Truthwitch (The Witchlands 1)

A magicked wind battered into Aeduan’s back, knife-like and meant to flay apart his skin. Yet Aeduan’s cloak protected him, and he protected the girl.

Aeduan pumped his legs faster, pushed Iseult on. “Right!” he bellowed, and she skittered down the new passage.

Rain fell hard now. Biting. It only added to the cleaving Tidewitch’s power. A bloodthirsty screech lifted over the streets. Several screams—tens of them, even.

“Left!” Aeduan barked at the next shadowy intersection. He had no idea where he was going, only that he needed a larger gap between him and the Cleaved. He could hide the Nomatsi girl until this ended.

Yes, Aeduan would repay his life-debt to Iseult, and then he would never think of her again. She wasn’t the Cahr Awen; she wasn’t his problem.

Aeduan spotted a recessed doorway at the end of the road. The door was loose on its hinges. “Ahead!” he shouted. “Inside!”

The Threadwitch’s sprint faltered. She flung a look back, eyes wide.

“Do it.” He grabbed her arm, grip vicious, and pumped his witchery through his blood. His speed doubled, the alleyway blurred, and the girl cried out. She wasn’t running as fast, and he couldn’t push her blood faster.

But then they were to the doorway and he was shoving her in, yanking her toward the back of the house, pushing her through a kitchen—their gasps for air almost as loud as the howling wind and beating water outside.

Pantry. Aeduan saw the tall cupboard at the back corner of the room, dangerously close to a shattered window … but the only hiding place he could spot. He shoved the girl toward it. “Get inside.”

“No.” She spun around to face him. “What are you trying to do?”

“Repay a life-debt. You spared me; now I spare you.” With a flick of his wrist, he unfastened his salamander cloak. “Hide beneath this. They won’t smell you.” He offered it to her.

“No.”

“Are you deaf or just stupid? Those Cleaved are seconds away. Trust me.”

“No.” Her hazel eyes shook—but not with fear. With stubborn refusal.

“Trust. Me.” Aeduan spoke more softly now, ears and magic straining for signs of the Cleaved. They would be here at any moment and this Nomatsi girl still wasn’t budging.

And if she didn’t budge, then Aeduan’s life-debt would remain unpaid.

So he summoned the only words he could find that would make her go: “Mhe varujta,” he said. “Mhe varujta.”

Her eyebrows shot high. “How … how do you know those words?”

“The same way you do. Now get inside.” Aeduan shoved her into the cupboard—hard. His patience was spent, and he smelled the approaching Cleaved. Bloodstained secrets and filth-encrusted lies.

The girl did as she was told. She stepped into the pantry, staring back at Aeduan with that odd face of hers. He tossed her the cloak. She caught it easily.

“How long should I wait?” she asked. Then her gaze raked over his body. “You’re bleeding.”

Aeduan glanced down at bloodstains from the old wounds and new patches from Evrane. “They’re nothing,” he muttered before easing shut the door. A shadow fell over the girl’s face, but Aeduan paused before he shut her out entirely. “My life-debt is paid, Threadwitch. If our paths cross again, make no mistake: I will kill you.”

“No, you won’t,” she whispered as the door clicked shut.

Aeduan forced himself to stay silent. She deserved no response—it would be her mistake if she thought he would spare her.

So, lifting his nose and pushing his Bloodwitchery high, Aeduan whirled away and strode into a world of rain, wind, and death.

* * *

Merik flew in a blind terror. Kullen was almost to Lejna, hurtling down to the first pier. But something was wrong. He had torn away from Merik quicker than Merik could fly—and with an uncontrolled violence that Merik had never seen before. It had sent him spinning wildly behind, grappling for any sort of control he could find.

When Merik finally reached the city, he slammed onto the splintered first pier—to where he’d seen Kullen go down. Yet he saw nothing in the cycloning storm. Even more frightening, his magic pulsed against his insides. Scratched wildly beneath his skin—as if people were cleaving nearby. As if they would soon send Merik teetering over the edge.

In leaping bounds, Merik crossed the pier toward shore. Lightning cracked beside a storefront, and Merik caught sight of Kullen. He knelt at the mouth of an alley, and fat, blinding veins of electricity ran the length of him. Then the lightning faded, and Kullen was hidden by air and seawater, kelp and sand.

Merik reached the street. He flew headfirst toward the spinning wall of lightning and wind.

No—there was more now. Glass and splintered wood. Kullen was felling entire buildings.

Merik crashed against it all in a roar of light, sound, and static. Then it swept him in. The wind bent him. The water beat him. The magic engulfed him.

And Merik couldn’t fight it. He wasn’t half the witch Kullen was, and with his own powers feeling as if they might cleave at any second, Merik could do nothing but let himself go.

The cyclone funneled him upward, so fast he left his stomach somewhere far below. Up, up, up he flew. His eyes clenched shut. Debris pelted him. Glass peeled off his exposed skin.

But then, as quickly as he’d been sucked into the storm, Merik was released. The spinning stopped; the wind let go. Yet the storm raged on—Merik heard it, felt it …