Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

A low bed sagged beneath a single window, its green coverlet finely made, if well worn. A chipped washbasin with cobalt leaves around the edge rested atop a table near the door, and there was even a warped mirror hanging above it.

Owl was immediately fascinated by the mirror, and Aeduan was grateful to have her distracted. Pain thumped in every organ, every limb, and it banged harder with each passing minute. He could barely keep the coughing at bay. Then there was the blood, an endless seep from not only his old scars, but now the twenty-one new ones. The shirt Iseult had gone to the trouble of cleaning was now stiff and red once more.

At least, he thought as Iseult helped him sit, I did not get any of my blood on her. “Thank you,” he tried to say as he sank onto the bed, but all that came out was a harsh sigh.

The wood groaned beneath him. The dark-paneled room listed sharply. Then the Threadwitch moved in front of him, a hazy vision of pursed lips and green-golden eyes. Her hands moved to his throat, gentle as always, and it took him a moment to realize she was removing his cloak.

He stiffened. She hesitated. A faint lift of color reached her cheeks. “May I? We need to tend your wounds.”

There was that we again.

He nodded, and as she eased off the cloak, he realized the problem was not that the room felt too small. No, the problem was that Iseult felt too big. She filled every space in his vision. Every touch, every word, every breath. There was no escaping her.

She folded Aeduan’s cloak, acting as if it were not filthy and pocked with holes, before carefully placing it on the floor. Brows drawn in concentration, she twisted back to him. Her fingers reached for the edge of his shirt, as if she intended to tug it from his pants. As if she intended to peel it up over his bare, bleeding chest.

It was too much.

His hands shot to hers. He stilled her fingers where they rested at his hips. “No” was all he said. A mere exhale of a word, but enough. The color on her cheeks fanned brighter. She snatched back her hands. Then pulled her whole body away, angling toward Owl. A split second later, and Iseult was scrabbling away from Aeduan entirely.

“Leave it!” she cried. “That mirror is not for you to pull apart—Owl, leave it!”

And Aeduan found a frayed exhale scraping from his lungs. He was more relieved than he cared to admit that Owl was making trouble. The sentiment was short-lived, though, for the actual act of removing his own shirt turned out to be an impossibility—and if he was honest, no longer a priority.

Every muscle in his body screamed. Shadows fringed his sight, and he simply had nothing left to fight them with anymore.

A man is not his mind, he tried to tell himself. The first lesson every monk learned. A man is not his body. They are merely tools so that a man may fight onward.

Aeduan’s attempts didn’t work—and he could no longer deny that Iseult was probably right: the arrows that had struck him had been cursed.

This, he supposed, must be what dying felt like.

“Apparently she can control glass too,” Iseult muttered in Dalmotti, twisting back to Aeduan. “Because this child wasn’t tiresome enough already … Aeduan?” Her face dipped in close. “Aeduan, stay awake—just a little longer. Can you do that?”

“Hmm,” he agreed, and though it took monumental effort, he forced his eyelids to stretch high. Forced his spine to straighten.

Iseult’s and Owl’s wide eyes met his.

“I’ll go find a healer now,” Iseult went on. “And buy supplies for the road.”

“No…” He swallowed. “There is an outpost for the Monastery in Tirla. I can … get supplies … there.”

Disbelief widened her eyes. “I thought you were a monk no longer.”

He had told her that, hadn’t he? And he had meant it too, even if the why of it from two weeks ago now seemed muddled in his mind.

“You can barely speak,” Iseult went on, “much less walk.”

“I … must, though,” he argued, wondering why she insisted. Why she cared. “The dead monk … he requires closure.”

“Then I will go report the man’s death for you.”

For several long moments, Aeduan stared at her, considering. Always, she perplexed him. He had no idea what she might say next. What she might do next. At times, it angered him—she had no right to care. But at other times …

Well, he did not know precisely. He just knew that he was glad he’d not yet abandoned this course and returned to his father. Glad he had not gone to Lejna or hunted the ghost that smelled of clear lake waters.

“Only monks may enter,” he said at last, voice hoarse. Body shamefully frail.

Iseult’s nose wiggled. “Fine,” she said. “You can visit the outpost later, once you’ve healed. Rest for now, though. And Owl”—she fixed a stern eye on the girl—“lock the door behind me, and no tampering with the mirror while I’m gone.”

Several pained breaths later, Iseult left the room. As promised, Owl locked the door with a pointed glance from across the room. The tumbler clicked into place, and Owl crawled onto the bed. She settled cross-legged beside Aeduan, expression expectant. “Story,” she said.

It took Aeduan a moment to even comprehend that word: story. It was not as if people went around saying it to him often. Or ever, really. And it was not as if he knew many to tell six-year-old Earthwitches.

“Monster and the honey,” she specified, more insistent now, and this time, she poked him in the biceps.

It hurt. The blackness advanced. He would pass out if he did not do something, and as useless as he was, he did not want to leave the girl all alone in a strange inn where mirrors were begging to be melted apart and remade.

But the monster and the honey … It was a tale his father had woven a hundred times when Aeduan was a child—and it was a tale Aeduan refused to ever tell. After all, stories like it were dangerous. They made the hopeless hope and the forgotten dream of being remembered. But the truth was that monsters could never be changed into men, no matter how much honey they might gather.

So Aeduan swallowed, throat aflame, and began a different story. A harmless story. One his mother had told him many times, all those years ago, about a dirty cat trapped in a thunderstorm and the little girl who saved him.





TEN


It was a song that saved Merik from the shadows. A voice so perfect, he thought surely he must be dead. That this must be the hall of Noden; this must be the chant of His most hallowed lost.

But there was warmth on Merik’s face, and when his eyes briefly cracked wide, sunlight pierced in. He instantly screwed them shut again.