“Corlant,” she began, but the man cut her off, sliding the rest of his long body inside.
Corlant det Midenzi had changed almost none since Iseult had last seen him. His hair was perhaps thinner, and gray swept the sides, but the creases above his eyebrows were as deep as Iseult remembered—parallel trenches from a tendency to always look mildly shocked.
He looked mildly shocked now, brows high and eyes glittering as they scrutinized Iseult’s face. He approached her, and Gretchya made no move to stop him. Instead, Alma shot to her feet and hissed at Iseult, “Stand.”
Iseult stood—though she didn’t see why she had to. Gretchya was the leader of the tribe, not this syrup-tongued Purist who had sowed discord throughout Iseult’s childhood. Corlant ought to be the one sitting.
He stopped before her, his Threads shimmering with a green curiosity and tan suspicion. “Do you remember me?”
“Of course,” Iseult said, folding her hands in her skirts and tipping her head back to meet his gaze. Unlike the rest of the tribe, he was just as tall as she remembered, and he even wore the same murky brown robe and the same smudged gold chain around his neck.
It was a bad attempt to look like a Purist priest. By now Iseult had seen enough real priests trained in real Purist compounds to know how badly Corlant missed his mark.
Yet it didn’t seem to change the fact that Alma and Gretchya were showing Corlant deference. Were sharing panicked glances behind his back while he examined Iseult.
He strutted around her, gaze roving. It sent the hairs on her arms spiking upward. “You have the taint of the outside on you, Iseult. Why are you back?”
“She plans to stay this time,” Gretchya inserted. “She will resume her position as my apprentice.”
“So you have been expecting her?” Corlant’s Threads turned darkly hostile. “You made no mention of this to me, Gretchya.”
“It wasn’t certain,” Alma piped up, beaming gloriously. “You know how Gretchya hates to snag the settlement’s weave if she doesn’t have to.”
Corlant offered a grunt, his attention settling on Alma. His Threads twisting with more tan suspicion, and deep beneath that, a lusty lilac. Then his gaze speared Gretchya, and the lust flared outward.
Iseult’s stomach curdled. This was not the dynamic she’d left behind. Corlant had been a nuisance when she was a child—always spouting the dangers and the sins of witcheries. Always claiming that true devotion to the Moon Mother was in the denial of one’s magic. The eradication of it.
But Iseult had ignored him along with the rest of the tribe. Yes, Corlant had hung around her home and begged Gretchya for attention. He had even asked her to become his wife—not that Gretchya could marry. Only Heart-Threads could marry in a Nomatsi tribe, and Threadwitches didn’t have Heart-Threads.
At first, Gretchya had ignored Corlant’s advances. Then she’d used reason, pointing to the Nomatsi tribal laws and the Moon Mother’s rules as well. By the time Iseult had fled the tribe, though, Gretchya had resorted to latching the doors at night with iron padlocks and paying two local men in silver to keep the serpentine Corlant away.
When Iseult had visited last, though, Corlant had been gone—and Iseult had assumed the man had left for good. Clearly, though, that wasn’t the case—and clearly things had changed. Somehow Corlant had gotten the upper hand here.
“I have alerted the tribe to Iseult’s arrival,” Corlant said, spine unfurling to its fullest length. His head almost reached the ceiling. “The Greeting should begin soon.”
“How smart of you,” Gretchya said—but Iseult didn’t miss the muscle twitch in her mother’s jaw.
Gretchya was scared. Truly scared.
“I was so distracted by Iseult’s return,” Gretchya continued, “that I completely forgot a Greeting. We will have to get her changed—”
“No.” Corlant’s voice slashed out. He spindled back toward Iseult, eyes cruel and Threads hostile once more. “Let the tribe see her exactly as she is, tainted by the outside.” He plucked at Iseult’s apprentice sleeve, and Iseult forced her head to bow.
She might not be able to read her mother or Alma, but she could read Corlant. He wanted control; he wanted Iseult’s submission, so as her knees creaked into an unpracticed curtsy, Iseult rumbled a groan. Pulled it up from her stomach and clutched her hands to her gut.
It sounded horribly overdone, and for a brief flicker of a heartbeat, Iseult desperately wished again that Safi were with her. Safi could brazen through this no problem.
But if Alma heard the falseness in Iseult’s moan, she made no sign of it. She simply lurched toward Iseult. “Are you ill?”
“It’s my moon cycle,” Iseult gritted out. She met Corlant’s eyes, pleased to see his Threads already paling with revulsion. “I need new blood wrappings.”