“Centuries?” I gasped. “Why have I not heard of these before?”
But maybe I had from Sam, back home. He said a creature with eyes like the moon and teeth the size of daggers had ripped through the Bitner’s corn the night before I came here. Could it have been this same creature from Ravensong? Had it entered into the human lands?
“There was only one, in the beginning. One monster who hid in the peaks of the highest snow-covered mountains. And now, it seems, there is another. Little by little, its infection, its diseasehas spread until it has made its way into our lands, ruining crops and killing livestock in large swaths.” Jel sighed as he soaked cloth strips in his potion and laid them over my jagged wound. “And the monster?”
Jel directed this last question to the king who nodded solemnly. “The beast has finally been contained. It was easy to find as it tarried, injured, so close to the castle.”
Jel’s shoulders dropped and he let out a great sigh of relief. Rafia, who looked as if she’d seen a specter, regained a bit of the color that had leached from her face.
“Thank the stars,” Rafia muttered under her breath.
Everyone looked so relieved, but I was laid out here bleeding.
“What will happen to me?” If this disease killed animals and land, surely it would do the same to me.
“We have not seen what will happen to a human, you are the first to be infected.” The king’s deep voice reverberated through the cottage causing the hairs on my arms to rise. “But the few elves who have been infected inevitably pass into shadow.”
My heart stopped; my mouth grew dry. “What do you meanpass into shadow?”
The king dropped his head. “No longer alive, yet not able to pass on.”
“What, you mean like a ghost?” My throat squeezed tight.
“A shadow wraith.”
All fell silent between the four of us as I scrambled to grasp onto anything. Each revelation was more impossible than the last. I was not ready to die, but death was better than existing in an eternal state as some shadow ghost—whatever that meant. Would I haunt these halls forever in a state of eternal torment? One thing was for sure, the first person I’d haunt would be the hateful king and his ridiculously beautiful face.
Though, for all his pride, he’d saved me. I looked down at the deep scratches on my leg which were halfway coveredby bandages as Rafia and Jel ministered to me. The king had earned far more scratches than I had this night.
“But you jumped right in front of me. You fought it.” My voice shook, shame at my weakness flooding me. “You’re infected now, too.”
The Elf King nodded, our eyes meeting for one long moment. My heart pounded in my ears as I looked into the king’s cold eyes, though now they seemed…warmer. “This was not the first night I have fought this beast. It tarried on the outskirts of the wood before this night. It grows bolder with every passing moon. I have been battling this infection for a year now.”
“But humans are weaker than elves.” Jel pulled out a small journal and jotted some information down in elvish runes. “I imagine Noelle’s infection will grow at a faster rate.”
“It will not happen.” The Elf King’s golden eyes had not left my face. “I will not allow this disease to spread. I will not let it fester. I know of a cure, if only?—”
“We have been working on a cure for a year now, Your Majesty.” Jel’s shoulder’s fell as he jotted some numbers in his journal that I did not understand. “I might be able to study the beast in custody, but the truth remains—I can only delay the transformation. It’s only a matter of time before the curse takes you both.”
“How long do we have?” I asked through a tremor in my throat.
Rafia tore cotton strips and dipped them in the potion, ministering to my wounds, which stung like a burning flame with every touch. I hissed, but bit my tongue. Jel continued to calculate in his journal, blue eyebrows knit in concentration. Rafia squeezed my knee, tears brimming in her magenta eyes.
“How long?” I repeated.
“A few weeks.” Jel paused his writing.
The pronouncement fell upon me like a blow to the head.
Jel took my hand in his. “You will need to take the same tonic the king takes every day to keep the disease at bay, but my best guess is that you both only have until the end of the year. A few days after the winter solstice.”
I had until Christmas.
Not only would I miss my first Christmas away from my family, I would be fighting a shadow blight. Any hope of ever seeing home again crumpled to ash.
I had to stay. I had to work to find the cure before the curse took me over. Before I turned into a wraith.
I looked up to the king. “You said you know of a cure.”
