Page 14 of Witchlight
And that tune from Nadje had been one of pain. One of hatred and anger and, inexplicably, relief when the end had finally come for him. What end that was, though, Aeduan couldn’t remember.
Nor did he want to remember. He wanted that cruel Paladin out of his mind, his bones, his blood. He wanted no memories or songs or fury to ever linger there. Iseult had told Aeduan that over time, these remnants of Nadje would likely fade. That these Threads, now unbound to him, would eventually drift away into the embrace of the Moon Mother.
But it hadn’t happened yet, and it wasn’t happening fast enough.
Aeduan sank to one knee at the Well’s edge. Nearby, Surefoot stopped her chewing and snuffed. Aeduan ignored her, dipping his hand down. Gently, warily.
The water lapped on a sudden wave. It splashed against his fingertips, warm and welcoming. No sentience or hunger or hints of a soul from a thousand years ago.
Now Aeduan was the one to snuff, in a harsh, almost hateful laugh. Because he was being a coward. Of course this Well could not possess him. Assuming any ghost still endured as Nadje’s had within the Aether Well, there was no Leopold the Fourth here to force such a being into Aeduan’s body.
He is Trickster,Iseult had explained weeks ago,from our legends. He can return souls to bodies just like the tale of the girl and her hedgehog.
Aeduan had been too embarrassed to admit he scarcely remembered the Nomatsi gods, much less the fables and stories his father had once told him. The only one he recalled with any clarity was the monster and the honey—and he hated that story.Collect the six pots of honey, little monster, and you can become a man.In the end, the monster didn’t become a man; because in the end, the Moon Mother broke her promise to him.
Aeduan swallowed. Wet his lips. Then, with an almost frantic speed, he stripped out of his clothes. Cloak, baldric, breeches, shirt, undergarments. Night air—winter laced with enticing heat—stroked his skin and raised chill bumps across him.
He dove into the Well. Water lashed into him, subsuming him with its wild churn. And with a sparkle that he had felt before, inside the Aether Well. One not of ghosts but of a healing embrace.
Within moments, Aeduan surfaced and let his legs float. He drifted on his back, the waters bubbling beneath him, sending him on a lazy course across the Well as he stared at the sky. At the Sleeping Giant, always pointed north.
A sky singing with snow,his magic murmured inside his chest.Meadows drenched in moonlight. Sun and sand and auburn leaves falling.It was not a scent Aeduan recognized, nor one he remembered ever having smelled before.
And it also was not a scent that was here. Instead, this was a memory plucked into being from the Old One, Nadje.
Inexplicably, the scent made Aeduan’s chest hurt. His heart hollowed out in one sharp twist as if he’d lost a piece of himself—theonlypiece of himself that really mattered.
Monster. Demon. I can smell it on you: you’re bound to the Void.
Run, my child, run.
Aeduan flipped onto his side. In four swift kicks, he reached the Well’s lip. He pulled himself free, water sluicing off him. Then he sat on the stony edge, legs still in the water, and crooked over to study his chest.
The six old wounds had reopened. For years, they had bled and haunted. Then they had seemed to heal—or at least stop their recurrent bleeding after Iseult had saved Aeduan’s life in the Aether Well.
But a week ago, the nightmares had returned and the wounds had begun their weeping again. They hurt too, as if the arrows from Aeduan’s childhood once more flamed through his mother’s body and into his own. He’d spent most of his life with that pain, just as he’d spent most of his nights with the nightmare of her corpse burning atop him.
Somehow, though, the intensity and cruelty of it all seemed far worse after two months of freedom.
Fresh waves lapped against Aeduan’s calves, at odds with the cooling water that dripped over his chest and mixed with fresh blood. Dark rivulets gathered in the grooves of his abdomen and poured down onto his thighs. Onto the stones.
Aeduan waited. And he waited. The wounds did not close up, but the echoes of his mother’s voice did fade, bit by bit. And the bleeding did slow. Then stanch entirely, while the pain eased into a softer heat.
Good. That was good.
After a quick scrub to clean away the blood, Aeduan stood. Winter air kissed and nipped against him as he strode to his discarded clothes. As he dressed, piece by piece, with Surefoot chewing audibly and watching him with drowsiness in her eyes.
“You can sleep, girl. I promise we’re safe here, and we won’t leave until first light—” Aeduan broke off. His bare toes had snagged on something unexpected. Something cold and slinking when there should be only stone.
A Hell-Bard’s noose,he realized as he hastily scooped a golden chain off the ground—and not one noose, but two. Both were split apart, no longer necklaces but simply strands of gold to glint across his hands.
Aeduan frowned, lifting the nooses and expecting his witchery to latch on to the fon Grieg brothers’ foul bloods. But no. These were different smells entirely, one of coastal storms and freshly turned soil. One of smokeless heat and a father weeping. Yet both scents also carried hints of the noose and cold iron.
Which matched the bloods of the two missing Hell-Bards: Zander and Lev.
For weeks, Safiya and Caden fitz Grieg—a bastard brother to Shitpants and Red—had been searching for these Hell-Bards. Aeduan himself had entered the Solfatarra three times to search for their bodies, since everyone had assumed they must be dead. They’d fallen from a flying machine; they could not have survived the acid lake waiting below.
But there had never been any corpses in the Solfatarra for Aeduan to find, and the mystery of Zander’s and Lev’s disappearance had stopped being his problem. He’d been sent away on errands. New coins, new causes, new Griegs with things the Empress needed.
