“Used to be? What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” Iseult pushed away from the flap before Alma might press for more. In five long strides, she’d reached Owl’s side. The healer’s work was finished, and a tiny Painstone winked against the girl’s chest. Gone was any sign of steel pain in her Threads. Now there was only hostility and exhaustion.
Which of course Alma could see. Iseult’s molars ground in her ears, and though she knew she ought to start with gentle words—perhaps even ask how the child was feeling—all that came out was a curt “We must move on now, Owl.”
“Move on?” Stubborn gray wefted up her Threads. “Why? I don’t want to.” She looked at Alma, and strands of green Threads reached, reached. The Threads that build, looking for a connection. Looking for someone to listen and care.
But Alma didn’t care. Not really. She would leave Owl behind just as Gretchya would, and pretending otherwise would help no one. Least of all this little girl with a magic everyone hunted and a past that was not her own.
“They do not want us here,” Iseult answered simply. “And so it is time we leave.” She offered Owl her hand. The child didn’t take it. Instead, she stared at Alma, those green tendrils still straining for humanity of any kind.
Iseult hated how familiar it was.
All she had ever wanted in life was a place to call her own. A home, true and steady, where she would never be afraid. Where she would never feel unwelcome. But she did not belong here, with her Severed Threads and her Void magic, any more than she had in the Midenzi settlement, tucked away from the world with a magic that could never be what her mother wanted. She had not belonged in Veñaza City. She had not belonged in Praga.
Either she was too Nomatsi, or she was not Nomatsi enough. Either she showed too few emotions, or she showed too many. And now Owl was facing that same truth, the same knife she could never escape. You are unwanted.
Owl must have seen something on Alma’s face—something that even Iseult missed—for her Threads abruptly stopped reaching. Abruptly reversed course, shriveling in while grief-stricken blue laid claim.
Her lip wobbled, but she did not cry, and heartbeat by heartbeat, more of that green determination that made Owl who she was assembled around her Threads. Until at last, she took Iseult’s hand, a weak grip but an accepting one all the same.
And something warm and new unwound in Iseult’s lungs. Something she’d never felt before but had craved every time another person had sent her away. Such a different heat from the Puppeteer rage, such a different heat from the tongue-thickening shame.
Maybe she and Owl were not enemies after all.
“Thank you,” Iseult told the healer as she hefted Owl off the table, the child’s eyes holding hers. “We are grateful for your help.” She didn’t wait for a reply before guiding Owl toward the tent’s flap.
Neither she nor Owl looked at Alma as they passed.
* * *
There was a way out of this prison tent. That much Aeduan knew—that much had ebbed to the surface, knowledge gleaned from the first Aeduan. Knowledge the new Aeduan should have tamped down …
But that he also was desperate to use.
The young woman named Iseult had unsettled him. Weakened him for just long enough that the other soul had clawed upward and seen this world, seen this tent … Then he’d overwhelmed Aeduan with a certainty that there was an escape here. It had something to do with his magic, something that Iseult should have seen but failed to protect against.
So now the new Aeduan was puzzling his way through what exactly his escape might be.
He was a Bloodwitch, that much he knew. And he had power over blood so vast that people feared him. Called him demon when they thought he could not hear. Even the Raider King had looked at him with mild fear during their journey. But Aeduan still had not tapped into all the nuances and corners of this magic. He still, despite relying on it more and more each day, had no fathoming of just how much he might do.
He could move his muscles faster. He could track people by scent. And what else? What more?
Control. The word curled up from the deepest recesses of Aeduan’s body, of Aeduan’s brain. It was the first soul again, and Aeduan’s initial instinct was to punch it back down. Stopper it behind the walls he’d buried it in.
Except the word came again: Control, and this time Aeduan knew exactly what it meant: he could control people’s blood. Anyone that he could scent, he could command. Which meant that the hunters watching him stood no chance. It meant these chains could be unbound in an instant.
Oh, what power he’d had within him for a month, yet he’d never known. No wonder people feared him. No wonder the Raider King had tensed whenever he was near. Such power was almost godlike.
And such power was truly worthy of the person he had once been.
Aeduan inhaled as much air as his lungs could contain, ribs bowing wide. The guards’ bloods coruscating against his senses. From the woman came a scent like a grandmother’s wrinkles and the tang of blood on steel. And from the man was wind from the north and bison fur still warm.
Control, the first soul nudged again, and so Aeduan did. Clumsily at first, his fingers shaping into claws behind his back, behind the column. He grabbed at the closest hunter—the woman—and squeezed.
But it felt like pawing at the breeze. He could feel her there, could even stretch his magic to reach for her, but he could not grab hold. His magic grasped nothing but empty air.
He tried again, this time focusing on the man. On the bison he had clearly hunted, on the Windswept Plains where he had clearly lived. There were deeper folds to his blood. A child’s laughter. A wine made from berries heated in the sun. A woman’s smile, one tooth crooked in front.
Aeduan inhaled more, all focus on the blood. On each new element rising to the top as he explored. Dogs barking. Fresh bison milk. The scrape of a knife on wood.
There. He had enough. There. He had finally grabbed hold. And now, as he squeezed, he took control—except that it was so much more. He was slithering inside, moving through veins and feeling the thump of a heart beating strong. He could stop that heart. He could freeze those veins. He could end this man’s life in an instant.
Control, the first Aeduan reminded. Only control.
It annoyed him, but the first soul was right. Death would serve no purpose here, at least not before Aeduan was free. So with hard, magic-fueled concentration, Aeduan spread his power into the man’s limbs. First into his arms, where he unfastened the keys at his waist. Then into his legs, where he sent the man stepping, one foot, then two, toward Aeduan.
Each movement was halting and crude, but the man could not resist—and the second hunter watched with too much confusion to intervene. It wasn’t until the man was almost to Aeduan that she finally called out in that language he didn’t understand. And it wasn’t until the man was behind Aeduan, a key grating into Aeduan’s locked chains, that she finally abandoned her post to hurry toward them.
But she was too late, too slow. By the time she was there, the chains had clanked to the ground. Aeduan was free.
He released the man’s blood, dumping it so fast the man collapsed. Not dead, but unconscious. Then he grabbed on to the woman. On to her blood and her body, his fingers clutching at her throat. His magic clutching at her veins.