And cold. A distant, numbing cold from a Void Paladin’s Threads.
Laughter trickled into Iseult’s hazy, spinning awareness. You have no idea what I can do, daughter, and this is not a fight you can win. As if to prove his point, the earth began to shake. First a lurch beneath Iseult’s back. Then a quivering that rattled her teeth and kicked up snow. Winds roared in her ears, yet the earth roared louder.
With each fraction of a heartbeat that passed, more shadows coiled up around her. As if the earth itself were cleaving—as if Corlant had taken too much power, and now the soil died. Ropes sliced over her and held her down. More, more, hundreds of them, then thousands. She couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel. There were only shadows and snow. Lightning and pain.
She would die here. One more dark-giver fallen to Corlant’s power.
And so much power it was. Too much power. She’d been a fool to think she could ever beat him. Fool, fool, always a stupid fool.
I’m sorry, Alma. I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry, Safi.
As the last of consciousness faded and the last of her senses rubbed away, Threads punctured in. They replaced the earth’s shadows. Silver and hungry and burning with eternal rage. Corlant, she thought, come to end her once and for all.
Except that instead of destroying her, the Threads only closed in. Instead of laughing at her, they softened into understanding.
The shadow wyrm, she realized distantly. It had found her, and rather than devour, it was protecting. A shield against the storm with no cold to pitch off it, nor even Void darkness. It was simply a monster who had lived too long, beholden to a master it feared.
Slowly, Iseult’s senses returned. The twisted world of snow and storm was replaced by a billowing chest covered in onyx scales. Its heart beat, bound in silver Threads.
And in the sunset bond of family.
It was a mother. It did understand, and unlike Gretchya, it hadn’t been there to save its child when death had come closing in. Now it wanted to protect Iseult.
And spooling atop the sunset was another shade—one she’d seen on Owl. One she hadn’t appreciated, though that color was the source of everything.
Three lines upon her Threadwitch gown. Three lines to represent the world of Threads: Threads that break, Threads that bind, and Threads that build. Iseult had lived so long with the gray, lived so long craving pink, she had forgotten entirely about the green.
Forever reaching, forever trying to forge and grow and become the bond this wyrm now offered her simply because it understood what it meant to love. Simply because even a monster could feel empathy and pain.
Iseult began to cry. Unbidden and unstoppable, the tears swelled in her chest. Her mouth hinged wide, and a hiccuping, sobbing scream tore free. It broke her more than Corlant’s storm had, and she welcomed it.
Because she had lived so long without seeing.
Even after she’d crossed a continent to save her Threadsister, even after Gretchya had chosen her, and even after Alma had died because of her inaction, Iseult still had not seen that true power had never been in death or in control. Cleaving was something she could do, but just as Alma had told her: it didn’t have to be that way.
She wasn’t merely the dark-giver. She was the shadow-ender too, and the Hell-Bards were not her tools.
“Thank you,” she said to the wyrm. A sound lost to the earth’s shaking and the storm still punching around them. “Thank you.”
At those words, the shadow wyrm gave a rumbling purr—more feeling than sound—and slithered its shielding body away. The storm instantly pummeled in. The earth’s shadows instantly grasped for Iseult again. But she was prepared; she already had exactly what she needed clutched in her hand.
The noose she’d taken a lifetime ago off a man she should never have slain.
She opened the cloth around it and placed her bare palm atop it. Then the world around her disappeared.
FIFTY-ONE
Vivia could not stop the drills. Vaness had crafted them for speed, and even she with her Ironwitchery could not stop the spell before the damage was done. No, Vivia wanted to scream. This warship wasn’t supposed to sink here. The Iris crew wasn’t supposed to still be in chains. The hunters weren’t supposed to still be in dinghies bouncing toward shore.
Now the plan was ruined. There was nothing for Vivia to do but fight and try to save as many Nubrevnans as she could.
Kadossi leaped into action. He opened his mouth, and pure fire poured forth, a stream targeted directly at Vivia. And this was exactly what she hadn’t wanted to do: face him directly.
At that moment, right as her muscles prepared to evade, the second drill ripped loose. The Lioness rolled sharply to port, flinging Vivia and Vaness out of Kadossi’s path—and instead toward all the sailors who’d realized an attack was underway.
“Free my crew!” she shouted at Vaness. And, for once in her imperial life, the Empress obeyed. She ducked beneath a sailor and flung her hands toward the warship holding the Iris crew.
More sailors stampeded, and Kadossi aimed his flames at Vivia once again. She summoned water from the hungry sea right as flame spewed across her vision. She dove sideways, launching her waters at the captain, but the water hit nothing.
He really was the best.
Vivia pummeled sailors instead. Strong as a shark beneath the sea, she slammed them one by one. No dexterity, no subtlety. Pure force that made the water laugh as it plunged bodies overboard.
Vivia didn’t laugh with it. Already the tides threatened to overwhelm her. Already, they saturated her with power and urged her into chaos. She needed her wits, though for such close combat and a Firewitch on the loose. Nubrevnans were depending on her.
As she leaped up the listing ladder to the half deck, she scoured the battle for Vaness, only to find that the Empress had one arm looped around the balustrade and one arm stretched high. When Vivia squinted toward her crew, she found chains melting off Cam, off Sotar, off everyone from the Iris. Then the iron flew toward Vaness, ready to be used and morphing as it crossed the churning sea.
She plucked the iron—now shaped like a flail—from the air, and with a wild spin, the spiked head swung outward and hammered into a sailor’s chest.
Vivia lost sight of Vaness then. Flames rushed toward her, up the ladder, forcing her to splash up a wall of water. Steam hissed. Then Kadossi lunged through. He moved easily despite the ship’s lean. His shaving scar oozed fresh blood. His cheeks were flushed from heat.
Vivia propelled more water, two ropes to splash his face and veil his eyes. But he ducked easily and blasted rounds of fire—a pounding of them, one after the other that her waters couldn’t stop. Each blast created more steam, scalding, blinding. And in the time it took Vivia to rush across the half deck, its angle increasing by the second, her world turned to fog.
The chaotic fight disappeared. The captain disappeared. Baile’s Blessing, the crew from the Iris, and even the groaning masts of the Lioness were all hidden within a realm of steam.
If only Vivia were like Stix, then she’d have been able to control it. Able to sense where, in all that mist, the captain lurked. But she was only Vivia. Only a Tidewitch. Only a little fox who’d hunted exactly where she shouldn’t have.
Vivia reached the railing. A pistol fired behind her, cracking loud. Impossible to avoid. Yet somehow, she had the time to turn her head back and look. Somehow, she had the time to think, I am too far from the Origin Well to survive this time. And somehow, she had the time to watch as the round bullet from the captain’s Firewitched pistol cut through steam and careered her way.