Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(98)

Still, Vaness stalked on. She was almost to the archway. Almost gone.

“Think of your Adders!”

At that name, the empress finally stopped. Finally swiveled back, her face expressionless. Iron through and through. Up swept Vaness’s left hand, as if she would ask Safi to dance. Then magic charged to life. It crashed over Safi, hot and alive, while a hundred locks groaned open at once. On doors, on shackles, on collars.

Between one breath and the next, the famed slave arena, where warriors and witches battled for coin, became a fight to simply stay alive.

Baile’s Slaughter had begun.





THIRTY-FOUR

Hello, old friend. Hello, old friend. It was a rhythm to stumble by while Merik followed Vivia ever upward. Ragged breaths and the occasional burst of distant waves broke the silence, while wavering green fungus lit their way.

Hello, old friend.

Merik’s feet dragged to a stop. Limestone gravel crunched beneath his boots. He snapped his head side to side, and water droplets splattered to the stone.

Vivia glanced back, strips of wet hair plastered across her forehead. “Are you hurt … Merry?” It was the first words spoken since she’d hauled him from the flood.

He offered nothing in return. There was nothing to say.

Hello, old friend.

Merik had seen his Threadbrother cleave in Lejna. He had seen the corruption burn through Kullen, and he had watched as Kullen flew off to die alone. People didn’t return from that. People didn’t come back from the dead.

Except … they did. They had. Garren Leeri, Serrit Linday—

Merik shook himself again. Harder this time. Almost frantic—legs! He felt legs scuttling over him. He grabbed at his scalp, at his neck. Something crawled on him. Shadows to take control, darkness that lived inside—

Vivia smacked his shoulder.

He rocked back, fists rising.

“Spider,” she blurted. “There was a spider on you.” She pointed to the hairy thing, now trickling up the wall.

For several distant heartbeats, Merik watched the creature, his heart a battering ram in his throat. Shadows. Darkness. Spiders. None of it had been real. Of course it had not been real.

He forced himself to nod at his sister, a signal to keep moving. She hesitated, her lips opening as if she wanted to say more. There was nothing to say, though, so she cleared her throat and resumed jogging.

The tunnel came to an end. Vivia clambered up a rope ladder. Then light seared down, forcing Merik to squint at a square opening above. With the sun came fresh air, fresh wind, fresh fuel for the heat and the temper that had kept him fed for days.

Merik let it come. Let it ripple over him like thunder before a storm. Darkness might live inside him, but right now, he could rise above.

He ascended, winds gusting beneath him. No ladder needed, and rope streaming past. Until the gray light of day brushed over him. Until he was out of the tunnel and surrounded by hedges and ivy.

Leaves rattled, branches thrashed. Wind from his own cyclone as well as wind from a darker gale gathering overhead. Merik flew higher, clearing the plants before finally touching down beside a pond. It splashed with each gusting sweep of his magic.

His mother’s garden. He hadn’t been here in so long. It was overgrown and rippling with shadows, the weeping willow dunking its branches into the pond over and over again.

“Merry, you’re hurt,” Vivia said. She stood beside the marble bench, body squared to the gate but gaze lingering back. Wind hurtled through the cattails behind her, yet her waterlogged uniform barely moved.

Was this actually his sister before him? When Merik stared at her, he saw none of her swagger. None of her condescending strength or self-righteous Nihar temper.

Merik saw, in fact, his mother.

A lie, though. A trick. Just as what he’d seen below had not been Kullen.

“Your stomach,” Vivia added. “And your leg.”

Merik’s eyes sank to a hole in his shirt, a hole in his breeches. Blackened, bloodied marks peeked through. He’d been hit by those arrows at the Cleaved Man; he remembered now. He pressed his fingers to the blood, but no pain followed. He felt only puckered skin below. It had already scabbed over.

“I’m fine,” he said at last. His hands fell away. “But Cam. I need…” Merik trailed off. He didn’t know what he needed. He was cast adrift. Aimless. Sinking beneath the waves.

The holiest always have the farthest to fall.

For weeks, he’d been hunting for evidence that his sister had killed him. For weeks he had wanted that evidence, so he could prove once and for all that her approach to leadership was wrong—and Merik’s approach was right.

That was the truth of it right there, wasn’t it? He’d seen what he’d wanted to see, even though, in the deepest furrows of his mind, he’d known Vivia was not the enemy. He had simply needed someone to blame for his own failings.

The enemy was himself.

“Your friend,” Vivia said, mooring him back in the present. “The girl? I sent her to Pin’s Keep. We can go there, but I need to tell the Royal Forces what’s happening underground—” She broke off, her forehead suddenly creasing. She twisted toward the gate, toward the city.

Then Merik heard it too. A wind-drum was pounding, its song almost lost to the black tempest overhead, where lightning crackled from a spinning heart.