Page 90 of Bloodwitch
Burn them. Burn them all.
In her dreams, Iseult stood on a battlefield thick with smoke. Massive rocks blackened the edges of her vision, and fire burned across the earth. Unstoppable. This was the Contested Lands of her memory, the Contested Lands where she had killed the Firewitch, severing his Threads and cleaving him through and through.
Burned hair and smoking flesh. Autumn pyres and mercy screams.
Ten paces ahead, the Firewitch leered at her, a skeleton made of flames. His skull grinned. Laughed.Clack, clack, clackwent his teeth.
He dangled too, arms outstretched at his sides like a puppet awaiting Iseult’s command. Shadows slaked down his frame, dark webs within the orange flames.
Unnatural flames, summoned by magic. Dominated by will.
But it was not the Firewitch who had summoned the flames this time, nor was it the Firewitch who controlled them. Iseult knew it was her own power, her own will—for she and the Firewitch were one now.
They had always been one. Set on a path toward each other. Unstoppable.
Three black lines squiggled off him.Sever, sever, twist and sever.They writhed across the thick, smoking air before reaching Iseult and winding around her heart. Knotted, clotted. Corrupt.
Threads that break. Threads that die.
“No,” Iseult tried to say, but all that left her mouth was pluming darkness.
She stumbled back two steps.
And the dead man stumbled forward, a perfect mimicry of her movement. He cackled all the way.Clack, clack, clack.
“You killed me!” he cried. “And you will kill me again. Over and over, for we are bound. I am yours and you are mine.”
Iseult’s throat constricted. Her lungs sucked in only heat. This time, though, she managed to stammer, “I-I have to kill you. To save Aeduan. Ihaveto.”
“He has left you, though. And he will leave you again. Over and over, Iseult. The world will burn around you, but he will never come.”
The Firewitch laughed again, a high-pitched keen like air whistling from logs trapped in a fire. Then, just like the wood, hepopped.His Threads snapped taut, and his body snapped tall. His arms cracked backward, elbows and knees inverting. Then his mouth opened, and fire boomed out. It enveloped everything. All sight, all senses.
BURN THEM!he screamed, a silent promise that conquered every space in Iseult’s mind.BURN THEM ALL!
The fire reached Iseult. Heat, light, and pain that shredded. This was the end. This was her death. The Firewitch she had cleaved now cleaved her in return. She screamed too.
Except death never came. The seconds slid past, the pain slowly misted away. So,soslowly, muchtooslowly—yet cresting back all the same. And the fire dissolved too, white holes speckling across her vision, as if this world were made of paper and a new world were punching through. Until at last, there was nothing left. Nothing save Iseult and white flecks drifting around her.
Ash,she thought at first.This is the end and ash is all that remains.But then she realized it was cold to the touch. It gathered on her shoulders, holding perfect crystalline shapes.
Snow.
The nightmare was over.
Except now Iseult had no idea where she was—and now, someone new approached, appearing from the very fabric of the Dreaming. Tall, looming, with broad shoulders and hands that hung stiffly at his sides. The only part of him that looked tangible, that had shape and texture, was a silver crown upon his head.
It glittered like frostbite. He was a silver king in a world of falling snow.
Cold.Iseult hadn’t realized until this moment that she was freezing. That her teeth chattered, her body shook. It was not like the fire, though—this did not hurt, this did not slay. It simplywas.
She was tired too, and suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to curl into the frozen calm and sleep. But she forced her eyes to stay wide and her mouth to form words. “Who are you?”
No sound left her throat. No steam, either, to coat her breath. Only the snow and the cold and the king, now offering a brusque bow. He lifted his hands, black shadows trailing behind—and giving him the look of a huge black bird.
Go,his wings seemed to motion.Wake up.
So Iseult did, watching as the final dregs of the Dreaming dripped away. As his wings shrank inward, revealing a woman with silver hair and warm, worried Threads hunched above.
