Page 134 of Witchlight
Nothing happened. Only more heat to ignite her skull. Only more pain—hers and Itosha’s—to rattle, rattle,shatterinto her teeth and eye sockets.
Oh no,Iseult realized as smoke filled her nasal cavity.I am no longer a Weaverwitch at all. I am no longer bound to the Void, because there is no Void.She was only the magic that the first Nomatsis had brought out of the east, only the Threads unbound to Moon Mother.
Not only had Iseult’s power as Eridysi’s blade been removed from her when she’d healed the Well, buteverythingelse had too. And now Itosha’s storm would finish its destruction. Iseult’s body would be pummeled and cooked, while her mind would finish collapsing into the strength of Itosha’s Threads.
There would be no completing what Iseult had initiated. There would be only oblivion.
When Safi left the mountain, she found herself in a land subsumed by storm. It was like Poznin all over again, except now it wasn’t winter, it wasn’t cold. There were no evergreens or soft earth. There was only heat and oaks and dry soil.This is the Contested Lands.
Safi had been here before, with Vaness, with Caden and Zander and Lev. There was a sharpness to this landscape she recognized, built by sunshine and the absence of humans. As if this place was whatallthe Witchlands could be—content and brimming with life—if people and their worst instincts would simply get out of the way.
Hot, fat droplets hit Safi’s already blistered scalp, shoulders, hands, while the winds that accumulated froze like winter’s coldest breath.
For several uncountable moments, Safi felt detached from herself. As if she were watching a performance unfold upon a stage. She knew she was in this forest where oaks groaned and ferns ripped from their homes. Where water cut down in fat lines and soaked the dry soil. Where insects and animals fled for their lives at the edges of her vision.
She also felt the winds gasping against her and the rain digging in. What she didn’t feel, though, was herself.
She followed these other feelings, these external Threads, her body a weathervane until she found Itosha in the sky with storms churning around her—storms that were focused on one small speck flipping and diving through the rain. Winds lashed at that speck. Lightning tried to cook it.
Love and dread,Safi thought, for that small speck was a mountain bat.
And on it was a person who somehow held on to the storm’s Threads, clinging to them like a child holding a thousand kites.
There was only one person it could be. Only one person who could make Safi’s heart instantly swell—make her muscles regain all strength and certainty.
“Iseult,” Safi gasped, and without another thought, she hurled herself forward. Through trenches dug up by rain. Past torn-up trees and over massive roots that groaned against the winds.
She had to blink rain from her eyes—and mist too, which had begun to rise in the forest with Threads of Waterwitch blue lacing through it. What was Iseult doing? What was Iseultgoingto do? She couldn’t hold on to those Threads forever. They would kill her if the Exalted One did not.
Unless,Safi thought,there is something else that we can bind the Threads to.She thought of her Truth-lens, she thought of her sword, and she thought of how she’d been able to make those things with the skills of a Threadwitch.
Then she thought about how Iseult had never been able to… and something about that scratched at the nape of Safi’s neck. There had been those rocks near Poznin, arranged in a way she’d thought meant something. Those rocks weren’t here, but…
She knew where there were others like them in the Contested Lands.
“I’m coming,” she panted as mist pushed into her mouth. “Hang on, Iseult. Like you did before.”
SIXTY-EIGHT
When Aeduan awoke from his nightmare, it was to find a sword had pierced his belly. There was an uncanny stillness draped over Poznin. A brutal cold, too. It didn’t bother him, so much as fold into him. One more dimension to add to the many dimensions that filled him after the dream.
He inhaled, savoring the scent of a sky singing with snow. Of meadows drenched in moonlight, and of sun and sand and auburn leaves falling.
That was the scent of the Sleeping Giant. Aeduan recognized that now.
With a wince, he crunched upward onto his elbows. It hurt—the sword was all the way through him. But he gripped the hilt with one hand, and in a single, easy move, he wrenched it out.
A groan unwound from his throat. Blood spurted. Then the wound crusted over with ice he was beginning to… not understand, but at leastrecognize. He set the sword beside him. It was the Truthwitch’s blade—he’d already found it once, and now here it was, delivered right to him.
Its sheath was gone. Burned away like so much of this city around him.
Aeduan patted at a pocket on his thigh, where the necklace waited. Despite many rips and tears that had shredded his clothing, this little gift from the Truthwitch still remained. And like the sword beside him, the bits of quartz and glass hummed with a purity of purpose.
“This necklace,” Moon Mother explained, “will remind you of who you are and how all your adventures have shaped you. And this…” She offered him the second gift: a small knife sharp as starlight. “This will help you build the world anew, Little Monster.Yourworld, for the choice has always been yours.”
“Thank you, Moon Mother,” Aeduan said to the snow falling around him. “For everything.”
A breeze stroked across him, tender like his mother’s kisses had once been—and filled with more love than any little monster really deserved.Run, my child,she whispered again, just as she had in the nightmare. Just as she’d always told him, whenever he’d needed it most.Run.
