“You left because of cruelty?”
Aeduan paused at the top of his next squat. The girl’s face was blank, and even her expressive nose was completely still.
He sighed. “Simply because I have lost faith in the cause doesn’t mean the training has lost all of its usefulness.”
Her head tipped sideways. “And why don’t you believe in the cause?”
What had Aeduan stepped into? One question begat another hundred, and now the girl had landed on the last subject Aeduan wished to discuss. Ever.
“Enough.” He turned away from her. “Leave this area or be quiet.”
He moved for a shaded patch in the clearing, where the grass was the shortest and no crumbling fortress could get in the way. Where he could spin and roll, kick and curl.
For some unfathomable reason, the Threadwitch followed.
“You can avoid answering me for now, but I intend to keep asking.” There was an urgency in her voice. Not a stammer, like he’d caught slipping in a few times. This was a hot intensity.
And she was standing much too close. Entering his personal space in a way no one ever dared. “Back away,” he warned, “or I’ll assume you wish to join the training.”
“I won’t leave until you answer.” She moved another pace, and the challenge was there. In her eyes, in her stance, in her jaw.
A thrill rose in Aeduan’s gut. Then he swept her legs out from under her.
She saw it coming—she was ready for it—but Aeduan was too fast to stop. His foot swung out, and she fell.
Yet before her back could hit the grass, Aeduan caught her and eased her down. She grabbed his shirt in two white-knuckled fists as her back settled onto the dewy earth.
“You shouldn’t waste energy,” she said flatly, “on showing off.” No fear in her yellow Nomatsi eyes, just a slight flush on her cheeks.
Aeduan almost laughed at those flags of color—and at her words too, for this was not showing off. This was merely the most basic of Carawen training. To prove that point, he gripped her wrist with his opposite hand, dug his fingers into her tendons, and twisted inward. Her joints had no choice but to follow.
She released his shirt, but to his surprise, she didn’t shrink away or buck her hips in panic. She simply kicked her feet wide, hooking with her heels. Trying to pin him to the grass. Too slow, she was too slow. A beginning grappler facing a master.
Aeduan squeezed tighter, twisting harder and forcing her to roll sideways. In half a breath, she had pivoted completely onto her belly, her head swiveled back. Now there was no missing what burned in her eyes. No Threadwitch calm remained.
She had asked him for this; she knew it and she was furious.
“Why do you care,” Aeduan said, “if I left the Monastery?”
“I don’t … care … that you left.” The strain was back in her words, a sound Aeduan was a beginning to recognize as a sign she fought off a stutter. “I care … why. Do you not believe in the Cahr Awen anymore?”
Aeduan hesitated, caught off guard by her pointed question. Then he remembered.
“Ah. Monk Evrane has filled your held with nonsense, and now you think you are the Cahr Awen.” He released her, rolling off her back and hopping to his feet. He offered her his hand.
She didn’t take it. Just pushed onto her hands and knees, staring down at the grass. “Why … is it nonsense?”
“You are not a Voidwitch.” His words were inflectionless, yet they seemed to hit her like stones.
She flinched. Then said, “B-but … I … we healed the Well.”
Aeduan’s head tipped sideways. He inhaled a long breath of the humid, morning air while crickets whistled from the forest and, again, distant thunder rolled.
“Yes,” he admitted eventually, “someone healed it.” He had seen the waking Origin Well himself, yet it had not seemed fully intact—nothing like the Aether Well that Aeduan had spent most of his childhood living beside.
He said as much, adding, “It was as if the Well was only partially alive. As if only half of the Cahr Awen had healed it, and I do not think, Threadwitch, that you were that half.”
Now it was the girl’s turn to exhale, “Ah.” She scrabbled upright. Her body wobbled, her gaze jumpy and unfocused.
Aeduan could see right away that he had made a mistake. He should have said nothing. He should have let her keep hoping for a pointless, fruitless fantasy.
After all, an unhappy Threadwitch would only slow them.
“First lesson of a Carawen novice,” Aeduan offered, acting as if nothing had just passed between them. “Do not challenge someone more skilled than you.”
Iseult’s nostrils twitched. Her face hardened. The defiance, the determination—they were back, and against his will, Aeduan’s lips twitched upward.
“I didn’t challenge you,” she said coolly.
“Getting too close is considered a challenge in most cultures.”
“Then teach me.”
His eyebrows lifted.