“Seren,” I murmur. “You’re safe. Can you hear me?”
A few silent seconds pass, and any relief I might have felt evaporates. Her breathing stays steady, but her eyes don’t open and her skin still has that same ghastly pallor. Her lips, too, have a strange cast to them, a deep blue-black lining the edges that seems to spread outwards, staining her skin.
I look at Soleil, and she’s studying Seren with deep furrows in her brow.
“What did this to her?” She’s back on her feet as she asks the question, heading to a neatly organized rack of sorted herbs and vials of various liquids.
“A—a mushroom,” I stutter, mind flicking through terror-filled memories of watching my mate nearly be shot through with an arrow. “Or a fungus, of some sort. She was covered in its spores.”
“What kind of mushroom?” Soleil never pauses for a moment as she rifles through hundreds of glass vials, barely looking at them as she plucks one, then another, and another.
“I don’t… I don’t know.”
She grunts her frustration. “Color? Shape? What were the spores like?”
“Black. Very large, round, and attached to a tree. The spores were dark green.”
She asks nothing else, and I doubt I’d be much more help, anyway. Fingers moving this way and that over the bottles, she plucks one, then another, and another, until she’s got an armful that she takes to a workbench and starts measuring into a bowl.
“Want me to get—”
“No,” Soleil cuts off the red-headed witch, who I’d forgotten was still here. “No one can know she’s here.”
The note of warning in her tone sends a shiver of ice down my spine.
Is this place not safe for Seren? Are these not her people?
The witchmagick emanating from this place is overwhelming, undeniable. Seeping from every inch of stone, like it’s been woven into the bones of the manor for generations.
Why would Seren not belong here?
The red-haired witch nods her agreement before slipping out the door.
“If anyone tries to—”
“No one’s going to hurt her.” Soleil doesn’t even look up from her work as she cuts me off, too. “They’d just be royally pissed to know she’s here.”
“Why would they—”
“Let’s save the questions for after she’s awake.” She returns to the table with a small stone cup filled to the brim with dark blue liquid. “Help me sit her up.”
Seren’s body is limp and unresponsive as I put my arms around her, supporting her back as I get her upright.
“Sorry, Ser.” Soleil tips the cup into Seren’s mouth. “If you didn’t hate me before, you will for this.”
Alarm rings through me, but the liquid’s already passing her lips.
Seren jerks to attention almost immediately.
Or, at least her body does, reacting to whatever foul concoction Soleil is forcing into her. With a firm hand over her lips and the other massaging her throat so she swallows, Soleil makes sure she consumes every drop.
“Alright, back down now.”
Despite her visceral reaction to the potion, Seren’s eyes never open. She stills again as soon as she’s down.
“Stand back.”
Soleil’s eyes are fixed firmly on Seren’s as she speaks, hands hovering in the air over her chest, and my terror is so absolute that I don’t even think to question it.
