Page 21

The next morning, I sat alone in Zota’s stall, picking at a muffin laden with blueberries and sugar. Orin was already awake

and working when I stopped by his study, and he promised to join me the moment he wrapped up a letter he was penning. Before

I left, he’d pinpointed his gaze on some indistinct spot, and a rush of warm magic had filled the space. It disappeared as

quickly as it came, and then Orin nodded. He’d removed Zota’s glamour so I could study his threads, but he begged me to wait

for any actual threadmending. Even so, I had yet to ignite my power. Instead, I just sat. Everything was quiet. The manor.

The lawns. The stables. Fernglove was holding its breath, waiting to see what I’d do next. And I didn’t know.

Before checking on Orin and grabbing breakfast, I’d stopped by my brothers’ quarters to once again find that their blight was accelerating. More wounds, more damning pustules, more rivers of black sludge in their veins. Their pale skin was glossy and damp, as if they’d freshly bathed, but I knew better. Their bodies were cooking them alive. I checked on their threads, too, and I wasn’t surprised to find them limp and covered in tar, loosely writhing about their frames.

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. I could. 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 her pressed 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...

Breathe.

A subtle warmth bloomed between my shoulder blades, as if a hand was gently resting against my back.

Breathe.

Slowly. Intentionally. I clenched my jaw tight as I forced a heavy inhale through my nose and held it. Then loosed it. The

pressure in my chest lessened a fraction.

Again.

Tipping my head back, I imagined inviting the energy of the world in with my breath. I imagined life flooding into my lungs

with the sweet, floral-tinged breeze of the Willowfell countryside. I imagined the taste of fresh coffee shared in tin mugs

between family members. Brothers. I let the buzzing of insects fill my ears as I remembered the feeling of warm arms holding

me tight. Protecting me.

My vision returned with the sounds of the estate, but I didn’t stop focusing on the sensations of my life. I’d kneeled before

Zota and braced my palms against the earth, seeking purchase in the cool ground of his stall. And while I vaguely realized

my breaths were laborious and my limbs riddled with pain, I didn’t stop.

Because it was working.

I watched in morbid fascination as the blight was leeched from Zota’s threads. Gone was the tacky, suffocating substance. The blight had liquefied into peaceful rivers of black ink sliding down his threads and into my veins. The moment Zota’s strands were cleansed, they retreated to twirl about his body, blissfully free of sickness and painfully exquisite. My throat clogged at the sight of Zota’s beauty returning. The hollowness of his face began to fill out, the scraps of loose skin falling to the earth like leaves. Fresh skin formed over muscles and tendons that now bulged with life. His hide was lustrous, and his mane was glossy. He was a stag of myth and beauty, and if it weren’t for the blight now running rampant in my body, I would never have guessed that he’d been sick.

Throughout it all, Zota had been still, but now he stood to his full height and let out a long, low-pitched grunt full of

warmth and joy. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and when I went to wipe them away, I stilled at the sight of my fingers. My body

was still drenched in a void of black night, but minuscule dots of blinding white light were blooming across the expanse of

my skin. Stars. I was the cosmos incarnate as my magic began to eat away the blight. My blackened fingertips were the last

to go until, like Zota, I was cleansed.

My power was doused an instant after that, and I collapsed fully to the ground as the weight of what I’d done slammed into

my body. But no matter how much I ached, no matter how much the splintering pain in my skull continued to grow, no matter

how much the world spun or how exhaustion was already pulling me under, there was only joy.

I’d done it. I’d sacrificed gods only knew how many of my threads in the process, but I’d cured something of blight.

Even though the very action felt like a blade carving into the muscles of my face, I smiled. I smiled because, so long as

I woke up, there was a chance I could save my brothers. Save Mavis. And maybe, maybe, even Orin.

The last thing I saw as the world faded to black was Ywena flying away. Orin would come. He always did.