Page 136 of Bloodwitch

“Faster!” she screamed, her feet slamming onto the tiles. The watersrippled and hummed beside her. Then she was past, the Hell-Bards at her heels, and charging once more into the cedars—not blackened. Good cover for what she was about to do.

They reached the spire.

Safi cut left.

And there, hidden within the dirt and the rocks and the trees, was the crack in the earth she remembered. “Down here.” She scrabbled toward it.

“Domna,” Lev warned behind her. “This seems like averybad idea.”

“Just trust me!” As she’d hoped, the blue light shone before her. She scooted toward it, scree slipping beneath her ankles, and the closer she inched, the more magic pulsed against her skin.

True, warm, happy magic that strummed in her heart. That beckoned her to enter. Yesterday, she’d fallen through. There’d been no chance to feel this magic. No chance to revel in its power or analyze what it might mean.

Lev crawled down behind her, and when Safi glanced back, the Hell-Bard’s mouth hung open, her eyes huge and glowing in the light.

“Thisis your plan?” Lev asked, voice barely a whisper.

“Yeah.” Safi grinned. “Follow me.”

She stepped through.

FIFTY-FOUR

Heat roars. Wood cracks and embers fly.

“Run.” Blood drips from his mother’s mouth as she speaks.

It splatters his face.

With arms stained to red, she pushes herself up. She wants him to crawl out from beneath her. She wants him to escape. “Run, my child, run.”

But he does not move, just as he did not move when the raiders first ambushed the tribe. Just as he did not move when his father drew his sword and ran from their tent.

Or when the raiders reached their doorway, loosed their arrows, and then his mother fell atop him. She had hidden him with her body until the raiders had moved on.

“Run,” she whispers one last time, pleading desperation in her silver eyes. Then the last of her strength flees. She collapses onto him.

The six arrows that pierced her body slam into Aeduan. Pain and punctured breath and blood, blood, blood. Always the blood.

He is pinned by cedar and corpse. His mother is dead.

And now there will be no running. Now there is only flame.

He begins to cry.

Aeduan watched himself. He stood where the raider had stood when he loosed the six bolts into Dysi’s back. He stood at the mouth of their tent—except there was no tent now. No walls or battle raging in the tribe. All that surrounded him was fire and shadow.

Over and over, he had died that day. A thousand times until the rain had come and Evrane had found him. The arrows had bled him. The fire had burned him. Yet always, he had come back. Always he had snapped awake to find his mother’s dead face above him while the flames and smoke bore down.

Death follows wherever you go, yet by the grace of the Wells, you always outrun your own.

It was true. Always, Aeduan had outrun death, beginning on this day fifteen years ago.

Except there was one thing Lizl had gotten wrong: it was not grace that had saved him. It was a curse. All he had wanted that day was to die and stay dead. All he had wanted was to join his mother and escape the flames forever.

But death had refused to claim him. Aeduan’s magic had healed his wounds while his mother’s body had kept away the full brunt of the fire’s force. Until she was nothing more than a charred husk, and the arrows in Aeduan’s body had burned away to white-hot heads buried inside his chest.

Eventually, the rainstorm doused the flames. Eventually, only damp smoke remained, and Evrane’s gentle face and gentle hands found Aeduan among the debris.