Page 103 of Witchlight
My eternal soul belongs to no one else. They all hook-kicked jaws and knees.
Claim my Aether. Guide my blade.A final slice through the neck.
From now until the end.Heads rolled from bodies.
It was carnage, and the raiders and Purists and black-uniformed soldiers who’d sworn fealty to Aeduan’s father, the witches and Nomatsis and lost, cast-out souls—they could not stand against this onslaught.
Many fled, while those who did not tasted Carawen steel and saw flashing opals before they died.
FIFTY-TWO
Iseult felt it when the lightning struck Safi. But just as Safi’s Threads kept Iseult from fading into death, now it was Aeduan’s Threads that kept Safi moored.
Iseult felt him through her bond with Safi. Shefelthis magic pushing through her Threadsister’s veins. And when Safi’s strength grew, regained, swelled, Iseult grew stronger too. More tangible, morereal. Her steps through the Dreaming felt sure, and she knew as she stared down at her bloodied body and lips that had turned blue, that she could crawl back inside. That she had enough life, for now, to return her body into being.
It wouldn’t last long. Not without a way to heal that hole in her abdomen, the muscles and organs past repair.
Iseult crouched beside her body, ready to slide down into it and haul herself inch by ruptured inch toward the Origin Well. Its waters might be dead, unable to heal or help or finish the building process that the Threads in that broken glass had begun, but it needed only the Cahr Awen to restore it. Iseult was one half; maybe her shadows and darkness could offer something for the Well, even if the Well could do nothing for her in return.
But that was when three things happened, spread apart like heartbeats. First: Leopold finally saw his moment and struck. His rapier cut into Ragnor’s face, directly into an eyeball, and though it was sloppy and desperate, it was also deadly.
Second: the Raider King fell, his Threads so blue, so bereft, so despairing. And he murmured a single word into the rising dawn.
Ignite.
It gusted across the Well and snow and dawn. It resonated against Iseult’s Dreaming ears, then it kept going. Out past the hill and down the avenue into Poznin, where it reached its mark. Firepots sparked to life beside barrels of seafire.
And the third thing happened: Iseult’s soul returned to her body.
There was no way forward. Every alley, every avenue was filled with shadowy flame. The heat was incredible, and the speed—thespeedat which the city burned. Safi had never seen anything like it. When she’d been on the Empress of Marstok’s ship, it had also happened quickly. A single eruption, and only Vaness’s magic to protect her and Safi both.
But now, it washundredsof such explosions. More seafire than Safi had known could consume the earth. And because of it, she and Aeduan were losing ground. Movingawayfrom the Well instead of toward it.
Threads blurred with the seafire. Too many colors to track or comprehend. Too much smoke. Too much death. Safi wanted Iseult’s magic to go away now; she wanted the Cahr Awen to stop too, with their screaming and jostling:So close! Do not stop!
I’m not,she wanted to scream back.Knifey won’t let me!And it was true. Although Aeduan no longer applied the harsh, almost chain-like control he’d used when he’d first revived Safi, he kept her moving. Kept her focused, like a hand on unsteady terrain.
Never would Safi have imagined that she and the Bloodwitch who’d first hunted her—firstpromptedher to flee Veñaza City—would be so tightly bound. She still didn’t like him very much, but at least she had no doubt where his loyalty lay.
He was a Carawen monk. He was her Threadsister’s Heart-Thread. And he was the Knife, a card that added strength to any taro hand—or took it away as needed.
The other Carawens still fought around Safi and Aeduan, warding off raiders who dared come this way. The biggest enemy now was the unstoppable flames.
As Safi and Aeduan wheeled onto another street, a sight lifted before them: the Cleaved. Tens of them stacked in frayed rows with Threads black and wriggling.
“Stop,” Safi said, and Aeduan obeyed. His witchery slowed her heart, his hand gripped her tightly, reining her in. And she realized with razored frustration that she was not actually moving as much on her own as she’d believed. That really, only Aeduan’s power and momentum had carried her this far.
The lightning had cooked her organs and baked her bones.
“This is useless,” she said. “I have no idea where we are or how to get—”
“I can get you through!” A small figure hopped up beside Safi. She wore Baedyed garb with a headscarf pulled low. Her face was streaked with black. “I can get you to the Well. That’s what you want, right? That’s what the other one told me. Your friend.”
Safi had no idea who this girl was or where she’d come from. One moment, Safi was next to a smoke-shrouded Cleaved; the next she was staring at this girl.
“You’ve seen Iseult?” Safi asked.
“Before all this, yeah.” The girl waved at the smoke choking the sky. “She said you’d need to get to the Well, and I know a way to get you there. She gave me a map, and I know where they put the seafire barrels. There’s one place they didn’t reach. But getting there will be… hot.”
