8. Chapter 8
T hey journeyed all day, stopping only when the sun began to set. Silence clung to them, each step and breath measured. No one dared waste energy on words.
At last, they found a small clearing. They collapsed in uneasy silence.
Ren sat with her back against a tree, knees drawn up, her body aching from the climb and the near-death they’d narrowly escaped. For a few blessed minutes, no one moved, each of them lost to their own thoughts.
It was Talen who finally broke the stillness.
“We can’t stay here long,” he said, scanning the woods as if he could already see what hid beyond the trees.
“Once night falls, these forests won’t be safe.
Too many creatures prowl after dark.” His gaze flicked briefly to Ren, before settling on the others.
“Rest while you can, then we move. We need to be far from here before the dark settles in.”
The words carried authority, but his once-pristine cloak was torn and muddied.
The dark waves of his hair had come loose in sweat-damp strands clinging to his temples.
A shallow cut traced the line of his jaw, smeared with dried crimson.
Even his emerald eyes were shadowed by exhaustion.
Yet somehow, standing there with his broad shoulders squared and his blade still steady at his side, he looked every inch the warrior prince .
Ren tightened her arms around her knees, staring at him from beneath damp strands of hair. He was right.
The thought of what might be watching from the shadows was enough to make her stand.
They trudged onward, the forest stretching ahead. Ren lowered her gaze to her boots, watching them rise and fall in a steady rhythm. One… two… three… She counted silently, forcing her mind to focus on the numbers instead of the ache in her legs or the gnawing uncertainty twisting in her gut.
When she reached ten, she started over. Again and again. Each set of ten became its own small victory, a way to carve the endless trek into something she could control – one step closer to Sela’s home, and farther from Mount Solfira looming behind them.
Then the trees opened to a clearing.
Once farmland, the land now lay bare and lifeless. No livestock roamed. No crops grew in the field. Just barren dirt and the outline of a small home.
Sela ran.
Elira cursed and broke into a run. Ren followed without question.
The building leaned crooked, a structure that felt more like a memory of home than a home itself. The front door hung slightly ajar. Ren stepped into the threshold.
The hearth bore only blackened coal. No warmth lingered. The air inside was dry and brittle, like even the walls had forgotten how to breathe. Ren slowed, boots echoing against the worn floorboards.
And then she saw a woman sitting hunched in a rocking chair, staring blankly at the wall as though she could see through it. Her eyes were glassy and distant. Her skin was the color of ash. She looked like she had been carved from dust and held together by sheer memory.
Or what remained of it.
The signs were unmistakable – the brittle bones, the hollow gaze, the slow, rattling breath that scraped through the woman’s chest like wind rustling through dead leaves.
They called it the Witherblight, a name that sounded almost poetic until you saw what it did to people .
It began as a fever. Nothing too alarming. But then the skin turned pallid with sickly gray veins. Muscles seized, magic unraveled. Everything began to rot from the inside out.
The Witherblight had already claimed hundreds of lives in Lytharien.
Whole villages went silent, windows boarded, bodies buried in pits the ground refused to keep.
Some said it came from the ships from Windhaven, carried in by wind.
Others whispered it was the gods punishing the realm.
But the truth didn’t matter when the coughing started and the eyes dimmed.
There was only one cure. The Verdant Elixir, brewed from rare fae-grown herbs and forged by magic, closely guarded by the royal court and priced like it was spun from stardust and gold.
And for a human with no name and no coin, it might as well have been a myth.
Ren and Elira exchanged a glance. Ren saw the flicker of emotions in Elira’s eyes, a mixture of recognition and hesitation.
Elira reached for her scarf and tied it across her nose and mouth.
Ren mirrored the gesture, tugging her cloak higher, jaw tight.
Every instinct screamed to leave, to run before the sickness took root in their lungs.
Nobody knew what spread the Witherblight.
Some theorized it spread in the air; others whispered that it spread through touch contact.
But neither of them moved.
They had seen worse. Done worse.
Talen didn’t flinch or look away. He didn’t lift a hand to cover his face, and he didn’t take a step back from the stench of death.
Of course he stayed.
What did he have to fear, with access to the elixir no farther than a command? While others had done far worse to get their hands on a vial.
Ren had heard stories of how one man carved out his own kidney to sell for a vial. How a woman once approached a soldier at the border post with trembling fingers and a ring in her palm. “It’s all I have,” she’d whispered. The soldier had only stared before closing the gate in her face.
Ren saw it for herself – a little boy in Briarstead waiting outside the apothecary doors from dawn to dusk, clutching a handful of wildflowers.
When the fae merchants emerged, he’d offered them up with both hands, voice trembling.
“For my sister. She’s really sick. Just one bottle, please.
” The flowers slipped from his grasp when they stepped over him .
The fae merchants hadn’t even paused their conversation to look at the boy.
Ren clenched her teeth and turned her focus back to Sela.
“Mama…” Sela whispered. “I’ve come home.”
For a few moments, the woman didn’t stir. Then, her eyes met Sela’s.
“Who are you?” the woman rasped. Then her tone turned sharp, rising into a hoarse shriek, “Leave at once! Leave at once, I say !”
Sela just sank to her knees, gripping her mother’s hands, as if holding tight might anchor the woman back to her.
Ren had seen a lot in her life. But this?
This was cruelty.
Because the Witherblight didn’t just kill the body. It unraveled the mind .
First came the trembling, subtle at first, like a chill that wouldn’t leave the bones. Then the fever, burning high enough to strip reason from the mind. And then, the forgetting.
Not just names whispered in passing, but the ones spoken at altars, sworn in love.
Faces blurred, even the ones held closest. You could glance at your reflection in a bowl of water and not recognize the stranger staring back.
Some would clutch their children, tracing familiar cheekbones, only to recoil because the little face before them was only a stranger’s.
And eventually, even yourself unraveled. Memories shed until nothing remained but the emptiness where a person had been.
It was like watching someone wither away in pieces. And for a girl like Sela, losing her mother while she was still breathing was a wound Ren wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy.
Ren swallowed hard, blinking against the tightness in her chest. No one should have to go through that. Especially not a girl who was so young.
“It’s me, Mama,” Sela whispered gently. “ Sela . I couldn’t get the medicine, but I’ll go again tomorrow. I’ll bring it back. I promise.”
That was when it clicked for Ren.
The theft the fae guards joked about. Sela hadn’t been stealing for herself; she’d risked everything for a vial of the Verdant Elixir.
The woman rose. Her knees wobbled beneath the weight of her frame, finger shaking as she pointed accusingly. “I don’t know you. I don’t want you here. I want to be at peace. I just want peace …” Her words dissolved into a choked sob. Then her legs buckled.
Sela caught her before she hit the floor. But the moment her hands touched her mother’s skin, the woman’s flesh gave beneath the touch, peeling. Her body was collapsing inward, being eaten away from within.
Sela’s mother’s breathing had slowed to shallow gasps, her eyes no longer tracking movement and fixed on something beyond this world.
Elira found a thin blanket and gently laid it over her frail form.
Sela guided her to a cot overlooking the field outside, where no doubt cows or horses once roamed.
Sela smoothed the blanket over her mother’s legs, tucking it in like she had done countless times in better days.
Sela lowered herself to the floor beside the cot, folding her knees beneath her, and laced her fingers together. “May the Veil be kind,” she whispered. “May the stars lead your way to rest. May your memories greet you on the other side.”
Ren stood in the corner, arms crossed over her chest. Her gaze shifted to the prince.
Talen stood as still as a shadow, eyes locked on the woman. There was something about the tension in his jaw, the quiet furrow of his brow; it was an observation warping into calculation.
Ren felt the air shifting. She sucked in a breath.
Magic.
It bled into the room like a living thing. It wasn’t flame or wind, not earth or sky. It was something older. Wilder . Talen’s expression remained unreadable, but his hands were clenched behind his back.
Then, as if pulled by an invisible thread, the old woman’s eyes flicked open.
And locked straight onto his.
Is he about to hurt her?
Ren lurched forward, ready to throw herself between them. But Talen only lifted a hand, palm out, a silent command to wait . His gaze never wavered from the woman’s, every muscle gone still, as if some unseen force held the air taut between them.
In the next breath, the woman’s hand reached blindly and found her daughter’s hand. A final breath rattled from her lips. A gasp that fluttered, then stilled .
Sela choked on a sob but held her mother’s hand tightly, tears spilling down her cheeks. She kissed the woman’s knuckles and bowed her head over them. And then, as if pulled from the depths of her grief, she lifted her chin.
“I will end this,” she declared. “I don’t know how yet. But I will. I’ll help stop this sickness. I’ll make them pay for hoarding the cure. For letting you die like this.”
Her small frame quivered with fury now, not just grief. Her fists curled around the blanket, her tear-streaked face lifted to them all with a fire that didn’t belong to a child. “One day,” she vowed vehemently, “ no one else will be left to suffer like she did.”
Silence echoed in the space she left behind.
And no one, not even Talen, dared speak against her.