With color fading from her cheeks, Cameron gasped. “You’re serious?”
She nodded grimly. “We call it Heart-rot or Wintering. It’s where we begin to decay from the inside out. Like what you saw with Mona. We turn pale and our blood darkens. Those of us who are strongest can mask the disease longer than those who are weaker, but sooner or later, it will show itself. And when it does, it turns us into monsters who live on the pain and blood of others.”
“Is there a treatment for it?”
Shaking her head, Mara winced at the brutality of the plaguelike illness. Though it wasn’t common among her people anymore, she’d seen more than enough of the illness in her time to be afraid of contracting it, and to want nothing to do with any manner of Wintering.
“Because the heart no longer beats on its own, it causes a painful hunger inside the sufferer for fresh blood, to the point they will hunt others for it. Tear them apart and devour them whole to get what they need. Even their own children aren’t safe around them. No one is. ’Tis said when it gets bad enough, they’ll even gnaw on bones like rabid rats, trying to get every last bit of blood they can out of the very marrow of them.”
“It sounds awful.”
“You’ve no idea.” Anger brought a bitter taste to her mouth as she silently seethed. “Worse? It was Du’s race who first cursed us with it. His own grandmother, Kara, sentenced her stepmother Heiðr for killing Du’s grandfather after they were married. A dark Disir goddess, Kara gave this disease to my people for what was done to hers, and we returned the favor to them with our own version of a similar illness. First Kara was stricken with it, then her son, and finally Du himself came down with it.”
Cameron gasped as she realized what that meant and why Du was so very evil. “If there’s no treatment, can it ever be healed?”
Again, she shook her head. “It’s what causes his eyes to turn red whenever he becomes angry. What makes him an unreasonable beast. It’s a credit to him that he contains his madness as well as he does. Most are driven so insane by it that they have to be put down like rabid animals.”
“‘Most’ implies that some escape.”
Mara sighed as she poured more drink. “There are legends—silly ones, of course—that claim they can be saved by true love’s kiss. Or the hand of one who can see past the beast to love them in spite of their cruelty. But that’s such hokum as to be ridiculous.”
“You don’t believe in love?”
How could she? She’d never seen it in her extremely long life. And she’d seen some rather miraculous things. But never love. Never anything close to what the poets described in their ridiculous songs. “Do you, Miss Jack?”
“Aye. Me brother loves his Lettice. It’s why I think we’ll find him. He won’t leave her. Not without a bitter fight.”
“Then they are lucky, indeed.”
Cameron sipped at her rum. “So you’ve never been in love, then?”
She shook her head. “My people didn’t believe in it. Not the way humans do. And the gods know Du’s definitely didn’t. He’d laugh like a madman if you ever so much as hinted at it. They only believed in duty, honor, and family.”
“You mock that?”
“’Tis not mockery you detect in my tone. Just pity. No matter how noble something is as a concept, when taken to extremes, anything can become corrupted and used as a vehicle for evil.”
“So you think the captain is beyond all redemption?”
Mara paused at the question. A few months back, she’d have said yes unequivocally.
Now …
She scowled as her gaze went past Cameron’s shoulder to focus on Devyl’s massive form, headed for them. There was an intensity to his swagger that she hadn’t seen in a long time. One he reserved for battle.
Or enemies he intended to gut.
He hadn’t approached her with it since the day they first met, and it wrung the same reaction from her now as it’d done then. Her gut tightened as every part of her sanity screamed for her to run.
Unfortunately, flight wasn’t in her. So she stood her ground, even though a part of her expected to wet herself at any moment.
Without a word, he took her arm in a fierce grip and hauled her from the galley to the upper deck.
“What are you doing?”
He practically carried her. Though he was insistent, he wasn’t rough, per se. Still, it unsettled her. And it seriously rankled her.
But not as much as his continued silence on the matter.
