Page 43 of Witchlight
Cold air coiled off her window. Snow billowed and spun outside. And in the hall, a three-beat rhythm that heralded Uncle Eron and his cane stomped out. “Let me in to see Her Majesty.”
Sorry,Safi thought.You’re just a few seconds too late.She spun from her desk, reaching her closet just in time to hear thebang-bang-bangof a furious fist against the door. She slunk into her closet, wedged behind a shelf, and found the hidden bump that marked a hole in the stones.
Knock, knock,she thought as she tapped out the secret rhythm. The stones vanished. Frost billowed against her. Her bedroom door cracked open and Eron called her name, an edge to his voice that meant he suspected what she was up to.
But he was too late to stop her. His empress had escaped. The night and freedom had claimed her.
TWENTY
Iseult went to a new spot in the forest. It was beside the same stream where Aeduan had left her, but a different clearing. A mere patch of shore where trees hadn’t grown. This was the secret backup spot to meet Safi, in case things went wrong.
And things had gone very wrong.
Here, there was no hole in the ice to reveal dark waters. Here, the snows had not banked quite so high.
Iseult dropped the Nomatsi pack, reaching for the taler at her neck. This was her chance to slip away. She should have removed it at the tower… but she hadn’t. She should have removed it at the tribe, but she hadn’t. She should have removed it atanytime in the past week, but she hadn’t.
For all that she had criticized Safi, Iseult was absolutely no better. And even now, she didn’t remove the taler.
The night was too quiet around her. Too real after the sensory overwhelm at the tower. Iseult’s senses were so keyed up, she felt raw. Overly receptive to the wind’s bite, the stream’s burble, the snow’s talons. She heard Aeduan long before she saw him. And she felt how incensed he was, as if Threads really did weave above him, revealing all he felt while he stalked from the trees.
She just hoped it was not with her that he was incensed. He would have every right to be.
“I lost Leopold,” he told her once he was near enough to be heard. “I am sorry.” He came to a stop beside Iseult on the shore, his cloak swishing around him. His cheeks were red with exertion, his eyes red with magic. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
His gaze flicked to the pack. Held there for three breaths. Then flicked to Iseult’s face again. “Why did Leopold try to kill you?”
“I don’t think he meant to. He was…” Iseult wet her lips.
“Trying to keep you here.”
“Yes.”
“You were going to leave for Poznin.”
“Yes.”
An expansion of time. A stilling of Aeduan’s chest as he studied Iseult. His witchery drained from his irises; the usual pale blue returned. “And now? Will you still go?”
“Yes.”
His nostrils flared, but he said nothing more. He didn’t ask if he could come, he didn’t insist that Iseult should stay. In the distance, a crow cawed into the night. Ice popped and groaned on the stream, while the overwhelm of Iseult’s senses ratcheted up another notch.
The snowflakes were too cold on her cheeks. Her breath was too big in her lungs. Her clothes were too constrictive across her body.
And Aeduan …
Aeduan felt too dangerous. There would be no escaping him now, and she couldn’t believe she’d ever wanted to. That she had ever convinced herself thatleavinghim would be the right course.There is no we, there is no us.He had said that to her in Tirla, and it had broken her heart.
Now she had planned to do the same—and standing here, facing him in a clearing made of winter, she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t known it would cut him. That even though his face wore no expression, inwardly, he was bleeding.
“I… did not want…” Iseult bit out each word. Carefully.Clearly,so there could be no confusion. “To leave you. But… I saw no o-other way.”
Aeduan didn’t reply. The exerted flush from his cheeks was fading, blending the pallor of his skin into the pallor of his eyes into the whiteness of his cloak—and into the snow tangling around them.
“You should not have to face your father,” Iseult continued. “I d-don’t want you to have to choose.”
