Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Leaving Stix to face the whispers all alone.

Besides, what could Stix even say? I know the underground city too well, Viv. I find secret corners and hidden streets that I should not be able to find.

Or, I feel anxious every moment I’m away from the city. But as soon as I’m back inside its walls, I feel as if I can breathe again.

Or, the one that scared Stix the most, the one she couldn’t even voice aloud to herself: There are whispers in the back of my skull, Viv. They talk all day, all night, and I am slowly losing my mind to them.

The whispers only spoke when Stix was aboveground, out of the under-city. They only screamed when she was far away from this door. When she was here with it, though, they were quiet.

It had started with dreams two weeks ago. Darkness and screaming and a pain in her neck that woke her in the night. She found her sheets soaked, sweat sliding off her in thick rivulets.

A week after that, the shadows had started coming during the day. Little flickers of movement that made her fear her already weak vision might be getting worse. The shadows only lasted a few days, though. Then they vanished and the whispers began.

The whispers were the worst part yet, because she could never quite hear them. It reminded her of a cadet she’d trained, who, no matter how much she told him to speak up, never got his voice above a squeak. The majority of what he said went forever unheard, forever lost to the din around him.

These whispers were like that.

At times, Stix thought them a hundred different voices speaking inside her brain. Other times she thought them only one, as if all those separate sounds and languages were blended together like a vast orchestra playing a single tune.

One voice or many, it did not change the fact that none of the words made sense. It was a language—or languages—she did not know.

Worse yet, the low, inaudible murmur of the voices never ceased. All day, all night, they followed Stix. Always incomprehensible, always angry, and they expected Stix to do something about it.

But I can’t hear you! she had mentally screamed a thousand times in the past two weeks. Twice, she had even slipped up and barked it aloud.

Her only relief came from Pin’s Keep. The boisterous bustle of the crowded main room, where the homeless and hungry came for food. Where all that noise could, for a time, drown out the maddening whispers. But only in the under-city did Stix feel truly at home.

There, the whispers shifted from furious to cajoling. Come, they seemed to say in words that had no meaning. Come this way, keep coming.

Every night Stix followed, knowing tomorrow she would regret it. Tomorrow, she would be exhausted with her head pounding and the whispers returned. But the call of the city was always stronger, and every night, she gave in.

Even now, when Stix should have been helping families move in or overseeing dam reconstruction, she wasn’t. It was her father’s birthday too, and she’d promised him a trip to the Cleaved Man. Instead, here she was, standing in front of this door to nowhere. Again. But there were no more answers here than there had been last night or any other night before it. Only the faint hum of Come this way, keep coming.

“I can’t,” Stix told them. Then she rubbed her eyes—by the Twelve, they burned—and turned away.



* * *



Stix was in the Cisterns, tracing the same path Vivia would have taken to reach the surface, when she passed a marking on the limestone wall. It wasn’t new; she’d seen it a hundred times before today.

For some reason, though, today it gave her pause. For some reason, even though water thundered this way through the tunnel, Stix’s feet slowed. Her gaze raked up and down the image.

It was a relief of Lady Baile, patron saint of change, seasons, and crossroads. In one hand, she held a trout, and in the other, wheat. The limestone saint stood as tall as Stix, so worn by time that her fox-shaped mask was missing. Actually, most of the head was missing.

But not the eyes, and it was the eyes that had hooked Stix’s attention. It was the eyes that were causing the voices to rustle and churn.

This time, though, they spoke in a language she knew—and this time, they were telling her where to go. Telling her how to come and keep coming.

“Hye,” she said, the sound lost to the waters rushing this way. “I’ll be there soon.”

Abruptly, the choir in her skull silenced. Then the Cistern tide reached her. Frothy, violent, and bound to the magic singing in Stix’s veins. She let it carry her away, because there was no reason to retrace Vivia’s steps now. No reason to return to Queen’s Hill or travel to the dam.

Stix needed to go south.

Come this way, keep coming.





SEVEN


Aeduan awoke, confused. There had been pain and fire and impossible dreams—dreams he could not quite remember. Iseult had been there, though, while they slept within a pyre beside a spring.

When his eyelids scratched up, soft light seared into them. He was in the cave that Owl had made, where the mountain bat’s stink overpowered all other smells. But not his magic. He sensed Owl nearby, the rosewater-and wool-wrapped lullabies that thrummed inside her veins. And if she was still here, then Iseult must still be here too. Not just in dreams but in waking.

He had no explanation for why Iseult had remained, nor could he deny the relief seeping through him that she had.

Clearing his throat, Aeduan twisted sideways—only to find Owl squatting beside him, her big, teardrop eyes unblinking.

“Breakfast,” she declared, thrusting a wooden bowl at Aeduan’s face. Earthworms wriggled within, and it took all Aeduan’s self-control not to recoil. Instead, he sat up. His blanket fell back; cold air swept against him. For some reason, he was missing his shirt.

“Blueberry’s favorite,” Owl explained, and as if to prove the point, the beast ducked out from the back of the cave, where shadows reigned. The musty bat stench rolled over Aeduan. His breath steamed into Aeduan’s face.

The worms continued to writhe.

Owl shoved the bowl in closer. “Eat.”

Aeduan accepted the bowl, which set Blueberry to snuffing right in his ear. Hot, damp snuffs. He waved Blueberry back and glanced toward the sliver of daylight that marked the entrance. “I … need water first, Owl.”

The girl seemed satisfied with this, and after watching Aeduan stumble to his feet, she snuggled into the still-warm blankets and Blueberry settled down behind her.