The man gulps, Adam’s apple bobbing in undulating fear. “And...and if I do, you’ll l-let me go?”
I laugh. The noise makes him flinch, but then his mouth opens wide in shock as I lash my magic into him, rotting the bottom row of his teeth from his gums. Letting the enamel brown and crumble till they slip from their places and disintegrate to the ground.
“Oh, no. You won’t be leaving this room alive. But it’s up to you how I let my rot toy with you.”
It’s funny how quickly he sings. Or rather, lisps.
He doesn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already figured out, but doling out punishment helps my dark mood. Only a little. But it helps.
When I walk away a couple hours later, with the sun in the sky and the taste of sweet rot and cold ash in the back of my throat, I should be relieved that we were able to get all of Midas’s spies and send them to a frozen grave.
But relief is the furthest thing I can feel, and Midas’s people no longer matter.
It’s the rest of Orea I have to worry about now.
CHAPTER 25
SLADE
Age 15
There’s a festival today in the city—a celebration of the winter solstice. I know this because we passed it on our way to the hills. There was already dancing in the city streets, blue lights hovering in the air with magic. Tonight, after the sun goes down, they’ll offer sacrifices to the cold stars and play music to the moon.
I passed by it all on the back of my horse, and that was the closest I’ve ever been to one of the city’s festivals. My father has chanted his entire life the importance of staying separate from the rest, to hold ourselves above.
“Get your head out of the clouds,” my father seethes, making my head snap back in his direction.
“It wasn’t in the clouds,” I reply. It was firmly on the ground...back at the city.
He raises a thick brown brow, his bald head so shiny that it can be blinding when the sun hits it at certain angles. “You’re slipping. Pull the rot back in where I told you.”
I look down at the ground and grimace when I realize he’s right—the rot has spread past the circle he’s drawn in the ground around me.
When we first started doing this lesson, there was no circle. He would just bring me out here, and my rot would explode out, killing everything in view. It was uncontrollable. Destructive.
Slowly, I’ve learned how to pull it back. To only rot the ground, coaxing it back from a tree, avoiding a lake.
It’s taken a lot of time and endless hours of practice, but now, I have a tiny circle drawn around me, the top line hitting the tip of my shoe. It takes a lot of willpower to keep the rot contained in such a small area.
Some fae have to work to expand their power. Not me. My power has always wanted to rip out of me. It is containment and control that have taken years of practice.
When it became clear what my magic truly did, it scared me. I was a danger to everyone and everything, was terrified of my power. When my father figured out I was scared, he dragged me out of the house. Took me right through the city teeming with fae. He told me I either had to control it or I’d have their deaths on my conscience. I threw up twice during that exercise and rotted an entire street, but I didn’t kill anyone. Not that time.
He loves to force me to train with consequences. Says it’s not real otherwise. So I had to learn very quickly, but it didn’t happen without very real ramifications.
The people celebrating in the city wouldn’t want me there, even if I were allowed to go. That’s what happens when you rot someone right in front of them. Even though I was able to pull it back, to make sure the fae lived, the city never forgot.
My father may be known as The Breaker, but I’m The Rot.
It doesn’t help that I can never hide who I am. I might be able to hide away my spikes, but the rotted lines that run down my arms and up my neck are a constant reminder.
“Concentrate,” my father snaps, arms held behind him as he walks just outside my circle.
“I am.” I grit my teeth, while lines of rot squirm beneath my feet. The grass is dead, the ground gone dry and hard, like anything alive in the soil has shriveled up and died.
The rest of the landscape is gently changing for winter, but even so, the hills still have patches of grass, the trees holding on to the last of their leaves. If my rot were to spread, there would be nothing gentle about it. There would be no natural progression from life to death, or the circle of nature’s rebirth.
There would just be a blight.
