Page 146 of Bloodwitch

And both choices would come to pass if Aeduan could not maintain his grip upon the battle. The Well’s power was fading fast from his blood.

Iseult, Iseult, Iseult.She was all that mattered. He just had to buy her enough time to get away.

Natan charged—and Aeduan was ready. For a stuttering heartbeat, he shifted the balance of his magic. Away from the battle, he pushedpower into his muscles. Enough to duck beneath Natan’s blade. Then to swoop up against his arm and knock the buckler from his grasp.

It fell to the snow.

The raiders and monks on the river lurched forward. A heavingpush,like an avalanche about to break. Thousands of fighters ready to destroy.

As Aeduan swung the buckler off the snow, Natan heaved again at Aeduan, strong and fresh and ready. He might have lost his buckler, but he was still a Carawen. Prepared for anything.

Aeduan deflected, buckler wrenching high—and arm juddering with the impact.

The battle jerked closer.

Another attack from Natan, and this time, when Aeduan blocked, Natan laughed. A crowing, vindictive sound. The same mocking laugh he’d flung at Aeduan every day when they were children. “I can keep going forever, Bloodwitch. But how long will you last, I wonder?”

Natan swiped, he swung, he sliced. Aeduan dodged, parried, and ducked, but each move was slower than the last. Each attack a hairsbreadth closer to connecting.

Then Natan drove his sword into Aeduan’s heart, cutting it in two. He wrenched the blade out, and like ice melting, Aeduan’s magic gave way. The battle slipped from his grasp. Noise battered against him, sudden and focused and plowing this way.

Natan jolted at the sudden upheaval. He glanced behind.

And Aeduan moved. He tackled Natan to the ground, sword flying wide. They rolled across the snow. Aeduan’s heart gushed, spraying Natan in red, but already the wound healed. Whether Aeduan wanted it to or not, his magic knit his heart back together.

And without that magic to push his muscles faster, he stood no chance. Natan grappled atop him, and no amount of bucking his hips or straining would get Aeduan free.

So he stopped fighting. He lay back on the snow, blood sliding down his chest—a distant pain, just as the snow beneath him was a distant cold—and watched as Natan laughed at him. Watched as he unfastened a cleaver from his baldric.

“I never thought to see you this way,” Natan said, echoing what Lizl had uttered only yesterday. But unlike her, he savored this moment. “I imagined it so many times, carving your head from your neck. And now here we are.

“You were always the best fighter—always claiming the best assignments, but who is the Abbot now? And who is the one about to die?”

As Natan spoke, as Aeduan lay there limp and gasping while blood-scent after blood-scent careened his way, his magic sensed a new blood shimmering above the rest.Speed and daisy chains, mother’s kisses and sharpened steel. It came from the cave, and it was not alone.

“How does it feel, knowing I will kill you?” Natan continued. “Knowing that your magic cannot save you now?”

She was so close. Almost here…

“I will do the same to that girl, you know. The ’Matsi smut claiming to be the Cahr Awen. I will carve off her head too.”

Then Aeduan saw her, a vague figure coated in ash and blood.

“And you cannot stop me. You cannot kill me—”

“No,” Lizl snarled behind him. “But I can.”

Her sword burst through Natan’s chest. The exact reverse of what Natan’s had done to Aeduan—into Natan’s back and out through the heart. Then just like Natan, she wrenched her blade out again.

Natan’s body toppled sideways, still spurting and warm, and Lizl offered Aeduan her hand. As she helped him rise, he spotted a new streak of blood on her cloak. It trimmed the edge, a perfect mimicry of what every Abbot wore—and of what Natan would wear no longer.

Behind her, a hundred monks thundered from the cave.

“Now you owe mefourlife-debts, Monk Aeduan!” Lizl lifted her voice above the raiders and the other monks barreling this way. She shoved Natan’s blade into Aeduan’s hand. “And a fifth one for this sword, plus a sixth for the rebels I’ve brought to save you.”

Then she turned to the monks behind her, pumped her free hand to the sky and roared, “For the Cahr Awen!”

The insurgents charged. A snarl of bodies and blades and blood that pumped with purpose. They rumbled past Aeduan, shaking theearth and the frozen reeds. And for a century, or perhaps only moments, he stood there, watching them leave while his heart stitched itself back together. While his blood—gradually, gradually—pumped stronger and his witchery finished what it had begun.