Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

When Aeduan’s eyes opened again, light flared around him, as if the night had turned to day. As if he had somehow fallen into the heart of the sun.

Waters streamed, obscure and blinding … and then morphing into a face.

Iseult.

She hung suspended in the water, eyes closed. Hair floating around her face, a halo of night to encircle the moon. The white Carawen cloak undulated behind her, heavy and wild. No bubbles left her nose or mouth.

Instantly, panic laid claim to Aeduan’s muscles. He grabbed her, one arm looping around her waist. Then he released the clasp at her neck.

The cloak fell beneath them.

He kicked for the surface, strong and fast and desperate—and it was as if his blood had waited for this precise moment. As if this was all it had ever wanted to do. His magic ignited within him. It spurred his muscles to a speed and power no man could ever match, and he flew toward the surface with Iseult at his side.

The Well had healed the curse, just as Iseult had promised. Then it had brought Aeduan back from death and returned to him the one thing he had spent his whole life hating. He’d had it all wrong, though. He saw that now.

Being a Bloodwitch did not mean he could not also be a man.

He towed Iseult toward the night, and a moment later, they crashed above the surface, cold and jarring. Aeduan grabbed for the nearest expanse of ice and held on, tugging Iseult tightly to him so she would not drift away.

Light and steam rolled around them, erasing the world. Blending it into a featureless expanse. He saw no one else. He heard no one else. For all he knew, they were the only people left alive in this battle.

In the entire world.

“Iseult,” he tried, willing her to wake up. “Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.” He could not stop saying her name, even as it came out in short, shallow bursts. Even as he searched for a way out of the water, a spot to gain purchase on the ice. Her name simmered from his chest and would not stop.

“Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.”

She had saved him. One more life-debt he owed her, except now he saw it did not matter. It had never mattered. Not since she had stabbed him in the heart beside a lighthouse. Not since he had given her his salamander cloak and told her Mhe varujta.

“Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.”

He could scarcely see her face through all the light and steam. He needed to get them out of this Well. With one arm, he pulled himself—and Iseult too—along the jagged ice.

He knew this went beyond life-debts, and that this fear anchored in his chest went against everything Aeduan had ever wanted to be—against everything he’d ever believed himself to be.

There. His fingers hit a ridge he could hang on to.

“Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.”

He grabbed hold. He pulled. His fingernails carved into ice. His forearm strained. A cry broke from his chest, and he could no longer say her name. So he thought it instead. Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.

He kicked his legs. The water pushed and his magic sang. Soon, his biceps cleared the ice. Then his head. Then her head too.

Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.

Now his chest was out of the water, and with one final kick, he wrenched his whole torso free. It was not graceful, nor gentle. Iseult’s body scraped against the ice, but she was high enough that he could release her for half a heartbeat.

Aeduan pulled himself the rest of the way onto the ice, then he scrabbled around to haul her out beside him. Steam coiled off her body. Off his too, and the cold of the valley gnawed deep into his bones.

“Iseult.” He uttered her name again, hoarse and low. Again and again and again.

She was warm to the touch, and a pulse fluttered at her neck. She breathed. Shallow movements in her chest that meant she had not drowned.

In a vague corner of Aeduan’s brain, he supposed the Cahr Awen could not drown—not here. When they had been in the water, he had felt sentience. Oneness. Completion. He had no doubt now about what Iseult was.

Aeduan ran his hands down Iseult’s wet arms, down her wet legs, checking for broken bones. For anything that might explain why she would not wake up. But he found nothing. Everything he touched was intact, though growing colder by the second.

“Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.”

She and Aeduan had survived the cleaving Adders in Lejna. They had survived raiders and the Amonra. They had survived a Firewitch and the Contested Lands and weeks of survival in the Sirmayan Mountains.

He could not lose her now.

It was as Aeduan pressed his fingers to the back of Iseult’s neck, searching for some damage to her spine, that her body tensed beneath his.

He stilled, waiting. Staring.

Then her back arched, face tipping up. She gulped in a single, wheezing breath before her body relaxed beneath his. She opened her eyes.

Golden eyes streaked with green. The only eyes that had ever met Aeduan’s without looking away.

His heart fluttered at the sight of them. His whole body did, a strange feeling of relief and confusion. He tried to pull back, to give her space, but in a movement too quick to resist, she gripped his collar. She yanked him down. His elbows gave way. His chest landed atop hers. Their faces were only inches apart.

Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.

The ice was cold against Aeduan’s hands on either side of her. Wind furrowed into his wet clothes. Water dripped off his face. A drop landed on her cheek and slid sideways. He wanted to brush it away, but he was afraid to move. Afraid that if he did, she would remember who he was. She would recoil and retreat.

And she was so close now. He could see every line of her. The way her jaw sloped to a pointed chin. The way her lips parted to reveal the edge of teeth, a flicker of tongue. But it was her eyes that held his attention—that had always held his attention. Her pupils pulsed in time to her breaths. Her ribs did too, battering against his.

He did not know how he had ever thought her plain.

Iseult’s fingers curled more tightly around his collar. She tugged him closer, until their noses almost touched. Already, hers had turned pink with cold. Her cheeks too.

Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.

Her abdomen contracted beneath his. She curled toward him until she was so near, her breath whispered against his lips.

“Aeduan,” she began. “I—”

The light within the Well winked out. No warning, and abruptly, the forest coalesced around them—as did smoke and fires …

And faces. A hundred soldiers stepping from the northern trees.

Aeduan shoved to his feet. The night air froze against him. “Get behind me,” he told Iseult, even though she was already behind him, already on her feet and sinking into her own defensive stance.

How had he missed the raiders approaching? The Well’s power must have interfered with his witchery. Now, though—now there was no mistaking the onslaught of bloods, as diverse as the faces that matched them. And at the fore was frosted baby’s breath and bone-deep loss.