He always had been a silent observer—he and that bird of his.
The bird now roosted on his shoulder, button eyes leveled on Aeduan as the Rook King crossed the clearing on sure, determined feet. Snow crunched with each step. His cloak billowed and curls shone. He wore a different face, a different body than one thousand years ago, but the same energy filled him. The sense of someone larger than the frame in which he’d been housed. He could have been an Exalted One a thousand years. They’d certainly courted him instead of Aeduan, but the Rook King had been indomitable in the end.
Aeduan had not. He really had been the weakest.
No more, though. He was ready to give back what should never have been his. Like before, it would not be death, just a return to the dark waters he had endured for so long. He dreaded returning to them. Dreaded the way they bore down, weighted and lightless and eternal. But he had made his choice, exactly as Saria had commanded him.
Evrane, he knew, would not agree. Yet as the Rook King paused before Aeduan with all the poise of a prince inside a palace, Aeduan also knew Evrane would have no choice. The Rook King had allowed their souls to return; now he would send them away.
His blood sang with a choir of scents—new leather and smoky hearths. Hot springs and empty halls. Hunger and loneliness and musty tomes stacked high. Dominating them all, though, was the smell that the first Bloodwitch had so fixated on: clear lake water and frozen winters. And deep within Aeduan, that first soul sighed. He had the answer that had eluded him for two months. He understood that the scents were not two people, but a Paladin’s spirit inside a prince’s body.
The Rook King smiled at Aeduan then, a real thing. Sad in a way that only the Old Ones could be. “It will not be the end, Nadje. The Lament is not yet finished with you.”
Nadje. So that had been his name. “I will reawaken?” He was ashamed at how much relief wept through him at those words.
“In light, twelve will meet on lands long contested, while in darkness, the shadow-ender will topple nightmares and the world-starter will build us anew.”
Now Aeduan was the one to smile, though his smile was not a sad one. He would live again, and in his own body. “When?” he asked.
“Soon.” The bird ruffled his feathers upon the Rook King’s shoulder, and the Rook King patted him with absentminded affection. “She will awaken too.” He dipped his head toward Evrane, still and half frozen upon the snow. “I had hoped that, like you, she would change her mind. Change her course. Then again, I always did have too much faith in people.” He sighed through his nose. “Or too little, if you were to ask Her.”
“Is She gone forever?” Aeduan asked as the Rook King crossed the final ten paces between them.
“No.” He extended a hand, winglike beneath his draping cloak. “Not if we win.” Cold fingers grazed Aeduan’s forehead. The Rook King’s eyes glowed silver, a light Aeduan remembered, as if he too had once possessed such power. “Find me when you wake up, Nadje. We have a great deal of work to do.”
The waters swept in. Nadje heard them first, sloshing and soughing like a waterfall awakening. Then he smelled them, crystalline and pure, glacier-formed and snow-fed. Finally, he felt them, as frozen as death but far more eternal. They sapped life and movement, breath and blood. Each of his organs iced over, each of his senses frosted away until there was nothing left but water. Until he was once more drowning and alone.
Yet only in death could he understand life, and only in life would he change the world.
* * *
The Bloodwitch named Aeduan returned to his body cold and supine. As the tides of possession receded, his senses expanded. Sunlight warmed his face. Snow melted against his arms. He shivered, and nearby, someone moaned. Crisp spring water and salt-lined cliffs.
In a heartbeat he had rolled to his feet. Two more heartbeats and he was over the shallow snow to Evrane’s side. Her eyelids cracked apart, squinting against a midday sun. Her teeth chattered.
“Aeduan,” she croaked, reaching for him with cold-chapped fingers. He hastily scooped his arms beneath her. She needed warmth—they both did—and a memory unfurled in his mind of this silver-haired monk doing the same to him all those years ago in a tent burned to ember and ash.
“Why,” she asked as he hauled her to him, “do I feel like I was eaten by a sea fox?” She leaned heavily on his shoulder. Her Carawen cloak was soaked and torn.
“It’s a long story, Monk Evrane.” He inhaled deeply, letting his magic pummel to the surface. Strong and alive and entirely his own. Mountain ranges and cliffsides. Meadows laced with dandelions and truth hidden beneath snow. The Truthwitch was near. And alongside her was a flicker of his own scent. A flash of blood upon a silver taler that Iseult had had the foresight to reclaim.
It made him smile.
The older monk frowned, and her dark eyes, the lashes snow-flecked, ran over Aeduan’s face as if he were only just coming into focus—or as if she were only just realizing they were in a snow-draped forest clasped in cold. “We are not at the Monastery, are we?”
“No.” He withdrew slightly and helped her rise. “But the Cahr Awen are near, and we should find them.”
She smiled, amused and slightly vicious—but wholly her own and untainted by dark waters. Unsullied by an Old One returned. And as Aeduan guided her toward the trees, toward the truth hidden beneath snow and a silver taler draped in blood, he couldn’t help but match her grin.
Evrane was herself again, and as ruthless as ever.
With that truth to warm him, he braced himself firmly against her. Then two rolls of his wrists, a crack of his neck, and together with his mentor, the Bloodwitch named Aeduan set off into the winter’s light.
FIFTY-FIVE
Vivia stood at the edge of the Origin Well and watched the Dalmotti fleet, mere specks on an ocean bright with sunshine. Any moment now, they would sail past the horizon. Any moment now, and she could finally breathe.
Beside her was Vaness, also watching the Jadansi. Her gown had finally stopped dripping, though her hair still hung in long, damp hanks. Since ascending the rough stairs to the Well, Vivia had said nothing. Vaness had said nothing. They had simply marched across the plateau and taken up sentry above the Nihar coastline.
Somewhere behind them, below them, Shanna negotiated with Yoris so that Vivia and her Foxes might remain here. And though Yoris still hated Vivia, he now also feared her. She had raised a ghost navy; she had scared off a fleet of twelve warships; she had won what Serafin had avoided entirely.
Such stories would cross the Witchlands. Vivia and Vaness could earn enemies from it—but also gain many more allies to their cause.
When at last there were no more ships upon the waves—when even her spyglass could discern nothing—Vivia’s lungs unwound. Though only slightly, for there was still so much to do. A village that needed repairing, a shoreline that needed fortifying, and a future that needed planning.
She turned away from the sea. Vaness, however, did not. Her gaze had turned glassy, her focus somewhere on the middle distance.
“We strike,” the Empress said softly, “which justifies that they strike, which justifies that we strike. And it goes back and forth for all eternity. Echoes bouncing across a cavern, except that in a cavern, the sounds eventually fade. With war…”