Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

“No gratitude.” Esme ripped up more grass, smiling a flat-eyed smile at Merik. “They have no gratitude for what I do, Prince. No understanding of the difficulty. They come to me, they demand I find people, and then they leave again. No gratitude.”

It was similar to what the Fury had mentioned, and even in his drowned misery, Merik had enough sense to tuck away that information.

“He has no Threads!” she went on. “I can only find him if he is near Iseult—not that I have told them that.” Another fistful of grass. “She is mine. Not theirs. And you are mine, Prince. Not theirs.”

Merik forced his head to nod and throat to wheeze, “Yours,” before his lungs started seizing again. Dry heaves shook through him.

Esme, however, stopped her grass-shredding, and when she cocked her head sideways, the anger had dimmed in her yellow eyes. “So you will not help the Fury enter the mountain?”

Merik had to wait until his stomach stopped shuddering, his throat stopped coughing. Then he eked out, “No.”

“Then why did the Fury say such a thing?”

Move with the wind, move with the stream. “Because he wants to frighten you. You are the Raider King’s favorite.”

Her flat smile faltered. “And why do you think that, Prince?”

“Because it’s obvious.” Merik sucked in a broken breath, forcing his exhausted eyes to hold Esme’s. “The King sends the Fury on menial errands. Fetching other people? That is the job of a page boy.”

Her nostrils flared. Her lips twitched—the hint of a real smile in her eyes.

“You, however, have an entire city. You have an entire army at your command, while the Fury commands no one.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Her face fell. She wrenched up more grass. “But he does command an army. He leads the Raider King’s southern assault upon the Sightwitch Sister Convent. And once they enter the mountain, he will use the doorway to enter Lovats and claim the hidden Well that should have been mine.”

Merik’s stomach hollowed out at those words. The doorway to enter Lovats. Noden, no.

“The Fury’s soldiers will stream into the city from the underground, and then he will win all the glory.” Esme’s lips curled back. “All while I am stuck here, winning nothing. Just waiting for them to find the doorway that leads to Poznin.”

Noden, no, no, no. The world wavered and blurred around Merik. His home was in danger. Never had Lovats fallen, even in the worst of wartime. The Sentries and the water-bridges had always protected it.

But if soldiers attacked from within—if they used these magic portals and poured in from the underground …

Merik’s retching resumed. Bile splattered the grass.

Vivia had planned to lead refugees into the underground. They had thought the newly discovered ancient city a miracle, a space to house all the homeless and hungry and lost. Now the homeless and hungry and lost would be the first to die.

Merik had to stop that. He had to lose this collar, no matter the means, and he had to stop that.

“I never should have cleaved him,” Esme went on. “Not before I made a second Loom. If I hadn’t, then I would be the one now leading the march—”

“Do it.” Merik’s voice graveled out, desperate and wild. “Do it. Beat him to the Crypts, and use me to lure out the Sightwitch. Then I will kill her, and you can go inside before the Fury does.”

Esme eyed Merik askance, as if she thought through what he’d just said. As if she played it out, step by step, and—

“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes, yes, yes. You can fly me there, Prince. And then you can trick the Sightwitch from her hiding place and kill her while I deal with the monsters of the Crypts. I know how to control them—it’s in Eridysi’s diary. Yes, yes, yes! I will lead the advance into the mountain before the Fury can, and then the Raider King will see how much he truly needs me. And oh,” she sighed, “if we are so near to the sleeping ice, perhaps it will suck him in. Eliminate the Fury and all of his memories for good.”

In a lurch of speed, grass flinging around her, Esme pushed to her feet. She was grinning now, an exultant expression with cheeks flushed and eyes aflame. In three skipping hops, Esme reached Merik. Her fingers gripped and tugged and twirled around the collar, as if she teased apart a braid of Threads he could not see. Her eyes flicked quickly side to side. Her heels bounced and her cheeks scrunched with a grin.

Then the collar gave a soft hiss, like steam leaving a kettle. The wood clanked apart, two halves that toppled toward the earth. Neither Merik nor Esme tried to catch them.

Merik grasped for his magic while Esme’s hands shot toward the Well. “You are mine, Prince. You know what pain awaits you if you disobey.”

He nodded. “I will not disobey.” Then, to convince her fully, he bowed his head. “Command me, Puppeteer.”

She giggled, and Merik used the moment to inhale as deeply as he could, fumbling, fumbling. His magic was in there—he could feel the faintest spark alive within his lungs. But it was weak. It was tired. It did not want to wake up.

That was all right, though. He knew that if he fled while Esme was at her Loom, then she would lash him with pain unimaginable. And if he fled at any time, the Fury would sense the magic and return. Merik would simply move with the wind and the stream, allowing his magic to rebuild with each careful step.

His plan, however, was short-lived. For as he lifted his face to watch Esme, still bouncing and laughing and thoroughly absorbed by her dreams of glory to come, a figure darted from the forest. It moved quickly through the lines of Cleaved, immobile and unresponsive to this living person in their midst.

The Northman, his red-tailed knife in hand, vaulted across the grass and stabbed Esme in the back.





FORTY-FIVE


Pain clogged Aeduan’s veins by the time he reached his father’s encampment, a sign the Painstone was almost depleted. He had jogged most of the way, only slowing when terrain or humanity required it. Four times, he had come upon battles in action—and four times, it was his ears that had warned him of what lay ahead. Not his magic.

Which was one more reason to return to his father. With his father, he could find Corlant, and if Corlant had indeed cursed these arrows, then Corlant could also cure him.

At least so Aeduan hoped.

He had known this might be coming, of course: the end of his power, the end of being a Bloodwitch. But caring had seemed an impossibility before. Loss was such an abstract thing until one was pressed beneath it and forced to stare into her dead eyes.

So Aeduan ran faster, pushing the limits of what the Painstone and his magic could still provide, and avoiding battles as they came. Nubrevnans and Marstoks, Baedyeds and Red Sails. Blood and death and violence that he could no longer smell.