Page 106 of Witchshadow

“I simply…” Vaness wet her lips. “I wish I could make it better.”

“There’s nothingtomake better.”

“I need not be a Truthwitch to spot that lie.”

No.Vivia would not have this conversation. She would not give in to the tightening around her chest. She needed to move.Theyneeded to move—there were hunters behind them, after all, and sitting still was a quick path to madness. She stepped into the stream to cross it. It kicked and kissed at her, so gentle.

She only made it two steps before Vaness said, “Wait, Vivia… Your Majesty. Please wait.”

And against her better judgment, Vivia paused, right in the middle of the stream. Behind her, Vaness took her own first step into the running waters.

“My parents died when I was young,” she said. “I have been Empress for as long as I can remember.” A second step. Then a third. “Like you, I have had to hide everything I feel lest the world use it against me.” Three more steps and she was at Vivia’s side.

But Vivia did not look toward her. She simply stared at the water and willed the storm clouds inside her to pass.No regrets, no regrets.

“I have never had anyone to whom I could show myself,” Vaness went on. “But I… butyou… We’re alike, you see?”

Vivia did not see. The Empress had grown up in a world with wealth beyond imagining. Vivia had been born to a nation poisoned and dead. Before Vivia could stop her, though, Vaness reached out and grabbed Vivia’s wrist. “You do not have to hide in front of me, Your Majesty.” Her fingers tightened. “Vivia, you do not have to hide.”

Vivia frowned at Vaness’s fine-boned fingers, curled against her skin. The Empress’s Witchmark was sharp and black, even in this dappled light.As if she had it regularly dyed anew. The hairs on her arms glistened with sweat. Her iron bracelet rested gently against a delicate wrist.

She was beautiful. She was regal. And she and Vivia were nothing alike, no matter how much Vivia might wish that they could be. She’d grown up hating this woman. Like her fear of the waters once poisoned around her, she could not change her hatred overnight.

But that was not why she had to hide from the Empress. It was not why she needed her masks or her little fox den. It was because right now, she needed the bear inside her to keep going. The only reason she was still afloat upon this stream—the only reason the bludgeoning in her lungs had not claimed her—was because she had masks to protect her from a world too bleak to face.

She tugged back her hand, and Vaness released her instantly, though the Empress’s arm stayed long, her fingers outstretched as if about to plead. But when Vivia said, “We must keep walking,” Vaness did not tell her again to wait.

For some reason, Vivia wished she had.

The Hammer came for Stix and Ryber at the hottest part of the day, when the sun had begun its descent, but the roads and rooftops had soaked up enough heat to emanate their own. The inn bedroom had become an oven, and even the six-fingered tabby had melted away in favor of cooler arenas. Compounded with the voices’ endless bellows, it was enough to make Stix consider leaving Saldonica and never coming back.

When the Hammer arrived, Stix practically pounced on him. She didn’t care that they were traveling back toward Kahina, nor that the burn mark seemed to itch the closer they got. She didn’t care that she might have to fight today. She wasmoving, and Noden bless her, it felt good. The carriage swept in a breeze to cool the sweat on her skin, and the voices quelled with each creaking spin of the wheels over swampy road.

“What is today’s fight?” Ryber asked with a suave trainer smile. She shuffled her cards absently, flipping one every few moments. Though Ryber never looked at them, Stix caught glimpses of the corners.

Six of Hawks. Eight of Hawks. Three of Hawks. Queen of Hawks.

“No fight,” the Hammer said, and for once he looked at Stix with something other than vague irritation. “Kahina says the prisoners are yours now. To do with as you please.”

Stix stiffened upon her seat. She met Ryber’s surprised eyes across the bench.

“That was fast,” Ryber said.Shuffle, shuffle.

“When Kahina wants something,” the Hammer replied, “she gets it done.” He stared at Stix as he said this, and his fingers tapped a curt rhythm against his knee. Clearly he expected her to explain this enormous gift. And clearly, when she offered nothing up but a blank stare, his usual irritation was returning.

“Draw a card for you?” Ryber’s voice trilled through the breeze as she offered her deck to the Hammer.

His nose wrinkled. “I do not play games.”

“Not a game.” Ryber feigned offense. Her braid sprang free. “I dabble in fortune-telling from time to time. Look.” She flipped over a card: the Moon. “You come from the Fareastern continent.”

Somehow, the Hammer’s nose wrinkled even more. “You could tell that by looking at my face and hair tails.”

Ryber cracked a smile and dealt another card. The nine of foxes. “You come from the southwesternmost tip, from an island that has mostly managed to evade the wars of the mainland.”

Now the Hammer looked impressed—and even Stix was impressed too. She knew Ryber and the cards were clever, but she’d never seen Ryber play this sort of trick before.

The Hammer’s fingers tapped faster against his knee. Outside, the wheels’ refrain shifted from a soil-soft creak to a stone-echoed clack. Then shadows fell, the breeze vanished, and they were moving beneath the Ring.