Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Vaness’s bandage was soaked through now, turning the red crepe to almost black while more blood oozed from her nose.

Then the glamour winked back into place, and false peace shrouded Safi’s vision once more.

“Right!” Caden roared. The boat veered right. “Sharper!”

“Oh gods, sharper!” screeched Lev.

And Vaness’s hands wrenched sharper. So hard, they almost flipped. But Zander clung to Vaness, and Lev clung to Zander—all while Caden and Safi simply clung to the boat. Ash flew into Safi’s mouth. Her eyes burned with unseen smoke.

Then the boat heaved back the other way, and so the other way they all flew. Back, forth, back, forth. On and on, side to side while Caden shouted directions and Vaness obeyed.

Three more times, the glamour fell, and three more times, Safi saw wreckage and death and blood smearing from the Empress’s nose. Then they left the glamour behind entirely. Between one breath and the next, Safi could see again. The Empress could see again—and abruptly, she sat taller.

The boat hurtled faster, sheering atop the waves. The lake crawled with ships fleeing the glamoured battle behind, but Vaness swerved and skipped and carried them ever onward.

Until quite suddenly, there was nowhere left to go. They were almost to shore, the quay zooming in fast. Vaness did not slow, though. If anything, she pushed the boat harder. Even when Caden roared for her to stop and Lev screamed, “You’re going to kill us!”

Vaness only flung her arms higher and aimed straight for the road, where thousands of people poured by. Blood streaked off her face. It hit Safi’s cheeks—not that Safi cared. All she saw was death propelling toward her, made of stone and bodies and pain.

Now Zander was shouting too and Safi also joined in, but still Vaness did not listen.

They reached the stone lip onto shore.

The boat lifted from the lake, water spraying and people screaming. Then the boat landed, a crash that shocked through Safi’s bones.

For several resounding seconds, everyone sat there in gaping shock. Not just Safi, Vaness, and the Hell-Bards, but all the Marstoks who’d fled the boat too. Everyone stared, breathing hard and trying to grasp what the rut had just happened.

But the moment of recovery was short-lived. Pistol shots rang out, and when Safi turned, she saw another ship plowing this way, packed fore to aft with soldiers. They fired their weapons into the sky, a warning for people to clear—a warning that people obeyed with frantic shrieking.

Leaving only Safi, Vaness, and the Hell-Bards sitting in a boat on dry land while they waited for death to reach them.

“So,” Lev piped up, “I guess it’s fair to assume those Marstoks are not on our side?”

“No.” Safi swung out of the boat. “Run.”

The Hell-Bards did as ordered. Again, Zander slung Vaness onto his shoulder, and Vaness uttered no word of protest. Her nose still gushed, her face had lost all color, and now her crepe bandage leaked blood down her face. It sprayed against the street in time to Zander’s leaping stride.

They cut off the quay onto a side street, barged through an intersection, and then shoved onto a wider thoroughfare. Crowds clotted thick against them; pistols chased from behind. No slowing, no looking back. They pushed and ducked and fought their way through the throngs.

Two streets later, though, Lev hollered over the traffic, “Where are we going? We need a plan!”

“You think?” Caden called back. “I don’t want another Ratsenried any more than you do.”

“We had a plan in Ratsenried,” Zander inserted. “It just didn’t work.”

“Because it was your plan!” Lev began. “Hell-pits, if you’d just let me—”

“Shut up!” Safi snatched Lev’s arm. “All of you, shut up and follow me!” As before, the Hell-Bards obeyed, and at the next intersection, Safi angled left. West, toward the mountains.

She had a plan. Oh, it was slapdash and Iseult would pick it apart in seconds, but it was something. Act now; consequences later. Plus, it gave her a place to run toward and easy landmarks to follow: the golden spires. One after the other, she found them above the buildings, above the crowds, and one after the other, she tracked them toward the heart of the city. Toward the largest spire of all.

“Yesterday,” Safi shouted to Lev, the closer they got to the final spire, “how did you get into the Origin Well? Where was that hole in the wall?”

“Why?” Caden demanded, eyes widening as he pushed around a woman with a squalling child.

But Lev—blessed Lev—simply barked, “Shut up, Commander. She didn’t ask you.” Then she pointed north. “The hole was that way!”

So Safi went that way. Four more streets and two more turns, she spotted the wall. No longer glamoured, but very well guarded. The gaping, crumbling hole revealed cedars and shadows.

“Vaness!” Safi called without slowing her stride, even as the twelve soldiers spotted their approach. Even as two on the right unsheathed their blades.

“Yes,” Vaness slurred. A snap of her fingers …

And the two blades turned molten in the soldiers’ hands.

They screamed. Their blades fell and Vaness snapped again.

Every piece of iron nearby melted. Anything that it touched caught fire. Sheaths, uniforms, people. Burning flesh, burning hair—it all sizzled into Safi’s nose as she sprinted by. Then they were to the hole in the wall. Then they were through the hole in the wall and tramping into a blackened stretch of charred forest.

Soon, they reached the tiles surrounding the Origin Well, and Safi risked a backward glance. Maybe there was time to heal Vaness before …

No, there definitely wasn’t. Hundreds of soldiers poured into the Well grounds, and if Safi and the Hell-Bards didn’t move fast enough, those soldiers would see exactly where Safi was running to.

“Faster!” she screamed, her feet slamming onto the tiles. The waters rippled and hummed beside her. Then she was past, the Hell-Bards at her heels, and charging once more into the cedars—not blackened. Good cover for what she was about to do.

They reached the spire.

Safi cut left.

And there, hidden within the dirt and the rocks and the trees, was the crack in the earth she remembered. “Down here.” She scrabbled toward it.

“Domna,” Lev warned behind her. “This seems like a very bad idea.”

“Just trust me!” As she’d hoped, the blue light shone before her. She scooted toward it, scree slipping beneath her ankles, and the closer she inched, the more magic pulsed against her skin.

True, warm, happy magic that strummed in her heart. That beckoned her to enter. Yesterday, she’d fallen through. There’d been no chance to feel this magic. No chance to revel in its power or analyze what it might mean.

Lev crawled down behind her, and when Safi glanced back, the Hell-Bard’s mouth hung open, her eyes huge and glowing in the light.

“This is your plan?” Lev asked, voice barely a whisper.

“Yeah.” Safi grinned. “Follow me.”

She stepped through.





FIFTY-FOUR


Heat roars. Wood cracks and embers fly.

“Run.” Blood drips from his mother’s mouth as she speaks.