Page 8 of The Blight of Hollowmire

Every eye in this accursed room has found us, leveling me with censure far beyond an unflattering gown or spoiled apple. The heat of embarrassment wars with the chill of dread, making my skin a clammy too-tight binding upon my flesh. If it wouldn’t make my spectacle worse, I would tear this suffocating wyrm silk from my body and run outside to breathe in the cool night air.

Her head jerks sharply to the side, spine bowing as though an unseen hand has pressed between her shoulders.

“The green will fail her first,” she gasps. “Then stone. Then bone. What is buried will answer her call, and what yet lives will beg to follow.”

A sob wrenches out of her, but the words keep coming. I have the faintest desire to press my hand over her lips and keep her world-shattering words stuck behind her teeth.

“By heart of stone, she may be undone. A curse unraveled, another begun.”

Her fingers slip in mine, clammy with cold and slick with sweat.

“She will love the world,” the voice whispers, suddenly soft, almost tender. Her sightless white eyes find mine, full of terror and sadness. “And in loving it, she will unmake it.”

The girl shudders violently, breath hitching. “The ancient ones call her forth from slumber,” she croaks, “the Blight Mother awakens. She heralds the end.”

The silence in the hall is absolute. Even the guttering candles seem to hold their breath.

My heart is scrambling to claw its way out of my ribcage. My mouth is dry. My hand aches where she grips it, and beneath the fear—oh, beneath it, something terrible stirs, curious and pleased and horrified all at once.

I swallow. In this frozen moment of silence, one thousand thoughts crash through my mind like waves preceding a storm at sea. As if people needed another reason to hate me—to fear me. First, I am merely disturbing, bothersome, and now I am to bring about the end of the world? I can almost hear the hisses, the whispers, the shrieks, and the jeers. I will be lucky if I can ever set foot at court again—not that that would truly be a loss to me. But her words are like bands of iron shackling me to my isolation—a lone woman with strange magic, chained to a prophecy I know I shall never be free of. I huff out a breath that’s half laugh, half sob.

“Well,” I say, my voice scarcely more than a hoarse whisper, “shit.”

The fortune teller collapses forward. I catch her automatically, because of course I do, and the hall erupts into bedlam around us—shouting, scrambling guards, my mother’s sharp voice cutting through the din.

Nibblebones bares her tiny teeth and hisses at those who press in too close to me, half-terrified, half-enraged. At the edge of the room, I hear Etia telling anyone who will listen that she just knew there was something to these ill omens. Her eyes cut to me across the room and gods, it hurts to see her flinch from my gaze—the way her body already recoils from me even separated by a room full of sweaty bodies and chaos.

Through my gathering panic, a singular frustration rises to the surface. Gods, I longed for a different life, for a change, but this isn’t quite what I had in mind.

I stare down at the unconscious girl in my arms, my pulse roaring in my ears, and think dimly that I really, truly should have snuck out when I had the chance.

3

Renard

The dust cloud is a fair distance away, but closing in fast. The group of twenty or so are still black specks on the desiccated horizon. Out here, this far into the outskirts of the kingdom, they can only be riding with singular purpose. Irritation makes my skin itch, less because of who the riders are and what this means, and more because it promises another delay I can ill afford.

The old, instinctive impulse to drop the plow, hurry inside, and prepare a table of refreshments for such a visit rises and before I can quell it, my hands loosen momentarily on the plow handles—the once rough-hewn wood now smooth from years of toil. Sensing the respite, Magnar nickers and tosses his head, stomping his hooves in the soft clumps of soil.

“You’re falling to laziness, my friend,” I chuckle, digging an apple from my pocket and coming to stand at his head. His velvety muzzle seeks the fruit eagerly, but my attention stays fixed on the riders cresting the small rise near the river that marks the boundary of my farm. By the time they cross the bridge, I can make out the gold lion’s glittering whiskers on the silken standard that flutters in the breeze.

Magnar tenses, his old battlefield instincts rearing as mine do. I scrub my hand across my face, scratching at the close-cropped beard that’s grown in the time since the last visit. I scan the tidy furrows of earth laid bare, waiting for the glossy grains of winter wheat to be planted, and eventually capitulate—leading Magnar down the last edge of this field that cozies up against the Verge. I doubt the riders will go anywhere near the infamous woodland, so full of rumored spirits and monstrous legends it’s a wonder there’s any room for the trees.

Sure enough, the retinue halts near the front gate of the cottage, giving my open fields and frightening neighbors a wide berth. Magnar and I take our time plodding back toward the stable and barn, giving the dread and anxiety plenty of time to settle in my gut like the jagged stones they are.

The wheat will get planted, I tell myself, but it does little to soothe my exasperation and still my racing heart.

Rather than meet the dismounted men at the gate, I give them a half-hearted wave and proceed with unhitching Magnar from the plow. The telltale clatter of plate armor heralds the arrival of three overdressed men approaching warily as I tend to my horse.

“You’ve been summoned.”

No fair greeting, no preamble, no pretension about who I am, who they are, and why we all know they’re here. I almost prefer it this way—saves time, anyway.

“He sent the lot of you for that?” I chuckle. “Seems a waste of men when a letter would do.”

“He says you ignore the letters,” the same man says.

“I read them.”