Then lightning cracked. Near enough to singe Merik’s skin. To judder electricity through his chest and veins. And bright enough to startle both him and the Fury.
Merik used that moment. He used the spots flashing in his eyes to thrust away. Aimlessly, yet with every piece of power inside—and inside those stars spinning far below.
It worked. Merik launched high, he launched fast. Kullen roared after him, a bellow to rupture Merik’s skull. A scream that set off more lightning, more winds. But Merik had the momentum he needed, and he catapulted up, up. Away, away.
And as he flew, he ransacked his mind for something—anything—that would help him. Kullen thought Merik had stolen his blade and glass; there had to be a way Merik could use that. Especially since as long as Kullen was here, he wasn’t letting the Raider King inside … and that meant the Raider King wasn’t reaching Lovats.
But Merik couldn’t distract Kullen forever.
Merik’s winds zoomed him to the ice-bridge. Cold quivered off it—different than the ice of Kullen’s storm. It seemed to hum, it seemed to sing: Come, come, and find release.
It was the song from the pond filled with bodies, firmer here. A mother urging her child to bed.
Merik’s flight slowed. The refrain thrummed louder. Come, my son, and sleep. Come, come, the ice will hold you.
His gaze traced the bridge across the dark expanse to where it fed onto a ledge with a tall door, half choked by more ice.
Come, come, and face the end.
Before Merik could fly that way, before he could fully answer that call, Kullen’s voice shattered across his brain: AND WHO ARE THESE INTRUDERS?
Merik flinched, a twang of his muscles that drowned out the ice, drowned out the song. He looked down, fearing he’d find the Northman. And sure enough, there was movement surging within the storm—colors that were not lightning. Figures that were not the Fury.
But they were not the Northman.
Four people ran across the cavern, somehow sprinting above the galaxy despite no stones to cradle their feet.
Even with his eyes streaming and lightning flashing, even with the ice to chorus and call, Merik recognized one of those figures the instant he saw her. That golden hair, shorter now, and that loping stride.
But she died, he thought, heart tightening. Mind reeling. She died in an explosion two weeks ago.
Then a second thought hurled in: And so did you.
In an instant, Merik pulled in his winds.
And Merik flew to her.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Vivia led the way to the under-city. Cam leaned on Vivia, his bandaged hand clutched to his chest and words tumbling out, incomprehensible and disjointed. Vizer Sotar followed just behind, lantern in hand. He did not believe Cam, but he also had not refused Vivia when she had asked him to join.
“Ryber and me,” Cam explained, “found Captain Sotar in the mountain. Or maybe the captain found us—I don’t know, sir. She was following Eridysi’s blade and glass. The ones that call out to people like her, see?”
Vivia did not see at all, and Sotar cleared his throat in frustration. The limestone tunnel descended steadily; the foxfire overhead shone green and bright.
“So Ryber took the captain with her into the tomb. It’s the fastest way back to the Convent.”
“Tomb?” Vivia asked. Then a second question hit her. “What about Merik? Where is he? You left the city with him two weeks ago.”
Cam grimaced, and behind them, Sotar’s pace stuttered—for of course, he didn’t know Merik still lived. No one in the kingdom knew that. They all believed he’d died in the Jana’s explosion.
“Merik was with us,” Cam admitted, “but we … we got separated. He ain’t dead though,” the boy added hastily. “I just know it in my gut that he ain’t dead.”
In your gut? Vivia wanted to demand—just as she wanted to demand more information on where Merik and this boy had been or how they’d gotten separated. Now wasn’t the time, though. Not with Vizer Sotar right there and a city to defend.
So Vivia returned to the early trail of information. “You mentioned tombs, Cam. Where? Whose tombs?”
“At the Sightwitch Sister Convent.” He spoke as if this explained everything. “Ry said the ice tombs were the fastest way to the surface, so she and Captain Sotar followed them up. They’re going to destroy the standing stones, see? Then, once they break ’em, the mountain will collapse and the magic doors’ll stop working. After that, the Raider King won’t be able to reach Lovats. Or anywhere else.”
Vivia’s forehead wrinkled. A squishing frown between her brows because all of this was absurdity. Magic doorways and standing stones and the Convent from a long-lost order—it was madness. Something out of one of her mother’s dreams. Yet, as Cam kept speaking, kept explaining all these impossible pieces as if they were real, Vivia started to wonder if maybe … just maybe it was true.
If the Void Well could live inside Lovats, maybe there were other hidden wonders out there too.
“But,” Cam finished tiredly, “just in case Ry’s plan doesn’t work, she and Captain Sotar sent me here. To warn you.”
“Just in case,” Vivia repeated, and this time, she glanced back to Vizer Sotar.
His nostrils were flared, his head shaking a warning.
They reached the end of the tunnel, where the doorway framed by Hagfishes waited. She shoved inside, and a young father with a babe in his arms bowed crookedly at Vivia’s entrance. Then other people along the narrow limestone street caught sight of her. Hesitant smiles flashed, curtsies and bows, and more fists over hearts than she deserved. Most, though, slept at this hour. Oblivious and thinking themselves safe.
Vivia’s teeth ground. If Cam spoke the truth, then every one of these people was at risk—and with each step, Vivia felt more and more inclined to believe him. Cam’s story might be fragmented and wild, but he had spoken words that only Stix could know.
Noden and the Hagfishes ought to bend to a woman’s rule.
“That way,” Cam murmured when they reached an intersection, and Vivia walked faster, towing Cam along where he pointed. Three more intersections and they reached a narrow tunnel at the edge of the cavern. She’d seen this space before, but it led nowhere, so she and her workers had left it alone.
Now, though, she followed Cam inside, and when they reached the stone end, Vizer Sotar stepped closer, lantern light spraying over it. A rectangle as tall as Vivia, framed by a hundred tiny boxes with diagonal lines.
“This is it,” Cam said, and he patted the stone with his unbandaged hand.
“This,” Sotar said flatly, “is a wall.”
And Vivia was inclined to agree. It was as if someone had started a door here, but then given up.
“No,” Cam insisted. He turned earnest, pleading eyes on Vivia. “The door only goes one way, sir. You can leave the mountain to come here, but you can’t go back through. The original Six made it that way for safety. I swear this is where I came in.”
Only goes one way. A breath hissed from Vivia’s lungs. What the hell-waters was she doing here? She wasn’t really going to trust a boy she barely knew just because he’d quoted something Stix had said …
Was she? Could she?
“Please, sir,” the boy whispered. He laid a hand on Vivia’s sleeve. “You gotta believe me.”
She turned and met his eyes. Sincere, innocent eyes—no shadows, no deceit. Merik had trusted this boy, and clearly Stix had too. And if Stix had truly sent Cam here because she believed that Vivia and Lovats needed warning, then Vivia couldn’t risk ignoring him. No matter how impossible his tales of magic doorways and Sightwitches might seem. Vivia would rather empty the under-city and be hated than lose hundreds of lives.
She turned to Vizer Sotar, and said, “Evacuate the under-city.”
He reared back. “You cannot be serious.”
“Do it,” she countered, fidgeting with her cuffs. “Then evacuate the entire plateau, Vizer. Or at least try to. I want e
very wind-drum in the city pounding.”
Sotar’s mouth bobbed open. Then shut. Then: “Please reconsider, Your Majesty. To empty the city would take—”
“Every woman and man inside Pin’s Keep,” she interrupted. “I know exactly what it would take, and I also know exactly what’s at stake if we choose to ignore this boy. If he’s right, Vizer Sotar … We cannot risk that. Now go. Please.”
At that name, Cam suddenly straightened. His eyebrows suddenly jumped. “Oh. It’s you, sir. I’m so sorry—I didn’t realize, or I’d have told you sooner. The captain also had a message for you.” A solemn bow to his head. Then: “She said she’s sorry she missed your birthday yesterday. Next year, she swears you’ll go to the Cleaved Man.”
It was like watching a wind change. One moment, the sails caught the breeze and Sotar’s ship flew. The next moment, he was dead in the water. His shoulders deflated, his eyelids fluttered shut. “I hate the Cleaved Man,” he said under his breath. “And she blighted well knows it. But she makes me go every year, all the same.”
Vivia inched closer to Sotar and, just as Cam had done to her, she laid a hand on the man’s sleeve. “You know what we have to do.”
“Hye.” He nodded slowly, almost to himself, and when he opened his eyes again, it was to offer a slow salute for Vivia. “It will be done, Your Majesty. We will evacuate the underground and the city.”
“Thank you.” She swallowed. Then she smoothed at her shirt, her coat, and said, “Also, I want you to bring me every witch in the city, Vizer. We need to block this doorway, and we need to block it fast.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
Te varuje.
I trust you as if my soul were yours.
Aeduan had never thought he would hear those words spoken to him. Not since his mother had died. Not since he had learned he was a demon—and that all demons died alone.
Te varuje.
Iseult vanished into the darkness of the cave.
And Natan bellowed his fury. The layers of his blood stank with it. The cackling laughter and mountain cold, the endless hunger and bloodied knuckles.
Aeduan had only two paths before him. He could fight Natan and let the battle overwhelm him. Or he could hold the battle and let Natan kill him. Both choices ended in his death, both choices ended in Iseult with danger on her heels.
And both choices would come to pass if Aeduan could not maintain his grip upon the battle. The Well’s power was fading fast from his blood.
Iseult, Iseult, Iseult. She was all that mattered. He just had to buy her enough time to get away.
Natan charged—and Aeduan was ready. For a stuttering heartbeat, he shifted the balance of his magic. Away from the battle, he pushed power into his muscles. Enough to duck beneath Natan’s blade. Then to swoop up against his arm and knock the buckler from his grasp.
It fell to the snow.
The raiders and monks on the river lurched forward. A heaving push, like an avalanche about to break. Thousands of fighters ready to destroy.
As Aeduan swung the buckler off the snow, Natan heaved again at Aeduan, strong and fresh and ready. He might have lost his buckler, but he was still a Carawen. Prepared for anything.
Aeduan deflected, buckler wrenching high—and arm juddering with the impact.
The battle jerked closer.
Another attack from Natan, and this time, when Aeduan blocked, Natan laughed. A crowing, vindictive sound. The same mocking laugh he’d flung at Aeduan every day when they were children. “I can keep going forever, Bloodwitch. But how long will you last, I wonder?”
Natan swiped, he swung, he sliced. Aeduan dodged, parried, and ducked, but each move was slower than the last. Each attack a hairsbreadth closer to connecting.
Then Natan drove his sword into Aeduan’s heart, cutting it in two. He wrenched the blade out, and like ice melting, Aeduan’s magic gave way. The battle slipped from his grasp. Noise battered against him, sudden and focused and plowing this way.
Natan jolted at the sudden upheaval. He glanced behind.
And Aeduan moved. He tackled Natan to the ground, sword flying wide. They rolled across the snow. Aeduan’s heart gushed, spraying Natan in red, but already the wound healed. Whether Aeduan wanted it to or not, his magic knit his heart back together.
And without that magic to push his muscles faster, he stood no chance. Natan grappled atop him, and no amount of bucking his hips or straining would get Aeduan free.
So he stopped fighting. He lay back on the snow, blood sliding down his chest—a distant pain, just as the snow beneath him was a distant cold—and watched as Natan laughed at him. Watched as he unfastened a cleaver from his baldric.
“I never thought to see you this way,” Natan said, echoing what Lizl had uttered only yesterday. But unlike her, he savored this moment. “I imagined it so many times, carving your head from your neck. And now here we are.
“You were always the best fighter—always claiming the best assignments, but who is the Abbot now? And who is the one about to die?”
As Natan spoke, as Aeduan lay there limp and gasping while blood-scent after blood-scent careened his way, his magic sensed a new blood shimmering above the rest. Speed and daisy chains, mother’s kisses and sharpened steel. It came from the cave, and it was not alone.
“How does it feel, knowing I will kill you?” Natan continued. “Knowing that your magic cannot save you now?”
She was so close. Almost here …
“I will do the same to that girl, you know. The ’Matsi smut claiming to be the Cahr Awen. I will carve off her head too.”
Then Aeduan saw her, a vague figure coated in ash and blood.
“And you cannot stop me. You cannot kill me—”
“No,” Lizl snarled behind him. “But I can.”
Her sword burst through Natan’s chest. The exact reverse of what Natan’s had done to Aeduan—into Natan’s back and out through the heart. Then just like Natan, she wrenched her blade out again.
Natan’s body toppled sideways, still spurting and warm, and Lizl offered Aeduan her hand. As she helped him rise, he spotted a new streak of blood on her cloak. It trimmed the edge, a perfect mimicry of what every Abbot wore—and of what Natan would wear no longer.
Behind her, a hundred monks thundered from the cave.
“Now you owe me four life-debts, Monk Aeduan!” Lizl lifted her voice above the raiders and the other monks barreling this way. She shoved Natan’s blade into Aeduan’s hand. “And a fifth one for this sword, plus a sixth for the rebels I’ve brought to save you.”
Then she turned to the monks behind her, pumped her free hand to the sky and roared, “For the Cahr Awen!”
The insurgents charged. A snarl of bodies and blades and blood that pumped with purpose. They rumbled past Aeduan, shaking the earth and the frozen reeds. And for a century, or perhaps only moments, he stood there, watching them leave while his heart stitched itself back together. While his blood—gradually, gradually—pumped stronger and his witchery finished what it had begun.
Once it was done, his lungs breathed fully. His heart boomed strong, and for the first time in his twenty years of existence, Aeduan knew who he was and what he had to do.
He straightened.
He joined the fight.
For the Cahr Awen.
* * *
Iseult’s footsteps echoed off the tunnel walls. Her breaths carved in and out. Steady. Trained for this, and bolstered by the power of the Well.
She was running. Again. Always running. The light from the valley, from the moon showed her the way, but when a bend in the tunnel stole that, she walked with arms outstretched. Straining to remember what had been here when she and Leopold had come this way.
Leopold, Leopold. She had left him. Curse her, she had left him and that guilt would crown her for the rest of her days—as would leaving Aeduan. Every few seconds, she looked back, praying she might see his face in the darkness. Praying she would hear Threadless breaths and know he had arrived.
But he did not come, and she kept moving. Until faint flickers of light glowed ahead, spurring her faster. She rounded a bend, reaching the fork in the path from before.
She slung to a halt. Even staggered back two steps. On the ground at the center was a candle—the candle Leopold had carried. Thanks to the magic within, the wax had not melted. The wick burned strong.
It was the bodies, though, that made Iseult’s heart drop low. Raiders and monks were locked in place, not so different from what Aeduan had done, except these people were held by stone. As if hewn from the tunnel’s granite, yet more real than any sculptor could ever produce.
Owl. Iseult had no doubt. The girl had been here. Both forks in the path, the one toward the Monastery and the other to the unknown beyond, were filled with stone fighters.
Threads skated into Iseult’s awareness, stunned and horrified. Confused and even relieved. Then a voice came, authority strong in her command: “Continue on!”
Iseult bolted for the tunnel out of the Monastery. She snagged the candle as she sprinted past, and right as the first Threads barreled into the cavern, she dove onto the ascending path. More stone monks, more stone raiders. She dipped and spun around them, accelerating even as the tunnel’s incline sharpened.
Then it became stairs, and though her breath scorched in her lungs, Iseult hopped them two at a time. The air sharpened, and frost glistened on the walls. The steps, though, were now layered in gravel. A clear line upward—as if an Earthwitch had come this way.
Iseult pushed her body even harder, and soon, moonlight and winter washed against her. She sprinted the final distance into the night.
Snow-dipped fir trees surrounded her. Wind kicked, and the first tendrils of dawn reached across the sky. Even here—wherever here might be—the sounds of battle and fire sang. Distant, though. Too far to sense Threads, too far for Iseult to even pinpoint a direction.
Except there were two sets of Threads near enough for her to feel, and they waited straight ahead. One set radiated brilliant green with the power of an Earthwitch, and the other bore a heart of churning, stormy blue.
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