The sound woke me in the middle of the night. For a moment I thought I was back home, hearing Bean the cat fighting a stray outside my window. But these weren’t the sounds of a cat brawl. 

It came again: a cough, a strangled cry of pain, both at once. I untangled myself from the sheets and tiptoed over to the door. 

More coughing, wet and harsh enough to make my own throat hurt. This time it was followed by sounds of choking and spitting. I twisted the doorknob and peeked out through the opening, heart hammering in my chest as my fears were confirmed: it was coming from Valerien’s bedroom. His door stood ajar.

I searched the hallway. Maybe Briar or Veerie or someone else was out there waiting for him to be finished, or making sure he was alright. But there was no one. Slowly, I pushed my door open and stepped outside, approaching his bedroom. I held my breath.

“Valerien?”

He was hunched over on the floor, lit by flickering blue candlelight. The pale skin of his neck was stained with blood, and from the wounds sprouted crimson rosebuds. Valerien’s body convulsed and he leaned over as if to vomit. His jaw unhinged and chunks of dark, bloody flesh splattered onto the floor, along with long, sharp thorns. He clutched his neck tightly enough to strangle himself to death.

“Stop!” I knelt beside him to pry his fingers away.

“DON’T TOUCH ME.”

A violent wind tore through the room. It launched me into the air and against the wall so hard it knocked the breath out of my lungs. I landed on his bed in a heap, gasping in bewilderment more than terror.

“THIS IS YOUR FAULT.” 

The voice had barely sounded like Valerien. Whatever was left of him stood up, its movements slow and clumsy, so tall its presence swallowed the room. Black wings unfurled behind him, his eyes glowing strange and cruel as blood dripped down his chin and neck. I shrank back, my wheezing filling the silence.

“YOU DID THIS.” 

The creature leaned forward and reached as if to grab me, what was once its hand extending and elongating, black feathers exploding from pores as the nails grew into talons. 

Valerien’s beautiful face became a grotesque mask of feathers as his lips hardened into a beak and new eyes opened across his forehead and cheeks. His neck extended, and thin, hoofed legs sprouted from his chest and stomach as crooked antlers twisted out from his head. 

“YOU DID THIS TO ME.” 

The claw was inches from my face and I still couldn’t find my breath, couldn’t find my voice to talk back or call for help. 

I pressed myself against the wall and glared at the giant creature before me. 

“I didn’t do anything!” I wheezed.

The talons closed around my chest, lifting me in the air like a doll. I wanted to scream, but only whimpers came out. I kicked my legs, but they met only air. Every one of the dozen blue eyes turned to watch me.

“I wanted to help!” I tried to shout, squeezing furious tears out of my eyes. “How would I even do this? Fuck you!”

Its grip around my ribcage loosened a fraction. Instead of dropping me, the creature brought me closer to its monstrous magpie head, leaning in. 

I thought he’d swallow me whole.

“I have seen you take pleasure in slaughtering my kind,” said Valerien’s voice from somewhere deep within the beast. “Why would this be any different?”

Another wave of coughs came and he convulsed, his crooked limbs twitching like a dying insect. I used this moment of weakness to wrench myself free. The bed groaned under my sudden weight and it felt as though the duvet was wrapping around my legs to keep me from running, but I managed to scramble off it and bolted out of the room. 

I stumbled to my door and hurried inside, only to realize he hadn’t actually followed me. What did was the sound of a desperate cry, an inhuman screech of pain so pitiful that some animal part of my mind wanted half to care for him, half to put him out of his misery.

Despite myself, I opened the door and stepped back out into the hallway. 

He was still in his room, claws buried in the wooden floor, beak stuck in a silent scream to make way for a river of blood. As he convulsed, his wings flailed and shattered one of the windows behind him. 

I hated myself in that moment. Hated that I couldn’t hate him, that I wanted to help. What twisted mind would look at this monster and wish to comfort it? 

I steeled my emotions and forced myself to watch him struggle. I couldn’t help him, but I couldn’t ignore his pain either. As punishment for my weakness and ineptitude, all I could do was witness it.

“Valerien!” Briar’s voice made me wince. She ran into her master’s room, skillfully dodging the flailing limbs and wings and grabbing onto his leg. “My boy! What happened to you?” 

“GET AWAY FROM ME.” The voice sounded broken, like it had cried for hours. Briar hesitated, craning her neck to see the creature’s head, before slowly letting go. 

“Has it begun?” she said quietly, voice shaking. “Talk to me. Don’t get lost, don’t let it take you.” 

Her tiny hands burrowed into the feathers of his wings. I shouldn’t have been watching this, but I feared my moving would remind them I existed.

The creature’s giant head hung low as if the neck couldn’t support it, but its dozen blue eyes stared wildly in different directions, desperately searching for something. Then, it turned away, and Briar stumbled back when it spread its wings. 

“Wait! Where are you going?” the gnome screamed before the monstrous being stepped through the broken window and flung itself into the night. 

I couldn’t help but sigh in relief as the black feathers melded with the darkness. 

My hand was shaking when I lifted it to open my bedroom door. It creaked and my heart jumped, fearing Briar would notice and confront me, but she just sat there, sobbing quietly. I fled to my room and collapsed onto the bed.

I wasn’t scared. At least, I didn’t feel scared. Even when he’d lifted me up, his hold had been gentle enough that the only pain I felt had come from the gust of wind slamming me against the wall. 

But I was shaken. The same way I’d been that one time my mother and I had been hunting in the forest. She was trying to teach me to use a bow and arrow, and to demonstrate the proper techniques she’d found a young buck. Right before she loosed the arrow, I slipped on a wet branch and it saw us. The arrow lodged itself in its neck, and I watched the animal writhe in pain as it tried to get away from us, drowning in its own blood. 

“Oh, for …” Mother had sighed in annoyance, then smiled sadly at me. “Come. I’ll show you where to strike to give it a quick and painless death.” 

The desperate writhing and panic. I promised myself to never witness something like that again, to always give my prey a quick death. Valerien wasn’t my prey, yet his pain felt like it was my fault.

The image of his body and face contorting and changing, so fast I was sure his skin would tear … I couldn’t get it out of my head. He hadn’t wanted it, that much was clear. His own body did that without his say. 

He was cursed.

The realization was paralyzing. I couldn’t imagine what sort of curse would do that to a high fae, or who would put him under it. Whom had he wronged to be punished like this?   

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when something knocked at my window. No, not a knock, rather a sharp tapping from a tiny beak. A little brown bird with a white belly and a black mask perched on the other side of the windowsill, looking at me intently through the glass. It was a red-backed shrike, from the looks of it, and it was immediately familiar. Its beady black eyes were sharp and calculating. 

I let Lin inside. 

“Do you have news of Sinéad?” I blurted out, my voice still shaking. 

“Naturally. Ta-dah!” They flicked their hand and a small note appeared between two of their fingers. 

All thoughts of Valerien disappeared and I rushed over to the tiny piece of paper Lin held toward me, taking it from their hand as if it was the rarest treasure in the world. 

Sinéad was alive and well enough to write me a letter. It was small and short and I could tell from the clumsy handwriting she had to write it in haste, but it was her hand. I hurried toward the lone candle burning on my nightstand and squinted at each tiny letter, taking in each stroke and loop of the ink as if I could pull her person from the traces she left on the parchment without actually reading the words. 

“Not even a thanks, hmm?” 

“I—” 

Lin had stuck their hand under my pillows. Our eyes met, and they grinned unapologetically. 

“What? I did as you asked, no? The dagger is mine.” 

I nodded absently. Between Sinéad’s letter and Valerien’s strange outburst, I felt caught in the eye of a storm, as though moving would rip the ground from under my feet. Lin taking my grandmother’s knife barely made a dent in my consciousness. 

“Why the long face, sweetheart?” they asked. “Well, aside from your long face.”

“Something happened to Valerien.” 

Lin’s smile faded, “What do you mean?”

I licked my lips. They’d gone dry and threatened to crack if I kept talking. “He vomited blood and thorns. Then he turned into some bird creature. He said it was my fault, but I don’t know what I did, I was asleep when his coughing woke me. I-I don’t know …” 

Lin’s gaze was somewhere miles beyond me and I stopped talking once I noticed. An expression of doomed acceptance fell across their face. “Then it’s finally started,” they mumbled to nobody in particular. 

“What started?”

“Nevermind that. Where is he now?”

“He left through his bedroom window, but I think Briar saw where he went?” 

They nodded curtly and headed straight for the door, leaving me alone again.

I swallowed the tears lest they fell and smudged the ink, and tried to breathe deeply as I read.

Yours always, Sinéad 

Sorry for the late update, I had to take my cat to the vet (dw it's just a routine vaccination) and then struggle to assemble IKEA furniture <3