Page 4 of The Withering Wood

She grumbled, a rumbling sound between a sigh and groan. “It’s in my spot.”

Eirwen tracked her gaze to the bear, splayed over the bundle of furs and rugs Cerise sat on every morning and night.

“We can let it rest here one night, can’t we? The poor creature must never get the joy of a fire.”

“It’s. In. My. Spot,” Cerise ground out.

The bear rose to its paws and lumbered past them, shooting her a pointed glance. It settled against the wall that separated the living room from the closet-sized bedrooms, curling into a fuzzy, round mass, and closing its eyes. Perhaps it truly was that exhausted. Or maybe it was trying to trick them.

“You would cast a Celestial into a corner?” Eirwen whispered, tone chiding.

“I don’t give a damn if it’s your holy father himself. My house. My rules. My spot.”

Eirwen tsked but said no more.

Leveraging herself to the ground using Beloved and Eirwen’s perpetually chilly hand for support, Cerise settled on the mound of warm furs and blankets. Typically heated from just the fire, the fabrics were even hotter now thanks to the bear’s body heat. The flame at her side and the heated pelts beneath her seeped warmth into every cold pore, raising her body temperature faster, and her muscles relaxed with the relief. At least there was one benefit from Eirwen’s foolishness.

Cerise stretched out her bad leg, folding her pants higher over her toned thighs as Eirwen ladled soup from the pot simmering over the fire. Cerise blew on the steam, wooden bowl warming the blood in her stiff fingers. Eirwen perched beside her leg in her usual position, and with the icy, delicate pads of her fingers, massaged Cerise’s knee. While she pressed on the sore muscles and aching tendons, Eirwen summoned the cold out of Cerise’s body, focusing on the swelling around her joint. As Eirwen pulled the frostiness from her being, her knee relaxed more and more, the discomfort receding as warmth replaced it.

Cerise watched her sister work while sipping on the thin, bone broth soup peppered with sparse and puny root vegetables. Eirwen was a creature of one color, her skin and hair white as the freshest snow. Thin and graceful as a willow, she’d blend in with the wintry world as easy as a winter nymph. Such was the blessing of her father. The only color on her was the faint blue in her eyes, like ice-crusted water.

Yet Cerise didn’t watch Eirwen work out of wonder.

If she closed her eyes, her sister’s fingers turned into the stiff, cloying hands of the undead as they ripped apart her comrades. Her clothes. Her skin. They became the cold flesh that pinned her to the earth, leg shattered and breathing in naught but the stench of rotted flesh. She’d never told Eirwen this. Never would, though she figured Eirwen knew. As children, they slept in the same bunk in Vhypael’s Temple. When sharing food or passing plates, Cerise hadn’t flinched at her cool touch. Even later, in Zyrdriel’s Order, she’d begrudgingly allow medics to tend her minor wounds. But after the bombardment, the entrapment…chilly flesh never felt the same.

Despite the reminders of her years in the Undead Wars, she needed this nightly pain relief to maintain their survival. If she kept her eyes open, watched the living fingers of her sister dance across her skin, she could keep the necromancers and their undead slaves from her mind.

Though many nights she wished for firm, warm hands that could massage the aches. Ones where she could close her eyes and relish the alleviation of hurt without also having to smother the monsters in her head.

Chapter Two

Cerise slept worse than usual. An impressive feat, considering she couldn’t remember a night she slept well. Where she felt safe enough for her consciousness to completely switch off.

A bear in the room didn’t help.

Eirwen slept in her own room, but Cerise refused to let the beast out of her sight. She dozed in and out all night, too alert to fall asleep. With the fire on one side and Beloved on the other, Cerise made herself as comfortable as possible on the pallet of pelts. She listened to the whistle of wind pushing against the cabin and the fire crackling down to dim, glowing embers. The bear snored, its hulking shadow breathing steady in the low flickering light.

Eventually, violet brightened to the pale purple of dawn and Cerise sat up, placing wood and kindling in the fireplace, restarting the flames. She grunted, sharp pain shooting through her leg as the stiff limb bent, popping like the wood in the fire.

A gruff huff resounded from deeper in the room, and the bear rose and stalked toward her, a strange look of concern on its face. It yawned, a moan escaping through its peeled back lips, revealing the large tongue and sharp, monstrous fangs. With one bite, those jaws could wrap around her head, teeth piercing into her skull.

Instead of charging her, the bear thumped to the floor beside Cerise with a tired humph. It glanced at her sideways, the orange fire dancing like meteors in its bright eyes. While staring at her, it moved its paws over its snout, as if to remind her it wouldn’t harm her. There was a strange softness to the bear’s gaze, whether from the color or the intent behind them, Cerise couldn’t tell. She wasn’t the sister with an affinity toward animals. Yet there was something steadying about this creature. The calm, burly presence. Something kind, too. In a way she hadn’t seen in humans or animals in a long, long time. Perhaps it was the slow steps it took so as not to startle her. Maybe it was the way it covered its jaws. Or maybe how it relinquished her spot by the fire the night prior, rather than claim it as its own.

“Maybe I misjudged you,” Cerise said, slowly extending a hand.

A terrified instinct in her told her to stop, that she was being just as foolish as Eirwen, but the look in its eyes was like a sad, scared dog. Its gaze flicked from Cerise’s hand to her face several times, as if gauging whether the motion was friendly or not. After a moment, it nudged its head into her palm, nuzzling the warm, fuzzy fur against her skin. She stroked its soft ears, ran a hand over the shoulder ridge, and then the hump on its back.

The bear closed its eyes and released a heavy exhale, relaxing beneath her touch.

Her hand roamed through the golden-brown fur, and she paused when her fingers grazed scabbed, furless patches. The bear flinched but didn’t whine or growl, and Cerise parted the fur to look at the cuts. It took several moments to make sense of the wound, hidden as it was beneath dense fur, but once it was revealed, she froze.

A rune was carved into the beast’s flesh, the clotted blood glowing pale green. A diamond with disconnected edges, an upside-down A in the middle, the slash in the center zagged with cross hairs, and the ends dotted with deep stabs.

The rune of Azkanix.

Cerise snatched Beloved as she launched to her feet and stepped back, creating space between herself and the beast while aiming Beloved’s knife point at the bear. The blade nicked its side, but between the creature’s own startled movements and dense pelt, the metal didn’t penetrate deep enough to seriously wound it, let alone kill it.

A frustrated growl ripped through Cerise’s throat as she pushed forward, through the creaking pain in her leg and humiliation of her heart. She should’ve trusted her instincts. She should’ve killed this thing as soon as she saw it, not let Eirwen’s softness influence her. She didn’t know what it was, but it was no Celestial.