Page 104 of The Blight of Hollowmire

The gray in front of me flickers a bit, shivering like ripples on the surface of a pond where a stone’s been thrown in. Through the Blight Mother’s eyes, I see movement near the collapsed edge of the scaffold. A streak of piebald fur darts between fallen planks and treacherous fungal roots. My little corpse weasel leaps over a gap in the stones, lands badly, scrambles, then keeps running with something clutched in her mouth—not just one something, several somethings.

“Nibblebones!” I scream.

The Blight Mother’s attention turns, slow and irritated. Before the little creature can reach me, the courtyard doors slam open.

Arden emerges first, with Renard clutched in his arms.

My world stops—Renard is alive.

He looks wretched, and altogether a bit humiliated about allowing himself to be taken hostage. Blood, both dried and fresh, mats the silver hair of his right temple. His hands are bound before him, the skin of his wrists red and raw, leaking even more blood in slow droplets upon the stone. His left eye is swollen shut, and he leans gingerly to one side, holding his ribs like he’s just been halfway down the gullet of another bogunder.

Arden stands behind him with a knife pressed to his throat, and my focus narrows to the small place where the edge of the blade draws a wet, red line along Renard’s skin.

“If you have enough of yourself left to hear me,” Arden calls, “I suggest you listen.”

The Blight Mother stills, more curious than anything, I think. I take the opportunity to slam myself against her from the inside—a feral animal against the bars of a new cage—until the gray mist finally tears open before me.

“Renard!” I scream through voiceless lips.

The gaze of his one good eye roves around the courtyard, finds my body, and something in his battered face breaks open—not fear, disgust, or shame, but relief. He is relieved to find me, even being used by this damned goddess who wishes to wipe this pitiable kingdom from the face of the earth. My heart gives another pathetic thump.

“Vireth,” he rasps.

The knife digs in deeper, and Renard winces in fresh pain. My rage is blinding and I scream again in my prison of gray, the sound enough to make the Blight Mother chuckle.

“Careful,” Arden says, but his voice has lost its polished edge and elegant composure. He’s panicked now—the cold blue of his eyes nearly swallowed by wide, black pupils. His hair is messy, his well-made tunic no more than tatters beneath mold, and his hand practically vibrates with the strain. “Call off whatever this is.”

My body doesn’t answer, but I feel my head tilt. The Blight Mother studies him, like she is observing an insect.

A man with a blade, she says inside the gray. Is that… it?

“Don’t touch him,” I growl. “You cannot hurt Renard. You mustn’t allow him to hurt Renard!”

In answer, the mist presses me down—her vastness swatting at me like one might swat a gnat buzzing too close.

Arden drags Renard a step closer, and my heart squeezes at the pained grunts he emits. “I know you care for him, fae, though I confess I cannot imagine why. He has failed every woman foolish enough to love him.”

Renard flinches, and the Blight Mother’s amusement curls through me.

Men are such petty, simple creatures. I, myself, have never understood the appeal.

“Shut up,” I snarl, though I don’t know if I’m talking to Arden or her.

Before I can think of a way out of this, or a way through this, Nibblebones moves. She darts up the scaffold remains, faster than any living thing ought to be. Arden sees her too late. She launches herself at his knife hand and sinks her teeth into the soft flesh between thumb and forefinger with a feral shriek.

Arden screams and swears, and the knife jerks away from Renard’s throat.

With a triumphant chitter, Nibblebones leaps over to Renard’s shoulder and then races toward me. Taking advantage of the distraction, Renard throws his bound hands upward, catching Arden under the chin with his forearms. The two men crash sideways into a spray of fungal spores and splintered wood. The courtyard erupts into chaos again and the Blight Mother turns toward the struggle, but Nibblebones reaches us first.

She scrambles up the roots wrapped around my ankles, claws digging into fungus, tail lashing. The Blight Mother tries to ignore her. I feel the impulse pass through our shared body—silly creature. Nibblebones climbs higher, whistling and chittering like we’ve been apart for weeks and she means to tell me all of her thrilling gossip. In her mouth is Sephia’s white-gold comb, the delicate filigree bent now, and one of the tiny mushrooms snapped from the edge. It’s filthy with mud and lint and perhaps a bit of someone’s blood, but it’s here—it’s here when it should be lost.

She drops it against my foot. The gray mist flickers.

Sephia stands in my memory, timid and lovely, bowed beneath the weight of duty. Her fingers braid my hair. Her voice says, We share a bloomday, sister. Of course I remembered.

Fresh pain shears through me, and a sob wracks my body. I sink to my knees.

Nibblebones chitters and digs in the little pouch of odds and ends she must have stolen from gods-know-where. She drags out Ulfrid’s dagger next, the carved bone handle wrapped tenderly with gravemaw hide. The first gift from my fortieth bloomday. The proof that someone saw me as more than a spoiled princess—as a student worth teaching. A fighter. As a little toadstool. Ulfrid’s betrayal still stings, but I understand it, and if everything ends now, I won’t have the chance to tell him that I forgive him for a moment of weakness.