After Basil’s rescue, Tenger’s next order would be Kestra’s death.
With little protest, I had followed Joth and Loelle into his home, determined to take control of my life again. So I’d said all the right things, praised Loelle as a blessing to her people, even as she’d brought a curse to me. And I’d done my best to pretend that I was settled with the idea of remaining in All Spirits Forest for as long as I was needed here, but in fact, the very opposite was true.
All night, my mind had been churning with the things that Joth had said while we were outside. The wider scope of Loelle’s plan was becoming clear; the purpose of her plan was not.
As Loelle wanted, I was healing the forest. Every day pulling more of Endrick’s curse into my body. His corruption.
This corruption was the reason I didn’t feel the ice outside; because the ice was inside me now. This was that cold, hard center that had formed like a pit in my heart and had begun to spread.
I should have felt frightened by it, should have already asked Loelle for a way to purge it from myself, but I didn’t.
Because now that I knew what this was, I could understand it. Corruption wasn’t what anyone had thought.
It didn’t weaken or destroy; rather, it fed on weakness to make itself stronger and thus I became stronger too. Corruption was only a powerful magic evolving within a weaker host, binding the one to the other, creating something more perfect than either was alone. I could withstand the ice because I was the ice; I could pass through the storm because more and more, I was the storm.
Simon would disagree, but he was wrong. He was wrong about nearly everything, I realized that now, including when he had said that he loved me. Maybe he loved the Kestra Dallisor he had captured once, the girl he had forced into betrayal of her family and her king. Maybe he even loved that girl when she had become the Infidante, bound to kill Lord Endrick.
But whoever I was now, whatever I had become since I had last seen Simon, I was no longer that girl. No longer … me.
I didn’t know who I was now, honestly.
A healer, perhaps. And a destroyer. They were one and the same. With magic, I could give strength by destroying it elsewhere, or take strength for myself, destroying its source. I could not give without taking, and I needed to give.
Increasingly, I wanted to take.
My life did not belong to Loelle; I was no tool for her and Joth to use in order to accomplish their goals. I had to watch out for myself because no one else would.
And with that thought, the cold within me spread, assuring me I had made the only decision I could. As soon as possible, I would find the Olden Blade; then Lord Endrick and I would meet again. This time, I would destroy his curse from within its well. Destroy him.
“Kestra, what are you doing? You’re bleeding!”
I looked down and realized that, without thinking, I had grabbed Loelle’s knife from off the nearby table and was holding it by the blade. I set it down as Loelle rushed to my side and began to wrap my hand with a rag that had also been left on the table.
“What did you want with the knife?” she asked.
I didn’t know, but it frightened me to realize what I had been doing. I had no memory of picking up the knife, and I certainly would never have gripped it by the blade, not in my right mind.
Loelle finished wrapping my hand, fastening it tight with a pin; then she went to the fire and added two logs before coming to sit beside me. There, she patiently waited until I was ready to explain myself. Which I could not do.
After several minutes of silence, I said, “I think Simon’s sister is an Ironheart now. I think she was one of the archers out there with Celia.”
Loelle took that in with a steady breath. Finally, she said, “I knew Simon’s sister, Rosaleen. I knew Celia too, and I’m sorry you had to see what happened to her. But we must keep moving forward, or Celia’s sacrifice will be in vain. All that you are now sacrificing will mean nothing if we do not succeed.”
I glanced away, finally speaking the truth that I’d kept buried since almost the very moment of becoming the Infidante. “I will succeed, Loelle, because I must. But I fear that I wil
l not survive to see the fruits of it. Not with what is happening to me.”
Another long pause, then Loelle’s whisper. “I should have warned you.”
“Simon already tried to warn me, when I saved him from the river below King’s Lake. I didn’t listen to him. I wouldn’t have listened to you either.”
“But you feel it now.”
“Yes. I’ve felt it for some time, even before coming here. I didn’t realize—”
“With the Endreans—your people—corruption usually comes on slowly, over several years or more. With you, it came on within a week. How did it happen so fast?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”