Page 111 of The Blight of Hollowmire

Fear and helplessness light in his eyes in a way that I haven’t seen. His eyes roll toward the gathered people. “I am your regent! Somebody help me!”

But this time, no one moves. Arden swallows and grits his teeth, angry at their betrayal, and turns his attention back to me. Defiance flashes in his cold, blue eyes.

“You think you can save him?” he says, because even bleeding out, he cannot resist a final little cruelty. “Good luck. Renard was nothing more than a failure and a fool. Everything he ever loved has died and rotted away. You think you will be any different?”

I’m unashamed to admit I consider cutting his throat. But that would be a very plain ending—practical. Human. Dull. The grin I turn on him is feral and dangerous.

“Yes,” I say. “Because I am the rot.”

He flinches, pulling back from my threatening position. But I don’t lift my dagger again, because he does not belong to me, and nor does his death. I stand and open my arms. The air around us goes very, very cold.

“Come, then,” I say. “I offer you this life, in exchange for another.”

The Blight Mother answers. My stomach clenches, and I double over as nausea and sickness rips through me. Black spores pour from my mouth in a thick, choking stream, spilling down my chin and drifting into the air before me. I vomit and retch until my ribs ache and my eyes water. Even Nibblebones gives a distressed chitter and backs away.

The spores seem to drift together as one, and rise, slowly finding form. It starts with a hand, each enormous finger too long and jointed in the wrong places, followed by antlers branching upward into the pewter sky. Then a face forms—beautiful and terrifying—made of clusters of mushrooms I’ve never seen, mounds of writhing insects, and held together with blood-red veins of mycelium. She towers above the courtyard, massive enough that the castle seems to shrink beneath her awe-inspiring horror. The people fall flat to the ground and everyone—even the mushrooms—bow before her.

The Blight Mother looks down at Arden, who tries to crawl away, leaving a thick red smear of cowardice behind him. His movements slow as his strength leeches out of him, and I already know I will not need to give chase.

“No,” he gasps. “No, wait. I can—there is more work. There is—there are things I can give you.”

You have given enough, she says, her voice booming through the courtyard even without a mouth to speak the words.

She reaches down and the moment her hand closes around him, Arden screams. She plucks him up and holds him aloft for a moment, giving him one final chance to see all that his decisions have wrought. Then she lifts him to her not-mouth, and his screams turn guttural and pained, finally quieting as his body disappears into the vast black spill of spores and shadow gathered beneath her ribs.

The Blight Mother turns, the wind rising around her, carrying her spores upward in a twisting, swirling cyclone of black. Arden is gone—whether into the sky, or the earth, or some in-between realm of sticky, slithering gray mist, I can’t say, and I find I don’t have the energy to care.

The Blight Mother looks down at me. I’m honored by your sacrifice, she says.

I stare back, hollowed out by grief, yet hopeful and shaking. “We had a bargain,” I remind her. She nods, or bows—it is hard to tell from here—and she breaks apart. Her black spores scatter on the wind, until there is nothing left of them in any place around Valehar—perhaps even on this earthly realm.

I turn and run back to Renard, my legs nearly giving out before I reach him. Nibblebones beats me there, scrabbling over his shoulder, nosing frantically at his beard, his ear, the blood-damp collar of his shirt. My hands tremble as I touch his face and he’s still cold, still so cold. A sob starts somewhere below my lungs and stays there, trapped, too large to pass through my throat. The bargain was made, so why does he lie so still?

“Renard,” I whisper.

Nothing.

“No.” My voice cracks. “No, no, don’t you dare make me barter with a vengeful goddess only for you to remain beyond my reach. Don’t you dare make me call her down again—I will be furious.”

Nibblebones crawls onto his chest and curls there, trembling—her sad whistle stabbing through the too-quiet courtyard.

I gather Renard’s pale face between my hands, the coarse hair of his beard scratching my palms. There is a small cut beneath his jaw where Arden’s knife cut him earlier, and the sight of it makes my vision blur again. I lean down, my tears falling onto his cheek, their black drops stark against his gray skin.

“Come back to me, Farmer Knight,” I whisper, pressing my lips to his forehead, his cheek, and his lips. Those are cold, too, but I imagine they still taste of him—of sun-warmed wheat and apples, and whatever mushroom stew I’ve cobbled together after a long day on the road.

For one endless moment—an eternity, really—nothing happens.

Then, finally, blessedly, Renard sucks in a breath.

It’s a breath that sounds like it has been pulled up from the tips of his toes—perhaps even lower—his body sucking down the air like he’s been drowning and has been denied his precious breaths. His body jerks beneath me, and I gasp in astonishment that something—finally, something—has gone right for me. For us. Nibblebones shrieks and springs straight into the air before landing on his chest again. I rear back, laughing, sobbing, choking on every possible emotion at once. Mushrooms—small, delicate pink ones, not the towering monsters from before—burst up from the soil in a small ring around us.

Renard coughs, blood and black spores spilling from his mouth.

“Oh, gods,” he rasps. “I never wish to do that again!”

His eyes open, and he flinches at the dreary morning light until his gaze can adjust. When he turns his head to face me, a smile lifts his cracked and bloodied lips.

“Vireth,” he murmurs.