Lev dropped to a crouch beside her. “It doesn’t work, Domna. I already tried. The magic won’t let us back through.” She offered Safi a hand, but Safi didn’t take it. She couldn’t. All that running, all that escape and violence and flame … and for what? Vaness still hadn’t made it in the end.
No, no, no. Safi couldn’t believe it. Not after everything, Vaness couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be dead. Not her too.
But Merik still lives, her brain reminded her—though even that seemed impossible now. Had she really seen him? Or had he been an apparition made of lightning and snow? Even if he had been real, even if he did still live, he was also trapped inside that mountain.
No, no, no.
Lev moved away, and Safi simply sat there, staring into the trees. There were mountains beyond, vague silhouettes against a darkened sky. Clouds wafted across the moon. The creatures of the night hesitantly resumed their song.
Safi didn’t cry. She almost wished she would. Tears seemed appropriate after everything. Habim and Mathew, Vaness and Merik. And Rokesh too, for she had no idea what had happened to him. Likely, he was as dead as all the other Adders, and didn’t he, her Nursemaid, deserve tears?
But no tears came. All Safi could do was breathe and keep on staring.
And all Safi could do was tap. Her left hand, filthy and cold, would not stop this steady rhythm against the earth. Faster. Faster. A roiling, building beat.
“We can’t stay here.” Caden’s voice drifted into her awareness. So far away, and yet she knew he was right there, kneeling beside her. Tap-tap-tap.
“I think we’re in the Ohrins, Safi. Near the Grieg estates. I know that river.”
The Ohrins and the Grieg estates. The literal opposite side of the Witchlands from Marstok. Oh gods below, what were the chances? So many impossibilities all colliding in a single night. Safi didn’t doubt Caden was right, though. Those trees, this cold and mist—she had spent her childhood in these mountains.
“Grieg has men who patrol,” Caden went on. “If they find us, they’ll bring us to him, and if that happens, then you won’t stay free for long.”
No, Safi thought. She wouldn’t. Dom fon Grieg was one of Emperor Henrick’s favored noblemen. One look at Safi, and he’d send her off to Praga …
Her spine tensed at that thought. She sat a bit taller. Tap-tap-tap. Then she turned and looked in Caden’s eyes. The blue door scarcely glowed now, a mere halo to frame his tight-lipped face.
“Good.” Safi let that word drip from her tongue. It tasted like metal. Then she said it again, harder, “Good. Let his men find us. Zander needs help, and a man as rich as Dom fon Grieg will have the best healers in the Witchlands.”
When Caden gave no reaction beyond a creasing frown, Safi held out her wrists. “Here. I’ll make it easy, Hell-Bard. Tie me up and walk me straight up to his castle.”
“What?” Now Caden recoiled, shooting a worried glance Lev’s way.
“You heard me.” With Caden’s help, Safi pushed to her feet. The forest blurred and swayed. Then she held out her wrists again. “Bind me up and bring me to his castle.”
“Domna,” Lev warned now. “Did that magic mess with your mind?”
Maybe it had. Safi didn’t know, and she didn’t much care. Tap-tap-tap went her heel, and she knew what she had to do. As clearly as if Iseult had made this plan and whispered it in her ear. Initiate, complete.
Zander was the first to figure it out, even half-conscious and pain-wracked. “She … wants to save her uncle,” he rasped.
“Exactly.” Safi flashed her most cavalier grin. “The giant has the right of it. So, Caden, I’ll say it one last time: bind my wrists, walk me to that castle, and turn me in. Because I have an emperor to marry, and I don’t think Zander here can stand to lose much more blood.”
* * *
Vivia stared out across the under-city. Her under-city. As empty as the day she’d found it, but now instead of dust and cobwebs and foxfire there were clothes and blankets and favorite dolls, forgotten inside homes or on limestone street corners.
It felt like defeat.
Hye, Vivia knew this was the only option before her, the only way to save her people. And she knew this was what little foxes did when their den and kits were threatened: they fled.
Still, it felt like she was handing the Raider King a gift. Here is my city, cleaned and emptied just for you.
The streets of Lovats must look a hundredfold worse than this. Boats crammed the water-bridge aiming south, and people were being led out of the city on foot into the farmlands and valley below.
It was not an official evacuation. Already, the King Regent had moved to counteract Vivia’s work, but he was too slow, too late. The wind-drums had pounded the alarm: raiders were coming. People fled.
Vivia just hoped her father and his officers would believe it too, and that they would order the troops back this way.
The second chimes ought to be ringing, and Vivia was now the only person left in the under-city. She had sent every one of her volunteers away, including Cam—though the boy had tried to stay. Such loyalty, such honest goodness. If … no, when they survived this, Vivia hoped the boy would stay.
She glanced behind her, at the barrier erected by the only witches able to help—two Plantwitches and a Stonewitch. Roots and rock knitted together to form a wall that would, if these raiders really were coming, slow any forces entering the magic doorway.
Perhaps it will all come to nothing, Vivia thought, turning away from the door, and stepping into her under-city with foxfire to light her way. Perhaps Stix and this Ryber girl will destroy the magic doorway.
Or perhaps there is no magic doorway at all.
Vivia was almost to the exit from the under-city and slipping the barricade key from her pocket, when her feet stopped. Her hand stilled.
A thunderclap boomed across the cavern. Then a second thunderclap and a third, as if someone knocked at a door. With fire-pots.
Finally, a fourth explosion tore out, and this time, wood splintered, stones flew, and the ground tremored beneath Vivia’s feet. She didn’t have to turn to know what had happened. She didn’t have to see to know the doorway’s barrier had been destroyed. That raiders were entering the city.
A city that wasn’t ready. A city that needed more time. Her city.
Shouts trickled into Vivia’s ears, Arithuanian words. And Marstoki too. Then footsteps scraped on limestone, and she knew raiders stomped this way. In a matter of minutes, they would reach her and this wooden barricade. In a matter of minutes, they would reach the other blockade to Pin’s Keep. They would make short work of it, just as they had before.
Soon, all of Lovats would be overrun.
But when a little fox finds her den and kits threatened, when she finds that her escape routes have failed, then she turns back. Then she fights. And a captain always goes down with her ship.
Vivia’s hand fell away from the key, and without a second thought, she abandoned the door and strode for the heart of the under-city. To the same spot where she had saved Merik’s life two weeks ago, to a square where the limestone ground just happened to be at its thinnest.
Vivia did not need a crown to protect Nubrevna from the Raider King. She had never needed a crown, because she had something far, far more powerful.
She reached the center of the square. Green shadows skipped around her. Footsteps hammered close, and voices chased. But she could not be rushed. This would require power. This would require trust.
She dropped to one knee and planted both hands on the stone floor. Her fingers splayed wide. Then she closed her eyes, and Vivia Nihar connected. She reached until her magic brushed against water. She reached until she sensed every drop that flowed through the plateau, that snaked through vast tunnels and hidden arteries. It punched through the Cisterns and trickled down limestone walls. It swept over the creatures of darkness and treasures hidden away.
All of that water—so, so much water—was bound to a la
ke lit by foxfire. To the Void Well that answered to Vivia and Vivia alone. Its waters sang within her blood, and just as the roots of the Well stretched everywhere, Vivia’s magic stretched with it.
Come, she commanded the water and the Well. Come to me.
The water and the Well obeyed. Small rivulets at first that climbed and curved, that converged and magnified. Higher, higher, stronger, stronger.
Distantly, Vivia heard war cries approaching. Distantly, she felt stampeding feet upon the stone. But it was the water that told her exactly where these raiders were—small vibrations and shivers. Hundreds upon hundreds of intruders vaulting this way, and more pushing in through that impossible, magical doorway.
They were almost to Vivia’s square.
Come, she urged the water. Faster.
The water came faster, vast rivers now that rocketed toward the surface. Toward Vivia.
The raiders came faster too. They had reached the square. They had seen her, and even as connected as she was to the waters and to the Well, there was no missing the roars that bellowed nearby.
Come, she thought again, but this time she did not address the water. This time, she lifted her chin and opened her eyes—and this time, she addressed the men charging toward her. Baedyed and Red Sail. Furs and beards and black silk and tattoos. A mass of violent hunger.
Come.
For half an eternal second, she almost imagined she saw what they saw: a woman waiting for her death. Submissive and weak and bowing to the force of masculine rage. But men had ruled the Witchlands long enough with only bloodshed and chaos to show for it. It was past time Noden and the Hagfishes bent to a woman’s rule.
Vivia erupted to her feet, and the water erupted with her. Two geysers that punched through stone right as the first raiders entered the square.
The water destroyed them.
It tore them from their feet with the force of a tidal wave, and as Vivia’s arms flung high, the water flung high too. It carried bodies, it carried weapons. Then it tossed them wide in a cascade of snapping spines and shattering skulls.
More raiders hurtled in behind the first wave. They tried to circle around the geysers, around the bodies crashing down.
Vivia twirled, and the water twirled with her. It whipped outward, splitting into a hundred limbs that moved as she commanded. That lashed and struck and yanked men low. The water was an extension of her body, of her mind. It wanted what she wanted—it wanted its home empty and safe.
Vivia lost all concept of time. She lost count of how many people she felled. The water measured time by drought and flood, it measured life by wave and erosion. It had no interest in humanity, no concern if blood stained its soul.
The water gathered and built and rose, and the higher it climbed, the stronger Vivia felt. Still the raiders charged; still she slashed and slew. Free, alive, unstoppable. No fetters to hold her down, no masks to hold her back.
Until her water suddenly hit resistance. Until it suddenly reached a body that would not yield, that would not bend.
Vivia startled back into her mind. Her water whips stilled. She gasped, stunned by the water’s icy claws—by how high it had flooded around her. All the way to her mid-thighs and still rising. Bodies floated by, some twitching, some choking, but most unmoving and dead.
More raiders still came too. Vivia heard them splashing and shouting.
It was the person standing before her, though, that seized Vivia’s attention. A figure in a sodden gown swayed in the water, and on either side of her were two iron shields that had stopped Vivia’s attacks.
The Empress of Marstok’s chest quivered in time to desperate breaths. Black coated half her face. She stared at Vivia and Vivia stared at her.
Then as one, they started running. Toward each other. A slogging, slow stride through water and corpses.
They reached each other, and the Empress of Marstok collapsed into Vivia. Her skin was frozen to the touch and it shone a sickly green beneath the foxfire. The black on her face was, Vivia realized, crusted blood.
No time to ask how Vaness had gotten here. No time to prop her up and keep fighting the raiders. Now the men were pouring into the square faster than Vivia’s waters could attack—faster than she could keep track of.
The water, though, did not need her anymore. It had answered Vivia’s call, and now it reigned supreme. A frothy, rising mass that would soon be too high for the raiders to defeat.
So, without another thought, Vivia let her water whips fall. Then she gripped the Empress of Marstok tightly to her—she was so small, so broken—and together, they drove through corpses and water.
Together, they left the underground. Together, they ran for the night.
SIXTY-ONE
Storm and stone, lightning and earthquakes. Iseult’s body was a conduit for noise and electricity. Wind seared against her, rain flayed her skin. She held Leopold, and he held Owl. Their Threads shone, two beacons to guide Iseult home.
She knew that having a child lead her through the end of the world was as impossible as walking through blue light and ending up inside a nightmare. But there was also no other alternative. To release Leopold was to lose her way, and to release Owl was to lose the only anchor they had inside this chaos.
There was no sight in this tumult, no sense of up or down. At any moment, Iseult expected the ice-slick stone beneath her feet to crumble away.
But the ground would never betray an Earthwitch, and Owl led them true.
Once, Iseult thought she heard voices. She thought she saw Threads cresting through the fray, an army of people far, far below. It could have been a mirage, though. Shadows shaped like humans dancing in a storm.
Boulders crashed around them. Never did they hit Iseult or Leopold, though, nor their strange, icy bridge. Always, Owl flicked them away as easily as a girl tosses toys—and for a dragging moment between steps, Iseult wondered if Owl had ever had toys. She did not seem like a child now.
Moon Mother’s little sister.
“This way,” Owl called, more a trembling in the stone than actual words, and Iseult realized they had reached a doorway where weak light shimmered through the chaos. It was small, though, and shrinking inward by the second.
Just as she had done above the Monastery, Owl scrabbled through without waiting for Iseult or Leopold.
They followed—of course they followed. Anything to escape this maelstrom. Iseult crawled through first, using Leopold’s grip to drop to her knees and squeeze through. She was battered, she was beat, she was pulled and compressed and broken in two.
Then she keeled out the other side, where cold air and blessed silence dashed against her. Owl squatted just ahead, her Threads a swirling array of pleasure and Earthwitch power. Still on all fours, Iseult dragged herself toward the child … then collapsed atop silty, damp earth. Two heartbeats later, and Leopold landed beside her.
Iseult and the prince sucked in gasps. His Threads radiated with the same wonderment and horror that Iseult felt. Her muscles twitched as if lightning still clashed. Her ears echoed and droned.
“What was that?” he rasped, pushing himself upright with his good arm. “By the Twelve, Iseult, what was that? And what is she?” He edged a wary stare toward Owl, his Threads briefly glimmering with distaste. Or maybe it was disgust. Or just continued horror.
Iseult was too sapped to interpret anything anymore. “I think that the more important question is, where are we now?” They had definitely left the Monastery. It was cold here, but not frozen—and water rushed nearby.
Threads hummed nearby too.
“People,” Iseult said at the same time Owl chirped, “Finished, finished, finished.” Now Iseult was the one to eye her warily. Owl had changed since leaving the mountain. It was as if, after leading them through a world caving in, she had abruptly reverted back to her childish self.
She even drew figures in the soil with a finger—all while singing, “Finished, finished, finished.”
“You stay here,” Is
eult said slowly, directing her words to Leopold though her gaze never left Owl. “I’ll go see who’s out there. Maybe they can help us.”
“Or,” he countered, “you stay here, and I go check.”
Iseult glared sideways. “We have no weapons, Prince, and last I checked, I’m the only one here with a magic that can hurt people. Well,” she amended, “there’s Owl. But…” She waved vaguely.
And Owl smiled up from her drawing. “Finished, finished, finished.”
“We could all go?” Leopold suggested, Threads shriveling inward with discomfort.
“And then all risk getting hurt? No.” Using her hands, Iseult foisted herself to her feet. The moonlit pines and beeches briefly hazed together—then quickly slid apart once more. “I can creep up and observe them without being seen. I’ll be back soon.”
Leopold’s only response was a dissatisfied grunt, but he didn’t argue. He was the one with a crown here, but Iseult was the one with the power.
Soon enough, she was tiptoeing into the trees. The landscape reminded her of the Sirmayans, of the forests she’d journeyed through over the past month. This was different, though—and she couldn’t say how she knew, she simply did.
And all of it was so, so different from Veñaza City. What if, what if, what if.
The Threads brightened ahead, and soon Cartorran voices rippled into Iseult’s ears, tense but not angry. A discussion, she decided, or a debate, for concentrated green wavered across their Threads.
Three of the people, though, had odd Threads. It wasn’t obvious from afar, yet the closer Iseult sidled, the more she noticed black tendrils writhing in their hearts.
Severed Threads, she thought. Except … not. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen, anything she’d ever been taught.
Iseult would have continued to study them, to evaluate safety and intent, but two footsteps later, she was close enough to distinguish individual words. And to hear a voice she had feared she would never hear again.
“Weasels piss on you,” said the only speaker without the darkness in her Threads. “I know more about these mountains than you, Caden. After all, who’s the domna here?”
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