Page 57 of Witchlight
“I take it you’re feeling better?”
“Much.”Lie,Safi’s magic scraped—and as if in agreement, the flames in her arm fanned hotter. She had to fight to keep her face from changing. She prayed her Threads wouldn’t give her away.
A frown tightened on Iseult’s forehead.
“Iamravenous, though,” Safi continued.Lie, lie, lie.“When do you think we’ll stop to make camp?” She batted her lashes. Innocent. Pure. She was not dying by degrees, but rather a hungry Truthwitch who liked the beating wind against her face.
Iseult glanced at Aeduan, and he—to his credit—stared straight back with all the enthusiasm of a dead fish slowly rotting on the Veñaza City harbor.Well done, Knifey,Safi thought at him. Iseult might not trust Safi’s reactions, but she definitely trusted Aeduan’s.
And while part of Safi felt dishonest, manipulative, and generally terrible for lying to her Threadsister, most of her was simply glad that Aeduan was willing to ally with her in this. Theyhadto reach the Well.
“We should travel as far as we can before nightfall,” Iseult answered eventually, gesturing to the horizon. “That storm is getting closer, and I’d like to reach the forests east of Poznin before it breaks. Can you ride any faster, Safi? The hills ahead are less overgrown. We could pick up the pace.”
No!Safi wanted to scream.My gods, no!But she couldn’t scream that, couldn’t scream anything at all. They had to keep moving forward; she couldn’t—wouldn’t—be the reason they slowed enough for more raiders to ambush them.
“Yes,” she gritted out. “Let’s ride.” She waited until Iseult had turned her attention to Cloud before looking again at Aeduan. He drew back his hood, just enough that Safi could more easily see his face in the grayness of the day.
“Well?” she said with more edge than he deserved. “Are you going tohelp?”
He blinked—a movement Safi was starting to recognize as an acknowledgment. But rather than do as Safi expected, with his eyes glowing and his magic taking hold of her, he simply leaned toward her, hand extended.
A small chunk of rose quartz glittered on his palm. A Painstone. He must have snuck it from the healer kit when Iseult wasn’t looking. “Use it,” he commanded softly. “And I will save the other measures for later.”
Safi swallowed. Somehow Aeduan’s arm was completely still beside her, even though Surefoot ambled beneath him.
The Painstone flashed and shone.
Safi yanked it to her and shoved it down the front of her shirt. The quartz touched her damp skin. Relief soared through her. Up her chest, into her shoulder, and then down, down into the flames. The magic wouldn’t heal the injury, but it would deplete the fires of air so they couldn’t blaze quite so brightly.
“Go,” Aeduan now ordered. “Before Iseult notices us.”
Safi nodded. She didn’t say thank you, she didn’t say anything. Her voice was caught somewhere in her abdomen, the relief from pain so great she thought she might start crying. She dug her heels into Dandelion and let her gelding shoot her forward.Jolt, jolt, jolt.
Behind her, the Bloodwitch followed, Iseult trailing last.
Iseult knew Safi was lying. She wasn’t a fool; she could see Safi’s Threads, for one, and for two, she knew Safi’s false bravado as intimately as she knew her own. Where Iseult would become more stoic, more centered to push through pain…
Safi just got louder.
Iseult had seen Aeduan give Safi the Painstone, just as she’d seen when he took it from the healer kit. Why Safi would accept it from him and not Iseult, Iseult decided not to ask. For now, she was simply grateful that Aeduan apparently had greater powers of persuasion than she, since there were two potential paths Iseult saw before them: they could continue goingslower, stopping often to accommodate Safi’s pain. Then the storm would almost certainly crack down right overtop their heads. Or else the raiders that must be hunting would catch up.
Or their trio could push through Safi’s pain and try to reach the safety of a distant forest before the storm unloaded and raiders arrived.
Option two was clearly better, and now that Safi’s Threads had changed—gone were the skittering, frantic lightning bolts of pain, replaced by something muted and calm—Iseult felt as if they could finally push hard.
So she rode them all as fast as the terrain would allow. Each league their horses carried them, the closer they got to the storm clouds. The winds bared their fangs. The temperature plummeted. When Iseult finally spotted a darkening line on the horizon—a shadow to disrupt the endless grass and snow—she cried out with a sound of uncharacteristic exuberance. Because there.There. They would make it, and they could finally pause their relentless, ruthless ride. Safi could rest properly. The terrain would protect them from storm and raiders alike.
Cloud’s hooves churned over the grassy earth. A thunderous beat. Faster, faster. The horse saw what was ahead; she understood that in the forest she too would find relief and rest and safety.
But the wind fought against Iseult and Cloud. It brought tears to Iseult’s eyes. It threatened to rip her scarf from her face. She glanced back to check that Aeduan and Safi were coming. That they too rejoiced in the forest ahead—
A funnel of wind tackled her, so hard it almost knocked her from Cloud’s back. The horse veered like a drunkard.
And that was when Iseult finally sensed it: Threads hurtling toward her, not from the Windswept Plains, but from the sky. She looked up, time sagging. Her vision smearing.Again?They would be ambushed again?
“Windwitches!”Aeduan roared, and yes. He was right. Two shadows streaked this way.
Iseult had been so focused on avoiding raiders in the grass like yesterday, she had failed to keep vigil on the sky.
