Truthwitch (The Witchlands 1)

Merik’s footsteps stumbled. Leopold was here now too? What the Hell was he going to do with a blighted prince?

He mentally swatted that aside for later.

“Admiral!” Ryber shouted again. “S’important, sir!”

“Not now.” Merik hopped the steps to the quarterdeck, where the wind whipped louder, harder. As he approached Kullen, slumped at the tiller, he wondered why Ryber had allowed her Heart-Thread to push himself this hard.

“Stop this boat!” Merik roared. “Stop your wind!” He grabbed hold of Kullen’s coat and yanked the man upright.

Kullen’s face was gray, but his eyes were sharp behind his wind-spectacles. “Can’t … stop,” he panted. “We’ve got to catch up … to the … Marstoks.”

“And we will, but we don’t need so much speed—”

“But that’s just it!” Ryber shouted, shoving up to Merik. “We do need speed because the Bloodwitch is here.”

For half a breath, Merik could only stare at Ryber. Bewitched air stung his eyes, screamed in his ears. Then he bolted for the bulwark and yanked his spyglass free.

“Where?” he breathed, heart lodged in his throat.

“More east.” Ryber gently aimed the spyglass right, until Merik saw it: a lone blur of white streaming down the seaside road.

Merik slid the glass farther east until … There. Two figures, one in white and one in black, on horseback. They coursed down the same road, and the Bloodwitch was no more than a league behind them. He would be upon Safi and Iseult before Merik could even fly back to shore.

Merik snapped down the glass and forced himself to inhale—in through his nose. The heavy scent of oncoming rain. Then out through grinding teeth.

It helped nothing. “How the Hell,” he ground out, “did that monster get here so fast?”

“By all that’s holy,” Hermin swore, peering through his own spyglass. “Is that white speck him?”

“His powers are straight from the Void,” Ryber said gravely. Then she cried, “Kullen!” and lurched from the bulwark.

Merik bolted after, and with Ryber’s help, he peeled Kullen’s white-knuckled hand off the tiller. Then he slid his arm beneath his Threadbrother’s.

Kullen was too cold to the touch, his clothes too damp with sweat. “You have to stop this!” Merik shouted. “Stop your winds, Kullen!”

“If I stop,” Kullen answered with surprising strength, “then we lose your contract.”

“Your life is worth more than a contract,” Merik said, but Kullen started laughing then—a hacking, gulping sound—and he lifted a weak arm to gesture south.

“I have an idea.”

Merik followed Kullen’s finger, but all he saw there were dark skies and the flickers of distant lightning.

But then Ryber breathed “No,” and Merik’s stomach bottomed out.

“No.” He towed Kullen around to face him. The first mate’s hair was so plastered by sweat, it didn’t even move in the wind. “That is not an option, Kullen. Ever.”

“But it’s the only option. Nubrevna needs this … trade agreement.”

“You can barely stand.”

“I don’t need to stand,” Kullen said, “if I’m riding a storm.”

Merik shook his head, frantic now. Panicking, while Ryber whispered over and over, “Please don’t do it, please don’t do it, please don’t do it.”

“Have you forgotten what happened last time you summoned a storm?” Merik looked at Ryber for support, but she was crying now—and Merik realized with a sickening certainty, that she had already resigned herself to this course.

How, though? How could she give up so easily and so fast?

“We don’t need the trade agreement,” Merik insisted. “The Nihar lands are growing again. Growing, Kullen. So as your Admiral and your Prince, I command you not to do this.”

Kullen’s coughing subsided. He sucked in a long, vicious breath that sounded like knives and fire.

Then the man smiled. A full, frightening smile. “And as your Threadbrother, I choose not to listen.” In a clap of heat and power, magic sizzled to life and Kullen’s eyes shivered. Twitched. His pupils were shrinking … vanishing …

A wind ripped over the deck—collided into Merik and Ryber, almost knocking them flat. It left Merik with no choice.

He ripped off his coat, and Ryber moved to take it. The wind battered them, but they both bent into it—she aiming belowdecks with his jacket and he staggering for the tiller.

As he moved into position at the helm of his father’s warship, Merik prayed once more to Noden—but this time he prayed that Kullen and everyone else in his crew survived the night.

Because the storm was on its way now, and Merik could do nothing to stop it.

* * *

Safi had never pushed a horse so hard. Sweat streaked her mare’s sides, foamed on Iseult’s roan. At any moment, they might throw a shoe or twist a leg, but until that happened—until the creatures gave out from exhaustion—Safi had little choice but to keep galloping down this cliff-lined road.

The girls’ long shadows galloped beside them, the dawn sun a pale flame over the Jadansi that lit up a bay so wide, Safi couldn’t see its end. Bare rock islands of all shapes and sizes speckled the glowing tide waters.

The Hundred Isles.

The road followed a descending curve, eventually reaching sea level—and Lejna too. After green for half a mile, they’d suddenly galloped back into a wasteland. It was all too quiet. Too dead. Safi didn’t like how the alert-stone pierced the sky from its spot tied to her saddlebag. They were literally asking to be noticed.