Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(100)

And now … Now look at what Vivia had done. This conflagration, this death—it was her doing. She had started the Foxes. She had stolen the weapons that had allowed her fleet to grow too bold.

And she, Vivia Nihar, had left her brother to die. She couldn’t outrun that truth any longer. Just as she could not outrun these flames.

“Get a healer for her highness!” Sotar shouted. He tried again to lift her, but Vivia resisted. Anchored. Stuck.

Until she heard him say, “We already lost Prince Merik! We cannot lose the princess as well—get her to safety.”

Prince Merik. The name slipped through Vivia’s awareness, settled over her heart and stilled her muscles. For they had not lost Prince Merik, and Vivia had not lost her brother.

The one with true Nihar blood boiling in his veins was still alive and fighting, for Merik could no more sit still than she could. That remained true, and at least, in that one characteristic, Vivia was like her father. She was like Merik.

And there it was—that was who she was. Split right down the middle, she bore her father’s strength, her father’s drive. She carried her mother’s compassion, her mother’s love for Nubrevna.

As that certainty settled over Vivia’s heart, she knew exactly what she had to do. It was time to be the person she should have been all along.

She straightened, breaking free from Sotar’s grasp, and in a burst of speed, Vivia charged for the blockade. There was a gap in the stones on the left. She could pass through. She could reach the wharf. She could reach the ship before its seafire and rage spread any further.

Sotar hollered for her to stop. “The fire will kill you!”

Of course it would. Vivia knew that death awaited her on the water-bridge. Those black, unnatural flames would hit her skin and burn, unsated, until they hit the bone.

But Vivia also knew that she could not leave thousands of people—her people—to die. If the dam broke, the seafire would only spread. First the city would burn. Then the city would drown.

Vivia dove headfirst into the wharf. Through smoke, through flame, until she was too far below for the seafire’s bite to reach her.

Then she swam as fast as her magic would carry her onto the northern water-bridge.





THIRTY-FIVE

Iseult’s heart had never pounded harder.

Surely the men around her could hear it. Surely they saw it fluttering through her body, one booming beat after the next.

Twelve men stood around her. Nine from the shore, three from the trees. One had his boot planted mere paces away, and a sound like steel on a whetstone shivered into Iseult’s ears. He was sharpening his knife.

She had splayed her hair and lifted her collar as best she could to cover her pale skin. It didn’t keep away the flies. They crawled on her ears and hands. Even down the back of her neck and into her cloak.

She didn’t move. She just breathed as shallowly as she could through parted lips.

The men were silent, waiting. Then the final man joined them. Even with her eyes closed, Iseult sensed his Threads of violent gray and of flaming red. Firewitch. He was the man in charge, for the instant he arrived, the others’ Threads turned mossy green with deference.

The Firewitch tromped through the slaughter. “They have the child.”

“The Baedyeds?” asked the man with his boot nearby. He leaned deeper into his stance; bones crunched.

“Who else is there?” Heat curled out as the Firewitch spoke, as if he sent fire coiling along each word. His Threads certainly flashed with the orange tendrils of fire magic at play.

“I thought,” spoke a third man, his accent thick, “that Ragnor had told only us about the child.”

“And Ragnor clearly lied.” The Firewitch was closer now. Iseult sensed his Threads, heard his breaths as he nosed around the corpses, like a dog on the hunt.

Her heart banged harder. She was definitely shaking. Please don’t come here. Please don’t come here.

“Maybe,” said the first speaker, “the Baedyeds don’t know what they’ve found. Maybe they took her by accident.”

“And killed seven of ours to get her?”

Owl, Iseult realized—and fast on its heels came another thought: Aeduan killed seven men.

The Firewitch snooped closer. He’d found something he liked. His Threads flared with interest and desire.

Then fire whooshed out. Heat seared against the side of Iseult’s face.

The man with the boot rocked back, hissing curses.

The Firewitch simply laughed, and a smell like burned hair slithered into Iseult’s nose. He was burning the corpses.

“Stop,” said the man with the boot, his Threads paling into beige revulsion. “The Baedyeds will see the smoke.”

“Does that matter?” the Firewitch snapped. Though he did clap his hands, and the fire did wink out. Only the smell and a hiss-pop! left behind. “We could win their ships. And their horses. All of Saldonica, even, if we attack now. All at once, while the Baedyeds are unprepared.”

At those words, every set of Threads in the area bruised into hungry shades of violet. They wanted what the Baedyeds had.

“But what of Ragnor?” asked a new voice. “What of the child?”

“We reclaim the child, and we sell her. If her magic is so valuable that Ragnor wants it, surely someone else will want it too.”