Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Safi had no choice but to skid to a halt and double over in the hall. Acid and bile spewed out, chunky where the chancellor’s blood had been liquid. Erratic where the blood had slithered so smooth.

More mess for the servants.

As she retched, the Adders stayed firmly planted in their square around Safi. Even when bits of bile splattered on Rokesh’s boots, none of them reacted. Nor made any move to help. A reminder that they were soldiers. That Rokesh was not a nursemaid, and he was most certainly not a friend.

Well, Safi was as disgusted with herself as the Adders no doubt were. She had killed someone. That man’s life—that man’s death—were on her now. And though she had seen death before, grim, violent, bloody, she had never been the cause of it.

Safi wiped her mouth with the collar of her dress and hauled herself upright. The world swayed, and she briefly wished at least one of the Adders would meet her gaze. Then Rokesh finally did.

“This isn’t what I wanted,” she told him, even though she knew he did not care. Still, she felt the need to make him understand. So she repeated, louder and with a throat burned raw, “This isn’t what I wanted.”

Then Safi stumbled the rest of the way to her room, blood and sickness trailing behind.





FOUR


Beside a towering waterfall, Merik Nihar picked his way up a cliffside. Spindrift misted his sun-soaked face.

“Another hour,” Ryber had said at the bottom of the cliff. “Then we’ll reach the Sightwitch Sister Convent, and I’ll guide you through the glamour that protects it.”

Always, Ryber had guided Merik and Cam, steady and true. Since leaving Lovats two weeks ago, she had led them through the Sirmayans, ever closer to her childhood home—the long-lost Sightwitch Sister Convent, a place Merik hadn’t known existed. And he certainly hadn’t known that Ryber was a Sister from their ranks.

Water caressed Merik’s face. He was tired, he was parched—so parched, he’d already imagined dumping his face into the waterfall and gulping whatever he could before it dragged him down.

He glanced at Cam behind him. Then glanced again.

“I’m fine, sir,” the boy groused. He had to shout to be heard above the falls. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“I’ll stop looking,” Merik countered, “when your hand is fully healed.” He knew Cam was sick of the fretting. Overprotective hen was his phrase, but Cam also couldn’t see how pale his brown, dappled skin had become since leaving Lovats. Since the Nines had cut off his pinkie.

“At the top,” Merik called, “let’s stop and change the bandages.”

“Fine, fine, sir. If you ins—”

A great rip tore through the earth, stealing Cam’s words and tossing Merik against the cliff face.

It tossed Cam right off.

Without thought, Merik’s magic snapped free. A whip of winds to snatch the boy before he hit the rapids. A coil of air to launch him straight into Merik’s arms.

Then he clutched the boy close while aftershocks rumbled through the stone. While they panted and heaved and hung on. It felt an eternity before the quake fully faded, leaving dust and water thick in the air.

“Sir,” Cam breathed against him, eyes bulging and terrified. “You used your magic.”

“I know,” he said at the same time Ryber coughed out, “Everyone all right?” Her umber black skin was streaked with dust from the tremor as she clung to the ledge above.

“Hye,” Merik called, even though that might not be true. Two weeks, he had stayed so diligent against his witchery’s call. Against the Nihar rage too, for they were connected. He could not stop his winds when the anger took hold.

And he could not stop Kullen when the winds awoke.

“Just a bit farther,” Ryber said. She scrabbled down slightly and grabbed hold of Cam’s good hand. Then, with Merik to push, they got Cam onto a higher ledge.

“Maybe,” Cam called as he climbed, “the first mate didn’t notice the magic.”

Not the first mate, Merik thought, wishing yet again that Cam would stop calling Kullen that. The first mate was gone. Kullen was gone. He had cleaved in Lejna. His magic had reached a breaking point, then it had burned through him and turned him into a monster. Yet unlike other Cleaved, who died in minutes from the boil of corrupted power, Kullen had stayed alive.

And somehow, Kullen’s mind had been replaced by a shadow beast that called himself the Fury.

Merik was just about to resume his own ascent when a voice split his skull: THERE YOU ARE.

Merik clutched at his head.

I AM COMING.

“Sir?” Cam blinked down at him. “Is it the first mate?”

“Hye,” he gritted out. “Move.”

This time, Merik did not resist his magic. Kullen had found them; they were already damned. He drew in his breath, clogged as it was with dust off the mountain, and let the hot air spiral close. Fragile strands, but enough to push them faster. Enough to send him, Cam, and Ryber skipping straight up to the top of the cliff.

When at last they reached the final ledge, they scrabbled to their feet and ran. No one looked back. They could hear the storm approaching, sense the cold on its way.

Fast, impossibly fast with all that dark, wretched power coursing through it. A journey that had taken days for Merik, Cam, and Ryber would take mere minutes for the Fury to complete.

They ran faster. Or they tried to, but waves of dizziness crushed against Merik—and Cam, judging by the boy’s yelps of alarm.

“Ignore it,” Ryber commanded. “It’s part of the glamour’s magic. You just have to trust me and keep going.” She took hold of Cam’s forearm, and Cam took hold of Merik’s. They ran on.

They reached a forest. Trunks striped past, prison bars to hold them in and nowhere to go but forward. Green needles bled into red bark and melted into hard earth. Everything spun and swung.

Ryber never slowed, though, so Merik and Cam never slowed either.

Then the creatures of the forest began to flee. Spiders rained down and tangled in Merik’s short hair. Then came the moths—a great cloud racing not toward the sky but simply ahead. Away from the Fury.

I never thought you would leave Nubrevna, the Fury crooned in Merik’s mind. All this time, I thought you would return to the Nihar lands. After all, do you not care about your own people?

Birds launched past Merik. Mice and rats and squirrels too.

“Faster,” Merik urged, summoning more winds. Cold winds. The world might be unstable, but if he had to, he would fight.

“We’re almost there!” Ryber shouted from the fore, while beneath their pounding feet, the earth quaked yet again. Merik couldn’t help but imagine each lurch as one of Kullen’s steps booming ever closer.

“Where are we even going?” Cam panted. “If he can follow us through the glamour—”

“He can’t.”

“He already did.” As Merik uttered those words, he slowed to a stop and looked back. Black snaked across the forest floor. So fast, there was no outrunning it. So fast that before he had even turned forward once more, the darkness swept across him.

He still had hold of Cam, and Cam still had hold of Ryber.