Bloodwitch Page 2

Except when Purists were not Purists at all.

“Help,” the man begged, clutching at the wound across his thigh.

At that sight, anger thickened in Aeduan’s throat. Mercenary monks faced the Void’s embrace without fear, without begging. To see desperation darken the man’s eyes—it was wrong. All wrong.

Yet Aeduan still found his magic reaching out. Spiraling around the white fire and iron ore that made the monk who he was. A pointless endeavor, for there was so little blood left inside the man’s veins it felt like trying to catch wind. No matter how tightly he grasped, his magic always came up empty.

“Why did you not use your stone?” Aeduan asked, and he glared at the man’s ear. At the Carawen opal that glistened there, waiting to summon other monks in case of an emergency.

The man shook his head, a bare trace of movement. “Sur … prise.” The word came out choked with blood, his face paler and paler with each breath. “Trained … better.”

Impossible, Aeduan wanted to say. No one is trained better than a Carawen mercenary. But then the man started coughing and reached for his mouth, and Aeduan realized he bore the burn-flecked hands of a blacksmith, the lopsided shoulders of a man who worked the forge.

An artisanal monk. The least combat-ready of all the Carawens. Why was this man here at all, away from the monastery and away from his post?

Aeduan’s lips parted to ask, but before the words could rise, the monk’s final breath escaped from punctured lungs. His heart slowed to silence. All life vanished from his blood.

And Aeduan was left staring at yet another corpse rotting beneath the rain.


TWO


Iseult thought he might not be coming back. All night, she had waited—since dusk, when Aeduan had first strode off to inspect the path ahead.

The sun set, the moon rose, the rain came. The moon set, the rain subsided. Until at last, mist and dawn laid claim to the mountainside. Still, Aeduan did not appear.

Logically, Iseult knew it was unlikely that he would never return. After everything that they had been through together, why would he abandon her now? Two weeks, he had stayed by her side. Two weeks he had guided Owl and Iseult higher into the Sirmayans with neither payment nor prod to force him onward.

Viscerally, though, Iseult could find a thousand reasons the Bloodwitch would never return. A thousand excuses from coin to company for why he’d strode into the foggy forest at dusk and why he might never come back.

The story that shone brightest though, as the sun’s first rays clambered over mountain peaks, was that he was kept away not by choice, but by captor. Or injury.

Or death.

That possibility sent her pacing on the gravel clearing beside their campsite. Ten steps one way. Pivot. Ten steps the other. Pivot. She never left sight of the narrow entrance leading to a dry, cozy cave of Owl’s creation. Inside, the girl’s mountain bat, Blueberry, curled fiercely around the child’s sleeping form, leaving little space for anyone else.

Not that Iseult could have slept had she been in there too. Sleep had been her enemy for days now. Ever since the fire and the voice that controlled it had slithered into her dreams. Burn them, whispered a leering face consumed by flame. Each night he came to her. Burn them all.

She had tried to cleave him in her sleep. Tried to sever his Threads and corrupt his fire magic, just as she had done in her waking in the Contested Lands, but the man had only laughed while the flames swept higher. Flames that were all too real, as she’d learned that first night, when Aeduan had roused her. A stray ember from the campfire, he’d said, and too much kindling nearby.

Iseult had not bothered to contradict him. She also had not slept again, and that lack of sleep had left her with no means to speak to Esme about why this was happening. About why the Firewitch she had killed now seemed to live inside her.

No exhaustion burned in Iseult’s eyes tonight, though. She wanted to leave—wanted to walk between those pines exactly as Aeduan had done at dusk and search every corner of the shadowy terrain, even if she knew it would be a fruitless hunt: Aeduan was too skilled to leave tracks behind.

Besides, she could hardly leave Owl.

Either Aeduan would return or he would not, and Iseult would keep marching back and forth until she had her answer.

Iseult heard him approach before she saw him. It was so unlike the ever-cautious Bloodwitch that she actually drew a cutlass from the sheath at her waist. There were bears in these woods. Mountain cats, too. And unlike humans, they bore no Threads—no colors to tendril and twirl above them, telling Iseult what they felt and to whom they were bound.

It was no Threadless animal that stumbled from the tree line, though, but the Threadless Bloodwitch instead. The instant she saw Aeduan’s Carawen cloak brightening the shadows between the trees, cool relief crumbled through her. Until she realized something was wrong.

He limped from the forest, and his eyes, when they slid up to hers, were hooded and lost. “They’re all dead.” The proclamation came out hoarse and low. Aeduan swayed.

The relief in her belly splintered to horror. He was hurt. Badly.

Without another thought, Iseult shot toward him and swooped an arm behind his back—where her hand met rain-soaked fletching and arrows. Countless bolts erupted from him like the spines of a sea urchin, and now that she looked, his cloak was shredded and stained to brown.

Aeduan listed into her; his breath came in short gasps. His crystal eyes swirled red. Whatever was happening, he clearly would not stay upright much longer, and Iseult didn’t want him passing out on top of her. Right where Owl could walk out and see him. The girl had a tendency to shatter the earth when she was upset.

There’s a spring uphill, Iseult thought, a crude plan cobbling together. I can clean him there without Owl finding us, and I can dry his clothes in the morning sun. She just had to keep Aeduan from slipping into unconsciousness before they reached the water.

With aching slowness, she guided Aeduan up the hillside. His eyelids fluttered, his feet dragged. Each step sent the ice in her belly knotting wider. As did each arrow she counted—seventeen in total. More than enough to kill a regular man, but Aeduan was no regular man.

Still, Iseult had seen him hit with double this many bolts before. There was something else happening here. Something deeply wrong. For some reason, he did not seem to be healing. His Bloodwitchery was not squelching or cleaning, it was not ejecting arrows and knitting him back together as she had seen it do before.

“Are you hurt somewhere else?” Iseult pitched the question into his ear. Stay awake, stay awake. “Is there a wound I cannot see?”

“Arrows.” The answer slurred out. Useless.

She changed tactics. “Is this injury why you took so long to return?”

A grunt, a vague nod. Then: “Survivor.”

Iseult tensed. “The woman from Owl’s tribe?” Aeduan had followed the woman’s scent for almost two weeks now. Twice, they had found these massacres, and twice, the woman’s scent had continued on. This latest would mark the third instance. But when Iseult searched Aeduan’s face for answers, all she got were pallid cheeks and harsh exhales.

“Was the woman there?” she pressed. Still no answer, though, so she let it go. They had reached the spring—thank the Moon Mother—and Iseult’s exhaustion was catching up fast. Fear could only sustain a tired body for so long.

Iseult led Aeduan to a low boulder beside the spring’s clear pool. The creek that trickled down the mountain had doubled in size overnight, thanks to the rain. With every muscle tensed, she eased Aeduan into a sitting position. A moan escaped his throat. Pain slashed across his face; she could hear his teeth grinding.

Even in the worst flames of the battlefield, even in the sea-swept moonlight beside a lighthouse, she had never seen him wear such suffering. Gripping his shoulder to keep him upright, she circled behind him. She would have to cut the cloak off if she wanted to keep this clean—

“Hurry,” he said, and with that command, Iseult gave up any hope of avoiding a mess. There was no time to lose. She just hoped Owl would not wake soon.

She gripped the first arrow and yanked. Minuscule barbs shredded flesh, and blood sprayed. Aeduan hissed, head tipping back, as one by one, Iseult snapped the arrows from his flesh, and a pile of bloodied white feathers and cedar gathered by her ankles.

Prev page Next page