Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

He gaped, his fire-flecked vision swimming and swaying. A head rested upon his shoulder, and he found he knew this face. He knew this profile—but what was the Threadwitch doing in his dream? It was as if she’d been holding him while he slept, and the oddness of that thought sent all his usual dream terror funneling away.

Orange flame and black smoke flickered, giving color to her ice-white skin. She was so close; he could see the ash gathering on her eyelashes and the frizz that heat and rain had lifted from her fine black hair. She had changed so much since he’d met her: the teardrop scar from the Poisonwitch acid by her left eye, the frayed, uneven edge to her hair from the fires of the Contested Lands.

Aeduan found himself unable to look away. How much more damage would he cause her? This Threadwitch who was not a Threadwitch at all?

She should not be here, he thought. If she stayed in his dream, then she would die like he did. Over and over until the rain came and Evrane with it.

He did not want her to die. In his dream or in real life. Unlike him, she was not a monster. She would not heal from the flames. She would not revive.

“Iseult,” he tried to say, and to his surprise, the name actually tumbled from his tongue. Soft vowels. Hard consonants. A sound and taste that fit her so perfectly.

She stirred. Her hands, which were draped against Aeduan’s sides, furled inward. Her fingers dug into his hipbones.

And at that touch, his stomach froze over. His lungs tightened with cold. Fire might consume them, but her touch was made of winter.

“Aeduan,” she exhaled, and with that sigh, the flames around them shrank back. Then they shivered out completely, revealing a pond. A spring that Aeduan knew, surrounded by evergreens and boulders.

The ice inside him froze harder. No longer a comfort, but murderous in its intent.

This was no nightmare. Iseult truly held him; she truly breathed his name in sleep; they had truly been surrounded by flame.

Too much. It was too much for his pain-racked mind or body to handle, to comprehend. Iseult so near. Iseult’s fingers still pressed into his hipbones. Iseult razing the earth to ash.

Against his most desperate, frantic desire—against every instinct that screamed at him to awaken fully—Aeduan’s eyelids fell shut. A moan slipped over his tongue.

Then the darkness took hold, and the flames of his nightmare carried him away once more.





THREE


This was why Adders wore black.

Safiya fon Hasstrel understood now. Black did not show blood the way the white floors did.

The ease and speed of it all stunned her the most. One moment, she had been staring at the nobleman’s long, horse-like face, still attached to his body. The next moment, it was on the floor, bleeding, eyes blinking.

Vaness had invited the man to her throne room, as was proper when relatives visited. Cousin, second cousin, great-great-aunt’s wife—they were all met in the imperial throne room. This man was a third cousin on Vaness’s mother’s side.

After kneeling before the Empress, his purple robe rustling with the movement, he’d been so bold as to plant a sandaled foot on the lowest step of the marble dais. Mere paces from where Safi stood, dressed in a perfect sleeveless white gown exactly like the Empress’s.

He looked her up, he looked her down, obviously knowing exactly what Safi was. Vaness hadn’t kept her Truthwitch secret.

Clearly, though, the man also did not believe in Safi’s powers. His confident foot on the dais. The smile creasing through his jowled face, and even the unrushed nature of his bow, all belied skepticism.

Most people Safi had met in Azmir had been this way: so certain a Truthwitch was impossible. A story. A legend. Not a flesh-and-blood nineteen-year-old with the muscles and scars of a soldier.

Or perhaps the cousin had simply believed that, even if his lies were caught, the Empress of Marstok wouldn’t actually hurt him. Family relations and all that.

“This is my cousin Bayrum of the Shards,” Vaness said in that inflectionless, heavy way she had of speaking when at court. As if each word were carefully selected to not only express precisely what she intended, but also to convey how much thought she had put into the utterance.

Actually, now that Safi considered it, it wasn’t only at court that Vaness spoke this way.

Vaness sat upon an iron stool. No cushion, no decorative additions. Very simple, really, for a woman with as many titles as she held—Empress of the Flame Children, Chosen Daughter of the Fire Well, the Most Worshipped of the Marstoks, the Destroyer of Kendura Pass, and likely several more that Safi had forgotten.

White adorned the throne room, as it did most of the palace, and the iron sconces upon the walls held neither candles nor Firewitch flame. The domed glass ceiling overhead, crafted by Azmir’s famed Glasswitches, filled the room with more than enough morning light to see by.

A single wave of Vaness’s hand, and every iron fixture could shoot off the wall, molding into whatever shape the Empress might need.

Not that Vaness would need to defend herself with her Adders nearby. Twelve of them flanked the dais at all times, clad in black so dark it seemed to suck in the sunlight. Gloves, headscarves, and soft, silent boots—the only skin Adders ever showed was the narrowest streak of their eyes.

The black sentries were never far from their Empress, and these days, never far from Safi either. One in particular, named Rokesh, had been appointed the lead guard for Safi. He followed her everywhere, though to protect her or to keep her in line, Safi wasn’t entirely sure. She had taken to calling him Nursemaid, and surprisingly, he chuckled every time.

Safi had been exceptionally well behaved since arriving in Azmir two weeks ago. She went where she was told to go; she listened when she was told to listen; she searched for lies when she was told to search for lies. And when noblemen eyed her up and down as openly as Bayrum of the Shards was doing, then she offered a polite curtsy in return—even though she wanted to break their arms.

Habim would be very impressed by her self-control.

“How do you do?” she asked.

The man only waved her greeting aside before swiveling toward Vaness and launching into a long-winded description of his travels. How he had crossed the Sea of Karadin in a storm, how flame hawks now nested on the mainland shores, how bandits lay in wait amidst the cotton farms beside the river.

As the man continued to list off the trials of his journey, each one more impressive than the last, Safi stared him down. Bayrum of the Shards was a liar—that much was obvious. His love for subterfuge and deception frizzled down her spine, scratching at her insides in a way that only an untrustworthy soul could.