Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
When Safi had been young, she’d gone swimming in a lake near the Hasstrel estate. The night had been hot, and there’d been guests at the estate she hadn’t wanted to deal with. So after sneaking out of the family castle, she’d hurried through the nearby evergreens and embraced the shadows.
Once at the lake, its surface a perfect mimicry of the starry sky, she’d stripped off her clothes and dived in. Down she’d swum. Down, down, savoring the silence. Relishing the cool. The pressure increased against her skull. Her eyeballs were compressing and her lungs felt like bursting.
It was a good feeling. A living feeling after too much time indoors hiding her magic.
Until something brushed against Safi’s leg and terror lashed through her. Then she writhed and kicked. She’d still been young enough to believe in the tales of mountain bats, and everyone knew they sometimes liked to swim when there were children nearby.
But Safi was too deep for the stars’ light to reach her. She saw nothing.
So she tried to surface, tried to swing her arms and haul herself upward …
but she only made it a few strokes before she realized she had no idea which way was up.
She’d swum so deep and lost so much air from her lungs, she wasn’t floating.
For all she knew, she might be swimming toward the night or she might be swimming deeper.
Panic really set in then. It was as if the Void itself had swallowed her, and now she was going to die. Who would find her body? Would it be eaten to bits by a mountain bat? Would anyone even notice she was gone?
Her toes hit something hard. She stretched longer, and yes. That was substrate. Rocky, glorious substrate.
Without another thought—there was no time—Safi kicked hard at the lakebed and swam. No mountain bats ate her, and soon, the shadows shifted as bright mountain stars cut through the water.
When she surfaced, her lungs were a conflagration. She gulped. Her vision spun. There was a very real danger she might pass out, so she made herself flip upward and lie on her back. Breathe. Breathe. Float. Float.
Eventually, Safi made it back to shore. Eventually, shivering and broken, she hauled herself onto the rocky edge and lay there until the stars stopped shaking and her lungs stopped aching.
She hadn’t needed Habim or Uncle to inform her how stupid she’d just been.
For some reason, Lady Fate had opted to spare her that night, and Safi never—not ever—swam alone or swam that deep again.
Yet now, here she was, trapped in the same shadowy unknown, and with no substrate to guide.
True, true, true. She was in a forest with soft earth and barren winter beech trees.
There was almost no snow here and even less undergrowth, and Dandelion listed and zagged so much in his panic, Safi had no idea which way would get them out of here.
Worse, her arm was on fire again. The Painstone’s numbing powers were finished, and the blaze was so much hotter than before—no longer confined to just her left side but sparking into her skull, into her chest and abdomen.
Safi squinted upward, trying to ignore how it made bile rise in her esophagus, but there was too much winter gray for the sun to pierce through. She couldn’t gauge which way was north. There could be no desperate final kicks to guide her home.
You can’t pass out, the Cahr Awen clamored. You’re so close to the Well. Just a little bit farther. But even those souls were not as powerful as the Firewitchery that had claimed Safi.
With a groan, she hauled herself off the saddle. Her left arm jostled. Pain stabbed, dazzling and fresh. She had to screw her eyes shut and wait for the wave to pass.
When she lifted her lids again, Dandelion was staring at her expectantly. His breaths whitened the air; he looked as lost as Safi felt. And Cloud—she was no better. She had moved closer to Dandelion, her ears swiveled forward as if she awaited her next command.
No, Safi thought as Dandelion’s ears also swiveled. They hear something. Iseult and Aeduan—it had to be Iseult and Aeduan. They had followed her tracks and were here to rescue her.
Except when no sounds actually reached Safi’s ears, she realized that whomever approached was moving with such quiet care, they could not possibly be an ally.
Cloud whinnied, and Dandelion’s tail flipped in a way that said, I don’t feel safe here.
“Me neither,” Safi croaked, and for several moments, she felt stronger. Clearer. She unsheathed her blade. It sang with such truth that for several seconds, it was the only sound she heard. An empowering echo that shivered inside her ear canals.
Another whinny, this time from Dandelion, and when Safi spun toward him, she spotted four figures rushing her way.
They were dressed in gray, faces hidden behind scarves like her own, and they moved with the concerted strength of trained military.
Gone was any attempt at quiet. Now they were coming for her.
Shit. She could not fight four soldiers. Even on a good day, those would not be odds for a betting woman like herself. And on a bad day? Hilarious to contemplate.
Safi dropped her blade and lifted her good hand. “I surrender!” she shouted. “I surrender. Take me to the Raider King.”
Aeduan’s worst fears had come to pass. He’d failed again, and now the consequences were so much worse.
He should have sensed the witches approaching.
He should have killed that Windwitch before it could attack Iseult.
He should have moved faster, thought faster, reacted better.
And he should not have been born the son of the Raider King.
It was that, above all else, that haunted him.
Where had his father gone so wrong? Why had he, Aeduan, served his father for as long as he had without seeing it?
One need not be evil to become it.
Aeduan thrust all his power into Surefoot, pushing the mountain horse to speeds she could never sustain without his help.
It was not a magic he used often, if he could help it.
For one, animals’ blood was a challenge to control.
The freedom in their bloods ran wild; it took twice the effort to manipulate an animal as a human.
For two …
Well, that same freedom sparkling and alive only ever served to remind Aeduan that what he did was wrong. Demon. Monster.
He thought of Boots.
He thought of crocodiles.
Then he squeezed the reins more tightly on Surefoot’s blood and told her where to go. She trusted Aeduan; she didn’t resist his magic and she didn’t resist the speed he pulsed into her muscles.
In some ways, it was good that he was on her back. It meant he had to focus so completely on propelling Surefoot faster that he couldn’t look back or second-guess Iseult’s command.
No one followed him toward the forest.
He hadn’t thought they would. After all, Aeduan’s father wanted the Cahr Awen. His son was merely a disappointment who now stood in the way.
There was a part of him that wondered if he should try to return to his father again, claim he had been serving the cause this entire time. Then he could do the one thing Iseult so badly wanted to protect him from: he could kill his father.
Except going to Ragnor was not the command Iseult had given Aeduan, and Safi would die from her wound if Aeduan didn’t find her.
His jaw ached. His knuckles too. He gripped Surefoot’s reins as if they were driftwood in a storm.
Go after the light-bringer and keep her safe.
That was all he had to do. He did not have to plan ahead.
He didn’t have to debate whether he should be here or he should have followed Iseult instead.
I love you. Te varuje.
Why hadn’t he said the words in return? Why was he obeying her instead of chasing after? Coin and the cause, coin and the cause. She’d been right: he had no idea how to live without someone else to command him.
The forest ahead was a black haze across pale grass. Never had he seen trees look less welcoming. The storm that hung above siphoned all light. All life.
Distantly, he wondered why this storm never broke.
At last, he and Surefoot reached the trees. The ground softened and flattened into a forested floodplain. The winds stopped their constant howl, and Aeduan was able to ease his control over Surefoot’s blood.
She slowed. Then stopped entirely.
Aeduan slung off her back, worried she might collapse.
That he’d pushed her too hard, and it would be one more creature he had failed to save.
But when he studied Surefoot’s face, he found her unharmed.
Her breaths were overloud in the sudden silence of this forest, her eyes were wide and terrified … but she was all right.
She was all right.
Aeduan lifted his nose, forcing his magic to rise again.
He wanted to reach for Iseult’s silver taler first—then he would reach for Safi’s blood.
But that was when the six old wounds decided to awaken.
Spasms of torture across his chest. He cried out.
He slumped over, eyesight crossing and ears ringing.
And the fire—the flames. They started in the wounds but didn’t stay there.
They lanced outward like wildfires spread by wind.
He imagined he saw arrows with fletching poking from his ribs. He tried to grab one. To yank it out. But of course, there was nothing there.
Surefoot’s face butted into Aeduan’s. She snuffed; her hot breaths steamed. Slowly, the ringing receded. The pain and cold too.
He rasped in air. Again, again, feeling how his heartbeat shuddered through him.
Into his lungs pierced by arrows, down toward his abdomen.
What was this weakness? This curse? Safi had said it wasn’t cleaving, but it was wrong.
Was it some lingering effect from the Old One, Nadje?
Or some new ailment he would never escape?
You’re bound to the Void, a cursed beast with ’Matsi poison running in your veins.
Aeduan grappled once more for his magic.
This time it obeyed. Weakly, sullenly, but there for the commanding—and Aeduan’s command was to search for the silver taler. He reached until he felt the faintest stirrings of his own blood smeared on silver.
Iseult had moved. In fact, she was aimed for a different part of the forest at this precise moment.
That was all Aeduan could sense—not if Iseult was alive, safe, running, or fighting.
But it gave him energy and hope. She was near; he would find her after he found the Truthwitch.
Then they would all leave this awful forest together.
For Aeduan understood now why this place might have been left unguarded by his father. There was something else at work here. A different danger. An uncanny force he didn’t want to reckon with.
Surefoot whinnied quietly, as if to say Hello? Human? What are you doing? He stroked her neck. Then forced himself to straighten and turn away from the silver taler, away from the dark-giver … and toward the light-bringer.
The Truthwitch could not have ridden far in her current state.
She had a vibrant blood, made all the more unmissable by her wound and blooming fever.
Yet when Aeduan sent his magic stretching out again, he sensed nothing.
Yes, Safi had left traces of her blood. Remnants floating like moths.
But the physicality of her was nowhere nearby.
Aeduan swallowed and let his hand fall from Surefoot’s warmth. He let his magic fall too. It shrank inward, tail between its legs. I am too tired for this. Give me rest and peace!
He couldn’t do that. He had sensed Safi’s scent to the east, so east he aimed, guiding Surefoot with him. Once at the spot where he’d sensed Safi’s blood, he hauled out his magic anew. Reach, stretch, find. There. He let his magic hide again; he resumed his tired trek with Surefoot.
Twice he wondered if it would help him to dig out the Truth-lens. Maybe it would sense its creator; maybe its magic was still somehow threaded to Safi.
But Aeduan resisted. He didn’t like the way that witchery felt. He didn’t want to have to stare directly in the face of truth.
So on and on he and Surefoot traveled, and bit by bit, they made progress. The undergrowth vanished in some places to reveal hoofprints that must have come from Dandelion or Cloud. Or he would snag a taste of the Truthwitch’s blood scent and know she’d gone this way.
He lost sense of daylight. The forest and its ever-present storm felt beyond the passage of time.
Here, it was gray whether night had fallen or not.
Here, the wind did not reach and the world did not change.
Only the river, expanding and growing and sinking into the porous, hungry earth, had any power.
It made Aeduan think of his time trapped and drowning inside his own body. When Nadje had ruled him and he’d felt no hope. Could that Exalted One be the source of this bloodied weeping from his chest?
A sound reached his ears: horses huffing, stamping. A clink like tack. Then a soft whinny to curve and slide around beech and pine trunks.
The Truthwitch.
Aeduan shoved ahead, leaving Surefoot behind as he kicked into a run.
He grabbed hold of his magic, yanking it out with almost painful cruelty.
There are the mountain ranges and cliffsides, there are the meadows filled with dandelions and the truth hidden beneath snow.
The blood scent was weak, but then Aeduan was weak too.
He spotted shapes in the forest ahead. Two horses.
One a splash of brown, the other a smear of gray.
They both nickered, and one reared slightly as Aeduan stomped through the undergrowth toward them.
He was close enough now to see their eyes widening and ears perking.
He was close enough to know they were afraid of his rapid, wild approach …
And then he was close enough to see the clearing held only Cloud and Dandelion. There were markings and boot prints in the snow, but no Safiya.
Aeduan cast his magic wider. He grasped and felt … but Safi was gone.
The gelding reared as Aeduan came to halt before him. His eyes rolled, and Aeduan lifted his hands. “Whoa, Dandelion. Whoa.” His voice was much too loud. The horses were much too loud. This was not a place for hope or life. Here, everything drowned.
Surefoot trudged into the clearing. She needed rest. So did Cloud and Dandelion.
Aeduan would have to continue alone. His worst fears might have come to pass—and Lady Fate’s knife might have turned against him—but he couldn’t abandon the cause yet.
The light-bringer needed him. The dark-giver needed him.
Hope dies last, he thought, knowing instantly that it was not his own thought, but a ghostly memory from Nadje. Hope dies last.
Aeduan set off again.