Page 46 of The Blight of Hollowmire

“So, your fortune teller truly is a seer,” he says.

“Given what I’ve read, and what appears to be happening to me, I’d say that is likely.”

“How badly do they hurt?”

The question catches me off guard, and I blink at him for a moment before I understand what he’s referring to.

“The antlers?”

“Yes.”

I hesitate, partly because the truthful answer sounds dramatic and absurd, and I don’t want to sound like a feckless youth who cannot manage her thoughts and feelings. Honesty, however, is usually the best policy.

“It feels,” I say slowly, “rather like someone is driving wedges through my skull with a carpenter’s mallet.”

His eyebrows lift, pulling at the larger scar on the side of his face. His mouth tightens.

“Is it truly that bad?”

I huff a sardonic laugh, nearly choking on how bitter it sounds—how bitter it tastes. Desperation and despair are clawing at me from within, like frightened animals bashing against the bars of their cages.

“Renard, I have antlers growing from my skull. I understand that you know very little about the fae and our history, culture, and biology, but you are no stranger to injuries or wounds. What’s happening to me—to my body—perhaps even to my very spirit, I believe you would say—is not something that just happens to fae women of a certain age.”

Despite the censure and sarcasm in my words, despite the prophetic yoke around my neck and the rotting wyreboar carcass behind us in the cave, the corner of his mouth almost lifts. The sight of an almost-smile hurts unexpectedly, like a splinter lodging beneath my fingernail, except the feeling sits between my ribs.

It’s devastating to feel like I’m losing the mutual familiarity we only just achieved—the kind that only travel companions find when you’re enduring more than your fair share of hardship and you’re determined to move forward anyway. The familiarity of hours spent together, trying to understand one another. Because now, there is distance between us.

It’s not physical distance, because even now he sits scarcely six feet away.

It’s something worse. He saw what I did to that creature. I saw it, too. I suspect I will continue to see it every time I close my eyes, every time I sink into a dreamless sleep. And no matter how carefully he speaks to me now, I sense some part of him is measuring the shape of this new horror against the woman he thought he was coming to know.

I lower my gaze to the fire, humiliated as black tears burn behind my eyes, threatening to spill.

“I frightened you,” I say quietly. “I am frightening to you.”

Renard is silent for long enough that heat creeps unpleasantly up my neck.

After interminable moments, he says, “It takes much more than this to frighten me, Vireth. I have had a trying time in your realm, yes, but my years are a catalog of horrors and regrets. If I am being honest, the things that frighten me the most are all the times and places I have failed. I failed my wife. I failed my infant sons. I failed my king, and my people. I failed my men. And now, today, I fear I have failed you.”

Blood rushes in my ears—my heart races like a runaway horse. He failed… me? He leans forward slightly, forearms resting against his knees. He’s shucked his bracers with much of the rest of his armor and pushed back his sleeves to attend the fire. It is a strange time for me to notice the veins and tendons along his bare forearms and the tanned skin dusted with fine gold hairs. Why can’t I seem to recall what his skin felt like? I’ve been tending his wounds for days. And why does it suddenly matter so much that I find myself swearing to memorize the feeling of his skin the next chance I have?

“Vireth, when that thing attacked us,” he continues. “I was unable to protect you. You must understand that my life has always been about protecting others. And so to find myself unable to do what I believe I’ve been put on this earth to do… that shame will stay with me until death. I thought we were going to die, and then suddenly the very air around us changed, and the beast…” He stops, searching for words. “It was as though everything inside its earthly body simply failed at once. This power you wield… it’s like... Well, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

I stare into the flames, fighting against everything in me that wants to shrug into the mantle of shame I’ve been accustomed to wearing for all my life.

“I didn’t want to do it. You understand that much about me, right? But it’s more than that. It’s not only that I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t decide to do it, either. It simply… happened.”

“I know. And I would not have survived this without you, many times over now. And if I could bear your guilt about ending this creature’s life, and the others, I would. I would take it up in a heartbeat.”

Of all the things I expected Renard to say, those words would be the last.

The cave falls silent again. Outside, the wind moans through the trees with a long low sound that reminds me unpleasantly of a grieving choir.

It’s been years since I prayed to the gods—really prayed—but I murmur a quick one to the Death Goddess to lead the poor thing to the green fields and blue caves of the spirit realm. I rub my palms against my breeches, trying unsuccessfully to rid myself of the lingering sensations from earlier. I can still feel the wyreboar beneath my magic… the rapid collapse of its flesh and the ensuing hunger of the fungal filaments feasting on its body.

I have spent years suppressing my abilities with tinctures and teas and careful self-denial because my uncontrolled magic frightened people. Because women with power were tolerated only when that power remained useful, ornamental, or easily governed. Decay cannot be controlled. It can only be forestalled for a time. And now this thing inside me has begun breaking through anyway, clearly tired of being restrained.

My skin has felt too tight these past few days, as though my body can no longer contain whatever I am becoming. At odd moments heat rushes through me so abruptly I feel feverish, breathless, half feral beneath my own skin. My antlers begin to throb again, sending a headache radiating through my skull.