Page 38 of The Blight of Hollowmire

“No,” I whisper again, tears freezing on my cheeks almost as soon as they spill from my eyes. This is no dream—no vision haunting me when my eyes are closed. This transformation is real, and my bones ache with the knowledge. I have spent a lifetime feeling like an outcast, a horror, a weed among the garden of my sisters. And now my body is changing—proving the worst that everyone has always believed about me. If I wasn’t a monster before, there is little doubt about it now.

Panic claws up my throat, and I scramble to my feet, boots slipping in the snow-covered ground that has begun to ice over. I stagger away from my bedroll and run down to the stream. A soft blanket of snow has covered my field of purple mushrooms but I cannot stop to admire it now. I run further still, deeper into the bruise-colored shadows of the forest, away from the faint glow of the fire—away from Renard.

I cannot let him see me—not like this. My hands shake as I touch my head again, more carefully this time, and beneath the soft growths of mushrooms and moss, I feel it.

Hard, knobbed, pressing outward. A broken sound escapes me. Monster. Monster. Monster!

“Gods no,” I mewl, covering my screams with dirty hands.

I stumble toward a bend in the nearby stream where water pools against a submerged log, and drop to my knees to stare into the trembling surface. For a moment, the reflection wavers, but then it steadies.

My face stares back at me, pale, strained, eyes wide with sickening terror. And from my head… small, budding nubs of antler break through my scalp as cleanly as new growth through soil. There is no blood, nor bruise, but the skin around them feels raw and tender.

My stomach drops out from under me and I clap a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. Behind me, faintly, I hear Renard shift near the fire.

I don’t turn. Coward that I am, I cannot.

Instead, I stare at the thing I am becoming and feel, for the first time, something colder than fear take root in my chest. Black tears spill down my cheeks, making the monstrous woman in my reflection look even more frightening.

Something inside me is changing. And I do not know if it will stop.

9

Renard

I wake with the taste of her on my tongue.

The dream clings to me like sweat on a hard-worked summer afternoon, except I cannot quite scrape this from my skin in the same way. It lingers in the back of my throat, in my chest, lower still in a persistent throb of lustful discomfort.

Gods, help me.

It began as something sweet and tender—a pale body beneath mine, cool as snow-covered stone that warmed beneath my hands. She had no face, and yet I knew her. Knew where to look, where to kiss, how to find her mouth as if I had done it a hundred times before. And the sounds she made—every soft, yearning, desperate whimper burrowed into my heart and made me wild with need that I answered only too enthusiastically. Beneath the blankets, I shift my uncomfortably hard cock in my breeches.

It’s been too long since I’ve indulged my lustful side. Rather, it’s been too long since I’ve been able to give it more than a passing thought.

In the dream, there was a part of me that suspected something wasn’t quite right, and then, as if I’d conjured the nightmare by acknowledging my unease, my dream woman changed. It didn’t happen all at once, and certainly not in any way that made sense—as is the way of dreams. I didn’t stop making love to her even when bones began to push through sweat-slicked skin in slow, terrible increments. Antlers—gods, antlers?—curled from her brow like new branches in spring. Her body softened beneath my hands, then sagged, then started to liquify in a way no living flesh should, at least until it putrefies.

I can still feel it—the way her flesh yielded beneath my fingertips and tongue. The heat of skin-on-skin friction turning to something damp and foul even as I…

I sit bolt upright with a sharp inhale, the remnants of the dream snapping apart like frayed thread. A violent shudder wracks my body, and nausea rises until I suck in a breath of dawn that’s painful with cold.

The snow-choked forest greets me in its gray morning stillness. Casting my eyes about, I comfort myself with the reality around me. There are no writhing bones, no faceless woman. No black mold creeping up my arms or soft, rotting flesh beneath my legs. It’s only cold air and the faint, dying glow of last night’s fire, smoldering beneath a dusting of gray ash that looks lavender in the nascent light of dawn.

I stay there for a long moment, breathing hard, staring at nothing. I haven’t dreamt of a woman since my wife died, and before that, I seldom dreamt of any woman but her. It is easier, I suspect, to believe it’s simply my body remembering what it has gone without for years, even if the sensations of the dream linger stubbornly in the cold light of day.

I exhale slowly and force myself to take stock of something more grounding and immediate—my aching, aging body. Carefully, I roll my shoulder, listening to the soft pops of my joints. The pain is still there, but it no longer feels like something chewing through bone. My leg aches when I shift it, but it does not threaten to give out entirely. The stiffness is familiar, and dare I say, manageable. With Vireth’s expert bandaging and nursing, I seem to be healing faster than even when I was fresh out of squiring. Damn fae magic—if only it could break a curse and ease a famine.

I huff out a quiet breath. So, her strange little brews and herb-studded meals have done something, at least. I glance toward the edge of the clearing and am unsurprised to find her awake, already finishing her morning care. She’s washed and is dressed in a different set of clothes—a quilted waistcoat over a clean white blouse, breeches, and those well-made, blood-stained boots. Boots stained with my blood—as though I could ever forget the debt of honor I owe her.

She stands near the remnants of the fire, her back half-turned to me, adjusting something at her shoulder. Her hair has been gathered up in a way I have not yet seen—twisted into a thick plait and wound atop her head, with several strands pulled forward to frame her pink-cheeked face.

She doesn’t look well-rested. There is a stiffness to her posture that I recognize as a poor night’s sleep, or mayhap no sleep at all. When she turns slightly, I catch a glimpse of her expression and it’s tighter than usual. I wager she will be much less inclined toward the petty squabbling that has been entertaining us both over the last few days.

Something in me stirs—concern, perhaps—but I tamp it down. We are not… that. At least, not yet. Not that I would wish for anything other than to repay my debt of honor, use her guidance to find the Blight Mother, and do what must be done so I can finally go home.

“Good morning,” I say, pushing myself upright.

She glances at me, and for a brief moment, something unreadable flickers in her gaze before it smooths into something more familiar.