Windwitch (The Witchlands, #2)

by Susan Dennard

The truth was, though, that she was stuck. On a ship. In the middle of nowhere. With only the Empress of Insipid for company.

Stasis, Iseult det Midenzi told herself for the thousandth time since dawn. Stasis in your fingers and in your toes.

Iseult and Safi had gone in the Origin Well of Nubrevna. They had touched its spring, and an earthquake had rolled through the land. I have found the Cahr Awen, Monk Evrane had then told Iseult and Safi, and you have awoken the Water Well.

For Safi, that title made perfect sense. She was sunshine and simplicity. Of course she would be the Light-Bringer half of the Cahr Awen. But Iseult was not the opposite of Safi. She wasn’t starshine or complexity. She wasn’t anything at all. Unless I am. Unless I can be.

Though we cannot always see the blessing in the loss. Strength is the gift of our Lady Baile and she will never abandon us.

The crimson and black pigments of his body had faded, never to be refreshed, as had the gray cavernous backdrop behind him—and the words below the Fury’s clawed feet: Why do you hold a razor in one hand? So men remember that I am sharp as any edge. And why do you hold broken glass in the other? So men remember that I am always watching.

“And this,” Merik murmured to himself, “is who that woman mistook me for.” This was the monster she had seen when she’d looked upon him.

My gut told me you weren’t dead, she’d explained to Merik, so I searched and searched and searched until I found you.

Will she become her mother, the vizers all wondered, the queen by blood but with madness in her head? Or will she become her father, the Nihar vizer who now rules as regent and for whom command comes as easily as breath?

Vivia already knew the answer. She knew it because she’d decided long ago to be a Nihar through and through. She would never become her mother. She would never let madness and darkness claim her. She would be the ruler the High Council expected.

“The Purists,” Vivia said, “will turn our people against the use of magic.” She launched right to march around the table. “They consider magic a sin, yet magic—witches!—are the one thing that have kept Nubrevna safe and independent. You, Linday, are a Plantwitch! Yet you see no problem in giving our citizens and our soldiers to the Purists?”

The paladins we locked away will one day walk among us. Vengeance will be theirs, in a fury unchecked, for their power was never ours to claim. Yet only in

death, could they understand life. And only in life, will they change the world.

A man is not his mind. A man is not his body. They are merely tools so that a man may fight onward.

“Destined for greatness?” he murmured as he slipped on his shirt. “I know you always said that, Kull, but look at me now. I should be dead, and you should still be alive.”

Except that in the silence came a thought. Something Aunt Evrane had always said whenever she scolded Merik: The Fury never forgets, Merik. Whatever you have done will come back to you tenfold, and it will haunt you until you make amends.

It was time to make amends. Time to bring justice to the wronged. Time to bring punishment to the wicked.

Yet only in death, could they understand life. And only in life, will they change the world.

Yes, the buildings tumbled more tightly together as they progressed deeper into the lowlands. And yes, there were more people crammed here than most cities, yet nonetheless, the Baedyed-controlled part of Saldonica was undeniably not a slum.

Burned hair and smoking flesh. Autumn pyres and mercy screams. A Firewitch. Aeduan’s skin prickled. Fire … unsettled him.

It was like the Nomatsi skipping rhyme. Dead grass is awakened by fire, dead earth is awakened by rain. One life will give way to another, the cycle will begin again.

She was broken. She was useless. She was the pointless half of a

friendship. The one who would live forever in shadows, no matter what she did. No matter whom she fought.

She clasped it tight, her fingers lacing between his. Together they ran.

Iseult nodded, as if this plan suited her. For some reason, the movement bothered him. Her easy acceptance made his lungs stretch tight.

Then Merik Nihar set off, content with no riches, no gold, and no crown, as long as he had friends by his side.