When the last tendrils snarled into formation beneath the moon, shattering it like a broken mirror, Rook sighed and went still.
Waking up that morning was worlds different than the morning previous. The jagged scraps of sky showing through the brambles were so overcast I couldn’t tell whether it was before dawn or after. Dew had settled on me overnight, leaving my clothes sodden and my skin so clammy my fingers and toes had gone numb. I was immediately conscious of how sore I felt, and how disgusting a state I was in. Of my entire body only my shoulder felt warm, but in a moist, disagreeable way that set my skin crawling. I found it covered in moss where Rook’s blood had soaked through my dress, and hastily peeled the growth off in clumps.
Then I rolled over, and found Rook dead beside me.
He lay sprawled a few feet away in exactly the same position I’d last seen him. His hand was still buried in the dirt, and his face was sepulchral. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for him to grow any paler overnight, but he seemed to have done so.
I went to him, my damp, grimy skirt flapping against my legs as I moved. I stood over his body and for a moment just looked. I’d gambled everything on his survival—more than was wise, I admitted to myself, as a gray bleakness engulfed me, chased by a weak flutter of hope.
Because I was wrong. He had to be alive. His spilled blood had turned to moss overnight, but his body remained whole. If he were dead, I wouldn’t be looking at him now, not intact, not like this.
I dropped to my knees and splayed my hand across his chest. When I felt it rise and fall shallowly beneath the rags of his coat, I breathed out an uneven laugh, shaken by relief. I reached for the coat’s edge to peel it back from his wound. My sleeve caught on his raven pin, and cold metal sprang against my wrist. I pulled away. I’d tripped a catch. The bird had a hidden compartment inside.
I would be lying if I claimed the secret it revealed surprised me. There were precious few explanations for Rook’s behavior, and this was proof of the most likely one: a curl of blond human hair nested inside the compartment, carefully tied together with blue thread.
I remembered how he’d insisted on removing the pin for his portrait. Even then he had fumbled to protect himself, his reputation, from his damningly mortal grief. He wore it still, though the pin’s tarnish and antique craftsmanship gave it away as two or three hundred years old.
Gently, I closed the pin, but I had to press down on his chest to secure the latch, and I think it hurt, because his eyes flew open. Their unearthliness in the light of day gave me an unpleasant jolt. They were glassy, burning with fever. He tried to move and started panting.
“I feel strange,” he announced, struggling to focus on the empty air beside me.
“You look strange.” I steeled myself and touched his forehead, which proved hot as an oven against my chilled fingers. “I was under the impression fair folk didn’t get fevers,” I said, concerned.
“What’s a fever?” he demanded with a scowl, which didn’t improve my fears.
“It happens when a wound goes bad. I’m going to touch this.” I indicated his clothes and he tensed, but nodded. While he waited for me to do my work he took his hand out of the dirt, inspected it, then cast about for something to wipe it off on. I had the annoyed suspicion he considered my dress before he victimized a patch of moss instead.
I peeled his coat open, and my stomach flopped over. The flesh around the wound had turned black. Black veins spiderwebbed out of it, vanishing beneath the edges of his clothes. How extensively had the poison spread? I dragged his coat and the shirt underneath open farther, undoing buttons toward his waist without a care for preserving his modesty. Or my own, for that matter, as while I’d educated myself thoroughly on the subject, I’d never seen a man undressed.
Rook propped himself up on an elbow. Despite his weakness, he suddenly looked very interested in whatever I might be doing. Then his eyes alit on his chest. He cried out in disgust and seized his clothes from my hands, fastened the buttons back up, and stood with more alacrity than I would have thought possible. I evaluated him warily. In some ways he had greatly improved. But as fevers went, this could be the final blaze before his body burned itself to ashes.
“You can’t just pretend it isn’t there,” I told him, climbing to my feet.
“But it’s hideous,” he replied, as though this were a reasonable objection.
“Festering wounds are always hideous.” I ignored the affronted look he gave me at the word “festering,” perhaps under the impression that I’d just insulted him. “Do you have any idea why this is happening?”