Page 74 of The Thirteenth Count

“Then let it fail,” she said.

“And when Ashford Cross falls with it?”

“Don’t.” Her voice shook. “Don’t put that on me.”

“It’s already on all of us, Fern.”

“That’s rubbish and you know it.” The words came out harsher than intended, but she didn’t take it back. “Ashford Cross has stood for generations. The fog has always been there.”

“The fog has always been held.”

“By draining people dry?”

“By blood,” he said. “Yes. Too much of it. More every year.”

“There’s nothing else you can take!” Fern shook her head. “Not from us. Not from the Rootfolk.”

“You’ve seen the Withering.”

The terrace went quiet around her, even with the wind clawing at the stone.

Cassius didn’t soften. “Surely you’ve walked near it. The dead soil. The grey water. The skeletal trees with dead roots and a hollow middle. You were taught to think of it as a sickness in the land.”

Fern’s breath thinned.

“It’s what happens when the fog touches it.”

The words sank in slowly. Not because she didn’t understand them, but because she did.

The Weeping Rise. The spongy ground. The dead branches near Whittle’s Rest. Her father saying they had to hurry. The itch in her skin whenever she walked too near the river. The way everyone spoke of the Withering as if it were simply part of Thornvale, another misery to endure because misery had always been there.

Not sickness. Contact.

A scar.

Fern looked over the parapet, down into the red haze shifting at the mountain’s base.

“Oh,” she whispered.

And hated that there was nothing else to say.

Cassius watched her for a long moment, the wind cutting between them. He didn’t look pleased to have convinced her. If anything, he looked worse for it.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Fern asked.

He closed in on her before she could step back. His thumb brushed beneath her eye, wiping away an escaped tear as if it were another weakness she wasn’t meant to show.

“Cassius,” she said, nearly breathless.

He dropped his hand. “Tomorrow night my father is hosting the Count banquet.”

Fern gaped. How, after everything that just happened, Cassius could casually bring up a banquet, was beyond her.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No,” she said again, nearly yelling. “You cannot drag me onto this terrace, scare me half to death, tell me the Withering is what happens when the fog touches land, admit your family is bleeding people to hold it back, and then expect me to stand in a room full of Highbloods and Stembloods and smile over puff pastry.”