Page 152 of Bloodwitch

When Caden gave no reaction beyond a creasing frown, Safi held out her wrists. “Here. I’ll make it easy, Hell-Bard. Tie me up and walk me straight up to his castle.”

“What?” Now Caden recoiled, shooting a worried glance Lev’s way.

“You heard me.” With Caden’s help, Safi pushed to her feet. The forest blurred and swayed. Then she held out her wrists again. “Bind me up and bring me to his castle.”

“Domna,” Lev warned now. “Did that magic mess with your mind?”

Maybe it had. Safi didn’t know, and she didn’t much care.Tap-tap-tapwent her heel, and she knew what she had to do. As clearly as if Iseult had made this plan and whispered it in her ear.Initiate, complete.

Zander was the first to figure it out, even half-conscious and pain-wracked. “She… wants to save her uncle,” he rasped.

“Exactly.” Safi flashed her most cavalier grin. “The giant has the right of it. So, Caden, I’ll say it one last time: bind my wrists, walk me to that castle, and turn me in. Because I have an emperor to marry, and I don’t think Zander here can stand to lose much more blood.”

Vivia stared out across the under-city.Herunder-city. As empty as the day she’d found it, but now instead of dust and cobwebs and foxfire there were clothes and blankets and favorite dolls, forgotten inside homes or on limestone street corners.

It felt like defeat.

Hye, Vivia knew this was the only option before her, the only way to save her people. And she knew this was what little foxes did when their den and kits were threatened: they fled.

Still, it felt like she was handing the Raider King a gift.Here is my city, cleaned and emptied just for you.

The streets of Lovats must look a hundredfold worse than this.Boats crammed the water-bridge aiming south, and people were being led out of the city on foot into the farmlands and valley below.

It was not an official evacuation. Already, the King Regent had moved to counteract Vivia’s work, but he was too slow, too late. The wind-drums had pounded the alarm: raiders were coming. People fled.

Vivia just hoped her father and his officers would believe it too, and that they would order the troops back this way.

The second chimes ought to be ringing, and Vivia was now the only person left in the under-city. She had sent every one of her volunteers away, including Cam—though the boy had tried to stay. Such loyalty, such honest goodness. If… no,whenthey survived this, Vivia hoped the boy would stay.

She glanced behind her, at the barrier erected by the only witches able to help—two Plantwitches and a Stonewitch. Roots and rock knitted together to form a wall that would, if these raiders really were coming, slow any forces entering the magic doorway.

Perhaps it will all come to nothing,Vivia thought, turning away from the door, and stepping into her under-city with foxfire to light her way.Perhaps Stix and this Ryber girl will destroy the magic doorway.

Or perhaps there is no magic doorway at all.

Vivia was almost to the exit from the under-city and slipping the barricade key from her pocket, when her feet stopped. Her hand stilled.

A thunderclap boomed across the cavern. Then a second thunderclap and a third, as if someone knocked at a door. With fire-pots.

Finally, a fourth explosion tore out, and this time, wood splintered, stones flew, and the ground tremored beneath Vivia’s feet. She didn’t have to turn to know what had happened. She didn’t have toseeto know the doorway’s barrier had been destroyed. That raiders were entering the city.

A city that wasn’t ready. A city that needed more time.Hercity.

Shouts trickled into Vivia’s ears, Arithuanian words. And Marstoki too. Then footsteps scraped on limestone, and she knew raiders stomped this way. In a matter of minutes, they would reach her and this wooden barricade. In a matter of minutes, they would reach theother blockade to Pin’s Keep. They would make short work of it, just as they had before.

Soon, all of Lovats would be overrun.

But when a little fox finds her den and kits threatened, when she finds that her escape routes have failed, then she turns back. Then shefights. And a captain always goes down with her ship.

Vivia’s hand fell away from the key, and without a second thought, she abandoned the door and strode for the heart of the under-city. To the same spot where she had saved Merik’s life two weeks ago, to a square where the limestone ground just happened to be at its thinnest.

Vivia did not need a crown to protect Nubrevna from the Raider King. She had never needed a crown, because she had something far, far more powerful.

She reached the center of the square. Green shadows skipped around her. Footsteps hammered close, and voices chased. But she could not be rushed. This would require power. This would require trust.

She dropped to one knee and planted both hands on the stone floor. Her fingers splayed wide. Then she closed her eyes, and Vivia Niharconnected. She reached until her magic brushed against water. She reached until she sensed every drop that flowed through the plateau, that snaked through vast tunnels and hidden arteries. It punched through the Cisterns and trickled down limestone walls. It swept over the creatures of darkness and treasures hidden away.

All of that water—so, so much water—was bound to a lake lit by foxfire. To the Void Well that answered to Vivia and Vivia alone. Its waters sang within her blood, and just as the roots of the Well stretched everywhere, Vivia’s magic stretched with it.