What a waste, Aeduan thought as he flipped a man to the cold earth. These Purists would all rise again, driven by Corlant’s command. Their deaths would be so much better for the dark-giver’s safety—and so much better for Aeduan’s own. Already, he smelled that the first woman had risen again. Already she’d resumed her steady hunt for Gretchya. But Aeduan could not go after her. There were too many. Purists of every age, every gender, every race.

He should be angry at the first Aeduan. He should hate this weakness and curse these muscles that betrayed. There was no order in mercy; only chaos in an already turbulent storm. And yet, with each twirl and kick, each grab and bend, Aeduan let the muscles’ memories rise higher. A strange warmth had settled over him. A foreign certainty that cemented around his bones and pumped his magic harder, faster.

More and more bodies fell. More and more bodies got up again. Until eventually he realized the storm had fallen away. He was no longer in the camp, but back at the spruce tree where he’d found Iseult and the child. There was the icy stream, snow vanishing into its dark waters, and on the bank Gretchya had dropped the young Threadwitch’s corpse.

She held her knife aloft again, except it was not aimed at Aeduan but at a figure in white stalking from the trees on the stream’s other side.

And it was only then that Aeduan caught the new scent against his magic. Crisp spring water and salt-lined cliffs. He did not think but simply moved, sprinting with heightened muscles past Gretchya, past the corpse stiff as stone, and then over the stream in a bounding leap.

He sank to the snow on the other side, catching himself on one knee, and pinned his gaze on the woman who had once been his mentor but was now as tormented as he.

Evrane smiled. A foreign thing that clashed with her blood-scent and grated against the memories pumping in Aeduan’s limbs. “I see you have changed sides.”

“I see you have not.”

Evrane sniffed and lifted her sword slightly. She had paused ten paces away, but now she advanced again, circling left. Aiming for a fallen tree that would give her higher ground.

Aeduan let her have it and did not rise.

She frowned, almost disappointed. “You will not fight me?”

“I do not need to.” It was true: he could control her blood. Choke off her heart, her brain. But just as the first Aeduan had let his mentor remain untouched, months ago on a Nubrevnan cliff, this Aeduan let the Old One be.

And though he told himself it was because the first Aeduan pushed through, whispering to him of mercy, he knew it was not true. Not entirely, at least, for there was only silence in his brain, save for a conscience newly grown.