Page 123 of Witchlight
Stix couldn’t disagree, but she also couldn’t leave her father like this. She wasn’t sure he could keep standing, much less get himself all the way to that temple on the canal. So she flashed a sharp look at Cam and said: “I’ll meet you in the Skulks.”
“Hye, Captain.” Another salute from the boy. Then he grabbed for Aurora, and charged winds once more spiraled them into the sky.
“Come on, Father,” Stix murmured, taking all of his weight onto her. “Let me carry you like you have always carried me.”
The creature that had claimed Vivia was unlike anything she’d ever seen, ever imagined. A nightmare that had once, perhaps, been human, but had spent too much time assomething elseto ever truly be human again. There were two legs, two arms, and a head with two eyes and a mouth. But therewere no ears and no nose. Only a curved, bloated shape like a fish left to rot on the waves.
“You never came to visit me,” the creature said as she hauled Vivia through the waters with kelp-like silver hair that tendriled around Vivia’s neck and arms. “Not like some who came before, who swam in my waters and healed themselves with my pain.”
Vivia had no idea what this meant. And the river shoving into her throat meant she couldn’t answer. There was nothing she could do but kick and claw against her captor.
Until even that seemed futile. Until Vivia was so exhausted, so drained, she knew that continuing to fight would only let the monster win faster.
Growing up, there’d been a cat that Vivia had loved. It had always hung around Pin’s Keep, and her mother had fed it whatever scraps the shelter had had left at the end of each day.A good mousing cat,Jana had always said.You can tell by its six fingers.
Ithadbeen a good mousing cat, but the mousing had also been one piece of the calico’s personality that Vivia had hated. Because whenever he’d caught a mouse—or rat or sparrow or sometimes fat wolf spiders—the cat had never just killed them outright. He’d always played with them for a while, carving off of their lives bit by bit with a savage swipe of claws or a chomp of fangs.
Once though, Vivia had walked into her fox’s den in the palace and found the calico there, far from his usual home. It had been after Jana’s death, and Vivia hadn’t seen the nimble mouser in months. Now here he sat, in the middle of her rug, a rat dangling from his mouth.
The poor rodent was barely alive. Its little chest wobbled, and its whole body hung limp in the calico’s jaws.
“No!” Vivia shouted at the cat. “Drop it.” Then without thinking, she grabbed on to her magic.
Glass shattered, water attacked, and the cat ran—although not before dropping the rat onto the rug.
Vivia, crying now, inched toward the dying, sodden creature. She was going to have to kill it herself, wasn’t she? Please, Noden, don’t make her do that.Please,there’d been so much death in her life lately. Don’t make her end this animal to save it from pain.
But as she knelt beside the rat, reaching tentatively toward its gray fur, the rat suddenly sprang up. No more wilted spine or rolling eyes. Just sheer determination to hang on to the last breaths it still had.
In seconds, it had scampered from the room, vanishing under a door that was now open—because now little Merik stood right there.
Oh no,Vivia thought.Did he see?He must have. Hemusthave seen Vivia trying to hurt the cat to save a rodent, and oh hang her, what if he told their father? Serafin would bellow and blare about showing strength by killing vermin… About acting fast before one’s prey could escape.
“Don’t tell him what you saw,” Vivia blurted.
Merik recoiled. He was a small boy, and gentle like Jana had always been. “What… did I see?”
Vivia blinked. Was he toying with her? Had he really seen nothing?No,she decided. He was simply being nice, being understanding. So she nodded. “Exactly,” she told him. “That’s exactly what you have to say.”
True to his word—or perhaps genuine ignorance—Merik had never tattled on Vivia’s weakness to their father. He’d never brought it up with Vivia again, either. And for years after that, Vivia had thought she’d seen the rat lurking throughout the palace. A bit roughened up and scarred, but still hanging on to whatever last breaths it still possessed.
And now, being carried down this river by a beast as cruel as the calico had sometimes been, Vivia was determined to be the rat. Not a fox, not a bear, but a lowlyratthat was impossible to kill because it knew how to wait for the right moment.
Vivia would wait. She would survive. She didn’t need her magic to win against a target bigger and more deadly than she. She just needed wits and patience.
She let her whole body go limp in the monster’s grasp. Let herself float along like anotherCommanderto sail uselessly out to sea. She didn’t know where she was, where Vaness was, where Zander or Lev were—or if they were even still alive. There was only the sky, brightening overhead, cresting with colors too beautiful for this much pain.
Thank you, Merry,she thought.Thank you for keeping my secret.
SIXTY-THREE
Sky wasn’t much of a soldier. She wasn’t much of a spy. And she definitely wasn’t much of a diplomat. But there was one thing she was good at—other than her magic, of course: staying alive. And when she saw that empress lady run into the seafire with the Cleaved…
Well, Sky had decided that wasnotgoing to be her escape route. Especially since she still had the book with the map. The one the other woman, Iseult, had given her.
Problem was, there weren’t any routes from that map that she could reach. Seafire burned down so many streets. And even after a greatrattlehad shaken the city in a way that Sky figured must have meant something good had happened at the Well, nothing about her own circumstances had changed. If anything, the quake had made it all worse. Three buildings toppled over right before her, kicking up more seafire and smoke.
And Sky abruptly found she couldn’t breathe. It happened like a thunderclap: one moment, she was upright and scouring for a way out of this wretched place…
