Chapter Twenty
TWENTY
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.