Aeduan.” She’d never said his name aloud. She was surprised by how easily it rolled off the tongue.He looked back, his expression inscrutable as always. But laced with … with something. Hope, she found herself thinking, though she knew it was fanciful.Aeduan was not the sort of man to ever hope.

This young man had stalked Iseult through Veñaza City. Had smiled cruelly at her, his crystal eyes swirling red. Then he had saved her too, in Lejna. With a salamander cloak and a single phrase: Mhe varujta. Trust me as if my soul were yours.

He was younger than Iseult had imagined. No older than twenty, if she had to guess. Yet he felt old, with his voice so gruff. His language so formal.It was in the way he carried himself too, as if he’d walked for a thousand years and planned to walk a thousand more.

This girl had fought Aeduan—tricked him and broken his spine. She had battled city guards and faced cleaved Poisonwitches head-on, yet never had Aeduan seen her show fear.

Aeduan didn’t contradict her. She was what she was, and fighting one’s nature only brought pain. Sometimes death too.

We will need to move fast. Are you up for that?”She snorted, and when Aeduan glanced back, he found her face had softened. The slightest—almost imperceptible—glint of mischief hovered there now.“I think we both know the answer to that, Bloodwitch.” She stalked past him, her chin high. Challenging. “The question will be if you can keep up.”Then she broke into a run, Aeduan broke into a run after her.

This was not the Threadwitch who had cornered Aeduan beside a bear trap. Nor the Threadwitch who’d sparred with him that very morning. This was a woman changed.Aeduan knew because he’d been there before himself. Soon she would learn—just as he had—that there was no outrunning the demons of one’s own creation.

Forever after today, she would flex and furl her fingers, precisely as she did right now. She would roll her wrists and crack her neck. She would stretch her jaw and wonder who might next die at her hands. Who might not get away.And forever after tonight, she would be hungry to outrun the nightmares. She would race and she would fight and she would kill again, just to make sure the ghosts were real.They were.

Who betrays whom first.