So much she hadn’t seen. So much she’d gotten wrong. Soon she would be with Safi, though. Soon she would make it all right again.

She reached the Solfatarra’s end. Anything that wasn’t blanketed in white caught her blurry eyes: a tower, crumbled like the ruins from the camp. A river, snaking and dark. And finally a splintered hole in the forest where a flying machine might have crashed down.

Descend, she told the magic. And it obeyed—but with no finesse and the magic fading fast. Ten feet of careful descent, no faster than the snow falling around her. Then a lurch, a drop, an abandonment of organs somewhere above.

Iseult yelped; Esme squealed. Then they flipped in midair and Iseult caught sight of Corlant’s storm anew. Only once had she seen anything like it: two months ago on the Nubrevnan coast when Merik Nihar’s Threadbrother had cleaved. Kullen had been a full Airwitch, and his Threads had stood no chance against the distant severing call of the Puppeteer.

Now, though, it wasn’t Corlant who cleaved. It was everyone around him, it was the sky and the forest and the Solfatarra. He sucked them and sapped them, gathering so much power he would be unstoppable.

Yet in the three booming heartbeats while Iseult and Esme hung suspended, Iseult realized there must be a price for what he did. There must be a reason he hadn’t used such magic before, and whatever the reason or cost might be, Iseult would find a way to use it.

She flipped again, Esme screeching in her ear, and once more gazed upon a winter-calm forest disrupted only by a fallen machine—and by Threads too.

A hundred of them clustered on a snaking trail nearby, all with shadowy Hell-Bard hearts. They hunted for Safi.

Another plummet, another yelp, and now broken trees crossed Iseult’s vision. Then a clearing dotted with Threads—Safi’s Threads, as beautiful as they had been in the Loom and with Caden’s Threads pulsing beside her.

And with two Windwitches in Cartorran red too. Threads of violence spun over Threads of yellow magic.

At that moment, the last of Iseult’s stolen power bled away. She plunged straight down. Air beat against her, cold and frostbitten. The winds of gravity pounded, scraping her acid-raw skin.

One hundred feet until she and Esme hit the ground.

Iseult had to do something. Plan, plan—she needed a plan. And time, more time.

Esme shrieked in her ear. Eighty feet until they hit.

They were going to die. Gretchya’s choice and Alma’s sacrifice would be for nothing.

Seventy feet.

Safi looked up. Her Threads glared with surprise. Then fear. Then recognition and love. It was warm and unabashed. The bolstering Iseult so desperately needed.

Fifty feet.