Hands caught her. Strong arms steadied her. And birds floated across her vision. “Aeduan,” she said, trying and failing to pull free. Cold beat against her. Cleaved oil sprayed and bodies fell.
“This way.” His voice was near her ear, his grip firm as he hauled her back the way she’d come.
She resisted. Now that she had released the Severed Threads, dregs of power pulsed through her. Bolstered her muscles, sharpened her eyes, and sent her instincts charging back to life. “Not yet.”
Mother, Mother—she needed to find her mother. As she dug her feet into the ground, hoarfrost gathered around her. Threads blared. The ground trembled. “Mother!” she shouted at Aeduan. “Where is she?”
This time Aeduan heard her question. “There.” He pointed.
Iseult spun right as purple Threads coagulated into her senses. They pooled with scarlet rage and exuded Cursewitch power. Most shocking of all, they glimmered with sunset family and the warmth of amaranth Threads that bind.
The wyrm paused its advance at Corlant’s arrival. Then it skittered sideways, like a dog obeying its master. And the Purists—what few remained—also drew back, revealing their priest. The top half of his face was bandaged, his eyes covered by blood-soaked cloths. His Purist robe whipped around him on an unnatural breeze.
He clearly couldn’t see, yet he also didn’t need to. Just as Iseult had escaped the Pragan palace without her sight, Corlant could navigate the world by feeling Threads.
At his side, her head bowed, stood Gretchya.
“Mother,” Iseult repeated, and had Aeduan not held her back, she would have bolted forward. It was good Aeduan was there. Good she had that half-second pause for logic to serrate in.
Gretchya, unbound and demure. Mother, head bent and willing. It was a pose Iseult had seen her mother wear most of her life, whenever Corlant was near. Whenever he’d come around and forced her to unbolt the rusted lock above the door. Iseult never understood why she’d done it, or fully understood why Corlant had always been there.
Even now, as an answer cemented in her belly—in that secret corner beneath her left lung—she couldn’t look at it. She couldn’t face it.
“Mother?” Iseult said again, but this time it was a question. And this time, it was so, so loud. A single word to split a newly silenced world. Iseult’s Cleaved were dead, the remaining Nomatsis subdued, and the Purists kneeling upon the hard earth. The monster had retreated into darkness cast by ruined stone, and were it not for its silver Threads—dampened once more—Iseult would never have seen it there.
There were no footsteps, no jangling belts or weaponry. It was as if the day itself held its breath. Everyone, everything was transfixed by Corlant. His Threads shone above all others, the purple hunger practically lighting up the sky.
Iseult reached for her sword. Then patted empty air because of course there was no sword. She was a fool. Always a fool.
But she still had her fangs and her magic. She would kill Corlant—and kill his monster too, if she had to. They could not have Gretchya, not now that Iseult was a Weaverwitch who could fight back.
Threadwitches might not harm, but Puppeteers did.
Iseult sank into her stance. Stretched out one hand, fingers clawed and ready to grab, to yank. Her teeth were ready too, her jaw creaking wide.
Corlant must have sensed her plan, though, for he smiled. The cloths on his face wrinkled, made the bloodstains shrink like red eyes. Meanwhile pink joy spread across his Threads, a disturbing contrast against the muted gray weave of death and shadow.
Iseult had been here before. She had watched as Corlant had pinned her with that same ravenous attention. Then watched as he had lifted his hands with deliberate slowness and crossed his thumbs in the sign to ward off evil.
Except this time, he did not make that symbol. This time, he opened his hands as if in welcome. “My daughter,” he said, so softly she almost did not hear. Then again, his smile widening: “My daughter, come join your mother and father.”
* * *
Daughter. A meaningless word that clunked around in Iseult’s skull. That hardened her muscles, holding them still when they ought to move, and wormed through her gut, cold and vicious and impossible.
Daughter. My daughter.
She must have misheard. It was the only possible explanation. Because of course she was not his daughter, even if that answer inside her was now scratching higher.
She didn’t want to examine it—and couldn’t while Corlant watched her, while Aeduan still gripped her arm and her mother stared at the dirt refusing to lift her gaze.
This wasn’t right, this wasn’t happening. Iseult’s hand fell to her thigh. Her stance weakened and balance wavered. Only her jaw held, open and with teeth bared. But there was no power there anymore, no desire to chomp down and kill.
Daughter. My daughter.
The pleasure in Corlant’s Threads had shifted to the sunset gleam of family. Tendrils that reached for Iseult and Gretchya. He smiled so widely, his face had almost folded in on itself, and the stained linens drooped to one side. For once, no trenches marred his forehead, no eyebrows lifted high. There was only delight suffusing his body and his Threads.
Iseult wanted to flee, to run, to fold into a ball and disappear inside herself. But there was nowhere to go, and there was—as she knew, knew, knew—no outrunning who she really was.
My fault, my fault. With no one to save her. No weasel, no Alma. She was trapped, faced by a Cursewitch whose Threads gleamed with family. Daughter, my daughter.
For two seemingly endless breaths, as the breeze swept up mist off thawing hoarfrost and as Threads danced around her, Iseult was paralyzed by guilt. By how much she hated herself and her magic. Sever, sever, twist and sever.
But then she considered one important thing: if Corlant was her father, then she’d been cursed from the day she’d been born. Tainted by evil blood and the Void. Moon Mother’s glow had never reached her and never would. Yet like the monster hidden in shadows nearby, there was freedom in darkness. There was power where light never reached.
It was as if, in that moment, time punched forward. No space for thought, no space for logic or concern or the stasis that had never helped her before. There was only action, only instinct, only rage.
Her spine straightened, her arms flung high, and Iseult stretched her fingers long. Aeduan’s grip released, and her fingers closed around Corlant’s Threads. Lightning seared up her arm. Shock waves to pummel her elbow, her shoulder, her ribs. Even her vision ignited with cold and light—freezing it away. She saw nothing but Corlant’s Threads. Nothing but throbbing purple pleasure and that sick sunset love.
But also a dark, icy core she’d never noticed before. One that her fingers closed around. That crackled outward in arcs of power.
Too much power. More than she could control, more than her small, human mind could comprehend.
Cold and light burrowed past her eyeballs and into her brain. Past her lungs, all the way to her heart. She was pure winter. She froze from the inside out; her muscles and bones became fuel for a Cursewitch.
Distantly, Iseult felt her knees give out beneath her. Distantly, she heard screams she knew must be her own. But she was powerless to stop them. She could not even release Corlant’s Threads. The dark current at the heart of them would not let her go. It swelled inside her, glaciating every cell it touched and every drop of her Aether too.