Page 145 of Witchshadow

“You are just in time,” Corlant called, and with another laugh, he lifted from the ground. Snow gusted away from his feet. His robe billowed, and his bandage slid downward, revealing an empty socket. A fresh wound, savage and deep, had claimed the other eye. Yet somehow, Corlant could see. Somehow, he only looked more powerful, more dangerous.

“Keep my Heart-Thread safe,” Corlant ordered, flying higher. High enough that Aeduan should not have been able to hear him. “And if she tries to leave,maimher.”

Then, with the power of stolen magic, he launched away—and where he flew, his storm flew too. Suddenly winds and snow blasted into Aeduan again. He dove for the Threadwitch, who hunched over her dead apprentice.

Even in the whiteout, he could not miss the streaks of blood or the scent of a girl dead too soon. Gone was Sirmaya, though. The autumn leaves and moonlit meadows had trickled away with Corlant’s storm.

“Stay back,” Gretchya shrieked at Aeduan. She thrust up a blade. “Iwill kill myself if you come near, and I can promise you, Corlant would not like that.”

Aeduan lifted his hands. He could not possibly convince her that he was on her side. She had no reason to believe him, and he had no way to prove. All he could do was nod at her and remain staked in place. “Where is Iseult?” he shouted.

She bared a grin as terrifying as the dark-giver’s had been. “Far away where you will never find her.” She sheathed her knife and with a grunt that quickly became a moan, she ducked beneath the dead girl and hauled her stiffening body onto her back.

“Do… not… follow!” she ground out, and Aeduan nodded again, his empty hands still high. Yet as Gretchya set off through the storm, he sensed smells closing in. Purists that would intersect with her at any moment. That would, he had to assume, try to stop her as their master desired.

So Aeduan knew what he had to do: he might not be able to find the dark-giver, but he would keep her mother safe. And he would not fail her as he had failed his own.

FORTY-EIGHT

Safi had never seen Iseult cleave before. She knew her Threadsister could do it, just as she knew what witchery lived inside her and how much Iseult grappled with it. It was bad enough being Nomatsi on a continent that feared them, but her magic linked to the Void had only made people treat her like a demon wherever she went.

She wasn’t a demon, though. When Safi had possessed her full magic, she’d seen the truth inside Iseult’s heart: a wicked power, but not a wicked girl.

And she’d never been more certain of that than now, with snow falling around her and her ears still ringing from the crash. She saw it in the way Iseult landed in the clearing, imbued with Windwitchery and graceful as a moonrise. And shefeltit in the way Iseult looked at the newly cleaved witches beside her, relief mingling with something frantic.

Their skin boiled with tar. Their eyes had gone black, though they didn’t attack, they didn’t move. Iseult controlled their minds, their magics, and their bodies. Two pistols lay useless on the snow before them.

Safi wasn’t sure when she’d started crying. Nor when she started running. All she knew was that she was suddenly stumbling over the ground toward her Threadsister. “You’re here, you’re here. I don’t know how, but you’re here.”

“Stop.” Iseult rocked back a step. The Windwitches rocked back too. Her golden eyes latched on to Safi, panic spinning brighter. “If I release them, they’ll die. I-I… don’t want to kill.” A pause. “Them or you.”

“So don’t release them.” Safi slowed, feet unwilling but brain understanding. “Why must you?”

Behind her, Caden rasped, “I’ve seen you control Cleaved before.” He attempted to rise. Then toppled back to the snow, his injured leg crumpling beneath him. Yet when Safi tried to help him, he waved her off. “Can you do what you did in the palace?”

“I don’t… w-want to. Besides.” She gave a dry, familiar Iseult laugh. “I-it hurts.” She lifted her hands, wrapped in bloodied bandages.

Safi gasped. “You’re wounded.”

“It’s not my blood.”

“Thank the gods for that. Whose is it though?”

Iseult never answered. Not before the white collar at her neck burst into movement. It raced down her body and hit the snow.

It was an ermine. A weasel with its winter coat. And somehow, though it didn’t speak with actual words, it uttered a sentient chatter that reminded Safi of another creature—except that the weasel was the old crow’s opposite: white fur with black upon the tail versus black feathers with white around the beak.

The weasel squeaked, a frustrated sound that seemed to say,Just let them die and be done with it.

Iseult shook her head. Her bandaged hands trembled. “Not again. Not this time.”

The weasel’s tail flicked. She chattered and ran toward the nearest Windwitch. She twirled twice around his legs, but Iseult only shook her head harder. Her hands quaked. “IknowI need a Loom, Esme, but there’s no time.”

Safi eyed the weasel with a frown. She knew the name Esme, and though her Truth-lens said nothing, her gut told her plenty: that animal had once been human. That animal had once been the Puppeteer. “Iseult,” she started to say at the same moment Iseult jerked her chin toward the sky.

“Corlant is coming.”

Safi looked south—Caden too, still kneeling with his face pinched tight. It pinched all the tighter once he spotted what Safi saw: a storm gusted their way. No snowstorm either, but a hurricane with black clouds and lightning.