10. Vireth #2
“Renard, I have antlers growing from my skull. I understand that you know very little about the fae and our history, culture, and biology, but you are no stranger to injuries or wounds. What’s happening to me—to my body—perhaps even to my very spirit, I believe you would say—is not something that just happens to fae women of a certain age. ”
Despite the censure and sarcasm in my words, despite the prophetic yoke around my neck and the rotting wyreboar carcass behind us in the cave, the corner of his mouth almost lifts.
The sight of an almost-smile hurts unexpectedly, like a splinter lodging beneath my fingernail, except the feeling sits between my ribs.
It’s devastating to feel like I’m losing the mutual familiarity we only just achieved—the kind that only travel companions find when you’re enduring more than your fair share of hardship and you’re determined to move forward anyway.
The familiarity of hours spent together, trying to understand one another.
Because now, there is distance between us.
It’s not physical distance, because even now he sits scarcely six feet away.
It’s something worse. He saw what I did to that creature.
I saw it, too. I suspect I will continue to see it every time I close my eyes, every time I sink into a dreamless sleep.
And no matter how carefully he speaks to me now, I sense some part of him is measuring the shape of this new horror against the woman he thought he was coming to know.
I lower my gaze to the fire, humiliated as black tears burn behind my eyes, threatening to spill.
“I frightened you,” I say quietly. “I am frightening to you.”
Renard is silent for long enough that heat creeps unpleasantly up my neck.
After interminable moments, he says, “It takes much more than this to frighten me, Vireth. I have had a trying time in your realm, yes, but my years are a catalog of horrors and regrets. If I am being honest, the things that frighten me the most are all the times and places I have failed. I failed my wife. I failed my infant sons. I failed my king, and my people. I failed my men. And now, today, I fear I have failed you.”
Blood rushes in my ears—my heart races like a runaway horse.
He failed… me? He leans forward slightly, forearms resting against his knees.
He’s shucked his bracers with much of the rest of his armor and pushed back his sleeves to attend the fire.
It is a strange time for me to notice the veins and tendons along his bare forearms and the tanned skin dusted with fine gold hairs.
Why can’t I seem to recall what his skin felt like?
I’ve been tending his wounds for days. And why does it suddenly matter so much that I find myself swearing to memorize the feeling of his skin the next chance I have?
“Vireth, when that thing attacked us,” he continues.
“I was unable to protect you. You must understand that my life has always been about protecting others. And so to find myself unable to do what I believe I’ve been put on this earth to do…
that shame will stay with me until death.
I thought we were going to die, and then suddenly the very air around us changed, and the beast…
” He stops, searching for words. “It was as though everything inside its earthly body simply failed at once. This power you wield… it’s like...
Well, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. ”
I stare into the flames, fighting against everything in me that wants to shrug into the mantle of shame I’ve been accustomed to wearing for all my life.
“I didn’t want to do it. You understand that much about me, right? But it’s more than that. It’s not only that I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t decide to do it, either. It simply… happened.”
“I know. And I would not have survived this without you, many times over now. And if I could bear your guilt about ending this creature’s life, and the others, I would. I would take it up in a heartbeat.”
Of all the things I expected Renard to say, those words would be the last.
The cave falls silent again. Outside, the wind moans through the trees with a long low sound that reminds me unpleasantly of a grieving choir.
It’s been years since I prayed to the gods—really prayed—but I murmur a quick one to the Death Goddess to lead the poor thing to the green fields and blue caves of the spirit realm.
I rub my palms against my breeches, trying unsuccessfully to rid myself of the lingering sensations from earlier.
I can still feel the wyreboar beneath my magic…
the rapid collapse of its flesh and the ensuing hunger of the fungal filaments feasting on its body.
I have spent years suppressing my abilities with tinctures and teas and careful self-denial because my uncontrolled magic frightened people.
Because women with power were tolerated only when that power remained useful, ornamental, or easily governed.
Decay cannot be controlled. It can only be forestalled for a time.
And now this thing inside me has begun breaking through anyway, clearly tired of being restrained.
My skin has felt too tight these past few days, as though my body can no longer contain whatever I am becoming.
At odd moments heat rushes through me so abruptly I feel feverish, breathless, half feral beneath my own skin.
My antlers begin to throb again, sending a headache radiating through my skull.
I close my eyes briefly, trying to breathe through the discomfort.
“You are not a monster, Vireth,” Renard says softly.
My eyes fly open at that—the first time someone has sworn as much, and he has said it when I am at my most monstrous. Gods, what I wouldn’t give for that to be the truth—for that to be my truth. The more I become the Blight Mother, the more I fear there will be no turning back from it.
“Perhaps not yet,” I reply. “But I fear I am to become one.”
He shakes his head, poking at the fire again.
“I have met my share of monsters—most of them lack your introspection. Real monsters, Vireth, are not consumed with worry about the power they wield. They simply wield it and convince themselves that the consequences are not their responsibility.”
“Perhaps. But even if there’s some chance I might… I need to find the seer.”
Renard studies me carefully. “Are you so certain she will have the answers you seek?”
“She was the one who set this all into motion. She knew things she should not have known, or suggested as much. She recited prophecy in front of half the nobility.”
Renard grunts, poking the fire with a stick to reinvigorate the quelling flames. “And half the court was drunk enough to believe it?”
A weak smile tugs briefly at my mouth. Gods help me, even now he can make me laugh.
“You should hear all of it,” I admit quietly.
His expression sharpens. “All of what?”
“The prophecy.”
Snow skitters across the cave entrance in a burst of white. I pull my cloak tighter around myself before continuing.
“Shall I recite it for you? I have it memorized word for word, and you may thank my mother’s rhetoric tutor for that,” I say, clearing my throat.
“Blight Mother. Rot-Born Queen. From the rot of mercy comes the mother of endings. Crowned in hunger. Swollen with what the world casts away. The green will fail her first. Then stone. Then bone. What is buried will answer her call, and what yet lives will beg to follow. By heart of stone, she may be undone. A curse unraveled, another begun. She will love the world. And in loving it, she will unmake it. The ancient ones call her forth from slumber. The Blight Mother awakes. She heralds the end.”
Renard says nothing, and I laugh shakily to fill the ensuing silence.
“Rather dramatic, really. One does miss the days when prophecies merely warned of bad harvests or slighted battle gods who didn’t approve of their sacrifices.”
“So, this is it, then? She names you the Blight Mother and you just… turn into a goddess sent to curse the world?”
The fire pops softly. My gaze returns to the remains of the beast near the back of the cave and my fingers tremble. I wish I could stop shaking.
“She named me the Blight Mother, Renard.”
The title settles heavily into the cave, even the wind outside seems quieter afterward. Renard’s gaze fixes on me with unnerving intensity.
“And you’re certain she meant you.”
“I think antlers are generally an ominous sign.”
“Vireth.”
“I rotted an animal from the inside out!”
He sighs, scratching at the dark blonde growth of beard on his jaw.
“You were defending yourself—and me.”
“Yes, well, forgive me if that doesn’t comfort me when I wake every evening with horrifying night terrors from it.”
He exhales slowly through his nose, the expression on his face inscrutable. I feel as though I can see him trying to reconcile the woman beside the fire with whatever nightmare stories he has heard about the Blight Mother.
Fear begins curling through me so swiftly I almost feel dizzy.
I know this moment—know it intimately. It’s the realization that someone is looking at you differently than they did before.
Gods, I cannot endure that from him—I don’t want to.
He is the first person—man—I met after leaving Hollowmire Castle and my previous life behind.
If he begins to treat me the way they all did, it might mean I cannot escape the fears of the world for being what I am.
The heat inside me surges violently and I suck in a breath, struggling to keep my chaotic emotions under control—the fear, the shame, the panic, the loneliness.
The desperation for acceptance, for validation.
The bone-deep need to simply be… seen. Everything rises up inside me, threatening to drag me below like the world’s loneliest tidal bore.
Another sharp crack sounds near my temple and pain explodes through my skull.
“Oh, gods!”
I double over, clutching my head.
“Vireth!”