Page 86 of Bloodwitch

And whatever Habim had planned, his treatment of the Hell-Bardswas separate. She couldn’t dismiss everything simply because she was angry.

If Iseult were here, she’d tell Safi to think with her brain, not her heart. So with her brain at the fore, Safi said, “Yes, Your Majesty. You can trust General Fashayit. He only tortured the Hell-Bards to protect the realm.”And to protect me.

Vaness nodded, relief briefly towing at her shoulders. Rounding in her spine. Two breaths later, though, and she had transformed once more into the Iron Empress, her mask nailed back into place, her posture turned to steel. She pointed a serrated stare at Safi. “Let the general in, then have the Adders lead you back to your quarters.”

“And the Hell-Bards? What will you do to them?”

“They will be brought to the border and sent home.”

True.Safi’s lungs released. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Thank you.”

Vaness swatted her away. “Do not thank me for what I always intended. Simply wash up and get ready for tonight.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

Adders led Safi the short way back to her quarters. For several minutes, as they strode through the hallways, she could almost pretend nothing had changed. She walked where she was led, a troop of black around her, and she was court Truthwitch. Nothing more. There were no Hell-Bards tortured inside the island, no Habim with plans to break her free, and no Empress cracking beneath the weight of her crown.

And there was no uncle arrested for treason.

When Safi reached her door, she found Rokesh waiting. His left shoulder hunched several inches higher than the other, as if wrapped in a bandage.

“Nursemaid,” Safi said. “You got hurt.”

A bob of his head. “It is my job.” His eyes flicked briefly sideways, and Safi knew that in that moment, he remembered other Adders. Ones who had died at the Well. Ones who had died in the Contested Lands.

He opened her door for her. It swung on silent hinges, and her room beyond shimmered in the midday sun.

Safi did not go in. “How many Adders died yesterday?”

“Seven.” He offered this without inflection, without emotion. And that absence was a lie, lie,lie.

Seven women and men whose faces Safi had never seen had battled the flame hawk so Vaness could live. And a hundred soldiers had died too.

“I’m sorry,” Safi said. “Did you… did you know them well?”

His dark eyes shuttered twice. Then a faint wrinkle formed between them, as if he frowned beneath his shroud. As if he did not know what to do with her question.

Until finally he seemed to find words. “In Marstok,” he said thoughtfully, “when magic such as ours manifests, we are given two choices: enter the healing schools or become an Adder. We all choose this life, and we all choose it at the same age. So yes, I knew them very well.”

Safi swallowed, suddenly struck by howbigthis was. How much space Rokesh’s grief must fill inside his lungs. How much weight Vaness’s doubt and exhaustion must place upon her head. And Safi had no idea how to help them.

“Magic… such as yours?” she asked eventually. Silly words to fill the silence. “You mean Poisonwitchery?”

A soft sigh—almost a laugh. Then a gentle shake of his head. “Waterwitch healing is what I and every other Adder is born with. But the power to cure life can also be the power to take it away. There are two sides to every coin, Truthwitch. Two edges to Lady Fate’s knife. Magic is no different. It is merely what you make of it.”

The truth of that statement bowled into Safi. Like lightning to a tree, it hit her with such force, her whole body snapped upright. For ofcoursemagic was what she made of it. Andof coursethere were two sides to every coin, to Lady Fate’s knife.

The answer to the Truthstone had been in front of Safi all along, but she had been so preoccupied bybothsides of the coin, she had never considered she could only use one.

“Thank you,” she murmured absently to Rokesh, already swirling away. But she paused after two steps, a fresh bolt of inspiration rising in her chest. She glanced back. “How do you make your poison darts?”

If he was startled by the question, he didn’t show it. He simply said, “When we carve them, we tell them what we want them to be.”

“I see,” she said—and shedidsee. Just like Threadwitches reciting words to their stones, just like healers embedding their power into the act of creation.

Without another word, Safi left Rokesh and hurried to her desk. She knocked everything off the table. All the books with their matching covers, all the stones and threads and tools that served well forotherwitches.

Then she turned and faced the telescope outside. She had been so focused on stones because they worked for other Aetherwitches that she had failed to consider other tools. She had failed to consider that she needed toassemblesomething.