Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

The mare panicked.

Two more trebuchets launched, both aimed at Aeduan. As if the Monastery had decided that he, the lone rider, was the greatest threat in the valley. Furious flames that wind could not snuff, and that water only coaxed higher. Aeduan smelled raiders roasting alive behind him. He felt the heat on the ice expanding.

A wall of fire to hold him in, and no salamander cloak to protect him.

Aeduan yanked the mare left, then right before two volcanic booms! shuddered through the ice. The seafire crashed down. Heat stormed against him—and now the mare truly panicked. She reared. No more joy, no more energy. Only terror as the black flames crushed in. And Aeduan saw no choice but to punch his heels into her ribs and drive her even faster.

He could see Iseult now. A Carawen cloak flapped around her, and the man beside her wore beige. But Aeduan had no attention to spare for that person. All he saw was the Threadwitch, a beacon of white amidst the eternal flames.

He should never have abandoned her.

He should never have let her go.

Another trebuchet fired. Aeduan estimated its trajectory. He swerved the mare with time to spare.

But arrows loosed a half second behind the seafire. A hundred longbows aimed by a hundred monks. They did not see one of their own riding toward them; they saw a raider and they aimed to kill.

Aeduan could evade the seafire, but he could not evade those arrows. They rained down, blacking out the moon.

Then they hit their mark. Aeduan. The mare.

Countless wounds to rip them wide. To stop them where they ran.

The mare screamed, a sound that broke Aeduan’s heart even as the arrows shredded that organ in two. Then the pain he knew so well filled him. The pain he had felt a thousand times over the course of his life, but that tonight, he could no longer heal from.

The mare went down.

Aeduan went down with her.

He tried to pull free. He dragged and heaved and clawed at the ice winged in flame, but the mare pinned him down. She screamed, a shrill sound that no animal should make. That Aeduan wished he could end, wished he had never caused in the first place. She tried to rise, but arrows covered every inch of her. Her belly, her back, her eyes.

And there were almost as many in Aeduan. He could not see, he could not breathe. He was trapped beneath the mare while smoke choked into his throat and his life bled out upon the ice.

It wasn’t enough, he thought before he died. Being a man wasn’t enough.



* * *



Iseult saw him die.

She watched the arrows hit him and the flames consume. She watched his black horse fall, and she watched him fall with it.

And she knew in that moment that logic didn’t matter. Nor escaping the raiders, nor even preserving her own life. What mattered was the Bloodwitch named Aeduan.

This would not be his end. Not for the man with no Threads, the man who had held her gaze without fear, who had saved her life from Cleaved and raiders, from rivers and soldiers.

From the day she had stabbed Aeduan in the heart, that heart had become hers—and she would not let this be his end.

Leopold shouted for Iseult to stop, but he could have been a million leagues away for all she heard. For all she cared. Instead, she pushed her limbs faster. They had cut away from the raiders, and though the raiders gave chase, the trebuchets distracted and blocked.

Iseult’s lungs burned. Her legs tired beneath her, and smoke tidaled in. Such trivialities she could ignore, for who needed breath, when one had power? Who needed sight, when one had Threads? She turned her mind inward and whispered, Come. Now is your time.

Instantly, the Firewitch awoke. Elated and alert, he slithered to the front of her mind—and then he laughed with glee at the battlefield spanning before him.

Death and flames and smoke for the claiming.

Yes, Iseult told him. You will take that fire and you will swallow it. It is yours. It is mine.

She flung up her arms and screamed, “COME.” Then Iseult dropped from a sprint to jog. From a jog to a walk.

She entered the fire.

It pulled her in, a lover’s embrace while the Firewitch squealed and laughed. This was his home, and this was Iseult’s home now too.

Heat seared against her. Smoke clawed down her throat. She welcomed it. She was one with the Firewitch, and he was one with the flame. Where she commanded, the flames moved, and with each long stride that she advanced, the flames skipped aside.

They loved her, but they dared not touch her.

Then at last, she saw Aeduan. The seafire licked across him; his black horse burned.

“Stop,” she ordered the flames, and the flames obeyed.

He was dying and bloodied. Broken and burned. She crouched beside him, cradling his head in one hand, resting fingers to his throat with the other.

There was no pulse.

No pulse, no life, no Bloodwitch named Aeduan.

No.

The word slipped from her throat. A raw, distant thing.

No.

He could not be dead. She would not let him be dead, and she would not let this be his end. Not after what had happened in Tirla. Not after everything that had passed between them.

She dug her hands beneath his shoulders and with a strength she did not know she possessed, she pulled.

Iseult pulled and pulled and pulled until eventually, his body tore free from beneath the mare. The flames caressed her. Hungry and wanting more than Iseult would give. Not now, she told them. Not now, not now. And they listened, a cocoon to hold her while she strained to lift Aeduan higher.

She tried. Four times, she tried to get him onto her shoulders. He was not so heavy, not so large—but limp and unresponsive, he was dead weight she could not carry.

On the fifth try, she found that she was crying. She did not know when the tears had begun, and now that they’d started, there was no stopping them.

Do not cry, the flames whispered, and inside her, the Firewitch whispered too: Do not cry, Iseult, do not cry. The fire eats what it wants, so you must do the same.

Oh, she thought. I see. And in that moment, it was true. Power was Threads, and Threads belonged to her. All she had to do was take them.

So she did. She sucked in power from the heat, power from the black flames, and power from the man she had cleaved in the Contested Lands. She focused it into her muscles. Into her legs and arms and back …

On the sixth try, Iseult hefted Aeduan up high enough for her to stand—and on that sixth try, she got him across her shoulders.

Then she walked. One hobbling step turned into two, then three. She left the dead horse behind. She crossed the seafire.

She did not know where she was going. She could not see beyond the shadowy fire and moonlight. Yet something stirred inside her. A string winding tighter and tighter—but only so long as she walked in this one, true direction.