Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(17)

And men could be found. Arrested. Hanged.

She stalked faster. This far beneath the surface, the air never warmed and few creatures lived. Vivia’s lantern light crawled over rough limestone tunnels. One after the next. Nothing like the symmetric brick-lined Cisterns above, where sewage and Waterwitched plumbing moved. Whenever Vivia hauled herself back to the surface, dust would streak her skin, her hair, her uniform.

Which was why she always kept a spare uniform waiting in her mother’s garden, tucked in a dry box. She also always worked alone, for these honeycombing caves were forever empty, forever secret. As far as Vivia was aware, she was the only person alive who even knew this world of magic and river existed.

Or so her mother had told her before bringing Vivia down here fifteen years ago. Jana had still been queen then, ruling and in power. The madness—and the High Council—had not yet taken her crown. This is the source of our power, Little Fox, she had told Vivia. The reason our family rules Nubrevna and others do not. This water knows us. This water chose us.

Vivia hadn’t understood what Jana had meant back then, but she understood now. Now, she felt the magic that bound her blood to these underground waterways.

She marched into the final tunnel, where an ancient Firewitched lamp warmed her vision. Brighter than her lantern, it made her eyeballs pound.

Keep moving. At least here, she wanted to keep moving. Here, she could stare into the darkness beyond, and it didn’t matter if her mother stared back.

Inky water spanned before Vivia for as far as her squinting eyes could see. A vast lake where miles of underground river fed and flowed, a heart inside the Lovats plateau. This was where Nubrevna’s true power lay. This was where the city’s pulse lived.

On the lake’s shore rested the skeletal ribs of an ancient rowboat, where Vivia always set her lantern and draped her clothes—and where she did so now, starting with the linen strip of iris-blue wrapped around her biceps.

Protocol demanded all men and women in the Royal Forces wear these mourning bands until the funeral, but they were a nuisance. A lie. Most of the troops had never known their prince, and they’d certainly never cared for him. Merik had grown up in the south, and unlike Vivia, who had risen through the ranks by her own sweat, her own strength, Merik had been handed a ship, a crew, and shiny captain’s buttons.

Then, a few years after that, in the ultimate insult to Vivia, Merik had been handed the admiralty. Though Vivia had appreciated the indignation of her fellow sailors and soldiers at the time—the men and women she’d trained with—it hadn’t made the pointed oversight by Serafin any less stinging.

Easy, easy. Everything in Merik’s life had been easy.

In a rough burst of speed, Vivia finished her partial undressing, yanking off her boots and peeling off her coat. Then she began her routine as she always did: she hissed, “Extinguish.”

Darkness snuffed across the cavern, and she held her breath, waiting for her eyes to adjust … There. Starlight began to twinkle.

Not true starlight, but streaks and sprinkles and sprays of luminescent fungi that offered more than enough light to see by once Vivia’s vision adapted. Four main spokes crawled across the rock, meeting at the ceiling’s center. Foxfire, her mother had called it.

There should have been six spokes, though, and there had been six spokes until nine weeks ago, when the farthest stripe—at the opposite end of the lake—had winked out. Leaving five lines for another three weeks … Until another rivulet had vanished too.

Never had the light died in Vivia’s life, nor during Queen Jana’s. In fact, it had been at least two centuries since any of the six spokes had winked out.

It was a sign that our people were too weak to keep fighting, Jana had explained. And it was a sign that the royal family was too weak to keep protecting.

So the city’s people had hidden underground, in a vast city carved into the rock. Where more foxfire grew in such huge magical masses that it was enough light for plants to grow—or enough light so long as Plantwitches were there to supplement and support.

The under-city is as big as Lovats above, my Little Fox. Powerful witches, the likes of which we no longer have today, built it centuries ago as a hiding place to keep our people alive.

Vivia had wanted to know more. How was the city built, Mother? Why aren’t there powerful witches like that now? How does the foxfire know we’re too weak? And where is the city?

These were all excellent questions, but ones for which Jana had had no answer. After their ancestors’ final use of the city, it had been sealed off. No records left behind, no clues to follow.

There was one question, though, that Vivia had never dared to ask: Will you ever show this to Merik? She hadn’t wanted to know the answer, hadn’t wanted to risk putting the idea in her mother’s head. This had been their space, mother and daughter.

And now this was her space. Vivia’s. Alone.

She stepped lightly to the lake’s edge. Green light splayed across the surface, dancing in time to the water’s flow. Flickering with the occasional fish or shell creature. The strength of the water poured into Vivia before her toes even hit the edge. Her connection to the ripples and tides, the power and the timelessness.

The lake embraced Vivia instantly. A friend to keep her safe. The waters cooled her toes, and as she dipped her hands into the vastness of it all, her eyes drifted shut. Then she felt her way through every drop of water that flowed through the plateau. This was her power. This was her home.