Figures floated behind her. A hundred of them, all shapes and sizes, suspended like dead men from the gallows. They stared at her—she felt them staring, even if she saw no eyes within the shadows.

They aren’t angry anymore, she thought, even though she didn’t know what that thought meant. All she knew was that the ghosts didn’t mind if she left, so she hurried after the fading lantern’s glow.

And Stacia Sotar did not look back.

THIRTY-ONE

Heat roars. Wood cracks and embers fly.

“Run.” Blood drips from his mother’s mouth as she speaks.

It splatters his face.

With arms stained to red, she pushes herself up. She wants him to crawl out from beneath her. She wants him to escape. “Run, my child, run.”

But he does not move, just as he did not move when the raiders first ambushed the tribe. Just as he did not move when his father drew his sword and ran from their tent.

Or when the raiders reached their doorway, loosed their arrows, and then his mother fell atop him. She hid him with her body until the raiders moved on.

“Run,” she whispers one last time, pleading desperation in her silver eyes. Then the last of her strength flees. She collapses onto him.

* * *

“Get up, Bloodwitch.”

Aeduan’s ribs shrieked. Pain punched him awake. Water rushed into his mouth. It shocked. It choked. His eyes snapped wide, and sunlight burned in. Water too. He must have fallen into the creek when he passed out.

He was freezing.

“Get up.” The pain erupted in his ribs again. Although the touch was nothing more than a gentle toe nudging, it felt like one of Evrane’s knife-toed boots. Aeduan angled his head back. A face swam into view. Brown skin, black plaits, a Carawen cloak gleaming bright.

“Monk Lizl,” he tried to say, but that was not what came out. All that came out was coughing. Speed and daisy chains, mother’s kisses and sharpened steel. Her scent was there, if weak.

She grabbed his shoulders and hauled him upward—enough for him to get his own arms under him. Enough for him to sink into a four-legged crouch. The coughing continued, although at least upright, he could drink instead of drown. One gulping splash became four; the coughing finally subsided.

Not the pain, though. Never the pain.

As if following his thoughts, Lizl dropped to a squat beside him. Dangling from a stiletto in her hand—his stiletto—was Aeduan’s Painstone. A drained, useless chunk of rose quartz. “Want to explain this to me, Bloodwitch? I thought you healed from everything.”

“I do.”

She sniffed. “Then why is this creek red with your blood? And why have you not healed yet? Somehow you look worse now than when you were unconscious.” She whipped the knife sideways. The Painstone flung into the woods. “You’re also shivering. Thirteen years we trained at the coldest place in all the Witchlands, yet I never saw you quake.”

“There are colder places in the Witchlands.”

“Ah.” She pushed upright. “Good to know you’re still a contrary prick. Now get up.”

Aeduan wagged his head. The forest dipped and swam. “Can’t,” he ground out.

“In that case”—she yanked a fat leather rope from her belt—“I will have to make you.” Before he could stop her, before he could even comprehend what she intended, she had looped the leather around his neck like a hunting dog’s leash.

She yanked. Aeduan moved.

He had no choice. Stars exploded across his vision, his breath slashed off. He couldn’t even cough anymore, and if he did not rise, he would pass out again. So somehow, though he had no idea where he found the strength, he pushed to his feet.

The pressure at his neck relaxed.

He tried to fix his gaze on Lizl, but her face bled into the forest around them. He tried to say, I am a fellow monk. We do not treat each other this way, but all that came out was “I … monk.”

“No you’re not,” she said flatly. Then she whistled once, and a sturdy chestnut mare ambled from the trees. Following behind on a lead was a saddled gray donkey. “Monks do not conspire with their targets, you see, and monks do not betray their own kind.”

It took Aeduan a moment to understand those words. Long enough for the horse and donkey to approach. Long enough for Lizl to say, “Mount up.” And long enough for her to tug at the rope again when he did not obey.

He grabbed for the donkey’s pommel, gasping. Blinking. Then suddenly Lizl was behind him, shoving him upward. In a blur of color and pain, he climbed on. Then he slumped forward, bracing against the donkey’s neck.

The rope slackened slightly, and Lizl grinned up at him. “I never thought I would see this day, Bloodwitch. You, trapped by me.” She laughed, a hearty sound, before withdrawing something from within her white cloak—so clean, so unmarred.

A Painstone, new and fresh, winked in the sun. “You would probably like to have this, wouldn’t you?” She glanced at it, brow knitting in mock consternation. “Why, I bet it would make you strong again. Get rid of all that torture and blood. Maybe, Bloodwitch, if you’re well behaved, I will let you have it. Not your weapons, though. Those, I am keeping.”

“What do you want from me?” he forced out.

“I told you already. Back in Tirla.” She dropped the stone into her cloak and turned away. The rope tightened as she aimed for her horse. “I want that ransom.”

“What … does that have to do with me?”

“Do not play a fool.” She vaulted into the saddle. “I want the Raider King’s head, Bloodwitch. I told you that, and as far as I can tell, there’s no easier way to get it than to kidnap his son and hold him hostage.”

THIRTY-TWO

The following morning, Safi’s unknown Adders guided her to a part of the palace she had never seen before, deep within the bowels of the island. The long hall of sandstone cells stood empty, save one at the end.

“Oh gods,” Safi breathed, thrusting past her Adders into the cell. The Hell-Bards hung there, bound to the wall by iron. Lev was the only one whose eyes fluttered at the sound of the opening iron gate. Caden and Zander remained limp and unresponsive.

“Lev? Do you hear me?” Safi rushed to the woman and cupped the Hell-Bard’s scarred face. Two lines of salt cut through the dirt on her cheeks.

Lev’s eyelids wavered up at Safi’s touch. Her pupils pulsed and swayed, as if she knew Safi was there, but couldn’t quite find her.

“What have they done to you?” Safi whispered.

Lev laughed, a drunken burst of air. “You … should see the other guy.” It was all she got out before her eyes lolled shut again. Her body sank into the chains.

Footsteps pattered behind Safi. She whirled about to find an Adder slinking in—one who had regularly stood sentry outside her bedroom. At first, relief dissolved through Safi’s limbs. This man she knew; this man could help her with the Hell-Bards.

Then she caught sight of the poison darts in his left hand. The famed tool of the Marstoki Adders, no larger than sewing needles, with small tufts of black on the end.

And just like that, Safi remembered all the stories she had heard growing up, of Adder Poisonwitches so powerful they could corrupt a person’s blood directly in their veins. Of wicked assassins who would stop at nothing to protect their empress. Of darkness and torture and pain.

“You … poisoned them.”

The Adder bowed his head.

And Safi rocked back a step. “Will they die?”

“Pain and sleep,” he said. “That is all I gave them.”

“Gave them?” She gaped at the tear tracks on Lev’s face. “That is not a gift. They saved your empress’s life. Mine too, and probably a lot of other people’s in Azmir—so you repay them with pain?”

No reaction in the Adder’s posture. The poison darts rested unwavering upon his gloved hand. “Please step aside, Truthwitch.”

“No.” Safi squared her shoulders toward him. “Does the Empress know you’re doing this? I cannot believe she would allow it.”

“I have orders.” He claimed one step toward her. “I must follow them.”

Still, she stood her ground. “Whose?”

“Stand aside.” Warning sharpened his tone now.

“Whose?”

“Mine.” Habim strode into the cell. Startling, unannounced, and with a grim slant to his jaw. “Leave,” he ordered Safi, a general through and through. “This is no place for children.”

Safi did not leave. In fact, she could do nothing but stare. This was not the man she knew. On the surface, he might wear the same face, same frown. But underneath …

I don’t know you anymore.

“Why is she here?” Habim asked the Adder.

“The Empress wants her to use her magic upon the Cartorrans.”

“It will not work.” Habim flipped a dismissive hand her way. “Hell-Bards are resistant to magic.”

I don’t know you. I don’t know you. The urge to scream grated down Safi’s spine. But all she said was: “How could you torture them?”

For three long heartbeats, she did not breathe. She simply held Habim’s gaze, willing him to answer. She didn’t care about his plan, she didn’t care about their roles as court Truthwitch and Firewitch general. The world was upside down, and now he had to make it right again.