Page 137 of Witchlight
“Please,” the Exalted One begged now while Safi studied her Threads through a Truth-lens. “Please do not change me again.”
“There,” Safi said quietly, pointing to a cluster of silver shot through with blue. “Start there.”
Iseult obeyed.While the right hand distracts,she thought as she slung out the sword,the left hand cuts the purse.She sliced through Itosha’s soul.
The Exalted One screamed. It was not a scream of pain, for she didn’t cleave—she didn’t even die. She simply lost all of the Threads, one by one, that had made her more than human. Made her bigger than a mere witch.
Safi found more clusters of Threads, more key connections that bound Itosha to Sirmaya and to the Witchlands. Eridysi and the Six hadn’t known what they’d initiated in the mountain a thousand years ago. Nor, Iseult thought, had Leopold known despite all these centuries he’d spent trying to undo it.
There was no going back. As Ragnor had said: there was only breaking the cycle. Stepping outside.
And thinking beyond.
As the last of Itosha’s Paladin soul slipped away, released into a continent that needed the magic back, ice crackled slowly—achingly—over her crooked body. And by the time the girls were done, there was nothing left but a coffin of impenetrable cold where Itosha had once been.
Come, come,the ice sang, with the same tune that echoed off Aeduan and that the mountain had sung before him.Sleep, my daughter. Come, come, my ice will hold you.
When at last it was complete, Iseult turned to her Bloodwitch who still stood beside the striated rock, stoic and ancient. He had not moved this entire time. The only thing that had changed about him since he’d handed over the new blade and glass were the wounds on his abdomen.
The highest on his chest had healed over. No scar, no blood.
Five wounds remained.
Iseult exhaled. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to find Leopold fon Cartorra and gloat into his face:Do you see how wrong you had it? Yourstupid Lament meant nothing.But instead, Iseult dropped the sword to dry, hoarfrosted earth and staggered toward her Bloodwitch.
He opened his arms.
Iseult slid her blackened, aching hands around him. One breath they were like this. Then a second. Before arms slung around them both.
“Goat tits, Iz. Can we agree to never do something like this again?”
SEVENTY
This water knows us. This water chose us,Vivia thought uselessly as the river flung her and snapped her, like the calico had with his rats. Vivia had been towed ashore, where she’d seen a rusted sword from battles long ago. She’d snatched it. She’d attacked.
But it hadn’t been enough.
Because it always seemed that Vivia was never quite enough.
She had always felt so powerful in the underground lake that had belonged to her and her mother. Through that lake, she’d been able to connect to every droplet of water inside the Lovats plateau. All the way up into the Sirmayan Mountains. Some days all the way out toward the sea. She’d felt so tiny, so inconsequential, and it had filled her with a tender, nurturing awe—for there was a comfort in knowing that the world and Nubrevna would spin on, even when Vivia did not.
Now, the awe she felt was shaped like despair. She was tiny and inconsequential in a different way. The water no longer knew her; the water no longer chose her. She was a dead rat who hadn’t quite died yet, but there would be no soft-hearted princess to save her.
Until there was. Or rather, there was a soft-hearted prince.
Vivia felt him, in the waters beside her. A bond that was not built from magic or tides or winds. These were Threads no master could take from Vivia—because they had been made so very long ago in a fox’s den where two children had felt safe.
Merry,she tried to say.
Vee,she heard him reply. Then she was no longer in the waters but instead on the shore where waves crashed and hot wind flayed against her. Entire trees cracked down.
As one, Vivia and Merik turned to face the whitecapped waters hurtling toward them. The flood would hit them in heartbeats. Two rulers. A sister and a brother who’d never really known each other, and only recently tried.
The onslaught arrived.
Out flung Merik’s arms. Wind, tides, power. A wall of magic to meet white foam. He slid, his planted feet dragging him backward across the gouged-apart riverbank. And he roared, a sound that tore from his throat. Sent his jaw slinging low as more winds, more power coursed out of him.
How,Vivia wondered.How does he have such power?Had she been wrong to believe magic was gone? She’d seen Zander lose it. Lev and Vaness too. And Vivia had felt it all leach out of her.
