Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Iseult was glad to be away from the inn. Glad to be away from Aeduan and the girl who never listened.

That room was much too small for them. The nearness of Aeduan … and Owl too … had addled her mind. Or maybe it was the cleaved Firewitch that steeped her blood with his flames. Or maybe it was simply exhaustion or the sudden, unsettling need to keep her face hidden.

No matter the cause for her idiocy, Iseult was still scolding herself by the time she reached the healer’s packed clinic. She could not believe she had thought to remove Aeduan’s shirt. It was one thing to pull off a man’s clothes and tend his wounds when he was unconscious. It was quite another when he stared back at you, breath catching and eyes blazing.

Something had wrestled in her chest at the sight of him like that. His hands resting over hers. Something she didn’t recognize, at once fiery and frozen.

It still wrestled. Goddess, what had she been thinking?

Iseult practically ran through the streets of Tirla, shame chasing fast at her heels, and haggling over healing supplies was a welcome distraction. She bought salves and tinctures, bandages and gauze, and unlike the innkeeper, the harried attendants had no problem with Iseult’s silver taler. Unfortunately, though, an extra silver taler would not get her name moved up on the fourteen-page list for a healer’s visit. She scribbled her name at the end anyway, though the odds were not in Aeduan’s favor that the lone healer would come before they departed.

Hopefully their new supplies would be enough to keep the curse away. At least until a better solution presented itself.

As Iseult ducked back into the tangling traffic of the day, she was struck by a tightness behind her ribs. A sharp pang that skittered atop her heartbeat. Regret, she decided after a moment. But no, that wasn’t quite it. This was a softer pain, laced with something almost like … like hunger.

It wasn’t until Iseult passed a Purist holding a Repent! sign that she finally pinpointed the feeling. Homesickness. Tirla was so much like Ve?aza City. Cleaner certainly. Colder too, and with green-clad soldiers to thicken the crowds, but it still felt like home. A few hours here and already she’d found her weft inside the city’s weave. The noise was no longer a bother but instead a comfort, as reliable as the tides, and checking her hood was once again second nature.

What if, what if, what if—for the past month, that question had come to her at least once a day while her fingers clung white-knuckled to her Threadstone. Always it hit in the lulls between chaos, when no threat hounded Iseult’s heels. When there was too much time for her brain to flitter to the past and catalog all she had left behind. When there was nothing to keep her mind from wishing—and wondering—what might have happened if she and Safi had never pulled that roadside heist north of Ve?aza City.

What if, what if, what if. A useless refrain with no satisfying answers. For without the misfired holdup, Iseult and Safi would never have drawn Aeduan’s mercenary attention—and without that, she would never have returned home to the Midenzi tribe. Then she would never have been cursed and fled for Nubrevna, where she would never have encountered the Origin Well …

And she would never have learned that she might be half of the Cahr Awen. That she and Safi might be the mythical pair of legend meant to heal the Origin Wells and cleanse the world of evil.

Iseult would never have made a bargain with Aeduan—whose Carawen order was meant to protect the Cahr Awen—and they would never have saved Owl from the Red Sail pirates. Then she would not be here now, chest hollowed out while she towed healing supplies through a foreign city that did not feel so foreign at all.

In fact, if Iseult let her gaze drop to the cobblestones, let her awareness settle back and her witchery guide her through the throngs, she could almost pretend she was on her way to meet Safi. That at any moment, her Threadsister would shove in close, grumbling about the crowds, and they’d head for Mathew’s shop. Why, that storefront over there looked just like his, right down to the sign declaring Real Marstoki Coffee, Best in Tirla.

Iseult halted midstride, heart punching into her throat. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. Surely she would not be so lucky as to find one of Mathew’s coffee shops here. She had lived for over six years in Mathew’s shop in Ve?aza City, training with the Wordwitch confidence man—and with his Heart-Thread Habim too.

Hugging her sack close, Iseult cut across the street and in a flurry of speed—of desperation, even—she shoved through the shop’s front door. It was like coming home. First came the smell of coffee, rich and rounded against her nostrils. Then the color hit her eyes, the rugs, the tapestries, and the pillows all arranged exactly as they were in Ve?aza City. Even the people lounging on sofas and low stools looked the same. Even the porcelain cups from which they drank looked the same.

This was his. This was Mathew’s, and that meant she could contact him. Oh, Iseult could not believe her good fortune—the Moon Mother had blessed her today indeed. She hurried toward a high counter at the back of the room, where a young woman with skin as dark as the coffee she ground and Threads an attentive green glanced up at Iseult’s approach.

“Would you like to order?” she asked, her Marstoki accented like Habim’s was—which meant she was from the capital. “You can order a full carafe or by the cup.”

Iseult slowed to a stop before the counter. Excitement was making her tongue fat. She had to swallow. Then swallow again before she could say, “I-is Mathew fitz Leaux in?”

A beat passed. The woman’s Threads stretched taut with turquoise surprise. Then tan wariness. Then finally a shuddering mixture of the two. She set down her cylindrical grinder and scooted aside the bowl in which the grounds had been gathering, all while her gaze swept up Iseult. Down.

“It’s … you.” She spoke in Marstoki, but then she hastily shifted to accented Dalmotti. “Welcome. It is good to see you, Iseult det Midenzi.”

Now it was Iseult’s turn to feel surprise and wariness. Only years of training kept her from reeling back. “You … know me?”

“Of course! Every shop has been told to look for you. Though I will admit, I did not think you would walk into mine. But, oh—wait here!” The woman’s hands flung up, beseeching. “I have a message for you.” She spun in a cloud of saffron skirts and disappeared into a back room.

The woman returned in less time than it took the nearest patron to drain his cup, and excited streaks of color had gathered on her cheeks and in her Threads. Iseult could only assume there was some kind of reward for finding her.