22. Vireth
Vireth
The sight doesn’t make any sense. When Renard falls, I expect him to catch himself—to twist away from the broken wood with his usual grace.
Renard is not the kind of man to be felled by a coward with a broken plank of wood—he has survived wars, and monsters, and grief that would demolish lesser men.
Yet he does fall—his knees striking first, then his hands—those same hands that only days ago were wringing pleasure from me like I’d never known.
All the strength seems to pour out of him at once, and he drops hard onto his side among the splintered scaffold planks and the white lace of mycelium threading through the stones.
The sound he makes is half whisper, half grunt—and it is too small, far too small.
Arden stands above him with the axe handle in his bloody hand, panting, eyes wild, his mouth curled upward in triumph.
Blood runs over his fingers—Renard’s blood.
Blood that I have tasted in the throes of passion, that I need to be flowing through his veins right now, but instead is spilling from the wound between his shoulder blades, spreading out through the back of his shirt.
I stare, unseeing and unaccepting. The Blight Mother says nothing. For once, the ancient goddess curling between my bones offers nothing—no sharp retort or angry tirade about the nature of men or failing kingdoms. She is just… quiet.
“No,” I say, the sound broken before it ever leaves my lips.
Arden’s mad, manic smile widens. He looks from Renard to me, and I know he wants me to see what he has wrought—to feel what it means to have everything suddenly snatched away.
He wants me to understand that there are always ways to hurt a creature like me.
If my skin will not split, if my blood will not run, if axes rot before they reach my neck, then he will simply destroy whatever I have been foolish enough to love.
“No,” I say again. This time it tears out of me, and I run.
The courtyard heaves beneath my feet, stones broken and slick with spores, and I slip and scrabble over the rot and the rubble.
Nibblebones shrieks from somewhere nearby, but I cannot see her.
I see only Renard, the crumpled mess of him, his broad shoulders gone slack and his beautiful silver and gold hair matted with blood and dirt.
I drop beside him so hard pain shoots up both my knees, but it fades beneath this new, horrifying, greater pain that I know will not heal—with time, or ever.
“Renard,” I sob.
My hands hover over his back because there is so much blood, and this time, I don’t know where to press and for once—gods, for once—all this power inside me is useless.
I can split stone and I can rust iron, and I can thrust my will beneath a kingdom and tear out a spell hiding in its roots, but I cannot put blood back in his body.
I cannot unmake the wound. I press my palms over it anyway, warmth slicking between my fingers.
A sound comes from me, high and wounded, and I realize dimly that I am sobbing before I feel the tears on my face.
“No, no, no. You foolish human, you do not get to do this.”
Renard draws a breath, and it catches halfway, the sound wheezing and bubbling beneath his precious, precious blood.
His eyes open with effort, searching until they find mine. I used to think his eyes were simply blue, but they aren’t. They are glaciers carved by sea water. They are the sky after a storm has spent itself. They are the blue of a sky that would not dare summon a cloud.
“Vireth,” he says. My name breaks in his mouth.
I try to roll him, but he gives the smallest shake of his head. The motion costs him—I see it in the tightening around his eyes, the pallor creeping beneath the gray in his beard.
“Don’t move,” he murmurs, blood dripping down his lips. “Please.”
Oh, gods. He’s smiling at me like he knows what’s inevitable—like he is already resigned to this fate.
That small, ruined smile undoes me more thoroughly than a scream.
“Vireth, I…” he begins. “I’m sorry. I should have come sooner.”
“No, please! Don’t do this, Renard—I forbid it!”
He huffs a laugh, and it’s too weak. My heart cracks in two, and then a thousand pieces.
“Just… let me say it. Let me tell you I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I sniff. “You came.” My hands press harder over the wound.
Blood pulses against my palms, hot and slippery, the scent of salt and iron in the air around us.
“You came, even if you were late and I didn’t know you were here.
But you’re here now, and now you are going to stay.
You hear me? You must stay here with me. ”
His gaze drifts past me for a moment toward the broken towers of mushrooms, the wreck of the courtyard, the people huddled against the walls. When it returns to my face, his expression is soft.
“I wanted you,” he rasps. “From the first moment.”
My breath stops, my pulse battering through my ribs so hard, I’m certain they’re going to break. A sob punches through me and it is an ugly, feral thing. The pain of this moment is worse than ten thousand cuts, worse even than Arden’s spell sizzling through me.
“I wanted you,” he repeats, his eyes shining with pain. “Even when I told myself I didn’t—especially then. You were… gods, Vireth. You were standing there with your fangs bared at the world, and still you gave up so much to save it.”
“Stop,” I whisper, but I don’t mean it. I suspect he knows.
“I was full of faults,” he says. “I… am full of faults—cowardice, pride, festering grief that became easier than living. I made ruin of things I should have protected. I let shame have dominion over my life.”
“You are not your faults,” I say fiercely. “You told me as much, and I am holding you to it.”
His lashes lower, and my stomach drops.
“No,” I snap. “Look at me.”
He does—barely. His eyes struggle to focus and his breathing sounds worse, going from wheezing to rattling.
“Listen to me,” he says, voice thinning. “If I could go back, I wouldn’t take any of it away—all the wrong turns, all the grief. Everything that broke me.” He swallows, and blood darkens the corner of his mouth. “I wouldn’t take it back… because every path led me to you.”
His voice is thin now, his breaths slowing dangerously. My whole body caves around the sound that escapes me—an animalistic scream that begins in rage and ends in such despair.
His hand moves weakly against the stones, searching. I seize it. His fingers are cold already, despite the blood, despite the morning, despite the fact that he simply can’t be this cold. He can’t.
“I love you,” he says.
I shake my head because surely if I deny the words, the moment cannot finish forming around them.
“I love you so much,” he continues. “I should have said it days ago. I should’ve said it when you saved my life, when we made love, and every moment in between.”
“You will say it tomorrow,” I choke. “You will say it a hundred times more, Renard. You must not give in. Please. Please!”
His thumb moves over my knuckles, so soft, it almost feels like someone else, because this Renard—my Renard—is strong. He is strong, and he will survive this. He must survive this, because I don’t think I can survive without him.
“If the Death Goddess takes me,” he whispers, “I’ll tell her about you.”
A laugh breaks out of me, cracked and hideous. “I rather think she’s heard enough.”
“No.” His eyes search mine with desperate focus, as if he is taking the memory of my wretched face with him. “Not enough. I’ll tell her your eyes are like garnets in the candlelight. That your hair is like moonlight caught in briars. That you smell like a forest after rain.”
My tears fall onto his cheek, black and shining.
“Well, right now I smell of dungeons, blood, and more kinds of fungus than I can actually name,” I warble.
“Yes,” he says again, smiling as if he loves that, too.
I bend over him, pressing my forehead to his. His skin is too cool. His breath feathers over my lips in shallow, broken pieces.
“Of all my regrets,” he murmurs, “and I have so many I could bore the dead with them, the one I feel most now is that I won’t see your cottage by the sea.”
I cannot hold the sobs in—they break free as I bury my face in his chest. One of his hands reaches up, tangling in my hair.
A small cottage between the sea and the forest, with land enough for a garden and wilds enough for Nibblebones to hunt. No one to bother us, or scurry away in fear. Poor little Vireth, dreaming her little dream.
“I would have followed you,” Renard says.
“Renard—”
“I would have given everything to follow you.”
“You will,” I say, gutted and cleaved in half. “We will be there together.”
His fingers tighten around mine once, and only once.
“I’m sorry. I shall miss your mushroom stews, and braiding your hair. I will miss Nibblebones and all her unearthly gifts.”
“No.”
“Vireth—”
“Don’t leave me,” I beg.
I beg. I don’t care about the indignity of it. I would suffer ten thousand fresh new indignities if it would save him.
“Please,” I sob. “Please, Renard. I love you. I love you, and I need you, and I’m only getting around to saying it now when the world is falling apart around us.
You must stay—I need you to stay. I need you to forgive yourself because I cannot bear the thought of you carrying all that grief into whatever comes after.
I need—I need—I need you to help me start again from somewhere other than death. ”
His eyes glisten, and that half-smile quirks his lips up… lips that I am dangerously close to never kissing again.
“I need your broad shoulders,” I say, half-laughing, half-choking.
“And your graying beard. And your terrible knee that predicts rain. I need your strength and your aches and pains and the little line between your brows when you think too hard. And, oh gods, I need you here, to help me remember how to be something—anything—other than death.”
His hand lifts, trembling violently before finding my cheek. He strokes one black tear away with his thumb.
“You are not death,” he says.