Page 72 of Bloodwitch

Stix accepted the canteen, which only made the boy beam wider. A comforting smile, she had to admit while she gulped cool water. She also had to admit that he and Ryber did look vaguely familiar.

“What is this place?” she asked, after sucking back a final gulp. “How did I get here?”

“This is the Past,” Ryber responded, as if this was a perfectly reasonable answer. She pushed to her feet and seized a bulging satchel off the ground nearby. “As for how you got here, I have a pretty good guess. But we don’t have time to linger, so either you get up and come with us, First Mate… I mean,Captain,or you stay here.”

“Don’t stay here,” Cam inserted. “There are raiders behind us. We don’t know when they’ll get here, but you don’t wanna be around when they do.”

Ryber and Cam might as well have been talking to Stix in anotherlanguage for how little their words made sense. “Why are you two even here?” she asked. “Whatisthis place and what raiders are you talking about?”

Ryber wagged her head. “I told you. There’s no time. I can try to explain while we walk, but we can’t wait another second.” Ryber extended a hand. “Are you coming?”

Stix didn’t see many other options before her, so she clasped Ryber’s hand and said, “I’m coming.” Then Ryber pulled while Cam braced an arm behind. Together, they helped her stand, and Noden curse Stix, but she needed every bit of their aid.

Before she could pull free from Cam’s support, her eyes caught on a low pedestal nearby. On it lay a broken sword and a broken looking glass.Death, death, the final end.

Gooseflesh slid down her neck, her arms. “What are those?” She took a step toward the pedestal. “I… know them.”

“Those,” Ryber said, moving in front of her, “are dangerous for people like you. Did you pick them up?”

“I… think so?” Stix blinked. Then rubbed her eyes.Death, death, the final end.“What do you mean by ‘people like you’?”

“I’ll explain”—Ryber laid a firm, but not unkind hand on Stix’s shoulder—“once we’re walking.” Together, she and Cam angled Stix away from the table and away from the calls for a final, final end.

The room was an endless streak of darkness beyond the lantern, no end in sight. No change in the rough flagstones beneath their feet or the shadows wavering in from all sides.

And still Stix remembered nothing.

The tunnel beyond the low door was too thin for Cam to keep supporting Stix, so after checking she could move on her own, he moved into step behind Ryber. They vanished into the maw.

Stix took up the rear, ready to follow. Except her feet didn’t quite move as they ought to.

Death, death, the final end.

She glanced back.

Figures floated behind her. A hundred of them, all shapes andsizes, suspended like dead men from the gallows. They stared at her—shefeltthem staring, even if she saw no eyes within the shadows.

They aren’t angry anymore,she thought, even though she didn’t know what that thought meant. All she knew was that the ghosts didn’t mind if she left, so she hurried after the fading lantern’s glow.

And Stacia Sotar did not look back.

THIRTY-ONE

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 hid him with her body until the raiders 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.

“Get up, Bloodwitch.”