Page 17 of The Blight of Hollowmire

“Enough, Vireth. As I said, this is a precautionary measure. None of us understand what’s happening—including you. Keeping you under lock and key is meant to protect you from anyone who’d be driven by fear to end a threat before it can come to pass. Everyone at court is terrified, and people often strike out of fear before they understand the situation and its many nuances. As soon as the sages come up with something helpful about the prophecy and we can figure out what to do about it, you’ll have unfettered access to the kingdom once again.”

Anger throbs through my veins, a pulse alongside the decay magic that is always clamoring to be released. It presses at my skin, itchy and irritating, like something trying to hatch.

“So instead, you punish me for the possibility of someone harming me? How is that just?” I snarl. There is a whisper—just a soft one—that suggests she might be right. That I might be better off locked away, or sent away. That my isolation is more than preferable—it is necessary. Gods, but why is that so much easier to accept than my nature?

My voice cracks, and with it, something inside me breaks open. It’s a hairline crack at first, splitting wider with every word I find the courage to say.

“This is madness, Mother—you go too far. You have always looked down on me for being the way I am. I spent the first half of my life desperate to please you—desperate to unmake myself from the disappointment that I was and become something that could be accepted and loved. The second half of my life I spent carving a home out of my solitude because I knew there was nothing I could do—no way I could change—to be something worth your love. And now, at the first opportunity—which was but a mere unhinged whisper from a stranger—you imprison me like some disobedient child or common criminal?”

A manic cackle stutters out of me, my wounds laying bare between us. Black tears spill down my cheeks, hot and shameful. Even Ulfrid’s measured hammering has ceased.

“If you truly seek to find those who would harm me, Mother, I suggest you find a mirror on your way out.”

The sobs trip out of me, and to my horror, something deep within me answers. The something that has been clamoring beneath my skin, coiling deep in my chest, waiting for the right emotional conditions to flourish.

Slick black mushrooms erupt from the mortar between the stones of the walls and floor. They split through the cracks with wet, obscene enthusiasm and prurient squelching noises. Black mold, fuzzy and toxic, thickens into carpets beneath my feet. Fungal stalks as thick as my wrist thrust upward, their caps trembling and seeping spores that hang in the air like breath on a winter morning.

Mother gasps, and Ulfrid swears under his breath. They hurry out, nearly stumbling over one another, and the door slams. The new lock clicks with finality.

I don’t blame them. I’ve had emotional outbursts that ended in fungal growth before, but nothing like this. Nothing so impressive, or dangerous. Maybe Mother is right to lock me up. As furious as I am, I don’t really want to harm anyone.

Well… I certainly don’t want to kill anyone.

Probably.

My breath steadies and my pulse slows. The mushrooms seem to throb in sympathy.

And then, I feel it. Not just connection—I’ve always felt the gentle hum of rot when I summon it. This feels… different. The filaments that give rise to these poisonous blooms feel like delicate extensions of my veins. Like the mushrooms aren’t conjured by my magic but growing out of me, as if I am not their mistress but their orchard. As if the mushrooms are the fruiting body of my awakening rage.

Interesting.

Taking a deep breath, I test my connection to this outgrowth of my powers, attempting to call the mycelium network back inside me. First, there’s an icy shiver, and then, it’s as if my body starts to drink up the decay through filament straws, sip by poisonous sip. I watch in wonder as the dripping black mushrooms shrink and wither, snaking back toward me in little tendrils of sentient black goo. Moved by pure instinct, I press my hands to the cold stone floor, and the trickles of black slither up my fingertips until they’re absorbed into my skin.

The room is as it was before my outburst. No trace remains save the faint smell of wet earth and the sound of my pulse roaring in my ears.

That’s never happened before. I’ve never been able to pull the decay back once it’s been unleashed. Interesting. Very interesting and slightly alarming.

The haunting words of the prophecy return to me, unbidden.

Blight Mother. Rot-Born Queen.

From the rot of mercy comes the mother of endings.

The words brand themselves across the inside of my skull and my pulse kicks up in a frenzy of anxiety.

She will love the world.

And in loving it, she will unmake it.

I press my palms against my temples, as if that will ease the painful ache building inside my head. I do love this world, in spite of everything. I love the way moss creeps along the northern walls. I love having the ability to reduce things meant to last for ages—wood and steel—back to their most basic elements. I love the way bones sink into loam and become something useful. I love the truth—the raw honesty—of endings. Is that so terrible? Or is that precisely the problem?

Prophecies are treacherous things. They’re not really instructions; they’re riddles that wait for desperate fools to fulfill them. My mind returns for the thousandth time to the fae fortune teller. Who’s to say her prophesies are true, anyway? Maybe they never come to pass. Perhaps this is a cruel trick from one of the countless courtiers I’ve angered or disgusted. Why did no one think to question her before she could make good her escape? Why didn’t anyone sequester her to ask her what she meant? Then again, perhaps no one cared to learn the truth because they found another easy reason to spurn me.

A plan begins to condense in my mind like mold in a forgotten cellar. Leave the castle, find the fortune teller. Persuade her to talk to me. Demand clarity. If the gods are speaking through her, it’s possible they’ve had more to say since the feast. Or maybe she has experience interpreting their words for others, and she can lend me some more insight. After ruining my life, it’s the least she could do.

Yes. Yes. The more I think through this plan, the better I like it, the more sense it makes to me. First, however, I think I’ll pay a visit to the sages and squeeze out every bit of information they have about the Blight Mother—a name I’ve only heard in the occasional folk tale murmured to children at bedtime.

The gold door lock might have kept me in, had decay been my only companion. It isn’t.