Iseult supposed it was as simple as rejecting that which might reject us. It hurt less when you were the one to act first.

She turned away from the mirror, stronger now. Cool, cool all the way through, and she found Aeduan dabbing at the wounds on his belly. Clumsy movements that splattered water to the floor.

Stubborn fool. It was a wonder Owl slept through all that splashing.

He dunked. He cleaned. He dunked. He cleaned. He dunked … he fumbled. The linen fell into the washbasin. It sank, and his dull fingers could not get it out again.

Silently, stoically, Iseult returned to his side and retrieved the linen. She wrung it out before offering it to him. But when his fingers curled around the cloth, she did not let go.

“Is it truly so awful to let me help you?” The words knifed out louder than she’d intended. Almost petulant in her ears. She wanted an answer, though, so she held on.

Water dripped to the floor.

“Your … touch,” he said eventually, “is … too much.”

Too much? she wanted to repeat. Too much what? There were so many ways that phrase could be taken. Logic, of course, told her that he referred to pain, except one look at the mess around them told her that couldn’t be true. Her touch was defter than his, her fingers gentler.

Iseult released the linen, released his hand. He had given her an answer; she would press no further—even if that tiny secret corner wanted her to. Even if it nagged her while she returned to the mirror: It is not too much pain that bothers him. It is too much of something else entirely. The same too much that makes your tongue fat and your face hot. The same too much that makes your body shut down.

And Iseult hated how much she wished that tiny secret corner spoke true.

FIFTEEN

The shadows were not kind to Merik. They taunted in a voice that was not Kullen’s. That was amused and probing and in a language he scarcely understood. They pulsed, they boomed, they grasped and coiled—and always, always, they laughed.

Twice, he managed to drag open his eyes. Twice, he saw a crisp, blue sky overhead and felt damp winds scrape against his face. Twice, he hovered into awareness firmly enough to sense that he was moving, being carried by someone with strong arms and a relentless grip.

That was all Merik saw before the laughing shadows returned.

When at last the shadows cleared entirely, the sky was no longer blue. Sunset was creeping in, a great slanting of the world against a sky painted pink. A chill air frosted Merik’s face, and as he shoved himself upright, he realized he was wet.

He was shivering, too.

A forest materialized around him, growing firmer with each breath as the final remnants of poison smudged away. Fog crept and curved around alders, their pale trunks speckled with black. Churned-up mud trailed out from the nearest trees, showing an oft-trod pathway across sodden grass.

It led to a towering slab mere paces from where Merik lay. It was like the standing stone Merik had seen Kullen destroy, except this one was carved with elaborate whorls. In some places, the marks had smoothed away to nothing. In others, pale lichen crusted overtop.

Whatever this stone was, it was ancient and it was revered. Trinkets and tributes covered the grass, some placed today and others left long ago to rot beneath the cold Arithuanian sun. Between a loaf of bread molded to black and a doll whose painted face had faded to nothing, three pears gleamed. Perfectly ripe, their green curves flared to red like the sunset beginning to gather above.

Merik’s mouth watered. It had been so long since he’d eaten, and the only water he’d had was the poisoned tincture Esme had given him.

Esme. With her name came the memories of where he was and how he’d gotten there—hundreds of leagues away from the Sightwitch Sister Convent. Hundreds of leagues away from Cam or Ryber or anyone he knew, and now someone had dumped him onto a shrine in the middle of a wet forest.

Had that someone been friend or foe? As far as Merik could see, there was no one here now, and his winds told him nothing. The collar still hung at his neck, and no amount of breathing deeply offered any connection to his power.

He was alone in a forest with no magic and no help.

Which meant there was also no one to stop him. In a dizzying burst of speed, Merik pushed to his feet and bolted for the forest. His heart jumped to maximum speed in moments; his lungs felt instantly drained. Alders whipped past, ocher leaves bright amidst the fog. The ground sucked at his plodding footfalls. He thundered on anyway, and he did not slow. He was going to get away from here. He was going to find people to help him, and then he would somehow get back to the Convent, to Cam and Ryber.

Merik had just reached firmer soil, where the forest shifted to beeches and firs, when pain lanced through him.

It was as if he were trapped on his exploding ship all over again—fire, fire everywhere. In his veins, beneath his skin, scratching at the backs of his eyeballs. A strangled cry tore from his throat before his knees gave way. He collapsed to the cold earth.

Black writhed under the skin on his hands.

You are going the wrong way. Esme’s voice slithered up from his chest and into his skull, glass shards and nightmares. Surely you would not try to run away from me, Prince. Surely this was all a mistake, and now you will turn around and come back.

“No,” Merik gritted out, fighting to crawl onward.

Yes, and the pain ignited a thousand times hotter. It stole his sight, his hearing, and screams erupted through the trees. His own screams, a thousand miles away and agonizing.

Turn around, Prince, or I will make this worse. And yes, I can make it worse.

Merik did not know how it was possible, but he believed the woman called Esme—and he believed that any more pain would crack him in two.

Stop. He did not know if he shrieked the word or simply thought it, but it took hold of every space inside him. Stop, stop, stop. He clawed himself around, still on all fours, and dragged himself back the way he’d come.

It took four mind-scorching paces before the flames finally reared back. Cold nothing rushed in. Merik collapsed to the ground, shaking.

Good, Esme trilled. Now walk back to the shrine, Prince, and we shall begin again.

“Yes,” he forced out, though he could do nothing but stare up at the amber leaves of a beech and try to breathe. Pain still cinched in his chest, moving in time to his staggering heart. Screams still rang in his ears.

He lifted his trembling hands up. Even backlit by sunset, he could see lines pumping beneath the skin. Esme had cleaved him—or started to—and she had spoken of other Cleaved back in the tower. She had called them her own, as if she had done this to them. As if she had done it to Merik.

Puppeteer.

There’d been rumors of a woman with the Raider King who could control the Cleaved. There had been tales that she created them, but Merik had dismissed them as lies—as impossibilities meant to frighten the empires and Nubrevna too. He had blamed the other leaders at the Truce Summit for ignoring a threat in Arithuania, yet it would seem he had done no better.

It was one more thing he had refused to see in all his holy conceit, and now everything he had done would haunt him until he made amends.

Though right now, all that mattered was obeying Esme. It shamed him that he could be so weak, but there was the truth: he would do anything she told him if it would keep the fire away.

Merik set off, his gait stumbling and uneven through the forest. His attention remained planted on the ground before him, his mind focused on simply staying upright. No space for thought, no space for fear, no space to notice the cold fog seeping around him.

He reached the shrine right as the sun was dipping beyond the horizon. This time, when he saw the pears, he ate them without hesitation. Juice slid down his face and over his fingers, and nothing—nothing—had ever tasted so sweet.

It wasn’t until the third fruit that Esme’s voice returned. Do you know what this place is? The words jolted Merik from his pleasure. Reality thudded into him, hard enough that he choked. Pear chunks splattered on a silver-plated bowl nearby.

“No,” he croaked eventually, wiping fruit off his sticky mouth.

This is a shrine that was built thousands of years ago, before the time of witches.

Merik hadn’t known there was a time before witches.

No one remembers the past, unless it is written down. And the ones who did write it down have all been forgotten. The past is so easily erased, Prince, and only the Sleeper knows what god or force of nature this shrine was originally built to honor.