So of course I blurted out, “I killed her.” My insides shook. “I killed your mentor.”
Great. Perfect. Maggie might still despise me after this with how badly I was botching it. But I was afraid once she didn’t hate me anymore, we would be nothing to each other. Why else would she stay in my orbit? She never cared that I was a King. My Nightmare wasn’t exactly made for snuggles.
She looked at me as if I were stupid. “I know. We locked eyes, remember? Why, Noth?”
We weren’t dancing around this anymore. I thought that would be the hard part, beginning, but Maggie looking at me like I had all the answers turned out to be harder.
“I never liked going to your village in the winter. It was always too cold and you never seemed to keep it warm enough.”
“I didn’t know you liked going at all. I don’t think I had ever seen you before that day.”
Of course she wasn’t making this easy. I fiddled with my carrot, then realized I looked foolish and ate it in one bite.
“I visited. I just didn’t want you to be awed by my presence… or ask for things I couldn’t give you. I inherited that secret place as my responsibility and even if we hadn’t offered monsters for breeding for hundreds ofyears, remained under my care. Rue’s house settled furthest from town, the closest to our border, so I always came to it first. She stood out in the middle of the woods, gathering Winter’s Bane from the trees.”
Maggie picked at the hem of her tunic, lost in memory. “I told her to let me do it. Her joints would ache afterward in the winter.”
“That proved the least of her concerns. She collapsed in the snow right in front of me.”
Her eyes flew to mine. We both held our breath in that moment so I had no choice but to continue.
“It was the least I could do to carry her back to the cottage.”
That little house deserved the name. Warm, snug, brimming with drying herbs and happy livestock, I understood why Maggie found peace there. I told my two guards to wait outside. Even their easy grace would have disturbed the energy there.
“She wouldn't let me put her in the bed, so I set her in a kitchen chair.”
Maggie bit her lip. “It's always better to be attempting something than wishing you were doing something. I couldn't get her out of that kitchen chair either.”
Watching the old woman try to regain her heavy breath was painful, even when I had brought her water and a steaming pot of a concoction I couldn't name. As she breathed it in, some color had come back to her face, but not enough.
I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood, but it cleared my head. “She was sick, Maggie. Very sick.”
Maggie’s face creased with confusion. “What do you mean? She didn’t tell me she was sick.”
“She had The Crux, Maggie.”
An easy enough wasting disease to hide, but still just as fatal. My world slipped a little as I waited to see if she would believe me. I didn’t realize how much I needed this.
“That can’t…”
A memory surfaced in her mind as Maggie’s sorrow flooded the bond in a torrent. She turned away in a rush, hiding her face in her hands, stopping in the middle of the road. No tears fell, but she shook. When she turned back, her teeth were bared and I had never seen her look more frightening.
“How did you get from a lingering illness to a sword in her back?” she snarled.
“She asked,” I said simply, throwing up my hands in a helpless gesture.
“She asked you to run her through?”
“She-”
“Rue.”
“Rue,” I amended, “had a sigil to make it painless and clean. It had spread to her heart, Pumpkin.”
“Death,” Maggie whispered.
A painful, messy death where the illness slowly drained your mind, your sense of self while it worked slower on yourbody.
