Sighing, I set the muffin down, largely untouched, and stretched my hands to the sky. I had to figure something out. Fast.
Zota chuffed and eagerly threw his head as he targeted my abandoned breakfast. A smile tugged at my lips. At the very least, our sessions hadn’t drained his personality. I couldn’t help but wonder how spry he’d be without the blight eating away at his body. I scooped the muffin up and offered it to him, and he ate it without hesitation straight from my palm. I brushed saliva and crumbs from my hands, and Ywena shifted against my neck as the collar of my blouse rubbed her wing.
“Sorry about that,” I murmured, flicking back my hair and offering her two fingers as a perch. “Are you hungry? What do you even eat?”
She kneaded my shoulder for a moment, as if ensuring my breathing was steady before abandoning her post, and then she fluttered to my hand. A needle-thin tongue uncurled from her mouth to graze a smeared streak of blueberry. Rorik had never instructed me to feed her, and she rarely left her post. After a few more ticklish laps from her tongue, she took flight and danced about my head before dropping to the earth near a cluster of white flowers.
I watched quietly as she peeled back the petals with her feet and then dipped her tongue deep into the flower’s center, searching for nectar. A low sigh pushed through my pursed lips. I doubted she’d get much from the dying plant. It was glamoured to look beautiful, just like the rest of the estate, but if what Orin said was true, then it was as blight-ridden as the inhabitants who lived here. Still Ywena...
A memory bloomed in my mind.
Blight seems to have altered their biology, but instead of killing them, it allows them to feed on diseased plants.
I nearly kicked Zota as I clambered onto my knees and brought myself closer to Ywena. She stalled in response and tilted her head in my direction.
“Go on. Keep eating.”
If a moth could narrow her eyes, Ywena did. But she eventually relented, once again drinking deeply from the flower’s core. Rorik’s words hung in the air as I ignited my power and allowed my threadmending magic to blossom around me. Like Zota’s, Ywena’s threads were a muted teal, but there wasn’t a single trace of black tar marring their beautiful shade. At least, not at first. But then Ywena must have finally secured the sliver of remaining life from the flower, because she curled her tongue back into her mouth and ingested whatever she brought with it.
Black droplets formed on one of her wayward strands, quickly dousing the entire thread in a sticky, tarlike substance that halted its lazy twirling. For a moment, nothing else happened. Ywena went about scrubbing her face with her front legs and showed no additional signs of illness. Her other threads were still wild and free, darting dangerously close to the infected strand. This couldn’t have been the first flower she’d snacked on, so how?
A shudder passed through Ywena as if a cool breeze had tickled her wings. The infected thread twitched. And then suddenly it was writhing, wrapping itself around every wayward strand until they were all tangled together and knotted with blight. I gasped and covered my mouth as numbness flooded my fingers. The creeping ink-black sickness spread to the rest of her strands until every single thread was covered.
Not Ywena.Scrambling toward her, I cupped my hands on either side of her body, not touching her strands but bringing my shaking fingertips close. She’d become a constant for me. I’d grown accustomed to her gentle shocks, the feel of her feet lightly kissing my neck, her wings fluttering in my ear. I didn’t want to be without her.
A white light formed between my fingers, and I was about to thrust myself into threadmending once more when Ywena cracked one eye open as if to say,Wait.
I froze as the tar on her strands shifted to something beautiful. Instead of tacky sludge or cracked dust drifting away on the breeze, the blight had transformed into a shimmering ink that streamed toward her center. The cascading blight was draining into her body, flowing like fast-moving rivers down the threads of her lifespan. One moment her threads were dark; the next they were completely free of blight.
I never would have seen it if my power hadn’t been active.
“Ywena,” I whispered. It was all I could manage. She’d ingested the blight and become one with the disease, and she was perfectly fine. As if to hammer that truth home, she took flight and danced about the crown of my head before settling against my neck.
I jerked my head toward Zota. With my magic still intact, I stared at his blight-ridden strands. My heart pounded in my ears. He wasn’t able to siphon the sickness, to draw it from his threads and expel the illness. But Ywena could.Icould. Instead of searching for an impossible thread to restitch for an illness that seemed to stem from everywhere, what if I just took it? Drained away blight from Zota like Ywena had with the flower? Could I take it all? How much of my life would I lose in the process?
You deserve to live.
Rorik was insistent even in my memories. Pushing aside his words, I turned my focus to Zota. For now, I had to see if my theory was correct.
“Ywena,” I said, speaking to her without breaking my gaze with Zota, “perch somewhere else. For your own safety.”
She must have sensed my purpose, because she didn’t hesitate. With a few beats of her wings she was off, searching for a suitable place to land along the wood railing of the stall. Even without herpressed against my skin, I couldn’t forget Rorik’s teachings. He’d seared them into my brain, into my very lungs, so that each breath was filled with power. Magic. Alabaster light grew around me, and I willed it to coat my entire body. Every inch. I’d become a seam of moonlight itself, and the world fell away as I focused solely on Zota’s dying threads.
With a steadying breath, I opened my arms wide and welcomed the blight. “Come.”
His diseased strands slunk toward me with deadly efficiency, sliding around my legs and arms like snakes eager to deliver their venom. My mind rewound to one of the threadmenders’ journals, with a note about pinching and refining threads to force them to take certain shapes.
It’d been his final entry, but something about it felt right.
Pinching one strand between my forefinger and thumb, I shaped it like a needle and thrusted it deep into my skin. Pain erupted as it broke through with ease, and I winced at the sharp, metallic tang of magic that scorched the air. I stitched Zota’s thread into my arm, weaving sickness into my skin and tying my existence to his. As soon as I’d coaxed the first thread into my veins, the remaining tendrils dove in after without prompting. The sharp pricks of thousands of needles ravaged my limbs as blight was sutured deep into my bones. Those tar-soaked tendrils tied me to Zota as if I were his puppeteer, coaxing the blight to move from him to me.
My throat tightened as I struggled to breathe. A fist had grabbed my insides and was violently twisting them into knots, and an uncontrollable tremor took hold of my body. Pain exploded from my bones the longer I worked, but I couldn’t stop. It splintered and ruptured through my arms, my legs, my ribs. There was nothing but the smell of sour mulch and decay and a heat that cooked my blood. Heady ringing filled my ears so that all other sounds fell away. Panic set in as my vision went.
Why did I think I could do this?My chest shuddered as my knees cracked against the ground.
My brothers...my brain screamed as a fog settled over my thoughts, taking away their names and my memories.
I was nothing. Nothing...
