Page 7 of Bloodwitch
“I’m ill,” Safi told him. Her voice sounded so very far away. Her breakfast, however, felt very near and rising fast.
“She may go,” Vaness said curtly from behind.
At a clap from Rokesh, seven more Adders marched into a square formation around Safi. If she extended her arms, she’d brush their black shoulders. They aimed for the door, clearly knowing Safi intended to get away from this place. Away from that body.
For some reason, the unlucky servant tasked with getting the blood off the white floor was all that fed through Safi’s mind, though. She didn’t want to add to the mess by stepping through the red. She didn’t want metallic, sticky blood on her white slippers, and she didn’t want to track prints across the marble tiles or into the sandstone halls.
Around would be easier.Around, around, around.
But she couldn’t go around. Not with the Adders beside her. They stepped through the blood, and she had to step with them. It splashed and spread, and Safi tracked it out the other side.
At the wide throne room doors, Safi pushed into a jog. The Adders did too. Down the seven endless sandstone hallways they ran, aiming for the Empress’s personal living wing. Safi had sprawling quarters of her own next to Vaness’s. Next to a private library too, which no one but the Empress and now Safi were allowed to use. So aside from the ever-present Adders stationed at every door, Safi had a sliver of privacy in her room.
Privacy for vomiting alone.
She almost made it too. Thirty paces from the ornately carved oak door, Safi’s sickness reached a head. There were few decorations in the halls, only the occasional lemon trees, sconces, and dangling iron wind chimes. Nowhere for assassins to hide. Nowhere for a sick young woman to hurl up her breakfast.
Safi had no choice but to skid to a halt and double over in the hall. Acid and bile spewed out, chunky where the chancellor’s blood had been liquid. Erratic where the blood had slithered so smooth.
More mess for the servants.
As she retched, the Adders stayed firmly planted in their square around Safi. Even when bits of bile splattered on Rokesh’s boots, none of them reacted. Nor made any move to help. A reminder that they were soldiers. That Rokesh wasnota nursemaid, and he was most certainly not a friend.
Well, Safi was as disgusted with herself as the Adders no doubt were. She had killed someone. That man’s life—that man’sdeath—were on her now. And though she had seen death before, grim, violent, bloody, she had never been the cause of it.
Safi wiped her mouth with the collar of her dress and hauled herself upright. The world swayed, and she briefly wished at least one of the Adders would meet her gaze. Then Rokesh finally did.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” she told him, even though she knew he did not care. Still, she felt the need to make him understand. So she repeated, louder and with a throat burned raw, “This isn’t what I wanted.”
Then Safi stumbled the rest of the way to her room, blood and sickness trailing behind.
FOUR
Beside a towering waterfall, Merik Nihar picked his way up a cliffside. Spindrift misted his sun-soaked face.
“Another hour,” Ryber had said at the bottom of the cliff. “Then we’ll reach the Sightwitch Sister Convent, and I’ll guide you through the glamour that protects it.”
Always, Ryber had guided Merik and Cam, steady and true. Since leaving Lovats two weeks ago, she had led them through the Sirmayans, ever closer to her childhood home—the long-lost Sightwitch Sister Convent, a place Merik hadn’t known existed. And he certainly hadn’t known that Ryber was a Sister from their ranks.
Water caressed Merik’s face. He was tired, he was parched—so parched, he’d already imagined dumping his face into the waterfall and gulping whatever he could before it dragged him down.
He glanced at Cam behind him. Then glanced again.
“I’m fine, sir,” the boy groused. He had to shout to be heard above the falls. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“I’ll stop looking,” Merik countered, “when your hand is fully healed.” He knew Cam was sick of the fretting.Overprotective henwas his phrase, but Cam also couldn’t see how pale his brown, dappled skin had become since leaving Lovats. Since the Nines had cut off his pinkie.
“At the top,” Merik called, “let’s stop and change the bandages.”
“Fine, fine, sir. If you ins—”
A great rip tore through the earth, stealing Cam’s words and tossing Merik against the cliff face.
It tossed Cam right off.
Without thought, Merik’s magic snapped free. A whip of winds to snatch the boy before he hit the rapids. A coil of air to launch him straight into Merik’s arms.
Then he clutched the boy close while aftershocks rumbled through the stone. While they panted and heaved and hung on. It felt an eternity before the quake fully faded, leaving dust and water thick in the air.
