Truthwitch (The Witchlands 1)

Safiya’s body was stiff, her pitchfork extended like a glaive. She looked trapped in time. Not even her eyes moved.

In a rush of speed, Aeduan darted toward Safiya. Yet just as he reached her—just as he crouched down to heave her onto his shoulders—the Windwitch burst into action.

The man’s arms flung upward, and both he and Safiya rocketed off the tower in a roar of wind. It kicked Aeduan backward—propelled him toward the tower’s edge.

Aeduan lost control of Safiya’s blood.

He launched into a sprint. Safiya was ten feet high now and flying backward, her body a frantic spin of limbs and skirts. She was screaming over the wind: “Iseult! Iseult!”

If Aeduan ran, he could leap into the Windwitch’s air-funnel—

A body hurled into him. He toppled sideways, barely transferring into a roll before the Nomatsi girl thrashed him to the ground.

Yet Aeduan was already spinning, fingers clawing for any wrists or elbows he could break, his Bloodwitchery grabbing for any blood to lock down.

But just as Aeduan’s fingers caught empty air, his Bloodwitchery found nothing—the girl was already flipping off him, already charging toward the edge of the tower.

She would jump. Aeduan knew she would jump.

So he leaped to his feet too and bolted after the girl named Iseult.

She hit the edge of the lighthouse; she jumped.

Aeduan hit the edge too; he jumped.

And they fell. Together. So close Aeduan could grab her if he wanted to.

But it was like she knew it. Like she’d planned it that way.

Midair in a fall that would last barely a second, she swiveled around. Her legs writhed through his and flipped their bodies—

His back hit the sand. So hard the world went black. Distantly, he felt the girl crash against him. Arrowheads dug even deeper. They smashed his ribs, his lungs. There was pain everywhere. His organs—they were all destroyed.

And he was pretty certain his spine was broken too.

That was a first.

Then waves washed over his skin. A breath passed. Aeduan thought he might make it out alive …

Until he felt a black explosion in his chest.

It cleared through all the other pains, and his eyes snapped wide. The hilt of his stiletto poked from his heart. His cloak and tunic were too stained to show the blood flowing out—but he knew it was there. Pulsing faster than his power could keep up with.

Yet he couldn’t withdraw the knife. He couldn’t do anything because he couldn’t move. His spine was definitely broken.

Aeduan lifted his gaze, the world streaming and blurry … and then morphing into a face.

A face of shadows and moonlight only a foot away from his. The girl’s lips shuddered with each gasping breath. Her hair flew on the breeze—a natural breeze, Aeduan realized—and her thighs trembled against his broken ribs.

He saw no one else, heard no one else. For all he knew, they were the only people left alive in this battle.

In the entire world.

Then his gaze fell on a Painstone hanging from her neck. Its rosy glow was fading, almost gone, and he could see from the strain on her face that she was hurt. Badly.

Yet she still managed to unstrap a cleaving knife from Aeduan’s baldric. She still managed to drag it to his neck and hold it there.

The blade trembled against his skin.

She had stabbed him in the heart with his stiletto, and now she was going to decapitate him.

But the cleaver stopped; the girl called Iseult cringed and her Painstone flared a soft pink … before winking out completely.

A groan erupted from her lips. She almost toppled forward—and Aeduan glimpsed the wound on her right bicep. Bloodstained linens. Blood he should be able to smell.

“You … have no … scent,” he ground out. He could feel his own hot blood gushing over his teeth, dribbling from the sides of his mouth. “I can’t smell … your blood.”

She didn’t answer. All of her concentration was on holding the cleaver steady.

“Why … can’t I smell you? Tell … me.” Aeduan wasn’t sure why he wanted to know. If she cut off his head, he would die. It was the only wound from which a Bloodwitch couldn’t recover.

Yet still, he couldn’t seem to stop asking. “Why…” Blood sprayed with that word, splattered the flat steel of the cleaver. A fleck hit her cheek. “Why can’t … I…”

She eased the blade away from his throat. Not gently—it cut through skin and dragged onward, as if she was too tired to even lift it.

Aeduan’s impaled heart fluttered. It was a strange feeling of relief and confusion that lifted with the blood in his mouth. She wasn’t going to kill him. He had no idea why.

“Do it,” he rasped.

“No.” She shook her head, a jerky movement. Then wind—of the charged, unnatural variety—gusted over them. It sprayed her hair from her face, and Aeduan forced himself to note every detail.

He might not have been able to smell her blood, but he would remember her. He would remember her round jaw that didn’t quite fit with her pointed chin. He would remember her snub nose and pale freckles. Her angled, cat-like eyes. Her short lashes. And her narrow mouth.

“I will hunt you,” he croaked.

“I know.” The girl dropped the cleaver on the sand and used Aeduan’s chest to push herself upright. His ribs crunched, and his stomach squished. She was not light, and his organs were pulp.

“I will kill you,” he went on.

“No.” The girl’s eyes thinned; she pushed herself further upright and the moon streamed over her. “I d-d-d…” She coughed. Then wiped her mouth. “I don’t think you will.”