Truthwitch (The Witchlands, #1)

Midair in a fall that would last barely a second, she swiveled around. Her legs writhed through his and flipped their bodies—

His back hit the sand. So hard the world went black. Distantly, he felt the girl crash against him. Arrowheads dug even deeper. They smashed his ribs, his lungs. There was pain everywhere. His organs—they were all destroyed.

And he was pretty certain his spine was broken too.

That was a first.

Then waves washed over his skin. A breath passed. Aeduan thought he might make it out alive …

Until he felt a black explosion in his chest.

It cleared through all the other pains, and his eyes snapped wide. The hilt of his stiletto poked from his heart. His cloak and tunic were too stained to show the blood flowing out—but he knew it was there. Pulsing faster than his power could keep up with.

Yet he couldn’t withdraw the knife. He couldn’t do anything because he couldn’t move. His spine was definitely broken.

Aeduan lifted his gaze, the world streaming and blurry … and then morphing into a face.

A face of shadows and moonlight only a foot away from his. The girl’s lips shuddered with each gasping breath. Her hair flew on the breeze—a natural breeze, Aeduan realized—and her thighs trembled against his broken ribs.

He saw no one else, heard no one else. For all he knew, they were the only people left alive in this battle.

In the entire world.

Then his gaze fell on a Painstone hanging from her neck. Its rosy glow was fading, almost gone, and he could see from the strain on her face that she was hurt. Badly.

Yet she still managed to unstrap a cleaving knife from Aeduan’s baldric. She still managed to drag it to his neck and hold it there.

The blade trembled against his skin.

She had stabbed him in the heart with his stiletto, and now she was going to decapitate him.

But the cleaver stopped; the girl called Iseult cringed and her Painstone flared a soft pink … before winking out completely.

A groan erupted from her lips. She almost toppled forward—and Aeduan glimpsed the wound on her right bicep. Bloodstained linens. Blood he should be able to smell.

“You … have no … scent,” he ground out. He could feel his own hot blood gushing over his teeth, dribbling from the sides of his mouth. “I can’t smell … your blood.”

She didn’t answer. All of her concentration was on holding the cleaver steady.

“Why … can’t I smell you? Tell … me.” Aeduan wasn’t sure why he wanted to know. If she cut off his head, he would die. It was the only wound from which a Bloodwitch couldn’t recover.

Yet still, he couldn’t seem to stop asking. “Why…” Blood sprayed with that word, splattered the flat steel of the cleaver. A fleck hit her cheek. “Why can’t … I…”

She eased the blade away from his throat. Not gently—it cut through skin and dragged onward, as if she was too tired to even lift it.

Aeduan’s impaled heart fluttered. It was a strange feeling of relief and confusion that lifted with the blood in his mouth. She wasn’t going to kill him. He had no idea why.

“Do it,” he rasped.

“No.” She shook her head, a jerky movement. Then wind—of the charged, unnatural variety—gusted over them. It sprayed her hair from her face, and Aeduan forced himself to note every detail.

He might not have been able to smell her blood, but he would remember her. He would remember her round jaw that didn’t quite fit with her pointed chin. He would remember her snub nose and pale freckles. Her angled, cat-like eyes. Her short lashes. And her narrow mouth.

“I will hunt you,” he croaked.

“I know.” The girl dropped the cleaver on the sand and used Aeduan’s chest to push herself upright. His ribs crunched, and his stomach squished. She was not light, and his organs were pulp.

“I will kill you,” he went on.

“No.” The girl’s eyes thinned; she pushed herself further upright and the moon streamed over her. “I d-d-d…” She coughed. Then wiped her mouth. “I don’t think you will.”

It seemed to take all her concentration to get those words out, and it was with an edge of frustration that her fingers laced around the stiletto once more.

She shoved the blade deeper into Aeduan’s heart.

Against his most desperate, frantic desire—against every instinct that screamed at him to stay alert—his eyelids fell shut for half an agonizing breath. A moan slipped over his tongue.

In that moment, the weight on his body vanished. Footsteps slapped through the water away from him.

When his eyes finally opened again, he saw no sign of the girl—not that he could have turned his head to look.

Then a wave washed over him, and Aeduan sank beneath the sea foam.





SIXTEEN

The wind roared in Safi’s ears as she flew. Her eyes streamed, her skirts tossed, and she quickly gave up shouting at Prince Merik to go back. He couldn’t hear her.

The ocean blurred beneath Safi, lucent and trembling, and Safi thought vaguely that she should enjoy this—she was flying after all.