She flinched at his touch … but then allowed him to grip her shoulders and slide a hand fully behind her. Not that she had much choice—she was too weak to rise without assistance.
Whatever she had done to Corlant, it had almost killed her.
“I do not know,” Aeduan answered honestly. “I have not looked for her.”
“But you will?”
He paused. Then nodded.
“To give her to Corlant or to help her flee?”
Aeduan did not answer. Iseult’s eyes were so close to his; the stove’s flames guttered within. Too close, too much. He released her and tried to withdraw.
Her hands snaked out. She gripped him, knuckles whitening round his biceps. Then her eyes bored into his. Her teardrop scar glimmered. “Te varuje, Aeduan,” she said. “Te varuje.” She murmured other foreign words to him that the soul swimming inside him understood.
And that soul was trying to surface, trying to rise before Iseult turned away. Te varuje, te varuje. She squeezed tighter, her gaze unwavering, and Aeduan found it hard to look away. Impossible even.
“I do not understand you,” he finally said, breaking free from her grasp. “Your words are meaningless.” Then he straightened to his full height and stared down at her. The change in angle made her look smaller, weaker. Less like Her.
But Iseult merely smiled at Aeduan then. A slow thing. Feral in a way he had never seen her wear—as if she had some secret. Or as if this had been a game between them and she had come out the victor.
He did not like that smile. He wished she would stop.
And when he turned to leave, his movements quick, frustrated, a laugh chased after him. All the way out of the tent and into the dark night.
* * *
Iseult had always told Safi that there were some truths one did not need magic to recognize. The truths one always knew but kept hidden away. The truths one never stared at directly. But they always show up eventually, she’d said. And when they do, you just know.
Corlant’s words had been one of those moments. One of those truths hiding in plain sight that Iseult had refused to see or consider.
The daughter I thought had been taken from me.
She’d always wondered about her father. There were few choices within the Midenzi tribe, yet she’d never considered him an option … because she’d never wanted it to be him. He was the only one, though. He had always been the only one.
The monster inside her had to come from somewhere.
It was good to have an explanation, she decided as she stared at a shadowy tent ceiling. She had no idea where she was, but she was neither bound nor gagged. Outside, a camp clattered and clinked and breathed. Threads drifted past, oblivious in their own goals, existence. Iseult could take them if she wanted to.
She didn’t want to.
But she could.
She was the dark-giver, the Puppeteer. She was shadows through and through, and it was not her fault. She had been born this way. She had been made this way. Cursewitch blood ran in her veins, and the very Void itself lived inside her.
She had hovered in and out of consciousness for countless hours; Aeduan had been the first to fully rouse her. The usurper Aeduan. Not the true Aeduan. He was gone, but not out of reach. One more soul she supposed she ought to save.
Her hands were wrapped in fresh gauze, her fingers stiff and raw. Pain suffused upward in jagged spikes flooding cold across her body. Frostbite from Corlant’s Threads.
Pain didn’t bother her, though. Stasis had claimed her so completely, she felt no urgency, no impatience, no fear.
She had been wrong before, when she’d thought life without emotion was no life at all. This was still life—she still lived and breathed and moved where her mind conveyed. But it was easier now, without obstacles or frustrations or Threads she could not control.
And if that was who she was—who she was meant to be—then she could stop fighting it. She could give in to this power that she loved. This control, this rage. She could stop trying to be something she hated.
If only Gretchya had told Iseult about Corlant all those years ago, then Iseult would have given up on Threadwitchery and saved herself a lifetime of agony. For so long, she’d had an arsenal of weapons at her disposal she’d never known about. She could have fought against those who had hissed, and those who had hated.
Now she knew, though, that she was the daughter of a monster—that she was a monster, and monsters could do whatever they pleased.
Oh yes, it was good to have an explanation. To have absolution and finally know what stasis felt like. No feeling, no worries, no shame. Just existence and a path to tread that led where it had always led: to Safi.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, gazing at canvas and tasting the smooth folds of true stasis. She didn’t know how long it took her to realize she wasn’t alone, but eventually the awareness of eyes—of breath—prickled against her skin.
She swiveled her head, disinterested. There was only one person it could be tucked out of sight like that.
“You should have told me,” Iseult told the corner where her mother watched. “Why didn’t you?”
“I hoped you would never have to know.” Gretchya’s voice rasped, as if she’d been crying. Which was impossible, of course. She eased a step toward Iseult, shifting into the stove’s weak light. Her ankles were bound by a stretch of rope. Her wrists too. She could move, but she could not run. “Corlant is not the same man that I first knew.”
“And I am not the same daughter.” With creaking bones and flimsy muscles, Iseult lugged herself upright. A woolen blanket fell from her torso. Fire-warmed air brushed against her, and she realized someone had dressed her in a new gown while she was unconscious. Threadwitch black, with gray dashes, sage circles, and magenta lines sewn into the hems. Even the new velvet pantaloons had been dyed black and marked with Threads.
She yanked the covers over herself again. She didn’t want to see those colors, didn’t want to see this gown that must have belonged to her mother. “People change,” she said. “It’s no reason to hide the truth.”
Gretchya offered no reaction, but she was close enough now for Iseult to spot splotchy skin and swollen eyes.
She had been crying. How strange. How laughable. How much, much too late.
“Corlant did not simply change, Iseult. He went from a simple Nomatsi man to a Cursewitch overnight. From a man who would have loved you—whom I would have told you of with pride—to a demon who hurt others for pleasure.”
“Oh?” Iseult asked without interest. She didn’t care, and she didn’t believe anything her mother said anyway.
She lifted her hands and stared at her bandages. Pain dissolved downward as blood drained. “Where are we?” she asked.
“Where we were before. In the Solfatarra.” Gretchya glanced toward the tent’s lone flap. No light pilfered in. “Some of the Nomatsis got away. Most did not.”
Iseult supposed she should blame herself for that. She didn’t.
“Alma?”
A headshake. “She is imprisoned with the others. But she is a good leader. She will keep them calm and give them guidance.”
Of course she would. Even now, Alma was the perfect apprentice. Even now, with a confession the size of the Sleeping Giant to scowl between them, Gretchya couldn’t help but compliment the other girl.