Page 97 of The Blight of Hollowmire

“Well, no one was doing anything satisfactory, so I attempted a solution.”

“A solution?! You turned our food into poison!”

“No,” he says, turning sharply. “I didn’t poison anybody. Poison kills. This preserves.”

“Preserves?!” My voice nearly breaks on the word. “You’ve preserved nothing but the appearance! Women and children are starving in the streets! Your own soldiers can barely hold a sword up with all that flagging strength.”

“The spell did not behave as I’d hoped it would,” he admits, crossing to his desk and scanning his own notes. “But I’m convinced the principle is sound. Crops were withering in the fields, so what could stop them from doing so? I’ll admit that the execution was somewhat flawed. ‘Life Everlasting’ is a misleading title, perhaps. There are ways one might describe it.”

“Blight,” I say.

His gaze lifts.

“There,” I continue, my vision going red at the edges. “I’ve described it.”

His mouth flattens. “You always had a flair for the dramatic—especially when you were puffing up with your overinflated righteousness.”

“This is your fault!” I bellow. “You played at being a god while you should have been repairing old alliances. You subverted the natural order of things, and then when you failed, you fed that failure to the kingdom.”

He rolls his eyes. “That was a creative solution to a surplus of goods, simply distributed during a shortage.”

“You exported them,” I spit.

He scoffs. “To Morsell! A good-for-nothing mountain town that could help us pay for the exported food we needed. And it contained suspicion—concealing the fact that we alone suffered. Had others learn of our misfortune, neighboring powers would circle like buzzards. A weak kingdom invites conquest—you know this better than anyone.”

“You are a coward,” I grit out, hands flexing with the need to throttle him.

He smiles faintly. “What’s the saying? ‘Takes one to know one’?”

The blow lands because he means Elena, and my sons. Their last day in this realm was a day I was not there. It’s a cowardice I’ve lived with for years, and will toil beneath until I breathe my last.

“How many?” I ask, pushing the memory down and pressing forward. “How many died before you understood what you’d done?”

His lips purse in a thoughtful expression, and I wonder how long he’s been mad— if it crept up on him through the years, or if it was always there, hiding just behind his eyes.

“That depends on what one considers death,” he says finally.

I move before thought can restrain me, seizing him by the front of his cloak and slamming him back against the shelves hard enough to rattle glass. One of the jars of miscellaneous bones drops and shatters, and bones spill across the floor.

“How many?” I snarl.

For the first time, his composure cracks enough to show disgust.

“Get your hands off me,” he hisses.

“How many children, Arden? How many mothers? How many men—both young and old? How many farmers did you blame for bad yields while it was your spell cursing their grain?”

“Enough!”

My grip tightens, anger threatening to choke me.

“Enough?” I echo.

“Enough to know the work can, and should, be done better. This version now requires something of a correction. Errors were made, yes, but I believe next time I will be able to start anew. I think I know where I went wrong…”

“You are mad!” I spit. “This cannot simply be corrected, Arden!”

“Of course it can.” He looks at me then with something like pity, as though I am too stupid to understand his grand designs. “That’s what you never understood. You see failure as a grave. I see it as information.”