Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

The blood looked fresh in the snow. It had wept, it had oozed, and now it was trapped in time by ice and cold. The frozen river would accept no offering of corpses; these dead would stay here for months, until next year’s summer thaw.

So many blood-scents to mingle against Aeduan’s magic, so many dead for his gaze to drag across. Aeduan had not killed these monks and raiders, though. While he had fought to protect the Cahr Awen, to give Iseult time to flee, he had taken no lives.

Death did not have to follow wherever he went. Not anymore.

He turned away from the battle. Some people still fought, far across the valley, while others simply moved through the corpses and gathered their dead. And in some spots, seafire still licked and reached for the sky.

Aeduan left it all behind. There was one blood-scent he had to follow, one promise he had to keep.

He tracked the scent through a tunnel in the mountain, where stone men waited. Grotesque creations Aeduan didn’t look at too closely or consider too deeply. At a fork in the path, the scent veered right—so to the right he veered as well. Up, up, until at last he reached a forest above the Monastery.

The full moon streamed down, a shimmery glare upon the snow. Footprints traced forward, the right size to have been hers.

Strong, the scent here was strong: Aeduan’s own blood, bright and fresh and laced with fireflies. She must be near, the one who wore his coin. The one who’d carried him, when no one else could. The one who’d shown him that only he could save himself.

The conifers parted. Here, more footprints stamped and splayed—and more blood-scents too, from two people Aeduan knew.

He rushed forward. The tracks and the bloods moved into a small ditch just ahead. He reached the edge and strode in.

And then he stopped. For the path went nowhere. Before him was nothing but a stone wall, and resting atop the snow was a gleaming silver coin.

Aeduan had not known he held his breath until it slithered out. He had not known his heart pounded so hard until it skipped a beat—and the world skipped a beat with it.

For Iseult had lost her silver taler. She had lost the only means Aeduan had of finding her. He had lost the only means he had of finding her.

With a stiff bend, he scooped the coin off the snow. Cold and wet, the double-headed eagle stained in blood grinned up at him. Laughing, he thought; and for half a stuttering breath, he wanted to fling it back to the ground.

But he didn’t. Instead, he furled his fingers inward and turned away from the strange, blank stone. Then he climbed back into the clearing, back into the moonlight.

For the first time in his life, Aeduan was free to move of his own accord. No cloak bound him, no contracts held him, and no leash locked him in place. Even vows he’d meant to keep were now lost to a wall of stone and snow.

He was a tool no longer. He was a blade no longer, to be wielded by others or brandished by Lady Fate. He was Aeduan. Just Aeduan, and he could choose whatever life he wanted. He could go wherever his will might lead.

He already knew exactly where that was. Not a place, but a person. Not a job, but a promise. And not an obligation, but a desire. He might not be able to follow her, but there were other ways than blood to find people in the Witchlands.

With that thought to guide him, he eased the coin into his pocket. Two rolls of his wrists, a crack of his neck, and the Bloodwitch named Aeduan set off into the night.





FIREFLIES


He does not hear her coming; he does not smell her. It is not until she is upon him, while he washes at the spring, that he realizes she is near.

He left her at the campsite with the child and the mountain bat. She stood watch while he scouted ahead, exactly as they have done each night for the past week while traveling together.

“You’re hurt,” she says, and he spins around to face her. Were he not injured, he would have attacked her—startled into action. But he is injured, and he is slow.

“Let me help,” she offers, striding toward him. The moon, a growing crescent, beams down from a sky dappled with stars. It turns the blood on his chest to black.

He does not know why she helps. He also does not pull away.

She reaches him, and though he wants to recoil, though his fingers tap against his thighs, he holds his ground. He lets her lean in. He lets her brace a hand on his shoulder and grip the first of six arrows poking from his belly.

A parting gift from a Nomatsi road just north of here.

“Why is it,” she asks softly, long fingers furling around the first shaft, “that I always seem to be pulling arrows from you?”

She yanks. He coughs. Blood pours.

Five more times, she repeats this, and he can practically see her calculating the life-debts between them. He would have healed from these wounds on his own, though, so as far as he is concerned, this counts for nothing.

“At least this time,” she says when she is done, a pile of red fletching at her feet, “you waited until you were here before removing them. The cuts will heal cleaner because you let me do it.”

This is not how his magic works. Not at all, but he also does not contradict her. Instead, he says, “You are an expert in Bloodwitches now?”

“No.” Her lips sketch a smile. “Just in stubbornness.”

“It takes it to know it.”

Now her smile widens, and for some reason, his heart hitches at the sight of that. And for some reason, he likes that he can see the tips of her white canines. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen them before.

“I could not sense you coming,” he tells her, gaze flicking away from her mouth. Back to her yellow eyes. “Did you remove the coin?”

“No.” She pulls back her collar to prove this, but he finds he is not watching the silver taler or the leather strap it is bound to. Instead, he finds he is staring at her collarbone. At the small hollow along the base of it.

Her pulse flutters.

“It must need more blood,” she says eventually, startling him back into the moonlight.

Their eyes meet. Hers seem closer now. The air seems smaller. He does not breathe. She does not breathe.

Until, suddenly, it is too much. He backs away two steps and blurts, “I am leaving soon. So you need not worry that I will hurt you.”

He does not know why he tells her this. He had not planned on letting her know. Then again, he had also intended to leave last night. And the night before. And every night since they had found that child in the Contested Lands.

He had yet to actually follow through, though.

“You would have left without saying good-bye?” she asks.

And he counters, “You would have cared?”

She does not respond to this. She simply stares in that inscrutable way of hers while heat gathers in his shoulders. On his cheeks, too. This is not the response he had hoped for from her; he does not know what is.

Without warning, she swoops down and reclaims an arrow from the spring’s rocky shore. Then she takes a single step toward him, and though he wants to back away, he resists. Even as she closes the space between them. Even as she reaches for his arm.