Page 133 of The Moorwitch

Come,I whisper to that glowing light.Come along now with me. Your work is almost done.

It reaches back easily, almost too easily, like a trusting bird hopping into my palm. It coils upward and outward, suffusing my body, warming me from the inside out. It swells in my breast and expands, rushing overmy heart and for once quieting the pain there, just briefly. Brilliant and bright, it flows through my arm and burns at my fingertips, like ten white stars trapped beneath my skin.

I feed the energy into the gray, limp thread of the Dwirra Tree. I hold nothing back, even though in the recesses of my mind, the voice of an eight-year-old Rose weeps, angry and afraid. I know what I’m doing, and what the cost is. But I also know I’d pay it a thousand times, over a thousand lives, because I love Conrad North, and I love Sylvie, and I love the moors in the fog and the bustle of the markets and the sunlight gilding the lovely houses of Wimpole Street, and I don’t want any of that to stop existing because I was too afraid to fight for it. I won’t let Lachlan’s fear of dying and fading spread like poison to consume everything and everyoneIlove. Not if I can still do something to stop him.

Not even if the cost of that something isme.

A fuzzy sense of calm falls over me; it’s how it feels when you fall asleep in a pleasant room when you’re very tired. Slow, and sweet, and gentle. I go willingly enough, as the last of the warm energy flows through my fingers and into the thread, the thread which was once gray but is now beginning to glow like the others, pale as the Dwirra Tree.

So tired and languid am I that I only barely note theotherthread that comes snickering through me after it, tethered to the end of my life like a creeping, poisonous vine. Dark silver, it seems to hiss as it feeds into the thread.

With a final sigh, I release the threads and slump onto my side. The last thing I see before the darkness is the battle around me bursting back into frenzied motion, and the last thing I hear before the silence is a wild scream of pain and rage from the Briar King:

“Witch, what have you done?”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Trapped beneath deep, dark waters, I sway in and out of consciousness, voices blurring in my ears. Nothing feels real. I am heavy as stone, sinking through relentless darkness. I have fallen over the edge of the world into a starless void.

“You have todosomething!” Conrad is shouting. “We’re losing her!”

“She gave too much. I can’t—”

“Save her, Morgaine. You saw what she did! She saved your life!”

“I know what she did. Bring her, quickly!”

I’m being carried, I think, feeling vaguely jostled against something warm and soft. Conrad? No, his arm ... it must be Morgaine. Voices rush around me; I cannot tell up from down.

“Is she—? Can you find a pulse?” Conrad’s tone is frantic and full of dread.

I want to call to him, but I cannot control my tongue. I am lost in my own body, unmoored from myself. Trying to recall what it feels like to bend my fingers, I find I cannot.

“Rose, Rose, can you hear me? Hold fast. Don’t give up now. Don’t leave me.”

Conrad murmurs my name again and again; I feel I am trapped beneath a layer of ice, swimming desperately, searching for him, but heis no more than a vague shadow above, out of reach. I scream for him, but he cannot hear; only silent bubbles burst from my lips.

“She’s fading fast.” Morgaine’s voice is low. “It may be too late.”

Hands smooth back my hair. The faerie queen kisses my forehead, and at her touch, a steady rush of magic shoots to the tips of my fingers and toes and curls in the ends of my hair. Her breath warms the dying embers of my soul, and I grow warm.

“Live, Rose Pryor,” she whispers.

The initial tingle of her magic fades slowly, sinking into me. I feel soft inside, my heart pleasantly light. Her hands are warm on my skin, and the energy filling me is strange.

She is channeling her own essence intome.

She is giving me her life, as I gave her mine.

Between the worlds of waking and sleep, I waver. Conrad is there every moment, murmuring to me; even when I cannot make out the words, the patterns of his voice are enough to soothe my restlessness. I follow his voice like it is a lamp and I a traveler lost in a mire. I do not care how long the journey takes, as long as he is beside me.

An hour may pass, or a year. Voices come to me in flashes like lightning, there and gone, and I have no way of knowing how long the darkness between them endures. I can only drift and wait, always feeling as if I am sinking. When I manage to surface, I cast about for him, and he is there, my name honey on his lips. Sometimes, I hear him singing in a warm baritone the traveling songs of his mother’s people, some of them in a vibrant language I do not know.

And then, finally, I wake.

It’s morning, and I am in the queen’s grand bed in Elfhame. Conrad is sitting beside me, slumped over it in sleep. His head rests on one hand, while the other lies over mine, a bandage wrapped from his wristto his elbow. With a flutter of alarm, I recall the sword he blocked to protect his little sister, taking the bite of steel into his own flesh.

I am very weak, but for now I am content to stare at him. The glow of the Dwirra’s light turns his skin gold. He looks worried, even in his sleep.