Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

by Susan Dennard

For the final mile into the city, she had walked with her arm underneath Aeduan. Owl hadn’t liked that. Aeduan had liked it even less, and Iseult had liked it least of all.

A man is not his mind, he tried to tell himself. The first lesson every monk learned. A man is not his body. They are merely tools so that a man may fight onward.

The truth was that acting like two bitches sniffing bottoms in an alley was much easier than the polite diplomatic nothings Vivia’s mother had taught her.

The Nihar rage, his family called it. But in anger there could be no listening. In rage, there could be no sight. And in fury, there could be no understanding.

But one need not be evil to become it.

Later, he would wonder how he knew it was her. Later, he would question if maybe his magic had been there all along and the silence of her blood had called to him. But

From the day she had stabbed Aeduan in the heart, that heart had become hers—and she would not let this be his end.

Iseult’s lungs shrieked. She wanted air. She wanted light. She wanted life. But here, in the shadows of the Well, she wanted Aeduan more.

Yet in that moment, as Iseult held fast to Aeduan, as she squinted against the brightness and willed his eyes to open, she saw red. Scarlet and true and spooling around them. Red that was not blood. Red Threads that led from her heart and ended inside of his. Impossible, she thought.

The shark will eat you whether you acknowledge it or not.

She opened her eyes. Golden eyes streaked with green. The only eyes that had ever met Aeduan’s without looking away. His heart fluttered at the sight of them.

Distant, echoing sounds that tangled inside her gut. That seemed to call to her, even as she knew such a thing made no sense.

But it was him. Safi would know Merik’s face anywhere. She would know his eyes anywhere. True, true, true.