Page 110 of Witchshadow

Except this time, he did not make that symbol. This time, he openedhis hands as if in welcome. “My daughter,” he said, so softly she almost did not hear. Then again, his smile widening: “My daughter, come join your mother and father.”

Daughter.A meaningless word that clunked around in Iseult’s skull. That hardened her muscles, holding them still when they ought to move, and wormed through her gut, cold and vicious and impossible.

Daughter. My daughter.

She must have misheard. It was the only possible explanation. Because of course she was not his daughter, even if that answer inside her was now scratching higher.

She didn’t want to examine it—and couldn’t while Corlant watched her, while Aeduan still gripped her arm and her mother stared at the dirt refusing to lift her gaze.

This wasn’t right, this wasn’t happening. Iseult’s hand fell to her thigh. Her stance weakened and balance wavered. Only her jaw held, open and with teeth bared. But there was no power there anymore, no desire to chomp down and kill.

Daughter. My daughter.

The pleasure in Corlant’s Threads had shifted to the sunset gleam of family. Tendrils that reached for Iseult and Gretchya. He smiled so widely, his face had almost folded in on itself, and the stained linens drooped to one side. For once, no trenches marred his forehead, no eyebrows lifted high. There was only delight suffusing his body and his Threads.

Iseult wanted to flee, to run, to fold into a ball and disappear inside herself. But there was nowhere to go, and there was—as she knew, knew,knew—no outrunning who she really was.

My fault, my fault.With no one to save her. No weasel, no Alma. She was trapped, faced by a Cursewitch whose Threads gleamed with family.Daughter, my daughter.

For two seemingly endless breaths, as the breeze swept up mist off thawing hoarfrost and as Threads danced around her, Iseult was paralyzed by guilt. By how much she hated herself and her magic.Sever, sever, twist and sever.

But then she considered one important thing: if Corlant was her father, then she’d been cursed from the day she’d been born. Tainted by evil blood and the Void. Moon Mother’s glow had never reached her and never would. Yet like the monster hidden in shadows nearby, there was freedom in darkness. There was power where light never reached.

It was as if, in that moment, time punched forward. No space for thought, no space for logic or concern or the stasis that had never helped her before. There was only action, only instinct, only rage.

Her spine straightened, her arms flung high, and Iseult stretched her fingers long. Aeduan’s grip released, and her fingers closed around Corlant’s Threads. Lightning seared up her arm. Shock waves to pummel her elbow, her shoulder, her ribs. Even her vision ignited with cold and light—freezing it away. She saw nothing but Corlant’s Threads. Nothing but throbbing purple pleasure and that sick sunset love.

But also a dark, icy core she’d never noticed before. One that her fingers closed around. That crackled outward in arcs of power.

Too much power.More than she could control, more than her small, human mind could comprehend.

Cold and light burrowed past her eyeballs and into her brain. Past her lungs, all the way to her heart. She was pure winter. She froze from the inside out; her muscles and bones became fuel for a Cursewitch.

Distantly, Iseult felt her knees give out beneath her. Distantly, she heard screams she knew must be her own. But she was powerless to stop them. She could not even release Corlant’s Threads. The dark current at the heart of them would not let her go. It swelled inside her, glaciating every cell it touched and every drop of her Aether too.

I thought you would be stronger,a voice whispered atop the ice.But there is still time for you to become the dark-giver you were meant to be. The shadow-ender the Witchlands needs. The daughter I thought had been taken from me.

“No,” Iseult tried to say. Or maybe she did say it, though no sound reached her ears. No voice shook in her chest. The crackling core of Corlant’s power still consumed, still froze.

Until at last he released her. Laughter briefly filled her skull, pink Threads briefly claimed her vision. Then darkness—blessed and pure—shoved in to drag her down.

Iseult collapsed.

Fourteen Days After the Earth Well Healed

Later, Iseult will wonder how no one saw her and Leopold. Later, she will have strange memories of gray and snow and walls that open wide. But it will all be so dreamlike that she will not be able to fathom what it means.

And she certainly cannot fathom what it means while it is happening. She loses track of the turns and passages, of the countless people they pass who never seem to see. Every time she says, “Safi,” Leopold ignores her. Or quiets her, a bloodied hand to cover her mouth, as if people might be near to overhear.

She sees no one, though, and Threads are hazy.

Worse, a voice is beginning to speak to her again. Just a tickle at the base of her brain, but Iseult recognizes it. She has been here before.You did this to me. You killed me. I will never let you go.It is the Hell-Bard’s voice. The Stonewitch’s ghost.

But then the voice pulls back. The gray seems to clear, and suddenly Iseult finds herself in a part of the palace she has never seen before, in a round room of dark, ancient stone and blazing hearth.

Owl is here, dressed in a plain traveling cloak and clasped in Zander’s patient arms. She gives a soft cry at the sight of Iseult, and relief swells across her Threads. A cleansing wave against the fear that paled them before. “Bad things are happening,” she says as Zander eases her to the carpet, red as blood and so much thicker. “We were worried.”

“I’m fine,” Iseult says, but it’s a lie. She is anything but fine. Her Threadsister has been broken and carried away, she has killed two people, and now another ghost of the Cleaved is awakening in her mind.