19. Vireth #2
The name passes through me in the Blight Mother’s voice and mine together, and I feel her satisfaction.
My lips curve—I didn’t wish for them to.
Fighting to pull the feral grin from my face is a losing battle, however.
I dig down into the only thing still wholly mine, past fear, past rage, past the tempting ease of letting her hatred carry me, and I hold fast to my damp, wilted, stubborn root of hope.
Do you truly think you can solve this problem? The Blight Mother says, her tone mocking. That you can find the root of the corruption and correct the imbalance without my interference? Without any bloodshed? Without these foolish humans reaping what they sow?
“I think it is worth trying,” I say, daring to hope that there might be a way through this without turning into the monster of bedtime stories.
Her answering laugh is boisterous and disbelieving.
Very well, Rot-Tainted One, she drawls, reaching for the detested moniker that haunted me throughout my life in Hollowmire. Go ahead and try. I look forward to your failure all the more—your despair and hopelessness will only add to the fruits of my wrath.
Before I can fully understand what’s happening, the gray mist parts like curtains drawing back with the first light of day—warm and light, and I find myself in control of my body once again.
The wyreboar skeleton collapses beneath me and I tumble to the ground, followed by an ear-splitting clattering of the bones of my skeletal army of supporters.
Turning back, I see them littering the field, glinting in the sun like the remains of an ancient battlefield.
Buoyed by hope and a fledgling sense of triumph, I march toward the city gates.
My first thought was to keep the Blight Mother at bay, somehow, but I never believed I would truly be able to reason with a goddess bent on vengeance.
As such, the panic begins to simmer at the realization that I have no true plan for rooting out the source of the corruption, as both Ursula and the Blight Mother referred to it.
If it’s hidden somewhere below the castle, that’s where I’ll need to start. But after listening to Renard’s accounting of the regent, I have a hard time believing that Arden will welcome me into the great hall with open arms and a willingness to let me explore.
Certainly there are other ways to sneak into a castle. With a pang of sadness, I think of Renard—hopefully following in our footsteps, and miss his company with a fierceness that helps steel my spine.
Renard would know what to do, I think—then huff a laugh at myself. Renard would probably walk straight up the castle steps and demand to see the regent, and expect to be obeyed. Failing that, I suppose he might try to fight his way through the guards.
The city gate looms large ahead of me, and I see the guards atop the wall running back and forth. The bell rings insistently, and I realize with a sudden start that my sleeping shift is back at the camp where Renard first divested me of it and I am as naked as the day I was born.
Panicked shouts erupt above me and I hear the measured marching of armored feet just inside the iron-studded wooden gate.
The massive doors lift with a bone-jarring clanking noise and the inner city of Valehar is revealed in slow measures, from its mud-caked cobblestone paths to its tumbledown market stalls, to its bedraggled, carved out people—most as skeletal as the bone army I’ve just left behind.
I seem to remember Valehar being referred to as a jewel of a kingdom—the best that the humans could conceive of, full of generous people and wondrous things.
The vision before me is as tarnished as a buried cloak pin—the grandeur long since worn away, thinned out from too many years of hunger and despair.
With a gathering unease, I begin to suspect that perhaps I won’t have to come up with a ruse to find myself invited to the castle.
A retinue of armored soldiers marches out from the open gate, meeting me before I can fully enter the city.
“I am Lady Vireth of Hollowmire,” I say, proud when my voice does not waver or drop. “I have come to entreat with Regent Arden.”
“Wretched fae,” someone whispers in the back.
“The Blight Mother come to devour us all,” whispers another.
Ah, I think. So, my reputation precedes me, after all.
I’m about to offer up an explanation for my appearance—for my nudity and somewhat disturbing escort—when someone circles behind me and thumps me on the back of the head.
Darkness welcomes me with open arms.
When I come to, I half expect to do so in the dream world of gray mist and grasping roots, but the Blight Mother, it seems, is still waiting for me to summon her.
It might have something to do with the fact that my wrists and ankles are bound in shackles and I find myself in some sort of cell—the dungeon, perhaps.
It’s cool and dark, and all I can hear at present is the soft guttering of a torch on the wall outside my cell, along with a steady drip of water echoing off the stone walls.
My head throbs insistently, sore from the knock I took at the front gate. I start to reach out with my magic to get a broader sense of my surroundings, only to be thwarted by a fresh pulse of pain at the back of my head.
From somewhere above comes the low squeak of hinges—a door creaking open—followed by soft footsteps on one—then two—flights of stone steps. The amber light of a torch filters down the adjacent hallway, bouncing off the walls until its bearer stands at the iron grate separating me from my freedom.
“I admit I expected a bit more from the Blight Mother,” the man says.
“The Blight Mother sleeps,” I snap. “I am Lady Vireth of Hollowmire—daughter of Queen Celene and King Rhainor.”
He lowers the torch from his face and I’m finally able to make it out—light brown hair, close-cropped. Dark brows set above a pair of deep blue eyes. Unblemished skin, a nondescript nose and chin, but full lips that seem horrifyingly familiar.
“And you—you must be Regent Arden,” I rasp. “And Renard’s brother.”
A muscle ticks in his temple, but otherwise there’s no indication of him hearing me at all. Suddenly, things begin to bridge together in my mind—Renard’s reluctance to discuss Arden, the weight of his guilt, his ever-constant shame, his exile… his reluctance to do what seemed so obvious to me.
“Different mothers,” he finally replies. “But yes, the same father. The fool never could keep it in his pants. A family trait, I’m afraid.”
His eyes rove over my nudity, making my skin crawl.
“So, he did find you,” he says. “But your presence here indicates he failed—again.”
“On the contrary, I’m here to help. Well, I was until you imprisoned me. Now I’m not so certain.”
Arden’s brows lift.
“Remarkably self-sacrificing of you.”
“If you’ll allow me my freedom, I can find the source of the famine and use my gifts to stop it.”
Arden’s eyes—so like Renard’s in every way but warmth—squint in confusion, or suspicion.
“What did Renard tell you about our… ah, misfortune here and your part in it?”
Until this moment, I hadn’t felt much worry beyond my location—surely it was some kind of mistake to imprison a fae courtier from Hollowmire, but of course it seemed logical given how I arrived.
An army of skeletal beasts almost certainly warranted an abundance of caution.
Now, however, the look on Arden’s face suggests I am missing some critical part of the matter.
Deep in my belly, I feel the presence of the Blight Mother, coiled and aware, yet too distant for me to reach.
“Your famine is unnatural,” I hedge. “None of your crops nourish. Everything lasts. Your people are starving, and your blight is spreading.”
Arden nods.
“And?” he prompts.
“Renard came to Hollowmire to find a cure—to find a way to break the curse,” I say.
“I suppose that is true, though I wouldn’t quite say it is the whole truth,” he says, examining his fingernails.
Dread snakes through my gut, easing its way outward through my limbs.
“What do you mean?” My heart skips several beats, my lungs seem to miss a few breaths. The anxiety of devastating news about to be delivered.
Arden smiles then, and in doing so looks absolutely nothing like Renard. It is cold and empty, and looks like a carnival mask.
“We have a cure,” he says. “It flows through your veins, fae.”
“Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. My magic has the power to undo the source of this land’s corruption. I simply need to find the heart of it,” I reply, somewhat exasperated.
“Not your magic, wretched woman. Your blood. How fitting that Renard kept the worst of it from you. He always won everyone over with his soft heart, but I saw it for what it truly was—a soft head. Never thinking things through, that one. Sending him into Hollowmire was a win-win for me—either he dies and I will have fulfilled my promise to my father that it be not by my hand, or he bleeds you like a stuck pig and your prophetic blood undoes the curse and sets the land to rights again.”
“You lie—Renard despises killing. And he would never agree to kill a woman.”
Arden tsks.
“You think he wouldn’t want his exile ended? A chance at a new life—to stop playing in the dirt to feed a handful of peasants and have the opportunity to exert real power?”
“No! He loves his farm—he hated court.”
“Of course he does,” Arden sneers. “But still, the promise of it sent him into the Verge, didn’t it? Perhaps you don’t understand his motivations as well as you think.”
“If he did, it was surely to help people.”
“I find it curious that you defend his willingness to end your life.”
“He didn’t, though. We’ve been traveling together for weeks now—he’s had ample opportunities.”
“To do what—slit your throat and carry your blood back to Valehar in buckets? Now I understand your appeal to him, you’re just as stupid as he is. Naturally, his job was to lead you here and empty your veins on Valehar soil.”