Her hands snaked out. She gripped him, knuckles whitening round his biceps. Then her eyes bored into his. Her teardrop scar glimmered. “Te varuje, Aeduan,” she said. “Te varuje.” She murmured other foreign words to him that the soul swimming inside him understood.

And that soul was trying to surface, trying to rise before Iseult turned away. Te varuje, te varuje. She squeezed tighter, her gaze unwavering, and Aeduan found it hard to look away. Impossible even.

“I do not understand you,” he finally said, breaking free from her grasp. “Your words are meaningless.” Then he straightened to his full height and stared down at her. The change in angle made her look smaller, weaker. Less like Her.

But Iseult merely smiled at Aeduan then. A slow thing. Feral in a way he had never seen her wear—as if she had some secret. Or as if this had been a game between them and she had come out the victor.

He did not like that smile. He wished she would stop.

And when he turned to leave, his movements quick, frustrated, a laugh chased after him. All the way out of the tent and into the dark night.

Iseult had always told Safi that there were some truths one did not need magic to recognize. The truths one always knew but kept hidden away. The truths one never stared at directly. But they always show up eventually, she’d said. And when they do, you just know.

Corlant’s words had been one of those moments. One of those truths hiding in plain sight that Iseult had refused to see or consider.

The daughter I thought had been taken from me.

She’d always wondered about her father. There were few choices within the Midenzi tribe, yet she’d never considered him an option … because she’d never wanted it to be him. He was the only one, though. He had always been the only one.

The monster inside her had to come from somewhere.

It was good to have an explanation, she decided as she stared at a shadowy tent ceiling. She had no idea where she was, but she was neither bound nor gagged. Outside, a camp clattered and clinked and breathed. Threads drifted past, oblivious in their own goals, existence. Iseult could take them if she wanted to.

She didn’t want to.

But she could.

She was the dark-giver, the Puppeteer. She was shadows through and through, and it was not her fault. She had been born this way. She had been made this way. Cursewitch blood ran in her veins, and the very Void itself lived inside her.

She had hovered in and out of consciousness for countless hours; Aeduan had been the first to fully rouse her. The usurper Aeduan. Not the true Aeduan. He was gone, but not out of reach. One more soul she supposed she ought to save.