Page 140 of Witchshadow

Safi spun toward Caden. He looked as bad as Safi felt—a deep gash across his cheek. Twigs and dirt in his hair. “They fell,” he repeated.

“No,” Safi breathed. “How far back?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll go after them. Wehaveto go after them.”All clear, all clear.

“Yes,” Safi agreed. She moved to help him rise… only to get a full view of Caden’s leg. Blood oozed outward from his calf, and his pants were stained through. “Can you stand?”

Before he could say this, though—before Safi could get him up to test the leg—footsteps thumped out in the forest. Hope surged in her chest. She spun about, ready to welcome Lev and Zander and Leopold. Ready to laugh and hug them close.

But it was not her friends who charged out from the underbrush. It was two Windwitches, each with Cartorran armor and air spinning around them.

“Surrender,” barked the nearest, “or die.” Then he and his partner lifted two pistols and aimed them at Safi’s and Caden’s hearts.

Iseult shambled through the fog. Without sight, she was aimless. Without breath, she was fading fast. And without touch, she was nothing but her insides. Her soul. Her emotions gushing outward: hate, love, frustration.

And regret. So, so much regret.I will fix this. I will fix this.Shehadto fix this. Her face seared, her eyes streamed, but at least she sensed no Threads tracking behind.

Except now that she was reaching and stretching, no other senses to interfere, there was something new within her magic. Unfamiliar, tinted yellow, and sparkling with air.Windwitchery.It was the power she’d leeched, but with no ghost attached, no voice to shout at her and drag her into nightmares. Just a tiny well, finite and waiting.

Esme squeaked into her ear.Use it, use it now.And Iseult didn’t need any more prodding. She had stolen that power, but now it would be her salvation.

Go,she told the magic.Fly.

The wind burst free. A punch of air that lashed around her, just as it had lashed around the Windwitch. Up it flew, a single magic assigned a single task. Iseult’s feet left the earth, and with each inch she lifted—faster, faster—the more true air slipped into her lungs and acid flames pulled away. Her stomach dropped. Her ears and brain swelled, then popped, and Esme clung so tightly her claws pierced skin.

Until at last they were above the fog, above the Solfatarra. Wind thundered, a roar of sound and cold and blessed purity. It was not the first time Iseult had flown, but it was the first time she had been the one to control it.

To the west, the moon hung low upon the sky. Full, glowing, silvery against a still-darkened sky. To the east, sunrise peeked out with golden light.

Mother.Iseult directed the winds south, toward the forest and the camp. She would find Gretchya, fly her away on these winds she should have discovered—wouldhave discovered if she weren’t always such a fool.

But instead of forest and snow, instead of Purists and tents and ruins forgotten, there were only Threads to the south. A hurricane, swirlingand gathering, engorging and darkening as one by one, more Threads were sucked in.

Corlant was coming.

Lightning cracked. A black cloud abruptly formed, and winds that were not Iseult’s clawed against her. Powerful enough to tow her down, cold enough to freeze her where she flew.

There would be no finding Gretchya, and as Iseult yanked in her own winds, screaming inwardly and aloud,Fly, fly, fly,Esme wedged a vision into her mind.

Northern horizon. White-sailed machine tumbling from the sky.

Iseult flung around, her winds wobbling against Corlant’s storm. He must be stealing every magic nearby. He must be stealing magic from the very earth itself. She couldn’t see it through the icy tears streaming from her eyes, she trusted Esme. Safi was ahead; the Threadstones were near. Once she had those, she could fix this. Shewouldfix this.

They flew toward barren winter forests dotted by evergreens and a castle of white stone rooted atop the only hill for miles: the Emperor’s hunting lodge. Safi’s flying machine had crashed nearby. Yet with Corlant scratching and pulling from behind, Iseult’s winds grew weaker by the second. She hadn’t drained the Windwitch fully, and she hated that she wished she had.

She lost all sense of time as she flew, the moon on one side, the sun on the other. She was the winds that roared around her, the winds that sparked within her. She was her mother’s words and Alma’s.No one hurts my daughter. We didn’t have to be this way.

So much she hadn’t seen. So much she’d gotten wrong. Soon she would be with Safi, though. Soon she would make it all right again.

She reached the Solfatarra’s end. Anything that wasn’t blanketed in white caught her blurry eyes: a tower, crumbled like the ruins from the camp. A river, snaking and dark. And finally a splintered hole in the forest where a flying machine might have crashed down.

Descend,she told the magic. And it obeyed—but with no finesse and the magic fading fast. Ten feet of careful descent, no faster than the snow falling around her. Then a lurch, a drop, an abandonment of organs somewhere above.

Iseult yelped; Esme squealed. Then they flipped in midair and Iseult caught sight of Corlant’s storm anew. Only once had she seen anything like it: two months ago on the Nubrevnan coast when Merik Nihar’sThreadbrother had cleaved. Kullen had been a full Airwitch, and his Threads had stood no chance against the distant severing call of the Puppeteer.

Now, though, it wasn’t Corlant who cleaved. It was everyone around him, it was the sky and the forest and the Solfatarra. He sucked them and sapped them, gathering so much power he would be unstoppable.

Yet in the three booming heartbeats while Iseult and Esme hung suspended, Iseult realized there must be a price for what he did. There must be a reason he hadn’t used such magic before, and whatever the reason or cost might be, Iseult would find a way to use it.