Page 86 of The Blight of Hollowmire

Her white eyes fix on mine, and I know them—I know them like the despair of my own failures. Fear bubbles in my gut, and it takes exhaustive effort to keep it down, to keep it from taking hold.

“Do you think I do not know that?”

Heat suffuses my face, but whether it’s from shame or embarrassment or anger or fear, I have no answer. For a long moment, she simply watches me, and there is nothing—nothing—like standing in front of a god who looks through you, seeing every selfish choice I’ve ever made, every excuse I’ve ever told myself, every failure and mistake I have tried to leave buried behind me.

“I should kill you. You share in this responsibility, knight. You are one more man who inherited a broken world and left it broken.”

Black liquid slips from her fingertips and spatters against the earth—the earth where, only moments ago, Vireth and I were locked together in bliss.

“I should strip the flesh from your bones and feed what remains to the roots.”

My stomach twists, but I refuse to look away. Beneath this terrifying ancient being is Vireth—my Vireth. I don’t want to lose her now, when I feel as though I’ve just found her.

“But I will not.”

Hope rises in my chest before I can stop it. Then she smiles.

“For Vireth's sake.”

The smile grows colder.

“She is fond of you, despite your faults, and I would not rob her of the chance to learn the truth for herself.”

“What truth?” A chill runs through me.

“She will learn why you came to Hollowmire, of course. She will learn that you came here to spill her blood. She will learn why you have not yet slipped into Arden’s room and cut his throat.”

Shame crashes over me. The words land with brutal precision because they are true, at least in part, and no amount of silence can change that. The Blight Mother watches my expression and laughs softly.

“She will learn all of it,” she says. “And when she does, Vireth can kill you herself.”

I lower my eyes. Not for the first time since arriving in Hollowmire, I find myself afraid not of death, but of seeing disappointment in her face—of being yet another person in her life who has betrayed her.

“You thought you could come into this world and defeat a god.”

Her voice carries across the clearing.

“Why? Because you wore armor? Because you survived a few battles? Because you were born in a castle? Because you were the favorite bastard of a king?”

She takes a slow step toward me, and I clench my jaw—the words hitting harder than I expect, doubly so because they spill from Vireth’s lips.

“You had more opportunities than most men ever see. You were given training. Education. Influence. You were handed advantages others would have killed for.”

The dead stand silent around us, waiting.

“And still, you could not set your kingdom to rights. You could not mend what was broken. You could not stop the suffering around you. Is it that you could not? Or that you would not? So content in your exile with the mantle of responsibility being taken away from you without a fight. Be honest, knight—you were glad to fail in Hollowmire the first time. You came here with your company hoping for death, because your wife and sons were gone. And since then, you have been cowering on your farm, letting the rest of your kingdom suffer because you could not find a way to use all that education and training and privilege to pluck the thorn that has festered in your land.”

I think of Valehar—of hungry villages, corrupt lords, frightened people who looked to men like me for help and received too little of it. The shame sits heavy in my chest. No defense comes to mind, perhaps because there isn't one.

“And now the responsibility falls to this woman,” she says, pressing a hand against her chest. “To one who has suffered more than you can understand. Hated from the day of her birth. Ignored at the best of times, punished at the worst. Pushed to the side, bullied, teased, feared, reviled, pitied. Imprisoned by the ones who were supposed to love and protect her the most.”

In my mind’s eye, I see Vireth as the beautiful woman she truly is, sitting beside a campfire with her boots kicked off, laughing at some foolish remark of mine, and I think of how she has been failed and betrayed by everyone. Including me.

The Blight Mother's expression hardens.

“She has carried pain all her life, and she will carry more before this is done, because someone must correct the errors of men.”

The forest falls silent, even the dead seem to stop and listen. Her gaze pins me in place.