Chapter Seventy
SEVENTY
This water knows us. This water chose us, Vivia thought uselessly as the river flung her and snapped her, like the calico had with his rats. Vivia had been towed ashore, where she’d seen a rusted sword from battles long ago. She’d snatched it. She’d attacked.
But it hadn’t been enough.
Because it always seemed that Vivia was never quite enough.
She had always felt so powerful in the underground lake that had belonged to her and her mother.
Through that lake, she’d been able to connect to every droplet of water inside the Lovats plateau.
All the way up into the Sirmayan Mountains.
Some days all the way out toward the sea.
She’d felt so tiny, so inconsequential, and it had filled her with a tender, nurturing awe—for there was a comfort in knowing that the world and Nubrevna would spin on, even when Vivia did not.
Now, the awe she felt was shaped like despair. She was tiny and inconsequential in a different way. The water no longer knew her; the water no longer chose her. She was a dead rat who hadn’t quite died yet, but there would be no soft-hearted princess to save her.
Until there was. Or rather, there was a soft-hearted prince.
Vivia felt him, in the waters beside her. A bond that was not built from magic or tides or winds. These were Threads no master could take from Vivia—because they had been made so very long ago in a fox’s den where two children had felt safe.
Merry, she tried to say.
Vee, she heard him reply. Then she was no longer in the waters but instead on the shore where waves crashed and hot wind flayed against her. Entire trees cracked down.
As one, Vivia and Merik turned to face the whitecapped waters hurtling toward them. The flood would hit them in heartbeats. Two rulers. A sister and a brother who’d never really known each other, and only recently tried.
The onslaught arrived.
Out flung Merik’s arms. Wind, tides, power. A wall of magic to meet white foam. He slid, his planted feet dragging him backward across the gouged-apart riverbank. And he roared, a sound that tore from his throat. Sent his jaw slinging low as more winds, more power coursed out of him.
How, Vivia wondered. How does he have such power? Had she been wrong to believe magic was gone? She’d seen Zander lose it. Lev and Vaness too. And Vivia had felt it all leach out of her.
Her hair slapped against her face. Cuts she hadn’t known were there stretched wider as Merik’s winds slashed and fought. More, more. An untouched well that must come from deep inside him …
The Well, Vivia thought, and she remembered what the monster had said in the waves: Ah, the little hound I used to watch over. It is time to take back everything we gave you.
Merik had grown up swimming in the Origin Well of Nihar.
Vivia had grown up in her underground lake—a place where she’d only ever felt safe. Watched over. And long after Jana had left this world, the lake and its foxfire spokes had been there.
Yes, a gentle voice whispered. I am so very far from you, Little Fox. But I can still give you what you need. I never forgot why I was made. You need only ask, and it will be there.
“Who…?” Vivia choked out. “How can a … a lake be inside in my head?”
Because I am a lake no longer, the voice answered. I used to be known as Midne before I became the Void Well. I used to serve and protect, and I vow that right now, I will do so again.
At those words—incomprehensible as they were—Vivia felt her waters return. Not these lethal rapids of the Amonra, but her waters. Unbound by droplets and limestone, by tributaries or mountains.
She felt as she was returned home.
And Vivia took that power. No rage, no hate, no love, no past. Just power, letting her reconnect to the waters that frenzied around her—but that now she could control again.
Vivia lifted one leg, stepping forward, pushing herself, pushing the waters. A second step became a third. One foot after the other into the waters that this beast had tried to take from her.
And beside her, Merik walked too. Their steps matched. One. Two. Fight. Push. Three. Four. No regrets. Five. Six. Keep moving. His winds never faltered.
Until suddenly, their magics grew bigger. As if leashes had been shorn. As if dams had been broken. More power slammed into Vivia, and she could do nothing but redirect it outward. Launch more river, more wave at the beast who fought with tide, with ice, with steam, with pain.
Vivia and Merik were in the middle of the river now, the waters cleared around them. Wet silt sucking them down as they pushed, stepped, fought. No regrets, still moving.
The monster roared, her massive form briefly faltering in the face of these two Nihars.
That was when the iron launched in. A hundred blades from battles long ago stabbed deep. Punctured hard. And when Vivia turned, she found Vaness was only paces away. Her empress. Her Ironwitch, and with fury scored across her beautiful face and violence in her dark eyes.
“I,” Vaness screamed as she staggered to Vivia’s side, “am Empress of the Flame Children! I am the Chosen Daughter of the Fire Well. I am the Most Worshipped in Marstok and the Destroyer of Kendura Pass. You will not claim me today.”
Hye, Vivia thought. And you are the woman I love.
She’d never been more certain. Never felt more pride and power and hope.
All this time, Vaness had been trying to teach Vivia how to not simply trade her little fox mask for the mask of a bear, but how to know that being the fox was enough.
Because Vivia was enough and she always had been.
It was in her blood, in her heritage, and above all, in the truth that she was here, still fighting, when almost all others would have given up.
So Vivia Nihar joined the chorus. “I am the Chosen Daughter of the Void Well. I am the rightful Queen of Nubrevna and the destroyer of the Dalmotti navy. And I am the Little Fox you cannot drown.”
Over and over, Vivia bellowed these words at the face of the bloated monster that could not have her. She might be made of pure magic, pure water, but she still was no match for three rulers with entire kingdoms that they would die to defend.
As if he thought the same, Merik joined in the war cries too: “I am the Leader of Last Holdout. The son of Jana and the Prince of Nubrevna. I fight for one and I fight for many. You cannot claim us.”
And with one final push—no regrets, keep moving—the monster in the waters shrieked terror, pain, defeat.
Then she fled. A calico who had learned some rats were not worth fighting.
Merik felt everything change when the one called Rakel finally fled. It wasn’t just that the magic around him shifted—or that the monster’s attacks were gone and this wrecked shore was left in quaking silence.
It wasn’t just that Merik’s own winds had returned, either, or that a new spring had filled him halfway into the battle.
And it wasn’t just that everything in the world had fallen silent. No more storms, no more Itosha, no more battle …
It was that the power inside Merik had shifted. Where his own winds were trickling into existence once more, the ones that belonged to Kullen were now fading.
No, Merik thought as he dragged himself away from his sister and the Empress of Marstok. Away from the countless questions he wasn’t ready to contend with. It’s not the magic of Kullen that’s fading. It is Kullen himself.
“Where are you?” The words climbed from Merik’s throat, coarse as rusted knives. “Kullen, where are you?”
Kullen didn’t answer.
Merik found himself once more running. Then flying, up through the forest. Up over the wrecked trees. “Answer me!” he screamed—both from his lungs and from his mind. “Kullen, where are you?”
Only silence. Too much silence, and the faster Merik flew back toward the mountain, back toward that cursed doorway that had brought him here, the more ice clotted inside his belly. Not a sleeping ice, not a timeless ice, but the kind that came with death.
Merik slammed to the earth before the door. Itosha’s storms had toppled oaks and flattened undergrowth. Lightning had scarred and burned. But it was meaningless destruction compared to what now suffused Merik.
He toppled into the mountain.
Instantly, the frizz of starlight hit his body. He stood on the central platform. All was calm. All was peaceful. The doorway now glowed behind him, as if nothing at all had happened or changed outside this mountain.
Merik flew once, a haphazard, panicked wind. Nothing like the targeted power he’d had only moments ago against Rakel, against Itosha.
“Where are you?” he roared, and his voice sent echoes across the cavern. It sent bursts of winged galaxies flying upward.
There was the door into the ice tomb ahead. No longer did ice clog its entrance, no longer did ice hunt a prince and his hound. Now it was as calm, as peaceful as the rest of the mountain. The ice that glowed was the ice that had always been there—ice for Sightwitches.
It had no interest in Merik as he shot through and bellowed out, “Kullen! Are you here? Answer me!”
“He can’t.” The voice that spoke was one Merik knew right away, even if he hadn’t heard her in months. Hadn’t seen her, hadn’t known where in the Witchlands she might be. She stood high above, on the same ledge Merik had leaped off of with Aurora only weeks ago.
Merik flew up, a streak of terror. His muscles, his magic, his mind were all shouting, No! This can’t be happening—not again. But it was. Merik needed only look into Ryber’s silver eyes to know …
Kullen was dying.
“Am I too late?” he rasped as he landed clumsily onto the ice beside her. “Is he gone?”
“No. But also…” She swallowed. Then nodded. Her eyes—always that Sightwitch silver—were brighter than Merik had ever seen. As if she were no longer just Ryber, but something much more.
It was like the very knowledge of Noden or the goddess or whoever it was inside this mountain were rippling out around her. It made Merik think of what Kullen had said over their Threadbond: These are the days that make sense to no one except Ryber and the other Sightwitches.
Merik pushed past her, no longer using magic. Relying only on his desperate legs and this ache that was filling him just as the waters and storms of the Exalted Ones had done only moments ago.
Then Merik saw Kullen. He saw his Threadbrother, stretched upon the icy floor.
Kullen had always been a lean man, but with massive bones on a long, stretched-out skeleton.
Now he was nothing but that skeleton, his eyes sunken.
His chest barely moving. His pale hair turned almost as silver as Ryber’s eyes.
And although it was not as thick as the tomb had been, there was new ice latticing across his body. A sheet to encase his desiccated hands, knees, feet.
His eyes fluttered open as Merik lurched to his side. They were the blue Merik had always known.
“Is it your lungs?” Merik asked. “Is it a breathing attack? I can get you air. I can fill your lungs—”
“No, my king.” The voice that rattled out was stronger than it had any right to be. It made Merik’s heart catch. Made tears punch through his eyes. “The problem is not my lungs.”
Ryber stepped into the tomb. It was so cold in here—not that Merik felt it—and she wore a thick gray gown and a knife at her hip. Behind her, other bodies assembled, each dressed the same. And each with eyes that glowed as Ryber’s did.
They were somber, unknown beings whom Merik supposed he ought to be alarmed by … but that he scarcely noticed. All that mattered was Kullen sprawled before him.
Merik tore ice off Kullen’s right hand and pulled his Threadbrother’s fingers into his. “What’s happening to you? How do I stop this?”
Kullen smiled. “You already know the answer to that.”
“No, no.” Merik’s grip turned brutal on Kullen. “Please, Kullen. The grave is still too deep, and I haven’t dug us out yet.”
“You’re wrong.” Kullen’s voice was weaker now. And the ice lacing over him had reached Merik—although it didn’t try to contain him as it had before. “The grave is long since filled, Merik, except for the one you refuse to climb out of.”
“I refuse?” Merik half choked that word—part laugh, part sob. “Kullen, everything I have touched is ruined. Everyone I have ever loved has ended up cursed or dead.”
“The greatness I saw in you is still there.”
“There is nothing there.”
“Trust me.” A tired, terrifying smile. “The Fury never forgets.” Kullen’s pupils were dilating now. His gaze looking somewhere far, far beyond Merik’s head or even this tomb.
Merik barked another awful laugh. How could this be happening? How could he be losing Kullen again? Were the first two times not enough? “But how can the Fury haunt me if he is gone? How can I make amends without you here?”
“You already have.” For the first time since Merik had dropped beside him, Kullen’s own grip strengthened.
His longer fingers curled into Merik’s as they had done so many times during all those breathing attacks they had fought through together.
“And now…” A weak breath. “Everything you have done is returned to you tenfold.”
One last squeeze.
Then came a burst of life, of light, of love and tempests and thunderclaps that had first rung out millennia ago—all of it surged out of Kullen and into Merik. “Safe harbors, my king.”
Kullen’s eyes fell shut. His body went limp. Then it went still, not with sleep but with death, death, the final end and a last embrace from the goddess at the heart of everything.
Ryber sank to Merik’s side. She did not cry as Merik did, but only chanted—along with every other Sightwitch inside the mountain, now awake and watching.
In the name of Sirmaya, I vow to preserve
All that has come before,
For the past is the only truth.
Once seen, never forgotten. Once heard, never lost.
In the name of Sirmaya, I vow to see
With clear eyes and open mind.
For the world is ever changing,
And the present is the only constant.
In the name of Sirmaya, I vow to protect
The future that is shown
For the Sleeper knows all
The Sleeper dreams all
And there is no changing what is meant to be.