For some unfathomable reason, the Threadwitch followed.

“You can avoid answering me for now, but I intend to keep asking.” There was an urgency in her voice. Not a stammer, like he’d caught slipping in a few times. This was a hot intensity.

And she was standing much too close. Entering his personal space in a way no one ever dared. “Back away,” he warned, “or I’ll assume you wish to join the training.”

“I won’t leave until you answer.” She moved another pace, and the challenge was there. In her eyes, in her stance, in her jaw.

A thrill rose in Aeduan’s gut. Then he swept her legs out from under her.

She saw it coming—she was ready for it—but Aeduan was too fast to stop. His foot swung out, and she fell.

Yet before her back could hit the grass, Aeduan caught her and eased her down. She grabbed his shirt in two white-knuckled fists as her back settled onto the dewy earth.

“You shouldn’t waste energy,” she said flatly, “on showing off.” No fear in her yellow Nomatsi eyes, just a slight flush on her cheeks.

Aeduan almost laughed at those flags of color—and at her words too, for this was not showing off. This was merely the most basic of Carawen training. To prove that point, he gripped her wrist with his opposite hand, dug his fingers into her tendons, and twisted inward. Her joints had no choice but to follow.

She released his shirt, but to his surprise, she didn’t shrink away or buck her hips in panic. She simply kicked her feet wide, hooking with her heels. Trying to pin him to the grass. Too slow, she was too slow. A beginning grappler facing a master.

Aeduan squeezed tighter, twisting harder and forcing her to roll sideways. In half a breath, she had pivoted completely onto her belly, her head swiveled back. Now there was no missing what burned in her eyes. No Threadwitch calm remained.

She had asked him for this; she knew it and she was furious.

“Why do you care,” Aeduan said, “if I left the Monastery?”

“I don’t … care … that you left.” The strain was back in her words, a sound Aeduan was a beginning to recognize as a sign she fought off a stutter. “I care … why. Do you not believe in the Cahr Awen anymore?”

Aeduan hesitated, caught off guard by her pointed question. Then he remembered.

“Ah. Monk Evrane has filled your held with nonsense, and now you think you are the Cahr Awen.” He released her, rolling off her back and hopping to his feet. He offered her his hand.

She didn’t take it. Just pushed onto her hands and knees, staring down at the grass. “Why … is it nonsense?”

“You are not a Voidwitch.” His words were inflectionless, yet they seemed to hit her like stones.

She flinched. Then said, “B-but … I … we healed the Well.”

Aeduan’s head tipped sideways. He inhaled a long breath of the humid, morning air while crickets whistled from the forest and, again, distant thunder rolled.

“Yes,” he admitted eventually, “someone healed it.” He had seen the waking Origin Well himself, yet it had not seemed fully intact—nothing like the Aether Well that Aeduan had spent most of his childhood living beside.

He said as much, adding, “It was as if the Well was only partially alive. As if only half of the Cahr Awen had healed it, and I do not think, Threadwitch, that you were that half.”

Now it was the girl’s turn to exhale, “Ah.” She scrabbled upright. Her body wobbled, her gaze jumpy and unfocused.

Aeduan could see right away that he had made a mistake. He should have said nothing. He should have let her keep hoping for a pointless, fruitless fantasy.

After all, an unhappy Threadwitch would only slow them.

“First lesson of a Carawen novice,” Aeduan offered, acting as if nothing had just passed between them. “Do not challenge someone more skilled than you.”

Iseult’s nostrils twitched. Her face hardened. The defiance, the determination—they were back, and against his will, Aeduan’s lips twitched upward.

“I didn’t challenge you,” she said coolly.

“Getting too close is considered a challenge in most cultures.”

“Then teach me.”

His eyebrows lifted.

“What you just did, pinning me like that. Teach me, so I won’t make the same mistake again.”

“We don’t have time for that.” He shook his head, and then with great deliberation, he turned his back on the Threadwitch.

She attacked.

And Aeduan smiled.

TWENTY-SIX

Despite her strongest attempts not to, Safi had fallen asleep. All through the night and into the next day, she’d slept. Food, a bath, and a taro game—it had been too much for her body, and she’d curled up beside Vaness on the bed. Her eyes had seared shut. Then the Hell-Bards and the empress and the Pirate Republic of Saldonica had drifted away.

Until the knock sounded at the door.

That jerked Safi awake so fast that she fell from the bed. Her limbs tangled in the new silk-wrapped ropes that Lev had, quite apologetically, tied around her ankles after the trip into Red Sails territory.

The Hell-Bards had knives and hatchets drawn before Safi could right herself, and by the time she did struggle to her feet, Lev—the only one in full armor—was creeping toward the door with a blade outstretched.

A second knock. Efficient, determined. Safi glanced at the empress, who sat calmly near the close-slatted shutters. Hands folded upon her lap, posture perfect atop the lone stool.