Pain sizzled through her body. Limestone cut her arms, her face, her legs. She snapped out her hands to grip the cliff—just as Iseult slammed into the rocks beside her.
“Ignite,” Safi grunted. The word that triggered the rope’s magic was lost in the roar of ocean waves—but the command hit its mark. In a flash of white flame that shot up faster than eyes could travel, their ropes ignited …
And disintegrated. A fine ash kicked away on the wind. A few specks settled on the girls’ kerchiefs, their shoulders.
“Arrows!” Iseult roared, flattening herself against the rock as bolts zipped past. Some skittered off the rocks, some sank into waves.
One sliced through Safi’s skirt. Then she’d managed to dig her toes in cracks, grab for handholds, and scramble sideways. Her muscles trembled and strained until at last, she and Iseult had ducked beneath a slight overhang. Until at last, they could pause and let the arrows fall harmlessly around them.
The rocks were wet, the barnacles vicious, and water swept at the girls’ ankles. Salty drops battered over and over. Until eventually the arrows stopped falling.
“Are they coming?” Safi rasped at Iseult.
Iseult shook her head. “They’re still there. I can feel their Threads waiting.”
Safi blinked, trying to get the salt from her eyes. “We’re going to have to swim, aren’t we?” She rubbed her face on her shoulder; it didn’t help. “Think you can make it to the lighthouse?” Both girls were strong swimmers—but strong didn’t matter in waves that could pummel a dolphin.
“We don’t have a choice,” Iseult said. She glanced at Safi with a fierceness that always made Safi feel stronger. “We can toss our skirts left, and while the guards shoot those, we dive right.”
Safi nodded, and with a grimace, she angled her body so she could remove her skirt. Once both girls had their brown skirts free, Iseult’s arm reared back.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Ready.” Safi heaved. The skirt flew out from beneath the overhang—Iseult’s right behind it.
And then both girls stepped away from the rock face and sank beneath the waves.
* * *
As Iseult det Midenzi wriggled free from her sea-soaked tunic, boots, pants, and finally underclothes, everything hurt. Every peeled-off layer revealed ten new slices from the limestone and barnacles, and each burst of spindrift made her aware of ten more.
This ancient, crumbling lighthouse was effective for hiding, but it was inescapable until the tide went out. For now, the water outside was well above Iseult’s chest, and hopefully that depth—as well as the crashing waves between here and the marshy shoreline—would deter the Bloodwitch from following.
The interior of the lighthouse was no larger than Iseult’s attic bedroom over Mathew’s coffee shop. Sunlight beamed in through algae-slimed windows, and wind tugged sea foam through the arched door.
“I’m sorry,” Safi said, her voice muffled as she squirmed from her sodden tunic. Then her shirt was completely off, and she tossed it on a windowsill. Safi’s usually tanned skin was pale beneath her freckles.
“Don’t apologize.” Iseult gathered her own discarded clothes. “I’m the one who told you about the card game in the first place.”
“This is true,” Safi replied, her voice shaking as she hopped on one foot and tried to remove her pants—with her boots still on. She always did that, and it boggled Iseult’s mind that an eighteen-year-old could still be too impatient to undress herself properly. “But,” Safi added, “I’m the one who wanted the nicer rooms. If we’d just bought that place two weeks ago—”
“Then we’d have rats for roommates,” Iseult interrupted. She shuffled to the nearest water-free, sunlit patch of floor. “You were right to want a different place. It costs more, but it would’ve been worth it.”
“Would’ve been being the key words.” With a loud grunt, Safi finally wrestled free of her pants. “There’ll be no place of our own now, Iz. I bet every guard in Veñaza City is out looking for us. Not to mention the…” For a moment, Safi stared at her boots. Then, in a frantic movement, she tore off the right one. “So will the Bloodwitch.”
Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch. The words pulsed through Iseult in time to her heart. In time to her blood.
Iseult had never seen a Bloodwitch before … or anyone with a magic linked to the Void. Voidwitches were just scary stories after all—they weren’t real. They didn’t guard Guildmasters and try to gut you with swords.
After wringing out her pants and smoothing each fold on a windowsill, Iseult shuffled to a leather satchel at the