Page 36 of Witchshadow

“I wonder,” says a new voice. Drawling, bored, and accentuated by meteor-bright Threads. Leopold slinks into the room, and Lev drops a low bow. “If Midne did not erase people’s magic, then who did? Who made Midne?”

“Your Imperial Highness,” Lev murmurs, eyes dropping to the floor.

Leopold ignores her and runs a finger along the nearest table of cloth. A pink velvet ripples beneath his touch, almost a perfect match for his playful Threads.“There is so much of the past lost to time. So many stories that depend entirely on who is telling them.” He glances at Iseult, then Safi. His Threads shiver into cobalt regret.

And Iseult’s gut sinks. She knows what’s coming next.

“I fear I am here to summon you,” Leopold says, and the regret darkens.

But it isn’t his fault that Iseult and Safi must face the Witchery Examination Board. They agreed to this when they met Henrick at the Hasstrel castle. Still, doing it feels vastly different from simply imagining.

Safi’s fingers settle on Iseult’s biceps, her Threads a tender peach. “You can change your mind,” she offers.

But Iseult shakes her head. If Safi can wear her magic openly, then so can she. She is half the Cahr Awen; her magic is nothing to be ashamed of.

“Lead the way,” she tells Leopold. “We are ready to receive our Witchmarks.”

FOURTEEN

Heat billowed against Stix. Wet heat, sticky with sea salt and mosquitos. It would become a dry heat any moment now, when the flame hawk broke its restraints and the battle began. Thank Noden there were no other people here, no prisoners Stix would have to fight. It was just her and that flame hawk.

Of course, at the edges of her mind, she supposed the flame hawk was a prisoner too.

“Three,” chanted the crowd, watching the same rope Stix watched. “Two.” It was burning fast. The next white mark would be gone in…

“One!” The final fibers snapped. The flame hawk screamed its awful scream, and launched at Stix, fire winging wide. While it gained altitude and the crowd of the Slaughter Ring bellowed and bet and washed her in sound, Stix flung out her arms and summoned all the water she could find.

She didn’t have to think about it, the magic was simply there, just as it always was and always had been since she’d first discovered it ten years ago. Her father might call her boastful, but when she spoke of power, it was merely truth. If she called, the water answered—and in a place as humid as Saldonica, the air itself was laden with droplets for her to use.

Freeze,she thought, imagining ice. Becoming ice, from her toes to her white eyebrows. She was a winter wasteland, and this water would be too.Freeze.Fog formed around her. Thick, heavy fog that frosted the skin and hid Stix from view.

The crowd shrieked their approval.

Overhead, the flame hawk reached its zenith, flipped, and dropped fast. Its fire feathers whistled, its flame throat screeched. Stix sprinted through the fog, her already weak vision reduced to near invisibility. She should have taken the spectacles with her, but the risk of broken glass in her eyes had scared her. A mistake. She’d gotten too used to clear sight.

Heat thundered against her scalp. Light and sound seared in, and the flame hawk arrived. Claws out, gullet wide.

Stix shot sideways, a frantic flinging of her body while her magic scraped for water. Humidity turned to ice again, then those ice droplets thickened into shards.

She hit the ground next to a shredded dog from the previous fight. The stench of roasted innards filled her nostrils. A fraction of a heartbeat later, the flame hawk hit the earth too. The ground undulated; heat rolled across Stix. So dry, so close.

She sent her ice shards flying, already pushing to her feet and grasping for any other water she could find. She needed more than this. She needed a river, a pond, the bay beyond the Ring. She couldn’t snuff out eternal fires with only fog.

Stix resumed her sprint. The flame hawk had stopped its screaming, and the heat had faded. It must be on the rise for another attack.

She reached the wooden stall she’d entered by, knowing full well it would be locked now. Knowing full well that the guards would only laugh at her and wave their heated pokers in warning. She had watched enough of these fights to know the rules.

Arms rising as she pounded closer, she felt for a bucket of water that waited beside the door. The crowd blared their disapproval. They thought she was fleeing, and a tiny piece of her wanted to glare. She never backed down from a fight. Not at the Cleaved Man, not at sea, and most certainly not here.

She didn’t have to. She was a full Waterwitch. People ran fromher.

In a vine-thin line of power, the water snaked up from the bucket and sliced through the tiny, barred window at the door. Then it was to her, then it was touching her—and just in time. The flame hawk had almost arrived. It barreled toward Stix, once more drowning everything in its violent heat.

Stix tossed her hands high, fingers shaped like claws, and the water obeyed. It split in two, forming arms like hers, yet with the fingernails hardened to ice. She jabbed out her left arm—quick, distracting—then followed up with a right power strike.

She’d always been proud of that punch. After all, it had earned her the title ofWater Brawlerat the Cleaved Man, and it had won her many a brutal fight.

Her water arced out, pure speed, pure power, and slammed into the flame hawk’s head. Where a true arm would stop, Stix’s water simply shot onward. A pillar of water to pound the hawk’s skull. To wash over it with targeted precision aimed right for the hawk’s eyes.