It’s only half her voice. The other half is a dark, deep, visceral tone I know all too well, reverberating up from some jet bell nestled inside my very being. Varia and the hunger say the same words at the same time, and the sound—the meaning—courses through me like icy river water, locking me in place. I will follow her. I will follow them—her and the hunger—until I can follow no more.

I spin again on my heels, this time toward her, and like I’m outside my body, hovering above it and observing it like a play on a stage, I watch myself obediently trot after the princess farther and farther into the crowd.

She is my witch.

Every single step of my boots on the cobblestones beats it into me like a terrible, inescapable drumbeat.

Princess Varia d’Malvane of Cavanos—the Laughing Daughter—is my new witch.

3

3

The White Wyrm
and the
Ironspeaker

“Do you know much about Old Vetris, Zera?” Princess Varia asks as we reach the very back of the South Gate crowd—where the edge of the cobblestone city meets the foot of the white wall that encapsulates Vetris proper. It looms, gargantuan and glowing with unholy light beneath the three moons, but my eyes can barely look at its beauty before my feet steer me uncontrollably after Varia.

Under the effects of the command, I can still move my face and my neck independently. But the rest of my body feels as if it’s fallen asleep, like the muscles I move aren’t really my own. I can both feel them moving and not feel them. I got drunk once, on cheap mulled mead Nightsinger was brewing behind her cabin, and that feeling of being absolutely haggard drunk is the closest thing I can compare it to. Here but not here. Aware but unable to do anything but gnaw my lip and answer. I’d love to hurl every insult under the sun at her, but fear is starting to win over my anger. What if I’m under her sway forevermore?

My vocal cords are free, at least—a small mercy. I’m not sure what I’d do if I couldn’t constantly voice my flawless opinion.

“No,” I say.

The princess stops just before a brass door in the wall, flanked on either side by dour-faced lawguards. I’ve never been this close to the wall before, at least not from the inside—so I’m surprised to see it has doors at all. Now that I think about it, these doors must be how the guards get up the wall to patrol—the single scaffolding at South Gate wouldn’t be enough to traffic every guard.

Princess Varia clears her throat and speaks, softly but clearly. “The Laughing Daughter calls.”