“Oh, but I think I do.” Purple flashed across his Threads, except it was not the purple of hunger—not quite. It was too pale for that, yet too dark to be desire. “I spent a thousand years in death, Dark-Giver. I have no plans to return.”

“And my body is the only means to keep you from it?”

“Your body is the only means to send me to it. Unless I control it.”

Iseult’s brain instantly sharpened at those words—and Aeduan instantly tensed. His Threads paled with panic. He hadn’t meant to say such words. Hadn’t meant to give her such power.

The weasel chittered in Iseult’s mind. Esme had heard him too, and she also marveled at the words’ significance. Iseult’s body could send Old Ones back to death. Was that why Corlant so desperately wanted her? But then where do the Threadstones fit in?

“Do not play games.” Aeduan stood taller. “You were a fool to leave me in that tent with a magic unfettered, and you are a fool for thinking I might help you.”

He lifted the knife toward her neck.

And Iseult curled back her lips. A false snarl came with surprising ease. After all, she hadn’t expected him to join her right away. “You are the weakest of them. You bow to Corlant. You fear him—he who was the first Hell-Bard. But I am more powerful than Corlant. I will be the one who destroys him in the end. And I will destroy you too, if you do not choose well.”

With each word Iseult spoke, Aeduan’s head tipped back more. Until he stared at her from the very bottoms of his eyes. His Threads melted between green concentration and rosy amusement. “You would never harm the monk’s body.”

“You have no idea what I would do.”

His head tipped even further. “You have already failed once against Corlant. Why would you succeed this time?”

“Is removing his eye a failure?”

Again, he sniffed. Again, the amusement winked over his Threads. And Iseult set her jaw. She was stasis. She was power. She was the dark-giver, and this Old One needed to see that she was the winning side as long as she kept her own body.

It was at that moment that Owl finally showed interest in Aeduan. Her Threads melted into the sunset shade of family as she scrabbled to her feet. The collar scraped against the tree. “You’re not like the first Aeduan,” she said in Nomatsi. “But you could be.” Then she smiled. A brilliant thing made all the more brilliant by her burning, loving Threads.

And though Aeduan couldn’t see such magic, he clearly sensed it. He swallowed. His nostrils flared, and Iseult knew instantly that the real Aeduan was listening. That he understood Owl’s Nomatsi words.

Iseult pounced. “Will you help us go west? To Praga?”