“It makes you wonder,” she said, voice suddenly distant, “how many Threadwitches were cast out because they were like me? How many faced ruin and hate, when the truth was that they were not Threadwitches at all?”

Merik didn’t answer her question, for he knew she expected none. She was, however, expecting something. He could feel the anticipation fretting off her.

“You … have no tribe?” he asked, hoping more questions would appease her.

His risk succeeded. Finally, her attention fell away from Merik, and, grazing her fingers across the grass, she stared once more at the pool. “I am amalej now. No tribe, no family, no home. And not by choice, but by force. They sent me away because I was not what they wanted me to be.”

For half a heartbeat, pity unfurled in Merik’s heart. To be cast out from home and family because one did not fit … He had felt that way his whole childhood, relegated to the Nihar lands while Vivia grew up in the royal palace.

The truth, though—the truth that he hadn’t seen until it was too late—was that his family had been there all along. Evrane, Kullen, the people of Nihar, and even Vivia herself. He had just been too holy in his conceit to ever see them.

Merik’s eyes slid sideways, cautious not to draw Esme’s attention as he watched her. To be truly exiled, cut off from people and love—it was a fate he wished upon no one. And perhaps a person still lived inside all that hate, some of the girl she had once been.

With the glittering pool and stark sunset glowing upon Esme’s regal posture, fine cloak, and lucent skin, Merik was struck by how still the evening had become. How otherworldly, as if he floated not in nightmares, but in dreams.

“They were the first to go,” Esme said, snapping Merik’s mind back to the clearing, back to the lesson. She smiled serenely at him. “Every last one of my tribe. Every person who had ever turned me away, I destroyed.” Without looking away from him, she reached her hand to the Well. A flick, a pull, a strum, and a rustling overtook the forest.

One by one, Cleaved stepped from the trees. Onto the grass, onto the paths, hundreds of Cleaved—and hundreds more trailing behind.

“It was worth near-death to claim them, Prince. Nothing tastes better than justice. And now I can tug at their Threads whenever I want”—she plucked at the air—“and then I can watch them dance.”

No, Merik wanted to say. Please don’t make them do it. But it was already too late: the Cleaved had started their dancing. Some clapped, some spun, some bounced and swayed, and two even went so far as to move their feet in a shambling, grotesque imitation of the Nubrevnan four-step. It was as if each Cleaved did whatever they thought was dancing.

And on and on they went, while Esme beamed and giggled and clapped a rhythm for them to move by.

Merik thought he might hurl. He had no trace of pity for her now.

“How … how do you do it?” he forced out, even as bile thickened in his throat. All he knew was that he had to stop this somehow, and maybe questions were the way to do it.

They weren’t. She just ignored him, giggling all the louder and clapping all the faster. Faster, faster even as Cleaved began to topple into one another or trip over their own half-dead feet.

So Merik tried a new tack. A trick he’d learned from Vivia, so adept at handling their father. “How do you control so many, Esme? You must be very skilled.”

Her hands paused. The Cleaved paused, some with legs kicked high, and others half fallen against tree trunks. Lazily, she withdrew her hand from the Loom. “I am the most skilled.”

The Cleaved abruptly fell into stiff-backed formation. They did not retreat into the forest, though, but remained where they were with a thousand sightless eyes to gaze upon Merik.

“It is the power of the Loom, Prince. But even its gifts are finite. Which is why you must help me. Why you must choose the proper Threadstones.” She bared her teeth. Then, in a sudden burst of speed, she folded onto all fours and crawled toward him.

Now, she did not look like a dream. Now, she looked like death on the prowl. Like hell-waters and Hagfishes come to claim his soul.

When she reached his coat, she scooped up a handful of gemstones bound in thread. “These will give me the power I need to make my next Loom, Prince. Threadwitches have bound their powers to these, and I suck them dry, like marrow from a bone. I grow stronger with each one.

“So now, when King Ragnor claims the Monastery, I will be ready to claim the Aether Well. And with that power, why…” She laughed, a bubbling, girlish sound. “Why, we will use Eridysi’s doors to take all of the Witchlands. One by one, the empires will fall, and one by one, the Wells will become mine.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

Burn them. Burn them all.

In her dreams, Iseult stood on a battlefield thick with smoke. Massive rocks blackened the edges of her vision, and fire burned across the earth. Unstoppable. This was the Contested Lands of her memory, the Contested Lands where she had killed the Firewitch, severing his Threads and cleaving him through and through.

Burned hair and smoking flesh. Autumn pyres and mercy screams.

Ten paces ahead, the Firewitch leered at her, a skeleton made of flames. His skull grinned. Laughed. Clack, clack, clack went his teeth.

He dangled too, arms outstretched at his sides like a puppet awaiting Iseult’s command. Shadows slaked down his frame, dark webs within the orange flames.

Unnatural flames, summoned by magic. Dominated by will.

But it was not the Firewitch who had summoned the flames this time, nor was it the Firewitch who controlled them. Iseult knew it was her own power, her own will—for she and the Firewitch were one now.

They had always been one. Set on a path toward each other. Unstoppable.

Three black lines squiggled off him. Sever, sever, twist and sever. They writhed across the thick, smoking air before reaching Iseult and winding around her heart. Knotted, clotted. Corrupt.

Threads that break. Threads that die.

“No,” Iseult tried to say, but all that left her mouth was pluming darkness.

She stumbled back two steps.

And the dead man stumbled forward, a perfect mimicry of her movement. He cackled all the way. Clack, clack, clack.

“You killed me!” he cried. “And you will kill me again. Over and over, for we are bound. I am yours and you are mine.”

Iseult’s throat constricted. Her lungs sucked in only heat. This time, though, she managed to stammer, “I-I have to kill you. To save Aeduan. I have to.”

“He has left you, though. And he will leave you again. Over and over, Iseult. The world will burn around you, but he will never come.”

The Firewitch laughed again, a high-pitched keen like air whistling from logs trapped in a fire. Then, just like the wood, he popped. His Threads snapped taut, and his body snapped tall. His arms cracked backward, elbows and knees inverting. Then his mouth opened, and fire boomed out. It enveloped everything. All sight, all senses.

BURN THEM! he screamed, a silent promise that conquered every space in Iseult’s mind. BURN THEM ALL!

The fire reached Iseult. Heat, light, and pain that shredded. This was the end. This was her death. The Firewitch she had cleaved now cleaved her in return. She screamed too.

Except death never came. The seconds slid past, the pain slowly misted away. So, so slowly, much too slowly—yet cresting back all the same. And the fire dissolved too, white holes speckling across her vision, as if this world were made of paper and a new world were punching through. Until at last, there was nothing left. Nothing save Iseult and white flecks drifting around her.

Ash, she thought at first. This is the end and ash is all that remains. But then she realized it was cold to the touch. It gathered on her shoulders, holding perfect crystalline shapes.

Snow.

The nightmare was over.

Except now Iseult had no idea where she was—and now, some one new approached, appearing from the very fabric of the Dreaming. Tall, looming, with broad shoulders and hands that hung stiffly at his sides. The only part of him that looked tangible, that had shape and texture, was a silver crown upon his head.

It glittered like frostbite. He was a silver king in a world of falling snow.

Cold. Iseult hadn’t realized until this moment that she was freezing. That her teeth chattered, her body shook. It was not like the fire, though—this did not hurt, this did not slay. It simply was.

She was tired too, and suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to curl into the frozen calm and sleep. But she forced her eyes to stay wide and her mouth to form words. “Who are you?”

No sound left her throat. No steam, either, to coat her breath. Only the snow and the cold and the king, now offering a brusque bow. He lifted his hands, black shadows trailing behind—and giving him the look of a huge black bird.

Go, his wings seemed to motion. Wake up.