Page 109 of Witchlight
Vivia stopped breathing.
“I do not expect you to say the same, but at least… At least now you know.”
Vivia wanted to say the same to this Marstoki woman before her, ripped and battered but never broken. The words were right there, in Vivia’s throat, trying like the waves below to crawl onto her tongue. To escape and set her free.I love you, too,she wanted to say. Then she wanted to kiss Vaness,deeply—even if that thought terrified her because she’d never kissed anyone before. Because royalty could never know if someone wanted them or feared them. Would love them back or use them.
But then, Vaness has always been royalty too. She has never had any reason to lie to me.Nothing to gain, nothing to lose.
Vivia’s lips parted. The wordsI love you toobuilt inside her lungs… but never went any farther.
Because suddenly, Vivia was dying. Physically, mentally, inside and out, she felt as if the Threads that defined her soul were abruptly shorn away. One moment, she was here on this living raft with Vaness and the two sleeping Hell-Bards.
The next, she was clutching at her throat and completely unable to breathe.
And she wasn’t the only one. Vaness too was toppling forward. Lev, Zander—both were spasming upright and gasping at the thick, damp air of dawn.
Water sloshed at Vivia, spraying across her with the same sense of floundering.What am I? What am I supposed to be?It warbled into Vivia’s heart, into her intestines, into all of the folds of her brain.I was water, and now I am not.
That was when Vivia felt it, rumbling up through the woven branches of theCommander. Up into her legs. A voice hewing through her muscles like the shadow of an eclipse:You have taken what is mine, Little Fox. Now I will take it back.
Far to the east in Azmir, Habim Fashayid gasped for air. It felt as if someone drained his lungs with a bellows, drained his veins with a syringe. Beside him, his Heart-Thread Mathew also wheezed.
They had been bowed over a desk in their private quarters, staring at Aetherwitched miniatures that showed a losing, failing battle in Poznin. They could do nothing to help; the troops they’d sent west to protect the Cahr Awen were still crossing the Sirmayans; everything Eron had planned was happening months too soon.
“What is this, Habim?” Mathew’s voice was tight, his pale face folded with pain. “What… is wrong with us?”
Habim couldn’t answer. There was no breath inside him. Instead, he toppled away from the desk, toward a balcony. His boots slapped on white tiles; his muscles operated on instinct, no real guidance from a brainclaimed by panic.I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe.He was not someone to lose control; he was a Firewitch general, after all, and he had bested Baedyeds and Dalmottis, Cartorrans and Nubrvenans.
Right now, though, Habim felt as if everything inside him had been left to burn in the sun.
He half ran, half stumbled to the balcony’s doors. Iron shutters clanged as he fell through and gaped at the city far across Lake Scarza. This was the former Empress’s balcony, and they had a full view of Azmir from here. Mathew fell against the railing beside Habim—and they were not the only ones emerging into the sunnied day in search of understanding. Soldiers, servants, Sultanate members: the gardens suddenly crawled with people panicking exactly like Habim and Mathew.
“The Fire Well,” Mathew gasped. “Something… is wrong with the Fire Well.”
“I feel it too.” Habim’s own voice was a deep, diaphragmatic tangle that did not want to exit his throat. Sparks sprayed off his skin. He couldn’t see the Well from here, but he knew where in the city it was—and he also knew something wild was amassing there. Like the small cyclones that writhed across the Sand Sea, like a water spigot dancing on the Jadansi. There was water and dust and flames spinning upward. Higher, higher, straining for the sky.
And the sparks still gathered on Habim’s skin, but now as they were drawn away, Habim saw exactly where they went: into that building tornado.
“Your magic,” Mathew said. He reached for Habim.
And Habim leaped back. “Stay away,” he tried. “I cannot control—” He never finished this thought, for at that moment, the cyclone reached its zenith. Light seared out, brighter than the midday sun. Then heat flew too, carrying with it dust, power, and pain across the city. It was like a thousand flame hawks winging into the day.
The explosion crossed the lake and reached Habim. It flung him against the palace’s outer wall. He lost sight of Mathew, he lost sight of Azmir and the sky. Then a voice shivered through him, ancient and strange:This does not belong to you, Firewitch. I will take it back now.
Caden had never felt an earthquake in the Ohrin Mountains. As far as he knew, such movements of the ground did not happen in Cartorra. They were for the Sirmayans and the unsteady rocks that lived there.
Yet here he and Alma ran while the forest rattled around them and the earth split beneath their feet. The horses who had served them so well these past days had bolted into the trees at the first trembling of the earth. Now branches fell, trees snapped, and only Caden’s grip on Alma seemed to keep her going.
“The Moon Mother,” she kept gasping. “The Moon Mother was healed, but it’s gone wrong. Healing her has gone wrong.”
Caden felt it too. It was like a bone that hadn’t been set properly: things had been better for a time, but now the misalignment had revealed itself. Now the bone was shattering.
He wanted to respond to Alma—to say,Yes, I feel that too—but he found he couldn’t get enough breath into his lungs. Fire beaded on his skin like sweat—hisfire siphoned fromhiswitchery.
Only his training kept him moving. These were the crooks and crags of his childhood, and although he wasn’t sure to where he and the Threadwitch ran, he knew thatthis waywas good—becausethis waywas in the opposite direction of the Earth Well.
And somehow, Caden knew the Earth Well was the source of all this madness.
Even the trees leaned as if they wished to flee. Wildlife flew, sprinted, buzzed everywhere Caden’s eyes landed. Pebbles too, inexplicably crawling across the ground like ants racing toward a mound—except they traveled toward the Well instead of away from it.
