Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

It was no Threadless animal that stumbled from the tree line, though, but the Threadless Bloodwitch instead. The instant she saw Aeduan’s Carawen cloak brightening the shadows between the trees, cool relief crumbled through her. Until she realized something was wrong.

He limped from the forest, and his eyes, when they slid up to hers, were hooded and lost. “They’re all dead.” The proclamation came out hoarse and low. Aeduan swayed.

The relief in her belly splintered to horror. He was hurt. Badly.

Without another thought, Iseult shot toward him and swooped an arm behind his back—where her hand met rain-soaked fletching and arrows. Countless bolts erupted from him like the spines of a sea urchin, and now that she looked, his cloak was shredded and stained to brown.

Aeduan listed into her; his breath came in short gasps. His crystal eyes swirled red. Whatever was happening, he clearly would not stay upright much longer, and Iseult didn’t want him passing out on top of her. Right where Owl could walk out and see him. The girl had a tendency to shatter the earth when she was upset.

There’s a spring uphill, Iseult thought, a crude plan cobbling together. I can clean him there without Owl finding us, and I can dry his clothes in the morning sun. She just had to keep Aeduan from slipping into unconsciousness before they reached the water.

With aching slowness, she guided Aeduan up the hillside. His eyelids fluttered, his feet dragged. Each step sent the ice in her belly knotting wider. As did each arrow she counted—seventeen in total. More than enough to kill a regular man, but Aeduan was no regular man.

Still, Iseult had seen him hit with double this many bolts before. There was something else happening here. Something deeply wrong. For some reason, he did not seem to be healing. His Bloodwitchery was not squelching or cleaning, it was not ejecting arrows and knitting him back together as she had seen it do before.

“Are you hurt somewhere else?” Iseult pitched the question into his ear. Stay awake, stay awake. “Is there a wound I cannot see?”

“Arrows.” The answer slurred out. Useless.

She changed tactics. “Is this injury why you took so long to return?”

A grunt, a vague nod. Then: “Survivor.”

Iseult tensed. “The woman from Owl’s tribe?” Aeduan had followed the woman’s scent for almost two weeks now. Twice, they had found these massacres, and twice, the woman’s scent had continued on. This latest would mark the third instance. But when Iseult searched Aeduan’s face for answers, all she got were pallid cheeks and harsh exhales.

“Was the woman there?” she pressed. Still no answer, though, so she let it go. They had reached the spring—thank the Moon Mother—and Iseult’s exhaustion was catching up fast. Fear could only sustain a tired body for so long.

Iseult led Aeduan to a low boulder beside the spring’s clear pool. The creek that trickled down the mountain had doubled in size overnight, thanks to the rain. With every muscle tensed, she eased Aeduan into a sitting position. A moan escaped his throat. Pain slashed across his face; she could hear his teeth grinding.

Even in the worst flames of the battlefield, even in the sea-swept moonlight beside a lighthouse, she had never seen him wear such suffering. Gripping his shoulder to keep him upright, she circled behind him. She would have to cut the cloak off if she wanted to keep this clean—

“Hurry,” he said, and with that command, Iseult gave up any hope of avoiding a mess. There was no time to lose. She just hoped Owl would not wake soon.

She gripped the first arrow and yanked. Minuscule barbs shredded flesh, and blood sprayed. Aeduan hissed, head tipping back, as one by one, Iseult snapped the arrows from his flesh, and a pile of bloodied white feathers and cedar gathered by her ankles.

By the time she removed the last, his white cloak was streaked with fresh red. His spine slumped, and the only thing keeping him from falling headfirst into the water was Iseult’s iron grip upon his collar. With the last arrowhead removed, she dug her heels into the gravel shore and towed him back. She wanted him to be upright so they could move away from the growing pool together.

Instead, Aeduan toppled backward. She barely caught him before he hit the earth and her knees buckled beneath his weight. Her bottom hit the rocks, pain barking through her seat bones. Her back hit a boulder, and her head cracked hard.

The spring wavered. Her eyes burned with sudden tears.

“Aeduan,” she said, but her rasping words earned no response. His magic had finally dragged him into a sleep. He would not wake up until he was healed.

Meaning Iseult was trapped beneath him, while her chest swelled with … with something. “You’re heavy,” she said, trying to move him. But she had no energy left. Not enough to move his blood-slickened dead weight. His head, peaceful and still, rested on her shoulder.

He was so warm against her, even as the cold morning caressed her skin. Then there it was again, that swelling in her lungs. Warm. Fizzy. Until at last it burst forth in a shrill laugh that felt a thousand miles away. It was someone else’s panicked amusement. Someone else’s weary body and fire-kissed mind. Someone else’s burgeoning headache and bloating scalp bruise.

Iseult was countless miles from her home, pinned to the rocks by a man who’d once been her enemy, while a wren chirruped from the waking forest nearby—and while a little Earthwitch and her mountain bat slept inside the hollow hill below.

If only Safi could see me now.

Unable to fight it any longer, Iseult’s eyelids sank shut, and the world went quiet.



* * *



Heat roars. Wood cracks and embers fly.

“Run.” Blood drips from his mother’s mouth as she speaks.

It splatters his face.

With arms stained to red, she pushes herself up. She wants him to crawl out from beneath her. She wants him to escape. “Run, my child, run.”

He does not run. He does not move. He waits, as he always does, for the flames to overtake him and the world to burn alive.



* * *



Aeduan had been in this nightmare before. Trapped and bleeding while flames crowded closer. Heat fanned against him, smoke scorched his lungs. But instead of the fiery tent he was used to seeing, instead of the storm he knew would come coursing in, he found only blue sky and wispy clouds. Instead of the clotted stench of his mother’s blood, he smelled only the faint reek of his own.

The pain in his chest was the same, though. Agony that did not want him to move, that argued with his mother’s last words. Run, my child, run.

Aeduan tried to turn, as he always did in the dream to no avail. Except this time, his head swiveled easily. The arrows and death that usually pinned him down were not stacked atop him. Instead, he realized with a jolt of confusion, he was pinning down another.