Page 125 of Bloodwitch

This was what magic was meant to feel like—this was what it had always wanted to be. No Nihar rage to fuel it. No dark magic from the Fury to taint it. If only Merik had listened sooner. If only he had bothered to see.

“Down!” Merik warned. Then he punched his winds toward the blue light below, and he and the Northman flew.

In seconds, they landed before the blue light and the stone wall that surrounded it. Behind them and above, held back by a wall of winds, the water waited. The Cleaved struggled and clashed.

“Go,” Merik told the Northman, pointing at a doorway made of blue light.

But the Northman took no steps forward, and Merik supposedhe could not blame him. So he took the enormous man’s hand in his own. Then he towed him toward the light.

“We go,” he said, attempting a smile. “We go.”

Together, they stepped through the doorway.

Together, they entered the mountain that everyone wanted to claim.

FORTY-NINE

Stupid as it might seem,Safi always told Iseult,stupid is also something they never see coming.Except this time, there was no Iseult to save Safi’s hide. To complete what she’d initiated. It was Safi and only Safi flying straight down toward Lake Scarza with Vaness right beside her.

The lake swallowed them. Light and heat tore against them—boiling in its ferocity, curls of flame to claw beneath the waves—and with no glamour to hide the sinking naval ship right before them.

Beside Safi, Vaness jolted to life. Mathew’s control had ended, and the Glamourwitch’s magic too, so there was no missing the blood pluming around her.

Safi frog-legged to her and then propelled them both toward the surface. Vaness tried to swim, to help Safi rise, but her legs tangled in their waterlogged gowns, which then tangled Safi too.

Safi pushed on, though, and she pushed through. Even as heat and light off sinking boats made it impossible to see where they were going. Even as her lungs ached from a breath held too long and the world heaved from the pressure gathering in her ears.

At last, Safi’s head broke the surface, and Vaness burst up beside her. But Safi had no idea where to go now, or what to do. They were caught between ships aflame and an island overrun by the enemy.

Vaness took charge. Despite the jagged wound across her face, she raised a single, weak arm upward.

A rope of iron shot off her wrist, looping around Vaness’s waist, around Safi’s. Then it yanked them toward shore.

“Hold on!” Vaness screamed.

Safi held on. The rope hauled them through smoke and bursts of fire, past ships and corpses, over waves building higher with each new explosion upon the lake. Vaness knew where to go, though, and eventually, both women were pulled beneath the surface once more.

Water and darkness rushed over Safi. The iron rope cut into her hips, her belly. She couldn’t see, couldn’t gauge where they traveled. All she knew was that it wasdownand that her lungs howled.

Then her trajectory changed. No more flying forward. She was abruptly jerkedup,and somehow, the water charged even harder against her. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t move. Her fingers brushed rough metal, and she prayed it wasn’t a sinking ship.

Safi erupted from the water. Carried by iron, carried by magic, she hurled from the darkness and rammed onto a narrow lip of stone. Gasping, coughing, squinting.

“Sewer,” Vaness said eventually, between sputtering breaths of her own.

Well, that explained the smell. It also explained the rounded shape of the tunnel overhead, and the constant current of water rushing past. As Safi’s eyes adjusted, she spotted a single lantern flickering nearby, a single ladder moving into a new tunnel above.

It was the blood that caught Safi’s attention, though. It dribbled in spurts from the top of Vaness’s forehead down to the edge of her right jaw. A deep wound had rendered her right eye completely useless. The Empress clutched it, still breathing hard.

The stone lip around her was already stained red.

“We need to wrap that.” Safi scooted toward her, reaching for her sleeve so she could tear it. Vaness moved faster, though.

“Wait,” she panted. Then her iron rope transformed, slithering inward before expanding and sharpening and splitting in two. In seconds, the iron became scissors that Vaness used to snip off a piece of red skirt.

Safi gathered up the crepe. It wasn’t clean. Not after the dunk in sewage. Nor was Vaness’s wound. But it was the best they could do, given the circumstances.

“I’m sorry,” Safi said while she wrapped the fabric around the Empress’s head. Over and over, tighter and tighter. “I’m so, so sorry I couldn’t stop the attack.”