Third, she knew that Corlant was not what he pretended to be. He was not a Purist, he was not a priest, and he was not even truly human. He was a Paladin reborn with the raw power of the Void coursing through him. Iseult could never defeat him on her own.
Nor could she fix what she had done by unraveling her mistakes and weaving anew. Not without power. Not without whatever rested inside the Threadstones she and Safi shared.
They rested now on the ruins, exactly as they were in life, except that here they glowed with such brilliance, Iseult had to shield her eyes. In fact, they shone brighter than Corlant’s Threads, thickening behind her.
And it was like stepping into daylight. The longer Iseult stared at the stones, the more she saw within and around. Hundreds of Threads—thousands even—climbing and flying, coiling and connecting toward the cloudy sky. Unlike Corlant’s storm these Threads wore only a single shade: the sunset of friendship. The sunset of family.
And the last nail in her scaffolding hammered down. No wonder Corlant wanted these stones. The bonds of love were powerful. It was why Esme had always cleaved the Threads that bind. And now such power was contained in two uncut rubies wrapped in string.
This was more magic than Corlant could gather in a morning. More magic than he could gather in a lifetime, and now all Iseult had to do was take it.
Her nose wiggled, skin stretching with cold. All she had wanted these past weeks was more power. All she needed right now was more power, and it rested before her. Yet something pricked at the back of her mind. Not her conscience, but her logic. As if there might still be one nail missing.
Thunder rolled from Corlant’s storm, audible even in the Dreaming. So without another thought, Iseult grabbed the first stone’s Threads and chomped down. Hard. And as her teeth cut in, she felt no resistance. No fiery pain like cleaving a person, no frozen ice like hurting a Hell-Bard.
These were ocean shallows on a hot day, tender and soothing. Welcoming and warm. Sheer pleasure to touch. Then the power washed over Iseult, a wave of strength to buoy her toward some nearby shore she hadn’t known she’d been swimming toward. Her chest swelled with a feeling she didn’t recognize. Her muscles and blood relaxed.
She had never felt so good in her entire life. It was as if there was nowhere else to be. As if past, present, and future all rested inside this moment and these Threads.
So content was she, she almost missed the chanting, cascading upward, carried on currents of power directly from the stones. Finally, they seemed to say, swelling in Iseult’s veins and in her eardrums. Finally, finally we are saved.
“What are you?” Iseult tried to ask, but the Threads had no answer. The stones had no real voice. All they could say was Finally, finally we are saved. Then they rushed against the Windwitch souls, not simply swallowing them but rubbing them away. Smoothing them down like waves to a stone.
And for a fraction of a moment, the clouds parted—in the Dreaming and in life. Both sun and moon beamed down, sharpening the endless gray and revealing faces within the Threads. They smiled at Iseult, as familiar as her own pulse even though they were unknown.
Use us well, they seemed to sing. Then the last of the Threads, the last of these lost and forgotten dark-givers, fused into Iseult’s being. A vast piece of her soul she’d never known she was missing.
Ah. So that was the nail she’d lacked. That was why Corlant wanted these stones and why he’d kept Iseult so near. That was why no Cahr Awen had been seen in so many years and why Aeduan had declared the Water Well only half healed. Corlant had killed and bound their souls—many of them only children—leaving each reincarnation weaker. Smaller.
Until now.
Iseult smiled at the altar. At Safi’s stone still shining. She would release those Threads too, let them flow into the light-bringer. Then she would leave the Dreaming and use her new power, ancient as the ruins around her, keen as a blade honed by moonlight.
* * *
Safi raked her gaze over Henrick’s storm-shadowed figure. A single sword, unadorned, hung at his hip.
“Surrender,” he said. “There is no escape.” He didn’t smile as he spoke, didn’t gloat. There was only the hardened, perhaps even tired frown of a soldier too long in the snow.
Safi fought the urge to glance at Caden. As doused in darkness as he was, she hoped Henrick hadn’t noticed him. He had, of course, noticed Iseult, but he offered her only a cursory glance, as if he recognized she was no threat to him in her current state. “You are surrounded, Safiya, and more forces approach from all sides.”
She flashed him a smile. The same smile she’d been wearing for the last two weeks. “But it was never escape I sought, Your Imperial Majesty.” Keep him talking, keep him busy. “I sought to protect my family, you see. My uncle. My Threadsister and all the Hell-Bards”—she motioned vaguely toward the forest outside—“bound to me in a way we didn’t ask for.”
Henrick said nothing. Snow gathered on his shoulders, glistened on his crown.
So Safi pushed on, sliding into a saunter around the tower, hands behind her back. The perfect distraction, and as hoped, his eyes remained on her. “I know you have a family. Sons you’ve never seen and a nephew you love. I know you understand what I feel for my own family, but—”
“Enough,” he barked, and Safi expected his sneer to return at any moment or for his hand to grab at the chain on his belt. Instead, he raised his chin and said, “We all have our burdens to bear. I will not shirk mine.” He grasped for the blade at his hip. “The fon Cartorran line will continue, and you will continue it. I am sorry, though, that it had to come to this.”
He unsheathed his sword.
And in that moment, as steel breathed free from its sheath, the full picture finally locked into place. Safi paused her amble. Her hands fell loose to her sides.
The Emperor’s crown was too tight. Not by choice, but by the confines of family—a different family than the one he kept tucked away in Praga. This burden came from his parents, his ancestors, his title passed down from mother to son in a cold castle wreathed in scarlet.
Which was not so different from Safi in the end. She’d tried to outrun her uncle and her Hasstrel blood, yet here she was, running right back to it.
“Surrender now,” he said, no cruelty in his tone, “and I guarantee neither you nor your Threadsister will be harmed.” He advanced a single step.
And Safi softened her stance. “No.” She offered him a sad smile—a real one. “You have your duties, Henrick, and I have mine.”
It was the first time she’d addressed him by his given name. The first time she hadn’t called him by his title, and he tensed at the sound of it. Then something almost like grief crossed his eyes.
She’d seen that look before, in his study when she’d called him poison.
Two heartbeats passed; the snow briefly lightened. Then Henrick sighed. “I am sorry,” he said, and he brushed softly at the chain glistening upon his belt.
Blades swiped free, a great clash of noise from outside the tower. Loud enough to sing above the blizzard winds, near enough to flash glimmers of movement through cracks in the ruined tower.
Safi lifted her hands. Cleaved lines crawled over them now, blending into her Witchmark. Warning of a doom so near. But that didn’t make her fists any less effective, thanks to the family who had trained her. The family she would fight for until the end.