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Finlay could not remember the last time she rested, trudging across the Lands Between with her lover draped across her back. Her eyes burned, tear streaks long forgotten on her cheeks. Arrows stuck out from her limbs, twisted themselves into her arms and legs. She did not dare pull them out. She dared not stop. She’d been travelling for days without stopping. Finlay only placed Malenia gently on the ground when she fought off the soldiers of the enemy. An enemy that was no match for Finlay. They might be stronger at times. Faster. More precise as she grew weary, but they would never overtake her. Not as long as she had breath in her lungs and a love to protect.
Every moment she paused, they attacked, so she learned not to pause. The first after she escaped came at the edge of a dried lake, a basin littered with corpses. A mere puddle of water left behind. Finlay drank the water, stale but clean enough. Her blade moved without a thought, a kill with each breath. When it was over, she picked up her beloved without wiping the blood from her cheek. Soon, the arrows started to find their purchase. She no longer had time or energy to deflect them all, letting them sink into her skin. She stopped feeling them, or maybe she stopped caring. Her sword stayed steady. Her knees did not. But she stood. She always stood. Each time, she placed Malenia down with a kiss on her brow. A whispered vow. Then, she’d rise and face the world with a fire that should have burned out days ago.
She did not know how she still breathed, but she did. That was all that mattered.
The weight of Malenia was familiar now — not heavy, never heavy — but it seeped into her bones all the same. The rot curled around her torso, weaving itself around her neck. It bloomed from the left side of her face.
Malenia’s breath ghosted against the back of Finlay’s neck. Uneven. Her metal hand lay limp against Finlay’s shoulder. The bloom nearly took everything from her. Everything, save for Finlay. She watched as her love’s rot destroyed the land. It ate soldiers and earth alike, warping it into a swamp that Finlay knew not. She did not care as she waded, knees deep in the rotted water. As her love collapsed to the ground, there was only one thought in her mind. Malenia must live.
The air around them stank of death — it choked them. Scarlet blossoms split Finlay’s skin, pulsing faintly as if they remembered Malenia’s screams.
Finlay did not look back.
Now, they neared the Haligtree. Her journey was almost over. Her feet dragged through mud and moss, blistered and bloodied beneath her armor. She lost feeling in her toes days ago. Perhaps she had none left. Her hands ached. Her lungs burned. Her back screamed. And yet, she walked. Step after step. What else could she do?
The Haligtree stopped singing. The wind had gone still. But the rot — her rot — sang to Finlay now. It coiled around her like a promise. Choking her.
The rot would be the last thing to remain. It seeped into the flesh where Malenia’s blood spilled, curling like ivy through the cracked skin and broken armor. Scarlet tendrils would bloom from her mouth, twisting bone and flesh until her face did not remain. She could feel the rot creeping behind her like a second shadow, a trail of withered vines in its wake.
It clung to her armor in smudges and patches, and it took root in the arrows digging into her skin. Her side ached with every step, the skin flushed with heat, cracking in petaled patterns. She ignored it. Sometimes, she would catch a reflection in still water or shattered steel and see it — the bloom unfurling from the side of her face. Roots digging into the veins of her eyes. It throbbed with a slow, pulsing beat. Unrelenting. Intimate.
Finlay learned after a few days that the pulse aligned with that of Malenia’s heart. After that, she did not mind it.
She collapsed at the base of the Haligtree, her body failing before her will ever could. With trembling hands, she placed Malenia in her seat, her throne. A great chair grown into the roots of the tree, twisted and weathered, carved to resemble Malenia and Miquella.
Malenia did not stir. Finlay rose to her knees and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. Dim light filtered through the leaves above. Malenia’s gentle, cracked skin was dried scarlet and tarnished gold. Her face so serene, even in ruin. She pressed another gentle kiss against each cheek.
Finlay pressed her forehead to the other woman’s. “I am going to die from this,” she whispered. “A little more every day, and when you wake, you will blame yourself. I do not wish you to.”
Her hands trembled as her fingers traced Malenia’s collarbone. Little specks of red ate away at the edges of her fingernails. She hadn’t noticed them before.
“It is not your fault. You told me to run. I did not,” Finlay murmured. She did not know if Malenia could hear her. She prayed that she could. “Still, I stayed.”
There was no reply. Only the quiet hum of Malenia’s presence — vast and broken and beautiful.
“I’ll rot too,” Finlay said. “Just like the earth. Piece by piece. I will die of you.”
And, somehow, that made it bearable. She leaned down, letting her lips ghost over the other woman’s brow. “I’ll carry you to the ends of the Lands Between if I have to. Even if the roots rise to swallow me. Even if the bloom takes my mind.”
A pause. A breath. The rot would take her. It already had. But it was not killing her. It was claiming her, just as Malenia did in the dead of night. Her lips ghosting along Finlay’s thighs. Her teeth sinking into her flesh. It was no different than that.
She had dreamed once of dying beside Malenia, her blade buried in the heart of some great beast, her name forgotten but her cause eternal. A clean death. A warrior’s death. But this? This was not clean. This was not quick. There was comfort in that.
The rot was not a death that took. It was a death that kept. It would keep her for eternity, bound to her one love. She welcomed it. She watched as the red pinpricks slowly carved their way down her fingers. She let it take her inch by inch, centimeter by centimeter. Because it came from her. Born of Malenia’s bloom, her breath, her blood. If Finaly was to be devoured, then let it be by her love, for love like this never died; it decayed.
She curled up beside Malenia, ignoring the sting in her lungs, the crimson eating through the soft skin at her neck. She rested her head against Malenia’s knee.
“I never understood why you are associated with death as your brother is with life,” Finlay mumbled, running her fingers over the flower blooming from the side of her face. “After all, you are the one who creates it, m’lady.”
She closed her eyes. For now, she would rest.
Let her last breath come tainted with scarlet petals falling from her lips.