Page 152 of Witchshadow

“Did you never wonder why your family’s lands were near the Earth Well?” His eyes opened. Though his crown had fallen, the weight of it had not. “It is your bloodline, Safiya. Your family was chosen, and mine…” A tired laugh. A single shrug. “We were not. But my ancestor took your family’s throne a thousand years ago, and ever since I have learned of it, I have tried to restore it.”

“Restore the throne without giving it up.” Safi barked a laugh of her own. It was thick with cold and hate.

Another defeated shrug. “I cannot deny it. My family worked centuries to improve Cartorra. Our borders are safe, our people are fed. Why would I give all of that up? Better to blend our bloodlines into one.”

“So that was why you wanted me to bear Leopold’s child. Our heir would be…” She searched her memory for the title Vaness had always used. A title she’d thought absurd, and yet clearly Henrick took it seriously. “Well Chosen,” she finished.

“Well Chosen,” he repeated.

“But why not betroth me to Leopold from the start?” Safi had to yell now. The wind whistled with speed, bending trees and covering the world in white. “Why didyoumarry me?”

“Because I… wanted Leopold to marry for love.” He looked strangely pained as he admitted this. Embarrassed even. “I did not know he loved you, or I would have done things differently.”

Snow gathered on Henrick’s shoulders, on the holly, on Safi’s arms still stretched long. And strangely, thunder rolled. A false, unnatural thunder that set her Truth-lens to frizzing. None of this made sense. Well Chosen and forgotten rulers—so many lives had been sacrificed forthat?

“Why do you care about the Earth Well?” She waved the branch at him. Snow swept off. “No one remembers whom it chose to rule—if that ever truly happened.”

“So I thought too, until I met your mother. Laia remembered. Laiabelieved,and she’d spent years gathering proof. Old Sightwitch Sister records, old stories the rest of us had relegated to myth.”

“So you killed her.”

“I am not proud of what I did, but in the end, you are correct: I understand the bonds of family, Safiya, and I I did what I had to do to protect my own.”

Safi’s fingers, numb and stiff upon the branch, squeezed until she felt splinters. Wind battered against her, and the thunder pulsedwrong, wrong, wrongagainst her chest. There was so much Uncle Eron hadn’t told her, and for what? Secrets hadn’t helped anyone; they’d only cursed himself, his sister, and now her too in the end.

Ever so slowly, Henrick lifted his hands. Not in supplication but in surrender. “Please tell Paskella I love her.”

Safi glared. “You can tell her yourself.” She swung the branch at his head, not hard enough to kill. Only hard enough to neutralize. It cracked against his skull, jolting shock waves up her arms. He slumped, a heap of flesh quickly vanishing beneath the snow. She would come back for him. Eventually.

After claiming his crown and then his newest golden chain to control Hell-Bards, Safi turned away from this powerless man who could do no more harm. And away from the holly berries now hidden beneath a storm’s vengeful snow.

It had never been so easy. All Iseult had to do was flick her hand toward a soldier, toward a Hell-Bard, and their Threads twined into her body. She didn’t have to hold on; their souls didn’t scorch or scream. She simply gestured and the world obeyed.

And part of her laughed at that. Finally, she and Safi were completing their plan—completing Eron’s plan. Finally, they were eliminating Henrick and taking control of Hell-Bards who didn’t deserve their eternal pain.

More soldiers advanced from the north, but as soon as they hit Iseult’s magical range, she claimed them. Like plucking berries off a tree, she added them one by one. When Iseult said, “Stay,” to the Cartorrans, the Cartorrans stayed. And when she told a nearby woman, “Give me your sword,” the woman did exactly that, unfastening it from her belt and handing it off with blank eyes.

So it was that no one followed Safi or Henrick, and no one advanced on Iseult or Caden. No one but Corlant. His storm still came, building by the second. But Iseult wasn’t afraid of him. He had power vast and stolen, but in the end, he was only a Paladin.Shewas the Cahr Awen. So manydark-givers now pumped through Iseult. Vibrant, sparkling, elated to be set free. They wouldn’t last forever, but they would take her far.

With the sword fastened at her hip, Iseult returned to the tower, to Caden hunched within the shadows. The wind now reached him, the snow now pelted. He had stopped shivering and lay limp.

He did not have much time left.

Iseult sank to her knees beside the Hell-Bard. Snow soaked her pants, spreading Alma’s blood anew. “I will send a Hell-Bard to find a healer,” Iseult said, hoping she radiated the same calm Gretchya always wore. “Surely, there’s someone to tend your wounds.”

But Caden only shook his head. One eye cracked open. “Only the Hell-Bard Loom can heal me.”

“I can access the Loom if you tell me what to do.”

Again, he wagged his head. “It… doesn’t work that way.” His eyelids fell shut, though he beckoned her near.

So Iseult leaned in, and his breath, weak and frozen, reached her ear. “We… are not your tools.” His chest shuddered; his body slouched; his leg gave an oozing spurt. Unconsciousness claimed his Threads.

And Iseult swallowed, tongue suddenly fat. Hot guilt suddenly rising. “It is…notforever,” she told his limp form. “It is o-only to keep us safe.” Her argument sounded flimsy, though, even to her own ears.

It was as she pushed back to her feet that the storm faded. The snow paused, the thunder silenced, and the winds whimpered into a false calm. The eye of the storm had arrived. Corlant was here.

His Threads descended behind Iseult, twining lazily toward the tower as their owner eased from the sky. Purple hunger, amaranth laughter, and the eternally spinning silver.