“It is about my uncle,” Safi said.
“I will not tell you where he is.”
“And I didn’t think you would.” She sat taller in her chair. “But I have one question for you. If you’ll answer it, then I promise I will never ask you about Uncle Eron again.”
“Indeed,” he replied, and there was still no change. Only his usual scowl and foul demeanor. It didn’t have quite the same effect, though, in a sapphire-blue dressing gown with his hair mussed and cheeks still red from lovemaking.
“Is that a yes?”
“Ask the question and we shall see.”
“Why did you arrest him?” Safi enunciated each word carefully. Crisply. Authoritatively. “Why did you decide Uncle Eron was a traitor?”
Henrick did not answer. Instead, he hooded his eyes with calculated disinterest. Safi didn’t look away, she didn’t relax. She simply stared back and waited. The Empress card to take the Emperor. The Sun to quash all the Kings.
Her patience—and her gamble—paid off. Eventually Henrick inhaled, hairy chest widening, and said, “When I ordered your uncle to kill your parents, he refused. When I ordered him to kill you, he removed his own noose.”
It was not what Safi had expected. She’d assumed Henrick had discovered Eron’s plan for peace. Or at least realized Eron had helped her escape Veñaza City after the engagement announcement. She’d even speculated that Henrick had jailed Eron simply for bait to lure Safi home.
But her uncle disobeying an order to kill her, an order to kill her parents … A feather could have knocked her over, she was so stunned. And so hollow too. As if someone had just scraped out all her memories but then failed to fill in the empty space again.
“Did … did you kill my parents then?” she asked.
Henrick shook his head. He was done answering questions, he was done with this conversation, and Safi knew it was time to fold.
“Thank you, my Emperor. As promised, I shall never ask about my uncle again.” She bowed her head once, wearing a bitter smile. Henrick truly was the villain she’d always believed him to be. Degrees of everything or not, his monstrous side was the one that mattered. The one that left hell-fires and destruction wherever his armies spread.
She would ruin him.
After pushing to her feet, Safi strode like the empress she was toward the door. Everything had gone according to her morning’s haphazard plan. She had the stones, she had the chain, and she even had an answer for the question that had haunted her for almost two decades.
Now all she had to do was to leave.
Fourteen Days After the Earth Well Healed
“Don’t touch me,” Safi screams. “Don’t touch me!”
Iseult screams it too. Words that shred her throat. “Don’t touch her, don’t touch her.” There are threats in those words—promises she will kill them. Promises she will cleave them.
But the Emperor of Cartorra, his Threads dull with boredom, does not listen, and the Hell-Bards who do his bidding cannot.
Iseult yanks against her iron restraints. She pulls, she fights, and her chains clatter in time to her growing shrieks. “Don’t touch her, don’t touch her!”
They hold Safi pinned against the marble table while they strap her in iron. Safi had told Iseult this room was beautiful, but Iseult sees nothing beautiful now. White marble walls, veined with gold and draped in chains—and in spells too, meant to induce calm. Faint Threads of power that are useless against such violence.
The Emperor says something that Iseult cannot hear, and one of the Hell-Bards slaps Safi. A crack of gauntlets against her face. It silences her long enough for them to stuff scarlet cloth inside her mouth.
So Iseult screams even louder, screams for the both of them. “Don’t touch her! Don’t touch her!”
Before her, Safi’s Threads are changing fast, moving from crimson rage to pure white fear. A saturation of terror that makes Iseult strain that much harder against her bindings. She knows what is coming; Safi knows what is coming too.
Again, Henrick speaks, this time glaring in Iseult’s direction, as if he wants her dealt with. His Threads flare with red impatience.
And two Hell-Bards turn on Iseult. They reach her in three strides, and she cannot evade. Cannot fight when they slap her too—a bright ignition of pain. It sparks in her left cheek, then erupts through her whole skull. Briefly, the world goes dark, before they stuff her mouth with scarlet and yank a sack over her head.
Now the world is truly dark.
She chokes, she fights, she writhes, but she can do nothing against the restraints on her wrists. The Emperor and his Hell-Bards have won. Through the sack, though, she can still sense Safi’s Threads, still hear Safi’s gagged pleas.
But she cannot see what the Emperor does to her, and she certainly cannot stop it.
One moment, Safi’s Threads are white to their very core. Then Iseult hears a muffled shriek, high-pitched and pure, before Safi’s Threads turn to shadow.
It is done.
She is a Hell-Bard.
And now it is Iseult’s turn. They drag her toward the marble table. Safi’s Threads pulse in more closely. It is all Iseult can see: Threads. Safi’s, Henrick’s, and the Hell-Bards’ with shadows at their core.
Safi’s has a shadow now too, and muffled sobs slither into Iseult’s ears. It is enough to make her weep. Enough to make her scream inside the sack: “I will kill you, I will kill you, I will KILL YOU.”
Now Safi’s Threads are moving away. A body being dragged, as Iseult is bent onto the table. They do not sprawl her out as they did with Safi. She is simply forced down, her face and chest smashed against stone while shaded Threads crowd in.
In front of her is the Emperor. He must be the one whose hands now reach around her neck while cold stabs into her. It is pain she has never known that steals everything. She feels sucked dry yet stuffed full of frostbite. She is going to explode, to erupt, to collapse inward like broken ice on a stream.
Yet somehow, through the agony, a distant part of her still reigns. A cold, logical, Threadwitch part with a cold, logical voice that says, “You are cleaving.”
It is not cleaving like she does—of that much, she is certain. That cleaving is hot, that cleaving is fire. But the principle is the same, which means the mechanics are the same …
Which means she can control this.
The Witchmark on her hand is not mere adornment. She is a Weaverwitch with the power of the Void inside her and just enough of Eridysi’s old knowledge to guide her. Iseult has cleaved a man before, and she will cleave again because though they bind her and shroud her eyes, they cannot hide their Threads.
They cannot stop her magic.
Before the chain has finished closing, Iseult’s fingers claw behind her. She grabs at the closest Threads, Hell-Bard and corrupted. They are lightning made of winter, but she holds on and pulls.
Pulls, pulls, pulls, claiming the man’s very will as her own. She doesn’t cleave him—she needs her teeth for that—but she squeezes until there is pain. She squeezes as she can only guess the noose must do.
The Hell-Bard releases her, and she hears his legs collapse and armor clank. She feels his body thud down as his Threads bend in ways they were not meant to bend. And for half a moment, shock ripples across the other Threads in the room.