Page 70 of Bloodwitch

Merik straightened at the same instant the man reached for Merik, beseeching. Then the former Cleaved crashed to the grass.

Merik rushed forward, dropping to the man’s side. “Are you all right?” A stupid question—the man hadn’t eaten in countless weeks, and he had somehow, by some miracle Merik could not fathom, come back from Esme’s cleaving.

Merik left the man and clambered around the stones. The bowls he’d seen earlier had been filled with rainwater. Fresh rain, he guessed, from the storms last night. Certainly fresh enough for a dying man.

He found one bowl, a massive, hammered bronze creation, and, careful not to lose a drop, he staggered back to the Northman. After setting the bowl on the earth, he hauled off his coat, then his shirt. The wind attacked; his bones shook against the sudden frost. Then he got the coat back on.

After dunking a shirt sleeve into the bowl, he brought it to the man’s lips and gently squeezed. Evrane had done this a hundred timeswhen Merik was growing up. A hundredhundredtimes, bringing the sick and the injured back from the brink of death. She’d done it for Kullen too, after his breathing attacks. And every time, Merik had watched on, hands wringing and terror bright in his chest.

That same terror shone brightly now. This man had somehow survived cleaving; Merik would not let him die.

Time trickled past, moving in time to the water dropping off the cotton. Slowly, the man’s shivering subsided. Slowly, he regained control of his throat, rasping strange words that did not sound like language. Eventually, the man managed to sit up.

The sun was halfway across the eastern sky.

“I cannot understand you,” Merik told him after the man tried, yet again, to communicate. The man pointed as he spoke. First at the stone. Then at the hilltop.

Merik shook his head, trying Cartorran: “I cannot understand you.” He tried Marstoki after that, and Dalmotti and Nubrevnan too. It wasn’t until he attempted Svodish that any comprehension finally marked the man’s face.

“Where?” the man asked, now in Svodish. He pointed again at the stone, at the hilltop.

“Arithuania,” Merik answered.

A frown, more confusion than horror—but the horror came soon enough. “When?”

“Year…” Oh blighted Hell, how did you count double digits in Svodish? Merik couldn’t remember, so he settled on, “Year ten and nine.”

Now the shock came, and with it bile. Before Merik could grab the man and help him, the Northman lurched around and heaved. Water first, in great sprays, then dark bile, and finally nothing but choked air. By the time he finished, tears streamed down the man’s cheeks, tracking pale lines amidst the dirt.

“How?” His red-eyed gaze did not meet Merik’s. “Four years. How?”

Merik exhaled sharply. Four years.Four years.Surely the man had not been Esme’s prisoner for so long.

“Why… heal?” Merik asked. The man had come back from cleaving; Merik wanted—needed—to know how.

But the Northman only shook his head. “Stop,” he said simply. “Dark, then stop.”

Before Merik could try to interpret this, the witch herself returned.

Where are you, Prince?

Merik spun away from the Northman as fast as he could. If Esme could look through his eyes, he did not want her to see. There was still a chance that man could flee; Merik would not let her claim his life again.

“I am at the shrine,” he said, staggering toward the central stone.

Why?A flicker of lightning—a mere caress of pain through Merik’s veins.You should be back to Poznin by now.

“I fell asleep,” he said. “The food offerings made me sick.” Panic crept into Merik’s voice, his words spewing out with frantic urgency. And he let them come that way. With or without a healed Northman to hide, this was how he reacted to Esme.

Especially since the pain was notching higher now.

“Please,” he squeezed out, teeth clenched. “Please, I have gathered gemstones and will walk back now—stop, stop,stop!”

You will run back,Esme commanded, tone dismissive, bored.I will not be happy if you arrive here after midnight.And just like that, her claws retracted.

“I will run,” he agreed, slumping over. He had no idea how he could possibly run that far.

He would deal with that problem later.