Page 49 of Witchshadow

“You will enjoy this,” Corlant murmured to Iseult, closing the space between them.So tall.He ran a single finger down her jaw, and though she screamed stasis within, her body could not obey. Iseult recoiled, and Corlant laughed. Then, with that same finger, he beckoned to the nearest Purist.

“The Herdwitch,” he said. “Bring him to me.” The Purist grabbed for a man at the edge of the kneeling family. The man yelped. His Threads ignited with fear while beside him a woman reached for him. “No, please no—”

A second Purist kicked her, square in the back. She splayed out on the mud, a cry scraping from her throat. Iseult moved, muscles reacting without thought. She would attack that Purist, attack Corlant—

Aeduan moved faster. He yanked her back, arm sliding over her throat. He squeezed. Her vision crossed. “Stay.”

Iseult nodded. She had no choice. And though she wanted to screw her eyes shut as Owl did, she forced them to stay open. She forced herself to witness Corlant’s powers in action.

The first Purist hauled the Herdwitch to Corlant. Sheep bleated frantically; in the distance, a dog howled.

“Blessed are the pure,” Corlant told the man as he drew him close and placed his palm upon the man’s forehead. “May you become as clean as Midne, as pure as the world when it was born.” With his free hand, he grabbed at the air above the man’s head, at Threads pale with terror.

Iseult could do nothing but gaze on, her belly sinking like a stone. Her breaths coming in shallow gasps.

She might have seen Corlant’s magic at the Midenzi settlement—seen how his presence faded Threads like rain erases paint—but she’d never encountered his magic used openly. She’d never watched as he slashed away the very power that made this Herdwitch who he was.

As Corlant’s long fingers curled around the man’s Threads, they grew fainter, fainter. The man’s body limper and more slumped.

“Don’t,” begged the woman. She did not rise from the mud. “Please, please leave him—”

A streak of gray bolted into the yard. Snarling, barking, the dog from before surged around the Purists and aimed straight for Corlant.

“No,” the Herdwitch mumbled, a desperate, broken sound. Then the last of his Herdwitch Threads swelled into Corlant, like a vine coiling around a tree. Corlant laughed, and as the dog reached him, teeth bared and legs ready to leap, Corlant snapped a single hand toward the dog.

The dog stopped in its tracks. Its fur settled, its teeth vanished behind suddenly loose jowls. A whine wisped from its throat.

“No,” the Herdwitch mumbled again, his legs buckling beneath him. But he could not stop Corlant any more than he could stop his fall. Corlant swiped his hand toward the well, and the dog obeyed. Six loping paces before it reached the stone rim. A single vertical leap and it dropped over. It dropped in.

Half a heartbeat later, its body hit dry ground with a yelp and snap of bones. An empty well, a pointless death. Owl’s wails filled the midmorning sky.

The Hell-Bard training “space” was a misleading term. It was, in fact, a vast complex beneath the newest wings of the palace. Three levels beneath the earth, the cold of the Stonewitch-carved caverns washed over Safi. The heat from the springs—and Leopold’s secret bath—did not reach here.

At dawn, Lev guided Safi into the long main room where Hell-Bards circled at a brisk jog. Several spread apart to allow Safi into their ranks. Her lungs seared within a single lap of two hundred steps. By four hundredsteps, the burn had moved to her stomach. To her thighs. But she welcomed it—sank into the sensation of pushing through pain and running like she hadn’t run in days.

She wondered if Uncle Eron had ever trained here. She wondered what he had been like before he became a drunk. She had never known that person. For her, his very Aether was made of bitterness and alcohol.

Eight hundred steps, and Safi was sprinting.

One thousand steps, and the other Hell-Bards had stopped running and had paired off for other training. The sounds of clanging metal, thumping arrows, and flesh pounding into flesh soon echoed off stone walls. Sweat, steel, tallow—the smells blurred together in Safi’s nose, familiar and palliative.

She didn’t join them in their training. Instead, she kept running. Three weeks of being in Praga, but she was no closer to her uncle than she had been in Azmir. It had seemed such a simple plan: bring down an emperor, then hand over his crown to an heir better suited. But nothing had gone as expected, and now Safi was trapped and useless and alone.

With Iseult countless miles away.

And with a favored owed to a raider admiral.Safi wasn’t sure where that thought came from, but she didn’t like it. It was one more thing she’d done wrong, and she had the blister around her thumb to prove it.

Safi sprinted faster, faster, until nausea charged up from her stomach. Until black floated across her vision and her breaths were so shallow that they eventually stopped billowing at all.

Then and only then did she stagger to a stop and drop her hands to her knees. Wheezing, she stared at the sand-covered ground. Her golden noose dipped out from her shirt. Once it would have been her Threadstone dangling there.

She would get that back, though. Somehow. Just as she would find Iseult and she would find her uncle.

Safi had asked Leopold the night before if he knew where Eron was. His denial had been an honest one. Yet, despite talking for hours and despite never catching Leopold in any lies, Safi had returned to her bedroom with the nagging sense that there was more to what he’d said. That he’d somehow hidden lies from her by wrapping them in pretty truths.

She had no one else to help her, though. The Hell-Bards were as bound to Henrick as she was. So for now, to Leopold she must turn.

“Heretic.”