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Two days passed before I tried to threadmend Zota again. And again, I failed. It went on like that for days—me attempting

to threadmend under Orin’s careful watch, and me failing every time, despite the variety of balms I had made and slathered

across my skin. The only solace was that each dance with blight left me a little stronger. A little more hardened. After the

third time, I needed only a day to recuperate. The fifth, six hours. Of course, Orin insisted I continue to rest and eat normally

to give my body every opportunity to replenish itself. Most threadmenders under his care were unable to work again after five

or six encounters with Zota. I was faring better, but we had no way of knowing what kind of long-term damage I was incurring.

By the seventh time we’d run out of all my initial ideas for blending magical ingredients with my own tinctures. Every medicine

had a shelf life, and nothing lasted long enough for me to fully eradicate Zota’s sickness. I even visited the library after

one of my failed attempts to snag A Collection of Rare Flora and Sloan’s Guide to Curses and Poisons in an attempt to brew something entirely un heard of. Orin sent Vora to retrieve the rare herbs and ingredients, and it took her a week by ley line to acquire what I needed. After, Orin and I worked together to craft a thick salve that stuck to my body like a second skin.

The blight destroyed it within minutes.

Throughout it all, I hardly saw anyone else in Fernglove outside of my brothers. But everyone else I avoided out of an abundance

of caution. I went straight to my quarters to bathe myself after each attempt at threadmending and bagged my soiled clothes.

If I was too weak to handle it immediately, Orin would cast a layer of glamour over me to keep any traces of it from spreading.

The last thing I wanted was to unintentionally infect an attendant.

While the Ferngloves weren’t at risk, I still didn’t see them. I suspected that was intentional—Orin’s way of making sure

I was free to work as I pleased—but I found myself missing the sharp, scrutinizing looks from Seville. The laughter of Amalyss

and Tasia. Even Rorik’s incessant teasing. Instead, my days were full of Orin and his words of encouragement. The warmth of

his touch, the soft feeling of his lips against mine, the steady reassurance I felt each time I gripped his hand tight. It

was enough to keep me going. The only other person I saw was Vora. She visited after I was clean to slather on medicine and

grumble about lasting repercussions.

She wasn’t wrong, either. So far, I couldn’t see any hints of sickness marring my appearance, but I could feel it. There was a sluggishness to my actions as if I were forcing my limbs through mud. A perma-fog had crept over my brain, and I often found myself reading the same lines in my books over and over again before fully understanding the words. I was beginning to wonder if this was what happened to my aunt. I had Vora bring her journal to my bedside and reread it every night, feeling more kinship with her stilted language as my mind began to wane. While none of her entries compared to the poems she used to pen, there was a distinct shift in quality from her early days to her last. Everything became blunt. Harsh. As if she had energy only for the facts and nothing else.

But I had to keep going. I didn’t have a choice. It was as if the blight knew I was coming, too, because it’d started to eat

away at my brothers with more fervor. I didn’t notice right away, but after visiting several nights in a row, I started to

spy new wounds forming along their arms and necks.

Time was running out.

After my tenth failed attempt at healing Zota, something changed. Not in me, but in Orin. He’d endured so much, watching me

try again and again, only to bottle up his hope and bury it back down each and every time. I saw his disappointment in the

way his eyes fell when he stared at my trembling fingers. Felt it in the hollowness of his touch. It must’ve been agonizing

for him to watch on levels I couldn’t begin to understand.

“This is hopeless,” he muttered as he sat beside me, not touching my sweat-soaked body.

I ached to feel the warmth of his embrace. “I’m close. I know it.” I couldn’t tell if it was a lie or a truth or if it mattered

at all.

Orin looked away. “Am I failing you?”

“What?” I straightened, ignoring the pain that came with the sudden action. At least that was one-sided. Zota remained largely

unaffected by our sessions and often ended up resting on the ground with his head propped against a hay bale, like he was

now.

“Have I pushed you too far?” Orin sighed as he shook his head at nothing.

I scooted toward him so our hands were touching. “Orin, you have nothing to do with this.”

“You’re not holding back just to spite me, are you?” He met my gaze, and I saw fear in his eyes. Rubbing his jaw, he studied me as if he’d forgotten about all our moments together. About the heat that had blossomed between us. About the unnamed emotion that drove me to consider saving his life. The fact that he questioned all that . . . A painful tightness settled in my throat.

“How can you even ask that.” It was meant to be a question, but there was no inflection to my voice.

“No one wants to die.” He dropped his gaze to our hands.

“That may be true, but if I fail you, then I also fail my brothers.” Slowly, firmly, I threaded my fingers with his. “And

I don’t want you to die, either.”

Silence enveloped us. For a long moment he said nothing, and then he heaved a sigh that carried with it the weight of the

world. Pinning his chin with my fingers, I angled his face so I could force him to meet my gaze.

“Orin, I...”

I didn’t know what to say. If I told him I cared for him... that I loved him... My insides squirmed. There were too many other things in the way. The length of my quickly shortening life. The

blight all around us. My brothers. His family.

Gently, I kissed him. “I’m close. I promise.”

Finally, he smiled. It was soft and hardly the wide grin I’d grown accustomed to, but it was a start. He dragged his thumb

over my cheek. “I didn’t mean to doubt you. I just wish there was some way to make this easier for you.”

Speak it into existence and it just might happen.

There it was again. That damning, tantalizing thought. Would it be so bad to share my power with him? Would he balk at sharing

his magic with me? I didn’t think so.

The sound of footsteps met our ears, and Vora rounded the corner of the stables before coming to a halt several feet away

from Zota’s stall. She didn’t look my way once.

“Sorry to interrupt, but Ossanna is here. She requests your presence.”

Orin sighed as he stood. “Ossanna? Why?”

“She didn’t say,” Vora said. She brushed stiff hands along her apron as she glanced back toward the manor. “You know her. Always angling for something.”

Orin’s eyes narrowed. “Indeed.” Then, to me: “Don’t tax yourself anymore today. You deserve a break.” Leaning down, he trailed

his fingers along my jaw before kissing me deeply on the mouth. Relief bloomed in my chest at the feel of his lips on mine,

and I nodded with a smile as he and Vora returned to the manor.

His kiss lingered on my mind far longer than I anticipated, and as I sat in the stall beside a slumbering Zota—his snores

were the perfect, soothing backdrop to the quiet chirps of insects—I turned over the possibility of sharing a heartbond with

Orin. There were worse things in the world than being tied to him. It was strange to think that not too long ago I’d flinched

at the idea of being seen with Seville at market. Now I was contemplating permanently tying myself to her brother.

My body protested as I stood, but I couldn’t sit any longer. While I’d learned how to better grapple with the consequences

of threadmending over the past several weeks, there was still an undercurrent of pain that accompanied each step I took. The

only thing that somewhat alleviated it was managing my breath. At least Rorik had finally taught me something useful. As I

willed my heartbeat to slow, the pain ebbed away. I’d become mindful of where my oxygen was going, diverting it to the places

where my body ached most.

I crept along the quiet paths of the courtyard, moving without really thinking about anything beyond bathing and then falling

into bed. When I opened the door, the house was eerily quiet, the halls devoid of sound and movement. The few candles that

were still lit suggested that most had turned in for the night, and there were more shadows spilling across the polished floors

than bright spots. As I moved through the darkness, a low growl rumbled through the air. My gaze snapped toward a thin shaft

of harsh light cutting across the floor. Orin’s study.

“I told you to dispose of them,” Orin seethed. The heat and ire in his words were so uncharacteristic that I couldn’t bring myself to move. Curiosity and dread had rooted me to the ground like the great ancestor tree outside.

“I did,” Rorik said. Footsteps sounded, and then chair legs scraped against the floorboards, as if someone was taking a seat.

“Dispose. Not kill.”

Orin slammed his hands on his desk, and I heard the angry rush of scattered papers being tossed into the air. “It was implied.”

“Implications are more like suggestions. I only do what you force me to do.” Rorik’s bored voice carried easily, and I couldn’t

help but picture him lazily leaning into his seat with his head tipped to the ceiling. “Zelyria and Briar are long gone. Jules,

too. She caught wind of their whereabouts after her outburst here. Is this why you summoned me?”

Shock nearly caused me to gasp, but I caught myself before my breathing could stutter. I hadn’t seen Briar’s and Zelyria’s

deaths, just assumed them, but Rorik had let them go. A strange, unexpected warmth stemmed from my chest.

“Jules caught wind.” The words were scathing as they dripped from Orin’s lips. “No doubt you were responsible for that, too. You deliberately

defied me. I wouldn’t have even known had Ossanna not seen them crossing her lands.”

Magic rolled from the study in palpable waves that filled the hall, and I instinctively slowed my breathing to just the shallowest,

most infrequent cadence. I was hidden in shadows, obscured by the statues and potted plants. I made no sound. No movement.

I’d never felt something so heady, so all-consuming, as Orin’s power. It was smothering in its oppressiveness, and it hung

in the air like a summer storm about to unload. Warning bells crashed in my ears. If this was just the surface of his magic,

could I even handle it? Could I even become his heartbond, welcome his power into my body, and use it to help my family?

“Ossanna,” Rorik scoffed. “What a nuisance. Still, she doesn’t concern me.”

“Don’t test me, Rorik.” Orin’s voice was deadly calm. “There’s too much at stake.”

The conversation stalled, and I was about to leave in case one of them caught me eavesdropping when Ywena suddenly started.

She’d been still against my collarbone until then, but now was craning her head in the direction of the door. She let out

the faintest chitter—a quiet creak that could’ve been the house settling in for the night. Then she flattened herself to my

chest, as if telling me to stay put.

Rorik’s voice seemed a touch louder than before. “Testing you is my favorite pastime. Even Father couldn’t put a stop to that.”

A low growl simmered through the air. “His evervow was meant to protect us, and yet you still find ways to put us at risk

just to spite him. Think before you act, or I’ll take matters into my own hands.”

“No, you won’t.” Someone stood then and moved before the door. Rorik. His broad back filled the small crack, but I could just

glimpse the fringes of his burnished locks. The heat of his words filled the hall. “You know you can’t do that.”

“One day, I will find a way around it,” Orin said.

A chill crept down my spine at Orin’s words. He spoke them with such lethal surety that it took me a moment to process what

he said. An evervow? Left by their father? What did it even entail? And why?

Rorik chuckled darkly. “We’ll see.”

The hairs on the back of my neck rose. This conversation felt far too personal, steeped in too much history. I could still

taste Orin’s barely contained rage in the air. A shiver ran across my skin as I slowly inched away, and Orin’s insult trailed

after me.

“Go back to your insects and the filth they live in. It suits you.”

My heart thudded in my ears, but my feet didn’t make a sound. Even my breath was nothing more than an errant current drifting through the house from one of the many open windows. I willed myself to stay calm, to keep moving and remain out of sight until I reached the safe confines of my quarters. But just as I rounded the stairs and was about to let out a sigh of relief, a glimmer of pale skin and the whisper of light feet over the carpeted runner made me freeze in place.

But there was nothing, no one, to be found.

Fuck this house. If it wasn’t some Ever’s magic rooting me to the floor, it was a spirit flying through the halls. Had anyone here ever known

peace? Quiet? Ease? I seriously doubted it. After staring into nothing for a solid minute and confirming that I was, in fact,

alone in the hall, I crept up the stairs and made a beeline for my room.

I closed the door and locked it, though I doubted that mattered.

I bathed quickly and then dragged myself to bed. Thankfully, sleep took me swiftly. I dreamed of Zota’s desiccated body covered

in golden beetles. Of a tar-black thread of blight binding Orin and Rorik to the decaying manor at their backs. Of Seville’s

haughty laugh and the whisper of the word evervow that came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Of a ghost with billowing clothes and heavy eyes that wormed into my very

soul.

And me drowning in the chaos of it all but powerless to save anyone. Including myself.