses onto this makeshift tribe that Gretchya felt indebted to her very Threadwitch core.
Gretchya dropped her stirring spoon and wiped her hands on her gown. Then she approached Caden in the same way Alma had.
“Welcome.” This was in Dalmotti. “Sit, and we will feed you, Caden.” She glanced now at Iseult, her face carved into its usual Threadwitch implacability. “You too, Iseult. We have much to discuss with this visitor, and the night could run long.”
The conversation that followed went better in many ways than Iseult had prepared for. Caden’s Threads settled into a calmness that spoke well of his adaptability. She’d known the man had been sent on countless missions across the Witchlands, to strange situations ranging from conning a Truthwitch out of coins in Dalmotti to capturing that same Truthwitch in the Pirate Republic of Saldonica. But he’d been so consumed by grief these last weeks—and his new, unsteady magic—that Iseult had forgotten this other side of him.
The Chiseled Cheater, Iseult kept thinking as she watched him turn on the charm in much the way Safi or Mathew would. He had a mission again; it would hopefully bring him to his friends.
Gretchya and Alma could interpret Caden’s Threads too, and although they themselves might not wear any Threads Iseult could see, she knew her mother well enough to sense Gretchya was warming to Caden as they sat on their stools and pored over a map of the Witchlands.
“The River Tine will get you south,” Caden murmured in Dalmotti, “but it is usually iced over here, where blizzards funnel out from the Windswept Plains—although you should have almost a full month before that happens. Winter comes more slowly in the south.”
“We will have to leave the Tine before that, I believe.” Gretchya tapped several spots near the map’s center. “These cities here are well known for hostility against Nomatsis.”
“Right.” Caden’s Threads moldered with both shame and frustration. He swiped a hand through his chestnut hair. “In that case, we can disembark here.”
We, Iseult noted. Not you. A quick transition—and she suspected Gretchya and Alma heard it too. She sipped at her borgsha. Then frowned at the half-eaten stew. The horse meat, taken when the beasts died at the Moon Mother’s will, was overcooked and greasey. She’d never enjoyed it.
“Not to your liking?” Alma asked. She sat two stools away, her face cast in firelight. Gone was the golden green of her eyes; now, they were pure silver. As pale as the icicles gathering on the trees outside.
“I have gotten spoiled off food fit for an empress.” Iseult flushed.
“As have we. Safiya has given us so much. But . . .” Alma slid over to the stool beside Iseult. This near, her eyes practically glowed. “You will have to adjust your tastes once you are on the road.”
Iseult tensed.
“When do you leave?” Alma asked.
Iseult’s tongue fattened in her mouth. “W-when Dom fon Eron d-decides our armies are large enough.”
Alma’s eyebrows arced. She didn’t believe Iseult at all, but she also didn’t contradict her.
So Iseult gave up. “How did you know?”
Alma dipped closer. “Because Rikra, who is selling you a tent, ratted you out. Although, to be fair, she only said something because I cornered her and asked.”
Iseult sighed. “I see.”
“This is not a bad thing,” Alma insisted. “She was going to sell you a broken tent for too much coin, and I will give you a good one for free. And.” She leaned closer. Then she half whispered: “I have assembled more things that might be useful. We Nomatsis travel so much, you know. We have useful tools that weigh less and pack smaller. It’s all in a bag behind the tent. I’ve covered it with pine branches.”
Iseult didn’t know how to respond to this. It felt so much like a moment a month ago when Alma had followed her through the forest east of here and given her a satchel of supplies. Iseult had asked why Alma had helped then, and Alma had answered: Because Moon Mother always protects her own.
Iseult didn’t ask Alma why she helped this time. She knew the answer would be the same—but now they both would remember the time Iseult hadn’t helped Alma at all.
“Does m-my mother know?”
“I have not discussed it with Gretchya, but I would think she can guess what you intend. After all, there is no other path before you.”
No, Iseult thought. There isn’t. She and Safi might not have known it, but they’d been locked into the future from the day they were born.
“I saw her, you know,” Alma continued, still so near. Still so quiet. “She was surrounded by stars and shadow. And I felt whole. I felt unafraid and loved to the core of my Threads.” Alma’s glowing eyes held steady on Iseult’s face. “But she is dying, and I fear these new Threads, this new slow cleaving—it is her attempt to take back what little power she can.”
“Yes,” Iseult agreed on an exhale.
“Until you heal the final Well, none of us are safe. Any of us might be the next target Moon Mother takes from.”
Iseult nodded.
“So it is good that you go now to heal the Well. And if there is anything more I can do to help you along your way, then you need only ask.”
“Ah.” Iseult sighed again, a sad, heavy sound that sank into the earth. There was so much building inside her. More than her lungs could contain. More than her heart or chest could hold.
She forced her throat to swallow. Then she clasped Alma’s bicep. “Y-y-you . . .” She paused. Tried again: “Youhave already done too much, Alma. I will ask for no more.”
“It is not for you that I make this offer, though.” Alma’s lips twitched in a way that might be a smile, or might simply be annoyance. “It is for Moon Mother, because if you do not heal the Well, we all will suffer.”
Iseult let her hand slide off Alma. “In that case, all I ask is that you keep my mother safe. And . . . well, Caden, too.”
“I will watch over them both, Iseult. With every tool and weapon I have.”
There was the swelling again, but now it pushed against Iseult’s skull. She wiggled her nose—once, twice—before standing. It stretched a distance between her and the girl who could have been her sister if only Iseult had let her in.
Caden did not look up. His Threads were fully concentrated on the map. Gretchya, however, did. She blinked at her daughter, her eyes nearly orange in the firelight. And she nodded once, knowing. Or perhaps there was something else, something almost sad, almost frightened.
But something that her Threadwitch training still couldn’t let free.
Iseult twisted away. “I w-will find you and my mother again in Saldonica,” she promised Alma. A simple good-bye before she left the tent. Left the tribe.
The night and its moon whispered a Nomatsi good-bye as Iseult found the pack Alma had left beneath furry branches. It was a proper Nomatsi pack, with structural rods meant to be hefted onto the back or alternatively reshaped across a horse.
Alma had added a Nomatsi shield too, a wooden square meant to protect one’s body when on the run.
Iseult’s lungs compressed, pushing air from her lungs as she hefted the pack onto her shoulders. Snowflakes fell anew, tender things. Hesitant even, as if they weren’t sure the world was ready for them.
Iseult wasn’t sure either, but she set off into the night anyway. Cold embraced her. Snow swallowed her footsteps.
I’m never getting over the end of ch 15 🥹 that, “All clear, all clear,” hit me straight in the heart, Caden my precious bean 😭🥹😭🥹