“Safi,” Iseult said in that special way she had: inflectionless yet somehow carrying a thousand emotions. She reached for Safi, and Safi, formless though she was, tried to reach back.
But a shadow came. It spread behind Iseult, liquid and alive, before solidifying into a man. Gold winked at his throat, and he crooned something in Nomatsi—something Safi couldn’t quite hear and wasn’t sure she’d understand anyway. Iseult turned away.
“No,” Safi tried to say. “Stay.” But Iseult didn’t hear. She spoke to the shadow man, a cold, detached version of herself. The one that sometimes frightened Safi.
Whoever the shadow was, he was bad. Iseult needed her help. Yet right as Safi brushed forward to speak again, to reach again, Iseult rounded back. Arms outstretched and fingers long, she grabbed for Safi as if to embrace. So Safi swept into it. Yes, yes, I am here!
Then the pain began. Safi shattered awake.
Her whole body shook. Her teeth rattled in her ears. And someone was grabbing her, holding her, and shouting her name over and over again. Caden. She twisted her stiff neck toward him, but her muscles were not her own. Left, right, she looked where Iseult wanted her to look.
No, not Iseult. This could not be Iseult’s doing. It would never be Iseult’s doing.
“Safi.” Caden gripped her biceps tightly. “Can you hear me?”
She nodded dimly. Still, no words would form; no breath would gather. She was going to suffocate, and this was going to be the end. Let go, she tried to tell Iseult. Please, please let go.
“Shit,” Caden hissed, and suddenly Safi was being hauled into an upright position. Then dragged over wood and leaned against the railing.
He ripped open her shirt, no ceremony, no gentleness, and exposed her chest to cold and starlight. “The Hell-Bard’s doom,” he said. “You should have said something.”
Safi could only shake her head. What was there to say? It wasn’t just the doom. It was Iseult, now gone, and the shadow man with gold upon his neck.
The longer she sat there with Caden’s fingers upon her chest, the more air seeped into her lungs, blessed and true. “I feel … fine,” she rasped.
“Liar,” he replied.
She shook her head. “Truly.”
A frown pinched his brow. His gaze lingered on her bare skin, yet when Safi towed her gaze downward, only the faintest of black lines radiated across her chest. Fewer with each heartbeat. Then after several ragged breaths, no lines wriggled at all.
Caden exhaled roughly and closed her shirt. “I don’t understand.”
“Nor I,” Safi admitted, and for the first time, she looked past him and realized everyone watched with wide eyes. Everyone except Leopold; he watched with bored calculation, like a crow watches carrion. He had done nothing to help her, and he did nothing now.
“We should turn back,” Caden said, rising as if to stand.
Safi grabbed his collar and yanked him back down. “No. That is exactly what Henrick wants us to do. And it wasn’t the doom that hit me. It was…” She couldn’t say Iseult. They wouldn’t understand. She didn’t understand.
Before she could find a solid argument, Leopold’s voice pitched out, “We are almost there anyway.”
He spoke so quietly Safi thought she’d imagined it. Except Caden stiffened too. And when she angled toward Leopold, she found him staring calmly their way.
“We are almost there,” he repeated. Then he waved to the horizon. “Welcome to the Solfatarra.”
Safi dragged herself around to peer through the railing. Night faded in the west, blanketing the world in soft blue light, though it could not hide the stretch of white fog. As if all the clouds in the sky had fallen to the earth and gathered close. For miles and miles, the earth was nothing but white.
“Where will we land? Where is Iseult?”
Leopold didn’t answer. He remained bored and statuesque beside the tiller.
“Polly,” she barked at him. “Now is not the time for games. Where is Iseult?”
“Near,” he replied. “Very near.”
She curled back her lips, and with a glare made of glass shards, she drew in her feet and stood. The world bled. Her head spun.
Frozen air gusted against her. Slithered into the cracks of her still unbuttoned blouse. “You will tell me, Polly, or I swear I will—” She made it only two steps toward him before the Eridysi lurched. A vicious sideways snap that flung Safi backward against the railing.
“The hells?” Lev barked, as all attention shot to Leopold. But he wasn’t looking at Safi or the Hell-Bards. His face had gone white as the sail; his knuckles too against the tiller.
“Windwitches,” he said. “In Cartorran colors.”
Then the world turned upside down, and the Eridysi fell.
* * *
“I found them for you,” Iseult said once she was back in the real world. Back upon her cot. Corlant stood before her, neck cracking side to side while Gretchya and Evrane watched silently. He had dropped the noose to the floor.
“You did indeed.” Corlant’s Threads thrummed with pleasure. “And now I shall reward you. Follow.” He spun about, his movements pointed and long. Eager as a child going to claim dessert.
Iseult didn’t follow. Not right away. First, she gathered the noose with a bandaged hand and dropped it into a pocket on her new gown. Then she searched for her mother’s eyes across the tent. But Gretchya wouldn’t lift her head. Wouldn’t move at all. She was stone, stone, always made of stone.
Well, Iseult was made of stone now too.
She joined Corlant outside the tent, where the edge of night awaited. Fourth chimes, she guessed, though clouds blocked the sinking moon as Corlant led the way through slouching square tents.
Never in her life had she willingly followed Corlant anywhere. Now here she was, trailing behind him through this new Purist encampment. Daughter, my daughter.
Iseult saw no sign of the shadow wyrm’s silver Threads. Purists, however, were everywhere. Like flies to a corpse, they’d gathered in vast numbers. Dressed in brown and gray, their Threads muted and muffled by Cursewitchery, they all wore identical focus. Identical fervor. They followed orders from Corlant willingly, desperately, and at the sight of him, they dropped low, a bowing of bodies and chorus of “Blessed are the pure, blessed are the pure.”
They also recognized Iseult. Many smiled at her, a few bowed, and one elderly woman even grabbed her bandaged hands and kissed them.
It hurt.
“Bless you, daughter of Midne,” the woman said. “We have waited so long.”
Iseult observed her and everyone else without emotion, without interest. These people didn’t see Corlant for what he truly was, but their blindness was a willing one. Corlant had made no effort to hide his power. Anyone who’d seen him face off against Iseult must’ve realized what he could do.
“Why don’t these people care about your magic?” she asked. No inflection. No stammer. Stasis lived inside her, and if Corlant wouldn’t answer her questions about Threadstones, then she would attempt to leach out other information instead.
“What magic?” he countered, the lines on his forehead sinking inward with mock innocence. Then he laughed, a rose-tinted chuckle edged with gray pain. “Oh, naive child. People don’t want facts. They want feelings. And they don’t want truth. They want faith that someone is fighting for them. I”—he splayed his hand on his chest, the fingers chapped with cold—“am fighting for them.”