Page 89 of The Blight of Hollowmire

A throne, she echoes. A weapon. A burden. Listen to yourself, my child. I am not making you anything that you aren’t already. I would never have you make yourself smaller. I would never call your power ugly. They will see, Vireth. You won’t have to smile when they whisper about you, or drink tea that alters you, or pretend your rot is a shameful thing.

My hands curl into fists, though I cannot feel my palms—it’s enough to drive any woman to madness, and I begin to wonder if I am already there.

“Cease your vitriol,” I warn.

They will fear you no matter what you do, Vireth, she says, her fathomless voice gentling. If you spare them—if you save them, they will forget it at the first opportunity. If you weep for them, they will mistrust your tears. There is nothing you can offer that will make them love the rot in your blood. You already know this to be true.

Something thready and panicky catches in my chest when I consider what she says. Visions of endless cups of leywort tea, of banquets ruined because I could not leash my mold-summoning sadness, of the near-constant sneers and frowns. I think of everyone at court whispering rot-touched behind their hands as they turned their backs on me. The anger that rises is old and hot, not sudden at all, and it is as comfortable as a pair of well-worn boots.

There you are, the Blight Mother murmurs, cat-like and far too satisfied.

I pull away, as if the thought is a flame I’m too close to. “No!”

Why not? Anger is honest. Anger does not beg a knife to explain itself before it cuts.

“Anger is destructive,” I argue.

So is hope.

For a moment, the mist clears enough that I see through her eyes, or through mine with her behind them, and physical sensations come back to me in waves—none of them pleasant. I feel the hard bones of the wyreboar’s spine beneath my legs, rubbing blisters on my bare thighs. I feel the aching weight of my now enormous antlers, the stinging black liquid that leaks from the beds of my nails and falls to the soil in fat, syrupy droplets. Wind gusts through our skeletal army, whistling hollowly as it carves through hundreds—perhaps thousands—of empty skulls.

I try to wrench my fingers open, but they do not move.

Panic claws up my throat, and this time it is buoyed by anger. I shove against the Blight Mother with everything I have—against the mist, against the weight of her will, against the deep thrum of her power entangling with mine. Suddenly, for one glorious, painful heartbeat, my smallest finger twitches against the wyreboar’s spine.

The Blight Mother stills.

I laugh because I cannot help myself—nearly hysterical with my petty, useless triumph. “There. Did you feel that?”

Her silence is frightfully satisfying, until the mist turns bitterly cold, and the gray closes around my ribs until it’s difficult to draw breath.

You are stubborn, she says. Perhaps as stubborn as your failed knight.

“He has not failed me,” I snap. “And I have had excellent practice in being stubborn.”

You are also wasting strength you will need.

“For what? Destroying Valehar? Becoming some beautifully tragic end of days? Forgive me if I am reluctant to be promoted from family embarrassment to apocalypse rising.”

I would have expected amusement from her, or annoyance perhaps, but what comes instead is an ache so old it nearly bends me. It rolls through the mist and into my chest, not mine but definitely familiar—an old pain, a splinter that was never removed.

I am taking you to the wound.

“The wound beneath Valehar.”

Yes.

“And after that?”

After that, the world will learn what comes of kingdoms that believe they have mastery over the earth and her gods.

A pulse moves through the gray—similar to the sound of a great drum struck somewhere beneath the earth.

Renard will stop you, I think before I can decide whether saying it is wise.

The Blight Mother hears the thought anyway.

Renard, she says, and there is enough scorn in the name to make my teeth ache. I left him where men of honor so often end up when their quest becomes too much for them—in a clearing, on his knees. Shamed because he could do nothing—shamed because he gave up trying long ago.