Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

He did not get to finish. At that moment, the glamour wavered. Ever so slightly, as if the entire world blinked, and for half a breath, the real world tore through.

It was so much worse than Safi had imagined. There was the Empress, standing in exactly the same place but with blood gushing down the right side of her body. Behind her, twelve Adders lay dead, every one of them impaled on their own swords. It was Lake Scarza, though, that made Safi gasp and rear back—and made everyone in the crowds do the same. A collective cry of horror that rippled outward while the world they saw was briefly replaced with another.

Military boats aflame and sinking. The wall of soldiers now a wall of corpses. Smoke and fire and explosions erupting in time to the fireworks.

Then the glamour snapped back into place. The ships floated once more. The soldiers and Adders stood sentry. And Vaness did not bleed.

It was too late, though. The mistake had been made. People knew they had been duped.

“Safi!” barked a new voice. Habim leaped onto the terrace, Firewitched pistol in one hand, sword in another. He moved into position beside Mathew. “Stand down, Safi. Do not ruin this. I realize you care about the Empress, but—”

Safi laughed. A surprising burst of sound that shut up Habim and made Mathew flinch. A fuzzy, burgeoning thing that could not have been more at odds with the crowds panicking below or the fireworks still detonating.

“Do not ruin it?” she repeated. “I already thought I had! All this time—ever since Ve?aza City, I thought I had ruined your precious little plan. I thought I had made choices that were wholly my own, and sent Uncle’s scheme spinning through the hell-gates.

“Now I see I was nothing more than your puppet. I suppose you knew about the engagement to Henrick all along. You knew I would end up in Marstok. And I suppose you thought I would help you here tonight, didn’t you? Well, you’re wrong. Because I won’t.”

“The Empress isn’t what you think she is, Safi—” Habim began.

“That is rich coming from you, General.”

“She is what her parents taught her to be, Safi. She will only lead Marstok into more war.”

“No.” Safi hissed that word with all the conviction she could conjure. Then she spat it again, harder, “No. You’re wrong. You don’t even know her, Habim.”

“We are running out of time,” Mathew warned. He stood taller now, with Habim at his side. Two Heart-Threads doing what they believed was right—and what Safi might have believed was right too, if she hadn’t seen behind Vaness’s mask.

“Do not make me compel you,” Mathew warned. “I did so with the Empress, and I will do it to you too.”

“You already have!” Safi laughed again, a ridiculous, high-pitched sound that screeched inside her skull. Mathew must have commanded Vaness not to move, so she could stand there and take a blade through her belly. Now, he would do the same to her. “You bewitched me in the storage room earlier, Mathew. And you bewitched me a month ago in Ve?aza City.”

His betrayal had cut deep then. Now, it severed her heart entirely.

All her life, these men had been there. To scold and to teach and to tend her wounds from another sword lesson gone wrong. They were not evil; Safi knew that as surely as she knew that Vaness was not evil.

They were merely wolves in a world of rabbits, who had forgotten that rabbits were important too.

Safi had no doubt that Mathew, Habim, and Uncle Eron believed in their cause—she also had no doubt that it had begun as good and true when they’d first started scheming twenty years ago. But along the way, they had become exactly what they hated.

True.

And now it was up to Safi to remind them that rabbits mattered too.

True, true, true.

She slipped her hand into her pocket. “You say that Vaness is what her parents taught her. Well, I am too, Mathew and Habim. You both showed me right from wrong, and you gave me a conscience.

“I love you,” she finished, “but I will not help you.”

She yanked the spark-candle from her pocket and threw it at the men who’d raised her as a daughter. “Ignite,” she whispered, already spinning away. Already slamming her body into Vaness and sprinting like the Void was at her heels.

Thank the gods, Vaness was small. And thank the gods, Mathew and Habim had trained her for exactly this moment, when she would have to lift a compelled Empress onto her shoulder and make a run for it.

As she’d expected, the spark-candle was no spark-candle at all. An explosion cracked behind her. Mathew roared her name—roared a command for her to stop. And she would have followed the command too, unable to resist such Wordwitched power.

But she was to the garden’s edge and he was too late.

She and the Empress toppled over and plummeted toward the lake.





FORTY-SEVEN


The Fury flew them down the mountainside, a sharp descent that made Aeduan’s ears ache and lungs compress until they were lowering again. No light shone on the forest below, and no amount of squinting through the winds revealed any landscape beyond. All he knew was that they were nearer to the valley that separated Ragnor’s mountain from the Monastery’s.

And all he could assume was that the Fury was bringing him to his father.

They lowered into a clearing surrounded by evergreens. One pine spired above the rest, twice as tall, twice as wide. Snow sprayed wide, carried on the Fury’s winds. It gathered in a circular bank around them.

Aeduan’s knees almost gave way upon the landing—and his teeth gritted against the sudden surge of pain. His Painstone bore only flickers of magic. He had, at most, an hour before the curse regained its full control.

At most.

“Hurry,” the Fury ordered, impatience thick in his voice as he left the clearing, and in his posture too. Eyes glittered within the trees, watching Aeduan and the Fury as they passed. Soldiers, Aeduan realized by the weapons in their hands and at their hips. They lurked in the darkness, some sitting, some standing, and all clearly waiting for a signal.

Aeduan had found his father’s forces—and an attack must be imminent. There was only one target this way, though: the Monastery.

After passing rows upon rows of archers at work crafting arrows with the practiced speed of the battle-worn, and then passing Baedyeds on horseback, their steeds draped in camouflaging white cloth, the Fury led Aeduan to a round-roofed tent. Light shone from cracks in the hide walls and a hole at the top. Voices wafted out; smoke did not.

Which meant this was the command tent. Ready to be moved at a moment’s notice. Ten women and men hovered nearby, varied in their skin and clothes, because Ragnor had chosen a personal guard from each faction he commanded. They scowled as the Fury passed, but none tried to interfere.