Page 48 of The Blight of Hollowmire

Fear begins curling through me so swiftly I almost feel dizzy. I know this moment—know it intimately. It’s the realization that someone is looking at you differently than they did before. Gods, I cannot endure that from him—I don’t want to. He is the first person—man—I met after leaving Hollowmire Castle and my previous life behind. If he begins to treat me the way they all did, it might mean I cannot escape the fears of the world for being what I am.

The heat inside me surges violently and I suck in a breath, struggling to keep my chaotic emotions under control—the fear, the shame, the panic, the loneliness. The desperation for acceptance, for validation. The bone-deep need to simply be… seen. Everything rises up inside me, threatening to drag me below like the world’s loneliest tidal bore. Another sharp crack sounds near my temple and pain explodes through my skull.

“Oh, gods!”

I double over, clutching my head.

“Vireth!”

Renard is beside me instantly, one hand hovering uncertainly near my shoulder. I can feel the antlers pushing farther through skin—the sensations of painful pressure, splitting flesh, and deep, aching growth. Warm blood begins to drip down the side of my face.

“Don’t look at me,” I beg with a whisper. The tears I’ve been fighting to keep at bay spill over, mixing with the blood on my cheeks.

“What? Why? I told you, I’m not afraid of you. There is no shame in your pain, Vireth.”

“Please.”

The word nearly breaks apart in my throat and for a moment, he says nothing. Then, very gently, he acquiesces.

“As you wish.”

I press the heel of my hand against my eyes, breathing hard while another wave of heat rolls through me. It begins low in my abdomen this time and spreads upward with bright intensity until every inch of my body feels aflame. Sweat drips down the back of my neck despite the cold air pouring into the cave. Gods, this is interminable. I feel like I am being hollowed out and replaced with someone—something—else. Something less willing to simply become smaller, grit teeth, and endure quietly for the sake of everyone else’s comfort.

Without warning, the ground rumbles and the cave walls start to tremble. Small pebbles and dirt rain down from above, skittering sounds echoing throughout the cave. Renard looks up sharply.

“Did you feel that?” he asks.

I nod weakly, and the movement sends another fresh wave of pain through my skull. Another tremor follows, accompanied by louder sounds of fist-sized rocks cracking against the stalagmites in the back. Near the fire, the ground shifts softly, the packed earth splitting in a thin dark line.

Something pale pushes upward through the mud. Renard and I stare at it in fascinated horror—at first I think it must be a root, but I realize with panic I’m looking at teeth. A fox jaw works its way out of the soil bit by bit, fungus threaded through the yellowed bone in delicate white strands.

My stomach turns and I suck in deep breaths to keep from vomiting.

“Oh, gods!”

Just when I think it will stop, there is another cascade of movement. Small ribs push through the soil, disconnected from some unknown ribcage. Feather-light bird bones, slick with mud, follow, along with something that might once have been the spine of a boar, worn down with age.

I stumble backward, uncertain whether I should flee into the woods or curl into a ball upon the bone-littered floor.

Renard’s eyes are wide, but his voice comes out calm and commanding over the building rumble of stone and dirt.

“Is this your magic? What are you doing, Vireth?”

“I don’t know! It’s just happening! I cannot stop it—I don’t know how!” I shriek, bent over from the pain and the terror, from the fear of these things. Why is this happening to me?!

The magic feels too close to my skin now, almost like my body can no longer contain it properly. Gods, what I wouldn’t give for a pot of leywort now!

The forest outside the cave seems to answer my distress in slow ripples beneath the snow. Roots begin shifting, mushrooms spring up where they should not be able to survive in the snow—mycelium-fueled rot surging quietly through frozen earth.

“I cannot stop it,” I say again, my voice barely more than a whisper. “We are going to die here, Renard—I don’t want to die like this! I don’t want to die a monster, surrounded by bones and naught but decay! Why won’t this stop?! Why can’t I control it?”

Renard jumps to his feet instantly, his hand going to his newly sharpened sword. The blade is steady in his hands, but it is impossible to miss the way he holds it up in front of himself defensively—a new barrier between us, like he’s finally realized I am the thing to fear.

Of course this is how it would be. All my friends, my paramours, my kith and kin have had similar moments with me, even before I was named the Blight Mother. Of course. There’s always something repulsive, something twisted, something wrong with Vireth. Something ugly tears loose inside my chest.

“If this is your doing,” he insists, “then you must be able to control it.”

“I’m trying!” I snap.