“Well, youhadjust died. And you were probably still very close to death, if the guards or any of the princes had caught you.”
My throat bobbed again. “He said… He said we’d meet again.”
Gillie glanced over at me with a brow raised. “Well, you’re still alive, aren’t you? So one day he’ll visit you again. When your time is up.”
“So he appears for all Folk? Not just unseelie?”
“Yes. He’s both and neither. A harbinger of death for all of us.”
I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt, staring at the cauldron. “Was he… Was he who you saw in your visions about me?”
The terrifying words on those notes tucked into theSpellsmithsbook still haunted me.Death warms him. Death weeps.
Gillie went very still, his hand freezing with the long wooden spoon poised over the cauldron. When I glanced up at his face it was vacant, his eyes unfocused as if he was trying to remember.
“No,” he eventually murmured, his voice dreamy like he was reliving the vision. “Not him.”
“Who then?” I asked, a hint of urgency in my voice. “Or was it just death in general? Because I was close to it while I was there?”
Gillie blinked hard, brows pulling together before his face cleared and he smiled over at me. “Not sure, lad. But it doesn’t matter now, eh? You’re here. You’re safe. You got away.”
I reached up and rubbed my stump through my pinned shirt sleeve, my voice hoarse when I said, “Yeah. Most of me, anyway.”
I stared at my new arm while Nua fiddled with it, making final adjustments. It was unnerving as hell to think that this thing was going to be attached to me soon. Was going to be a part of me.
It looked nearly identical to Gillie’s drawing. Nua had carefully twisted the softened branches together into an arm that bent at the elbow, just like a flesh-and-bone limb. The fingers were long and spindly, but flexed and could clench into a fist.
Gillie assured me it would act as a fully functioning hand once the fungi had… done their thing. Honestly, I was trying hard not to think about that aspect of it too much.
Running down the core of the arm was a central branch that would attach to my severed humerus. Gillie said he wasn’t sure which would be more painful, the branch fusing to my bone, or the fungi invading my nervous system, but he cheerfully warned me that the entire ordeal was going to be unpleasant at first.
I was still determined to do it.
“What if… Is there a chance my body will reject it?” I asked nervously as Gillie walked into the living room from the kitchen carrying that fucking whisky bottle, a tiny knife, and a glass jar filled with miniscule dark brown things. The spores, I presumed, swallowing hard.
“Psh.” He sat down cross-legged beside Nua. “It won’t. You’re fae. You’re part of these woods, just like these branches and fungi.”
He passed me the whisky bottle. “Drink up.”
I reluctantly did, knowing what was coming. I looked down at my stump, hidden beneath my shirt sleeve.
“So,” Gillie said cheerfully as Nua carefully passed him the arm. “I imagine it will take a few days for you to start being able to move it. It’s nice and warm and damp in your arm, eh? So it won’t take long for the spores to flourish into mycelium and work their way into your muscle tissue and nerves. Until then, we’ll keep it secure while the branch fuses to your bone and your skin connects.”
I took another long gulp of whisky.
He chuckled, then bent his head over the arm to concentrate as he made tiny, careful cuts in the ends of the branches before inserting the spores. Nua and I watched in silence, and my stomach twisted with dread when he finally raised his head to give me a grim look.
“Ready, lad?”
I licked my lips and nodded, following Nua and Gillie up unsteadily from the floor. We were going to re-open my wound over the bath, so blood didn’t get everywhere. I took the whisky bottle with me, taking another gulp.
I felt the blood drain from my face when I saw the sharp, longish blade resting on the wooden chair in the bathroom.
“Best to get it done quick,” Gillie said as he dragged the chair over to the side of the bath and swapped the arm for the blade. “The sooner we do it, the sooner it’s over.”
I nodded again, walking to the bath on trembling legs. Nua and Gillie waited in silence while I slowly pulled off my shirt. Nua took it from me, then knelt behind me when I sat unsteadily beside the bath with my stump over the lip of the tub.
“One more gulp?” Gillie asked, nodding at the whisky bottle.