Page 108 of Bloodwitch

The Fury lost his patience in an instant. “Puppeteer!” he called louder, still to no avail. So he launched once more into a prowling pace. It flattened the grass in a crooked line, and with each step, he picked at the scabbing on his mutilated ear.

He also muttered to himself: “Thankless tasks,thanklesstasks. I am no tool. I am the Fury. I was there on the day the Six turned, just as he was.” As Kullen walked, black lines slithered across his face. Shadowy snow fell.

He reached the end of his line and pivoted.Pick, pick, pick.“That will change with you at my side, Merik. Unlike you, the General is not a king, and once I find the blade and the glass, then I won’t need him. Or any of them.” Now his glare turned to the Puppeteer, and he stalked right up to her.

Then he lurked over her, staring down while snow fell and darkness webbed across him. “Six turned on six,” he sang, “and made themselves kings. Five turned on one and stole everything.”

The Fury remained that way, humming rhymes, while Esme continued her focused work at the Loom. And the Fury remained that way as Cleaved slowly emerged from the forest, one by one, to flank the Well.

Merik hardly noticed them. His blood had rushed to his head from the flying; his ears had popped; and the energy from his last meal had already worn off. More importantly, his mind was snagged on what the Fury had said—on the fact that no one wanted the same thing. Hye, they all wanted to enter this mountain, but Esme wanted the Wells. The Raider King wanted the empires. And the Fury wanted a blade and a glass, and then Merik at his side…

That was valuable information. People with different aims could always be pitted against one another.

When at last Esme’s eyelids rolled up, her head swiveled to face the Fury. “What,” she hissed, “do you want?” Before Kullen could answer, her eyes caught on Merik several paces away. Rage snarled across her face. “How dare you bring him here.” She shoved past the Fury, voice lifting as her arm lifted too. “Go back to the tower, Prince! I command you!”

Merik’s whole body tensed, shoulders rising to his ears. Pain—heknewthe pain was coming.

“No.” The Fury clamped a hand on Esme’s shoulder. “He comes with me.”

Esme jerked free. She looked fit to destroy Kullen. Her fingers had curled into claws at her sides. “I am not done with him.”

“He is not yours to play with. Release his collar.”

“Heismine. Both of you are.” Again, her arm levered high as if she planned to use her Loom.

But the Fury only laughed, a mocking, chesty sound that echoed across the water. “You cannot control me, Puppeteer. And you cannot hurt me. My power is too immense for your magic, as you well know.”

“I do not need to control you, because I can controlhim.” Her fingers moved, and Merik moved with them.

It was not as if he wanted to; his feet simply walked toward the Well, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. Cold splashed against his feet, then his ankles, then his calves, and no matter how much he spun his torso or tried to twist back, his feet kept striding. He even stretched and spun his arms, grasping for the shore, but it did nothing. Step, step, step. Splash, splash, splash.

And now it was the Puppeteer’s laughter that echoed across the waves.

Hips, waist, chest. Cold squeezed the air from Merik’s lungs, and soon only a few steps remained before he would be fully submerged. His breath had turned staccato. “Please,” he tried to say, but the sound was instantly swallowed by a gathering storm.

The Fury’s storm.

“Enough.” The Fury rounded on Esme. “Release him.”

“No.” She stood taller. “I want to see what happens if he drowns. Will he come back from such a death, I wonder?”

Merik’s feet took another step. Water lapped against the collar, against his neck.

“Do you want to enter the mountain or not?” the Fury demanded. “The prince is my key inside.”

“Is he?”

Another step. The water reached Merik’s chin, even with his head tipped as high as it would go. And now water slapped against him and choked down his throat, carried by the Fury’s building winds.

“He has agreed to lure the Sightwitch through the mountain door. Release him.”

“The mountain door?” Esme hooted a laugh. “You have not evenreachedthe mountain door! Your soldiers still fight the monsters of the Crypts!”

The sky overhead turned darker with each passing, spluttering breath. No more moon. Only hell-waters and ash.

“Leave,” Esme ordered the Fury, shouting over the growing storm. “Or I will drown him.”

“He is not the only reason I am here—” Merik did not hear the rest of the Fury’s words. A wave crashed into his ears, into his mouth. By the time he could hear or breathe again, Esme was responding.