Each movement was halting and crude, but the man could not resist—and the second hunter watched with too much confusion to intervene. It wasn’t until the man was almost to Aeduan that she finally called out in that language he didn’t understand. And it wasn’t until the man was behind Aeduan, a key grating into Aeduan’s locked chains, that she finally abandoned her post to hurry toward them.

But she was too late, too slow. By the time she was there, the chains had clanked to the ground. Aeduan was free.

He released the man’s blood, dumping it so fast the man collapsed. Not dead, but unconscious. Then he grabbed on to the woman. On to her blood and her body, his fingers clutching at her throat. His magic clutching at her veins.

She had just enough time to widen her eyes in horror before her breath choked off. Before she too went limp and hit the floor.

Aeduan smiled. Oh, what power indeed. No one could stop him, no one could contain him. Not even the Old One named Evrane. Not even Corlant with his Purists always around. There was only one person he could not control. A young woman with no blood-scent—a young woman with a power from the Void.

And a young woman who knew exactly what Aeduan could do, yet she’d said nothing and warned no one. Instead, she had taken the silver taler stained in his own blood so he could follow her. So he would follow her. Why? As long as she lived, she was a risk to him. She had to know he could not leave her free.

The reason didn’t matter, he decided as he reached the tent’s flap. He was coming for her, and neither she nor the first Aeduan, still wrestling within, could stop him.

If Iseult was lucky, she would never see Alma or Gretchya again.

It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to stop in the Solfatarra, no matter what accusations her mother might have flung at her. Gretchya and this tribe had been an interruption in her path, an inconvenience blocking her way. They had neutralized Aeduan for her; now Iseult didn’t need them; she could dismiss them as easily as Gretchya always dismissed her.

Each step away from the healer’s tent brought clarity to Iseult’s veins. Men had died at her fingertips, and people had whispered her name in fear. For once, on the road, she had been the one making the choices and the one making change.

But Gretchya and Alma didn’t see that—and they wouldn’t care if they did. They would only hate her more because it would be the final proof that Iseult was bound to the Void. That she would never fit into the tribe’s weave and never follow in Gretchya’s perfectly placed footsteps.