Page 41 of Witchlight
But the prince was so close. Aeduan could feel the imminence of capture. The lure of prey that could not get away. Any rising pain was a mere distraction.Not his mind, not his body.
Except halfway into this uncanny tunnel—with the clear lake waters and frozen wintersright there—the highest two wounds on Aeduan’s chest erupted with such fire, he gasped. He stumbled.
Run, my child, run,came his dead mother’s voice.
Aeduan’s vision wavered. His rib cage felt as if it were collapsing, and he could do nothing but gulp for air while Leopold’s scent sidled away. Aeduan had had these wounds since childhood, yet never had they tortured him with such brutality. It was as if his dead mother had fallen atop him all over again. As if the six arrows that had punctured her were now puncturing into him again too.
Run, my child, run.
The pain eased. Reluctant, sluggish. Then urgent and freeing. Aeduan regained his footing. Resumed his forward hunt.
Not that it mattered; his prey had flown, and soon the stink of the Solfatarra snaked into Aeduan’s nose. Flickers of rotten eggs and acid before the fog, thick and deadly, rolled into the branch-woven tunnel.
Leopold’s boot prints strode right into the fog.
So Aeduan strode in after him. His chest wounds still ached, but with a throb he could once again ignore. Especially since the acid mist that trawled over him ate at his face wherever his fire-flap didn’t cover. It ate his hands too, and any other part of him not protected by salamander fibers—although even the cloak couldn’t resist this acid forever. And as fast as Aeduan’s magic healed the blistering parts of him, it would never be fast enough to outrun the Solfatarra forever.
Water splashed beneath Aeduan’s boots, a sign he’d reached the poison lake at the heart of the mist. He had no choice now but to stop and abandon his pursuit.
Yet again, the prince had won.
Yet again, the Rook King would fly free.
Run, my child, run.
For several seconds, Aeduan stood there, listening to the silence of the Solfatarra. Feeling the acid burn, scrape, carve into his lungs… Then it came: a laugh. Soft, ghostly, unreachable. A mocking sound from a Paladin who lived for mischief and games.
Aeduan’s fingers moved to the sword at his hip.Come,he dared the prince.Come so I may end you.His lips ached where a hole was forming in the flap. His eyeballs were on fire.
But the prince never came, because in the end, he was a coward. Forever working from the shadows. Never stepping into the light. He might make the bear dance, but he would never dare face it head-on.
No man could avoid Lady Fate’s knife forever, though. It would come for Leopold eventually. It would exact all payments owed.
And Aeduan only hoped it would be his hand holding the knife when the prince finally paid up.
None of the supplies survived the blast. All of the carefully accumulated food, kindling, blankets, weapons—all of Iseult’s and Safi’s things, right down to the crates, had been destroyed. Only embers and splinters remained, and scraps from a salamander blanket that would not burn.
Somehow, Iseult preserved her calm as she limped through the tower, searching for anything that might be salvaged. In the end, only the Nomatsi pack from Alma was still intact, thanks to the Nomatsi shield attached to it. But even that was now pocked with holes along the top, where the shield had not protected it.
Perhaps the worst blow of all, though, was Eridysi’s diary. It was gone. Not because the flames had claimed it, but because Leopold had. And in its place was a new book, hidden by rubble.A History of Arithuania’s Rise,Iseult read as she wiped off melted snow and ash. It was an old book, written from before the plague had wiped out the entire Republic—and now it was filled with handwritten notes and drawings.
Leopold clearly wanted Iseult to have this. And given how he’d left it where it could have been easily destroyed, he also clearly hadn’t expected to almost kill Iseult in the blast. He might have known about her and Safi’s supplies, but he hadn’t known about the firepots.
Grim as it was, Iseult was almost satisfied by his miscalculation. What would he have done if hehadkilled her? How would he have proceeded then? And how much more would he have hated himself for such a vast mistake?
Iseult held the new book toward what few flames still burned. She’d seen Leopold’s neat scrawl before, and now it was crammed so small she had to squint to read it.
One page in particular was thick with annotations: a fold-out map of Poznin, except it was the city as it used to be fifty years ago, before the roads and buildings had been flooded, then eaten away by despair. Leopold had marked all the locations that the Raider King might utilize in his favor. Streets where Ragnor wouldprobablymove troops, where he wouldprobablyreinforce walls, where he wouldprobablyguard most heavily against an attack.
And it was clear the Raider King could defend Poznin and the Air Well for weeks, if not months. The only thing that could possibly defeat suchstrength and such magic (for Ragnor had many, many witches at his disposal) were numbers. Exactly as Leopold had told Iseult in the Dreaming.
And Leopold had also laid out exactly where to direct such numbers. While the bulk of the Cartorran and Carawen monk forces could attack head-on in a dizzying, aggressive onslaught of bodies against a siege, in the hidden background, the Cahr Awen could infiltrate the city using ancient tunnels that the Raider King had not yet discovered.
In other words: with one hand the armies would distract while the other hand cut the purse.
It was a good plan; Iseult couldn’t deny that. From the arrangement of Cartorran forces upon the field to the use of long-forgotten passages beneath Poznin. But as Iseult had told Leopold less than an hour ago: the cost was too high. She couldn’t do it. Shewouldn’tdo it. And destroying all of her and Safi’s supplies was not going to force the Cahr Awen to change course.
Iseult clenched her eyes shut. Her fingers moved to a Threadstone that was no longer there, and for half a moment—on a pause between smoky breaths—she felt the Threads that bind. ShefeltSafi miles away inside the hunting lodge.
