Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Then he lurked over her, staring down while snow fell and darkness webbed across him. “Six turned on six,” he sang, “and made themselves kings. Five turned on one and stole everything.”

The Fury remained that way, humming rhymes, while Esme continued her focused work at the Loom. And the Fury remained that way as Cleaved slowly emerged from the forest, one by one, to flank the Well.

Merik hardly noticed them. His blood had rushed to his head from the flying; his ears had popped; and the energy from his last meal had already worn off. More importantly, his mind was snagged on what the Fury had said—on the fact that no one wanted the same thing. Hye, they all wanted to enter this mountain, but Esme wanted the Wells. The Raider King wanted the empires. And the Fury wanted a blade and a glass, and then Merik at his side …

That was valuable information. People with different aims could always be pitted against one another.

When at last Esme’s eyelids rolled up, her head swiveled to face the Fury. “What,” she hissed, “do you want?” Before Kullen could answer, her eyes caught on Merik several paces away. Rage snarled across her face. “How dare you bring him here.” She shoved past the Fury, voice lifting as her arm lifted too. “Go back to the tower, Prince! I command you!”

Merik’s whole body tensed, shoulders rising to his ears. Pain—he knew the pain was coming.

“No.” The Fury clamped a hand on Esme’s shoulder. “He comes with me.”

Esme jerked free. She looked fit to destroy Kullen. Her fingers had curled into claws at her sides. “I am not done with him.”

“He is not yours to play with. Release his collar.”

“He is mine. Both of you are.” Again, her arm levered high as if she planned to use her Loom.

But the Fury only laughed, a mocking, chesty sound that echoed across the water. “You cannot control me, Puppeteer. And you cannot hurt me. My power is too immense for your magic, as you well know.”

“I do not need to control you, because I can control him.” Her fingers moved, and Merik moved with them.

It was not as if he wanted to; his feet simply walked toward the Well, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. Cold splashed against his feet, then his ankles, then his calves, and no matter how much he spun his torso or tried to twist back, his feet kept striding. He even stretched and spun his arms, grasping for the shore, but it did nothing. Step, step, step. Splash, splash, splash.

And now it was the Puppeteer’s laughter that echoed across the waves.

Hips, waist, chest. Cold squeezed the air from Merik’s lungs, and soon only a few steps remained before he would be fully submerged. His breath had turned staccato. “Please,” he tried to say, but the sound was instantly swallowed by a gathering storm.

The Fury’s storm.

“Enough.” The Fury rounded on Esme. “Release him.”

“No.” She stood taller. “I want to see what happens if he drowns. Will he come back from such a death, I wonder?”

Merik’s feet took another step. Water lapped against the collar, against his neck.

“Do you want to enter the mountain or not?” the Fury demanded. “The prince is my key inside.”

“Is he?”

Another step. The water reached Merik’s chin, even with his head tipped as high as it would go. And now water slapped against him and choked down his throat, carried by the Fury’s building winds.

“He has agreed to lure the Sightwitch through the mountain door. Release him.”

“The mountain door?” Esme hooted a laugh. “You have not even reached the mountain door! Your soldiers still fight the monsters of the Crypts!”

The sky overhead turned darker with each passing, spluttering breath. No more moon. Only hell-waters and ash.

“Leave,” Esme ordered the Fury, shouting over the growing storm. “Or I will drown him.”

“He is not the only reason I am here—” Merik did not hear the rest of the Fury’s words. A wave crashed into his ears, into his mouth. By the time he could hear or breathe again, Esme was responding.

“I told you,” she spat. “He is not so easy to find as the others.”

“Why?”

“He has no Threads. He is outside the world’s weave.”

“Impossible. Do not lie to me.”

“He was born in the sleeping ice. You, of all people, should remember that.” A withering tone had taken hold of Esme’s voice, and finally—finally—the storm reared back. Less wind, fewer waves. Holding his breath, Merik lowered his chin and twisted his face toward the shore.

The Fury looked puzzled. The shadows on his skin, the snow and the winds—they had faded. “You have found him before.”

“Because he was with others I knew.” Esme gave a dismissive flick of her wrist. “He is no longer.”

“The General will be displeased.”

“Then tell him to come here and say so himself.”

“Oh, I see.” Kullen’s head fell back, and he cackled at the sky. “That still bothers you, does it? You are still bitter he did not bring you with him.”

“No.” The word cracked out, and with it, a pain lightninged through Merik. His back arched. He gasped for air.

Then it was over, as fast as it had come.

“The King,” Esme snipped out, “will bring me to him once he opens the doors.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” The Fury clucked his tongue. “A lovely delusion, Puppeteer, except he already got what he needed from you. He got me.”

A pause. Stillness and silence softened around the Well. But it passed in an instant, and Merik had just enough time to suck in air before the storm tore loose.

First came all-consuming pain. His muscles locked; his throat screamed.

Then came waves. Wind too, and the sudden hammering of rain. He could not breathe, he could not see. No screaming, only choking and convulsing.

Finally, his feet moved. He stepped below the surface. Three long strides while cold and darkness shuttered over him, stealing sound. He exhaled, bubbles charging out even though he needed to conserve air. There was no conserving anything here. No thinking, no moving. The only thing he could do was drown, electrified by Esme’s cleaving while the last of his life drained away.

Merik lost consciousness, there beneath the waves. He couldn’t say for how long. He could not say how many lungfuls of water he inhaled. All he knew was that the final sparks of pain towed him into Hell … Then he came back into his body, and he was on all fours upon the shore, vomiting.

He was mid-heave, bile-laced water gushing from his throat onto grass, when he realized he was awake. He was alive.

Esme sat several paces away. Her prim pose was a lie; her tight smile a painted mask. Her fingers yanked grass from the earth. Fistful after fistful, she wrenched up the blades and then dropped them at her feet.

Blinking, Merik scanned the forest and the Well, searching for the Fury, but the man was nowhere. Only the usual Cleaved remained, standing guard as always. How long had Merik been underwater? How many times had he drowned?