Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

None of the officers reacted to this command. No Hye, sir! or crisp salutes. No apologies or explanations for why they had so easily, so willingly changed course. In fact, every officer at the table acted as if she had not spoken at all.

In that moment, Vivia realized it was worse than she’d ever feared. She had been so focused on protecting the city—she had been so intent on doing what she felt was right, on what she knew the infrastructure of the Lovats plateau would demand—that she hadn’t seen this coming. Now, she had a full mutiny on her hands, and her own father had lit the first match.

Share the glory, share the blame.

Her confirmation came a heartbeat later, when a Second Admiral, black hair streaked with gray, said, “The vizers came to us an hour ago.” No expression. No inflection. “Vizer Quihar, Eltar, and Quintay. They informed us that your crown has been withdrawn and the King Regent rules once more.”

“Ah.” It was all Vivia could say. The only sound or breath she could muster. The world had fallen apart around her and now the Hagfishes were dragging her to Hell.

It mattered none that she had stolen an arsenal of Marstoki weapons for her troops. It mattered none that she had captained a ship of her own and earned the loyalty and love of her crew. It mattered none that she had found the under-city and filled it, and it mattered none that she had been born to her title and the underground lake had chosen her.

When Serafin Nihar, former King Regent and former Admiral to the Navy and Soil-Bound, had beckoned, these soldiers and three vizers had answered that call.

“So,” she said quietly. “You will not call back our forces to defend Lovats?”

Three officers shook their heads. Two said, “No, Your Highness,” and the remaining nine simply regarded her with bored eyes.

“All right then.” She pushed away from the table. “Just know that when the city of Lovats falls to the Raider King, it will be your guilt to bear—and the Fury never forgets.”

No one stopped her and no one saluted when she left the room. If her threat—a promise, really—bothered the officers, none gave any indication. But Vivia knew she had spoken the truth.

Her father might be experienced on the field, he might understand wartime tactics in a way that Vivia would willingly admit she did not. But he did not know her city. He did not know the people crowded into the streets. He had never walked the Skulks or served the hungry at Pin’s Keep. He had never ridden the waves of the Cisterns, or explored the under-city.

He was a transplant from Nihar who had married into power. Who stole speeches and titles and glory that were not his, and the right to rule did not live inside his veins.

Yet despite all that, it had taken only a few words to three vizers and a few words to the armed forces. Between one ring of the chimes and the next, all of Vivia’s power—all of her plans and careful protections—had been yanked out from beneath her.

She should have seen it coming.

She hadn’t, though. Not in the least.

All these years, her father had said he only wanted what was best for her, that he only cared for her sake. And all these years, she had believed him.

When she reached her boat several minutes later, her guards tried to join her. She waved them off. Then she boarded her boat, summoned her tides, and pushed off into the Waterwitched currents that led to the southern water-bridge.

She no longer felt attached to her body. No longer attached to dry land. It was not the officers who would drown—it was her. She was already drowning. Already sinking beneath the waves, watching the sunlight vanish, until soon, there would be nothing left but Noden’s Hagfishes and a final lungful of air.

She’d done it all wrong. She had been too much like her mother, exactly as the High Council had feared. The queen by blood, they had said about her mother, but with madness in her head. They had wanted Vivia to be like Serafin, for whom command had come as easily as breath. They had wanted bluster and confidence and a rage to bend their enemies.

Vivia supposed it only made sense that the Royal Navy and Soil-Bound officers had wanted that too. Even after she had laid out the truth of the city’s infrastructure before them, even after she had spent hours forming a detailed strategy for protecting Lovats and slowing the Raider King—even after that, a single barked command from the King Regent had sent them all snapping into line.

At some point, Vivia did not know when, tears began to fall. Hot, angry tracks that propelled her Tidewitchery faster, faster. Wind crashed against her. She dipped around ships, she swayed around ferries, she veered, she skipped, and she rode waves of her own creation.

It wasn’t fast enough, though. Never fast enough. She could not outsail this shame at her heels nor the rage that she had bungled her rule so badly. It was not a pretend rage either, worn to win her father’s approval, nor even a berserking Nihar rage that her father’s family had always been so proud of.

This was a true, heart-shattering, tide-ripping rage. All directed inward, at the truth now laid bare before her: she was not fit to rule. She would never be the one thing she’d fought so hard to be.

She wondered if this was how her mother had felt before she’d jumped.

There was the spot, just ahead. A strip of unassuming stone on the water-bridge where her mother had finally decided the shadows were too much. That only in death could she understand life, and that Noden’s court would be an easier solution than the weight of dark life spanning before her.

For thirteen years, Vivia had never looked at this spot when she sailed past. She had always fixed her gaze on the barn swallows, dancing and happy and free.

Today, she looked. Today, she slowed her skiff and stared at the gray stone, cloud-dappled and rough, while two swallows swooped past.

All this time, Vivia had feared that if she looked at this place, that if she did not turn the other way, then she would find her own feet moving toward it. That the shadows inside her would win, and the High Council—and everyone else too—would be right: she had too much madness inside her head to ever be Queen.

As a child she had tried to blame Merik for what Jana had done. Somehow, if it was Merik’s fault, then it could not be Vivia’s. And then the same fate could not befall her. The bludgeoning in her chest would not win.

She regretted what she’d said to him, but never had she regretted it more than right now. With the breeze caressing her face, with the water lapping and kind. For she felt no urge to follow her mother off the edge. She felt only the hollow grief she had always worn, and nothing—neither Noden nor time—could take that away.

It had not been Merik’s fault their mother had jumped. Nor had it been Vivia’s own doing. Jana had died because she had seen no other escape, and there had been no one there who knew how to help her.