And I found… I found that this darkness was not the bottom of my powers at all. It was the beginning.
I did not wield the wind, I became it.
The lordling of the swamp was a beast and he was quick, but I was the wild itself and I was quicker. I cackled madly in his ear as I chased him through branches and twigs—the hunted turnedhuntress. Oh, how I adored this power. A magic most curious, indeed. I became the thorns, beautiful and lethal, and I sank my eager claws and teeth into his vile flesh. I became the roots and I choked the life from him, and I revelled in the sound of snapping bone—
There was a hiss and a bite of rotten magic.
I tumbled back into my body, swaying on my feet. The wind played wildly with my hair as I stared at the kennel of roots and thorns I’d woven around the lordling—at the cell I had spun from the wild.
It was empty.
I caught a glimpse of him as he vanished into the thicket, his pink rat tail twitching as he scurried off. He’d slipped through gaps in my roots. He was injured and slow, but not slow enough. I slumped against a near trunk, blood throbbing from exertion, muscles aflame from the strain of wielding such power.
Another waft of magic so foul it stung my throat. I flung a feeble curse into the skies as the lordling soared. As he became a black dot in the brightening skies.
He vanished.
He vanished, because deep down he was a coward and a weakling and that was why his sister sat upon the throne he desired and why he was obsessed with hunting those who might grant him a sliver of power. I sank to the mud-wet ground, hands and knees bloodied from thorns, heart racing with disgust. I retched. A sob built in my throat, and another. I swallowed them.
Not now.
The lordling had escaped, but not unscathed. In the pallid morning sun, his golden blood glistened like dew on the spikes of his abandoned kennel.
On hands and knees I crawled through the mud, numb to the pain of raw palms and bruised ribs. I plucked a piece of barkfrom the splintered trunk of an old cedar and I used it to collect one, two, three golden droplets.
Behind me, Adrik groaned. Head low, muscles still rigid with the glamour, he hung in the tangle of roots, his arm bent at an odd angle, a thorn grazing his heaving chest.Gentle, I warned. The thorn receded.
“Adrik.” I choked on his name as I approached, careful not to startle him. No reaction. “Adrik,” I said again, with urgency.
A small twitch of his unharmed arm. I kneeled beside him, just out of his reach, and lifted the gilded bark to his lips. He wrinkled his nose. I almost laughed, strangely endeared by the sight of such squeamishness in light of the horror still thick in the air.
“I have watched you mix ground spider eggs with something that looked like a lobworm and hand the elixir to poor Ilvar. You better not tell me you cannot handle a drop of faerie blood.”
His chuckle was hoarse and strangely sharp, but I cherished it. Blood slid past his lips and gathered at the corners of his mouth. I bit my cheek to keep from retching. The sickly sweet taste of rot still coated my tongue ten winters later. Dark spots danced at the edge of the thicket and spread towards the center.
“That is enough,” I murmured, voice dull. “Give the rest to Zora.”
The swamp tilted. I squinted into veiled skies. I did not remember falling, but my head throbbed and a horribly damp chill seeped through the dress. Darkness lurched at me. With my last shred of awareness, I forced myself to whisper the name that echoed through my nightmares.
The name that had cost me my soul—and the kind-hearted miller’s daughter her life. I used to wish it were me instead; used to burn with remorse and loathing whenever her lifeless eyes stared at me from the darkest corner of my memories. But asthe dark swept me off and Adrik called softly for me, I felt only gladness.
To save him, I would have done much worse.
TWENTY-NINE
Just be with me.
Iawoke to a tune that felt like home.
To the crackle of a merry fire, the whistle of winter wind over roof tiles, and a pair of bickering voices.
I was content for a while to rest and to let the voices wash over me like rain.The sound of my name amid the tangle of words sharpened my ears.
“... check her pulse again.”
“I checked it a minute ago,” grumbled Lorell. “She will wake soon.”
“You cannot know that.”
