Merik eased the map from the stack and folded it along the already-creased lines. He was just tucking it into his belt when a chill settled over him. Ice and power and a voice saying, “Put it back, please.”
Oh, Noden hang him. Merik knew that voice.
Stacia Sotar had arrived.
Merik swiveled his head ever so slightly, the hood blocking his face. All he needed was to get to the open window. A single jump, and he’d be free.
Or so he thought, until water surged up his leg. It snaked and coiled and constricted, freezing into a shackle of ice—because, of course, how could he forget? Stix was a full-blighted Waterwitch. It left Merik with only one choice: he gave in to the darkness.
He became the Fury.
His winds boomed out. The ice fractured. Merik yanked at his leg, ready to fly.
The ice melted. It steamed upward, scalding and searing into his ruined face.
Merik couldn’t help it. He roared his pain before diving over the desk and dropping to the other side.
Ice shot above in a spray that beat the wall, sliced open Merik’s scalp. His hood had fallen. Yet he was already moving. Crawling on all fours toward the window. He sensed Stix drawing in more magic. Easily, as if this fight had only just begun.
She slammed down her foot, and at once the water in the room turned to fog. Merik couldn’t see a thing.
With a gust of weak winds, he puffed a path to the window. Mist coiled away. Merik pushed upright and ran.
Yet as he feared might happen, Stix appeared in his path. He spun right, his winds punching up to cloud her in her own fog. Before he could twirl past, her hand lashed out and grabbed his wrist.
Ice ripped across his forearm, locking her to him.
Their eyes met, hers dark as Noden’s Hells—and widening. Thinning, just as her lips were parting.
She knows me. It was the worst possible outcome save for death. Being recognized would end everything Merik had planned.
Except that what left Stix’s throat was not Merik or Prince or Admiral.
“The Fury,” she breathed, and instantly the fog froze to snow. A flurry to drift harmlessly down around them. “You’re … real.”
A new cold—one from within—struck Merik in the chest. He was that broken. That unrecognizable. And though he tried to tell himself she was nearsighted, she couldn’t possibly recognize his face unless he was inches from her … He knew the truth. He was a horror to behold. He was the Fury.
But this pause was a gift. A moment he could use.
“I am the Fury.” At those words, at that acknowledgment, heat frizzed down Merik’s back. He tapped into the rage.
Power, power, power.
“Release me,” he commanded.
Stix obeyed. Her hand snapped back; the ice retreated—though not before tearing open his sleeve. His skin too.
Merik lunged for the window. Headfirst, past shutters and lemongrass. Past shingles and guttering. Headfirst toward the ancient, narrow alley below.
His winds caught him. Cradled him so he could spin upright before hitting the jagged cobbles.
As soon as his boots touched down, he ran. Twice he looked back, though. First, to see if Cam was anywhere near, but the girl wasn’t—and Merik couldn’t exactly go back to search for her.
Second, he looked back to see if Stix pursued.
But she didn’t. She simply watched him from the open window, haloed by candlelight and falling snow.
THIRTEEN
Iseult and Aeduan ate in silence. His jaw worked methodically. He hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the bear trap.
Iseult hadn’t expected him to. Never had she longed for Threads more, though. The world was so empty, so colorless without humans nearby, and weeks had passed with only distant plaits to brush against her. Now, when she was finally faced with a human again, he was colorless. Threadless. Blank.
Body language, expressions—these were puzzles Iseult had never had to decipher. Yet without Threads hovering over the Bloodwitch, she had to scrutinize every movement of his face. Every ripple of his muscles.
Not that he made many. Cool as a Threadwitch, her mother would say. Gretchya would mean it as a compliment, for of course Threadwitches were not meant to show emotion. It would sting like an insult for Iseult, though, since the phrase was never directed at her. Gretchya only ever used it for other people—the ones who were better at stasis, better at calm than Iseult could ever be.
The longer Iseult observed Aeduan, the more she sensed an emotion emanating off him. Distrust.
It was in the way he sat stiff and at the ready while he ate. In the way his eyes never left Iseult, tracking her as she moved about the small campsite. He saved my life, Iseult thought as he ate, and he hates me for it.
Iseult was accustomed to distrust, though, and to hate. And if those feelings could kill, then they would have slain her a long time ago.
“More?” She motioned to the campfire, to the final grayling staked to her spit.
The Bloodwitch cleared his throat. “Where are my blades, Threadwitch?” He stubbornly still spoke in Dalmotti.
So Iseult stubbornly answered in Nomatsi: “Hidden.”
“And the rest of my talers?”
“Far away.”
The Bloodwitch’s fingers curled. He pushed to his feet. “I can force the answer from your throat if I wish.”
He couldn’t, and they both knew it. He’d lost all power over her by admitting in Veñaza City that he couldn’t smell or control her blood.
Yet as Iseult matched his pose with her own chin high and her own shoulders back, she still found her heart running too fast. Thus far everything in her plan had gone as she’d estimated—as she’d hoped. But now … Now was the final knot in her snare.