Page 41 of Witchshadow
If only, if only, if only.She had enough of them to fill an ocean, and not a one could actually help her.
Except she wasn’t totally alone. The weasel was still out there somewhere. Iseult had seen no sign of the creature, and each of her attempts to reach the weasel’s mind had yielded no results. Which surely was a good thing—ithadto be a good thing.
Owl’s Threads meanwhile had been trapped in white terror, pure and unchanging for hours. Iseult did her best to comfort the child by twisting around to look at Owl, but it was a useless endeavor. Owl would not meet her eyes, and Aeduan always shoved Iseult’s head forward again.
To think that only yesterday Iseult had been the Puppeteer, reveling in her own strength. Now she was nothing except a prisoner to people she’d once loved. She would’ve laughed at that, if wool did not gag her, for this was how it always went: she ruined everything around her. She hurt whomever came near.
When at last the sun was setting, the horses carried them into a small clearing surrounded by old growth. Here, Aeduan called a halt. He pulled down Iseult, rough in a way the true Aeduan never was, and tied her to an ancient ash. Moments later, Owl was bound beside Iseult, and while Evrane and Aeduan built a cooking fire, the child pressed in as closely as she could. Her collar bumped Iseult’s hip bone. Shivers racked her tiny body.
Which was why the first thing Iseult said when at last Aeduan removed her gag was “The child needs a blanket.” Her voice was rusted, her mouth painfully dry. Still she repeated her words: “The child needs a blanket.”
It was the first clear thought she’d had all evening:Owl is too cold.And it carried with it the first streaks of anger. She clung to that. “She is freezing and must be warmed.”
Aeduan glanced at Owl, his Threads calculating. “Yes,” he said at last. Then he grabbed Iseult’s biceps and pushed her toward the campfire, where Evrane stirred halfheartedly at an iron pot and watched Iseult from across the flames. “Sit,” Aeduan ordered before turning back to untie the child.
“You look worse than when I saw you last.” Evrane grinned, a hateful look that did not belong on her face. “And you were quite broken then, surrounded by monks who wished you dead.”
Iseult didn’t react, even as she stoked the fire in her chest a bit hotter. “Who are you?” she asked as Evrane approached with a bowl of soup.
The woman smiled again, her eyes crinkling this time and her Threads pink with pleasure. “Ask the little one.” She waved at Owl, who sank clumsily to a cross-legged seat beside Iseult. “Do you remember us, Saria?” Evrane looked at Owl as she asked this. “Do you remember what you did?”
“Leave her.” Aeduan’s voice was low but commanding. “She’s just a child.”
“That is no child.” Evrane stepped closer. The bowl steamed in her hand. “How many lifetimes have you had since that day? How many lifetimes have you enjoyed while we lay trapped in darkness?”
“You talk too much.” Aeduan nudged Evrane with his boot, and the older woman did not resist. Her expression smug, her Threads satisfied, she offered Iseult the bowl. Iseult tried to accept it, but she was awkward with her wrists bound. Oily liquid sloshed.
And Evrane laughed. A hideous, brain-scratching sound while she returned to her place beside the fire.
Aeduan passed the second bowl to Owl, but the child only looked at Iseult with confusion. She had a bruise on her left cheek. New and purple. More fury swept through Iseult.
“Drink it,” she whispered. Then she demonstrated, sipping as best she could. Some leaked down her left cheek. Greasy from whatever fish had been boiled.
“She’s lucky,” Evrane commented, still watching Owl from across the fire. “If not for that collar, I would have to put her to sleep.” Her smug smile slid to Iseult. “The dark-giver knows how much fun that can be.”
Aeduan grunted, but if in amusement or annoyance, Iseult could not say. His Threads were once more unreadable, once more masked by avian shadows. Evrane’s Threads, however, were easy to interpret. She enjoyed taunting Iseult, just as she had enjoyed keeping her bound by nightmares at the Monastery.
Iseult kept her face blank as she swallowed more stew. She was stasis on the outside. Cold enough to make even her mother proud, while inside, she burned. These usurpers had chosen the wrong targets. They had imprisoned the wrong girl. Iseult was not the weakling of old. She didn’t cower, she didn’t break.
And she didn’t forget.
When she’d finished her food, Aeduan reclaimed her bowl and Owl’s. Like Iseult, the child had spilled soup down her cheeks. Iseult moved to wipe Owl’s face, but Evrane knocked her arm aside before gripping Owl by the hair. She tipped back Owl’s head and moved to stuff the wool gag back in.
Owl screamed.
And just like that, Iseult’s outward stasis crumbled. The fire in her chest erupted. The rage of the road, the rage of the Puppeteer.“Stop.”She leaped to her feet, hands clawed even as her wrists were bound. She would take Evrane’s Threads and she would destroy them. She didn’t care whose body this was, didn’t care what damage she caused.
Aeduan grabbed her. A rough slinging of his arms around her torso before he wrenched her away from Evrane. Brutal, hard, but Iseult could be brutal and hard too. She turned her claws on his face, her fingernails on his flesh. But he was stronger than she, and in mere heartbeats, he had her pinned to a tree.
Thetree she’d been tied to before, while at the campfire Owl wept, her tiny body dry-heaving against the wool. Evrane laughed and laughed.
“She’s choking.” Iseult grabbed at Aeduan’s chest. She didn’t fight him this time, didn’t resist the arm he pressed into her throat. Instead she simply begged. “Please,the child can’t breathe. Help her.”
“She’s fine,” Evrane spat, and she dragged Owl toward the ash tree. In moments, she had the girl tied up again. Still, Owl choked and cried.
Meanwhile, Aeduan simply watched. Simply waited. Only when the other monk was seated at the fire again did he show any reaction or make any move. Without releasing his hold on Iseult, he bent sideways and tugged at the wool in Owl’s mouth. He didn’t remove the gag entirely, but he pulled it far enough forward that Owl’s chest and throat relaxed.
“Thank you.” The words squeaked from Iseult’s throat, cracked and quiet—and in Nomatsi. She still burned inside, but it was a weaker flame. A dying flame. She settled into Aeduan’s grasp. Her head lolled against the tree, bark rough against her scalp. “Thank you,” she repeated.
