Page 13

If my would-be husband didn’t want me as his wife, I could still thrive as a shrine maiden.

I poured a little water into a bowl. The fox came close enough to drink, and I let my fingers trail over one pointed ear. It tolerated the touch, but a sideways flick suggested I shouldn’t take it as encouragement.

“Please! Is the shrine maiden here?”

The cry carried through the courtyard. The jug slipped from my fingers. It struck the stone with a crack that sent the fox scrambling under the shrine. Beneath my feet the roots stirred with a sudden, sickening urgency. Someone was hurt.

Help them, the Forests urged. Help them now, child.

I stumbled out from under the branches and ran across the courtyard. For a moment, every rustling leaf seemed to repeat the cry. I reached the entrance hall just as an elderly dryad struggled through the doorway. She had a man’s arm slung across her shoulders, his weight dragging against her side as his boots scraped the stone. She tried to lift him higher, but her knees buckled.

“I have him,” I told her, catching his other arm. “Help me lower him. What happened?”

“He was cutting wood.” She clung to his tunic as we eased him onto the floor. Dark scars crossed her bark-like skin, and her hands shook so badly she couldn’t let go. “There were spores inside the trunk. He breathed them in before he could get away.”

The man coughed, a wet, tearing sound that left him slumped against my arm. I held him until he could lift his head. His mouth hung open, working for another breath.

“What’s his name?” I asked, loosening his collar. I wanted something to call him, something he might answer to.

“Damon. I’m Kallisto.” She pushed damp hair from his forehead. “They said someone had heard singing here. A maiden’s songs. Please, tell me I’ve brought him to the right place.”

“You have,” I assured her. “Let me look at him. I can help.”

I wanted it to be true. Gods, I wanted to take him from her and wipe the terror from her face.

“Damon, can you hear me?” I asked, leaning over so he could see me. “Tell me where it hurts.”

“Chest,” he rasped, reaching for my wrist. “Can’t get air.”

His fingers dug into my skin. I let him hold on. “I’m going to loosen this,” I told him, pulling his tunic open with my free hand. “Try to let me look.”

Dark veins spread across his chest, branching toward his throat. Underneath my palm, his heart beat frantically. Something else moved with it, pulling at the current, consuming the strength his body was fighting to summon.

I knew those marks. For one awful moment, I wished I didn’t. But if I hadn’t recognized them, I’d have begun healing him with all the certainty Kallisto expected. I’d have believed I was helping. And I’d have killed him.

I stopped the current before it passed into his flesh and fed the disease eating at Damon. A life-consuming spore. It was a terrible parasite, one that sometimes appeared in the angrier, older trees. Life magic fueled it. The harder a healer tried to mend its victim, the faster it spread.

Damon coughed again. I supported his shoulders, waiting for his next breath. It came as a thin, strangled gasp. Too shallow, too weak. He was dying.

Kallisto grabbed my arm and squeezed it. “Why aren’t you singing?” she demanded. “He needs you. Can’t you see he needs you?”

“I can,” I replied, hating my own helplessness. “But right now, my magic will feed the spore. I can’t give it to him like this.”

She stared at me, her grip tightening. “Then do something else.”

Something else. As though I were withholding a second, more difficult cure.

I wanted to tell her to let go of me. To give me room to think. But she’d dragged a dying man through the woods, and I’d just assured her she was in the right place. She had every reason to expect more from me than a warning.

“How long ago did he breathe it?” I asked, trying to keep the strain out of my voice. Damon was still holding on to me, but his strength would soon falter.

“Before the sun was overhead. He said he only needed to get away from the tree.” Her mouth trembled. “He could still walk then.”

That wasn’t long at all. The parasite had grown quickly. I looked at the dark lines creeping higher and tried to remember every lesson, every account of a patient brought to the shrine with this sickness.

Don’t feed it. Don’t try to close the damaged flesh.

Was that all? Surely there had been something else. Surely someone had found a way to save a man instead of merely naming what was killing him.