Victory at Pied-de-Cochon tasted of ash and iron. Geneviève rode for miles, pushing the destrier well beyond the limits of prudence, driven only by the instinct to put distance between herself and the grateful gazes of the peasants. Gratitude was as dangerous as a blade: it made you lower your guard, it made you want to stay. And Sir Gilles could not stay.
But there was another reason for her precipitate flight. Her left shoulder throbbed with a searing, sickly rhythm. The beast's bite had not just torn flesh; it had left something inside. A slimy coldness that radiated from the wound, descending toward her heart and rising toward her neck, numbing the fingers of her left hand. The "Fever of the Dead," the veterans called it. Usually, a man died screaming within three days, while his blood turned black as tar.
Toward dawn, the horse stopped, refusing to take another step. They had arrived at the ruins of an old watchtower, a broken tooth of stone sticking out of the gray fog. Geneviève dismounted, but her legs gave way. She fell heavily into the mud, the clang of armor muffled by the moss. The world began to spin. The trees looked like skeletal hands trying to grab her.
"Get up, Gilles," she hissed to herself, her voice thick. "You do not have permission to die."
She dragged herself inside the ruined tower, sheltered from the incessant rain. With trembling hands, she unclasped the dented pauldron. The leather underneath was sticky. When she tore away the sleeve of her shirt, the smell of rancid meat filled the cramped space. The wound was black, rimmed with a sickly green. The veins around the bite were swollen and dark, like poisoned roots trying to reach the heart.
Geneviève leaned against the cold stone, her breath short. The fever hit her like a hammer. She closed her eyes and saw her father forging chains. She saw Sir Balduin laughing while wine dripped down his chin. She saw the Damsel in the forest, looking at her with sadness. "The path ends in a dark pit," she had said. "Is this the pit?" thought Geneviève. "Dying of fever in a forgotten tower, eaten by worms before I even stop breathing?"
A violent shiver shook her. It was not cold. It was a presence. The necromancy infecting her blood was trying to snuff out her soul. She heard a voice in her head, a honeyed whisper promising peace, sleep, and the end of pain, if only she would stop fighting. Let go, little smith. The steel is too heavy for you.
Geneviève gritted her teeth so hard she heard them creak. "No." The refusal did not come from her logical mind. It came from the deep, from that secret place where she guarded her identity. It was not just stubbornness. It was something new. In that year of solitude, of silent prayers, and stolen identity, Geneviève had forged her spirit as one beats raw iron: blow after blow, burn after burn. Her personality, the magnetic charisma she had learned to hide under the helm, had not disappeared. It had condensed.
Suddenly, the cold of the fever collided against a wall of white heat. Geneviève felt a force explode from her sternum, radiating outward. It was not magic studied in books. It was the pure force of her will bending reality. She felt Divine Grace wrap around her like an invisible cloak. It was a physical sensation: a second skin, imperceptible but indestructible, made of absolute conviction. The voice in her head tempting her to surrender crashed against this barrier and shattered. The fear of death vanished, replaced by a crystalline clarity. Her body was still sick, but her spirit had become untouchable. No dark magic, no supernatural fear could easily bend her again. She had transformed her suffering into a shield.
She opened her eyes. In the gloom of the tower, she saw her hands. They were no longer trembling. She looked at the infected wound. The poison was still there, but now she knew what to do. She did not need a surgeon. She did not need herbs.
She pulled off her right gauntlet, leaving her bare hand exposed to the freezing air. The hand was calloused, stained with grease and dried blood, with nails short and broken. A worker's hand. Geneviève placed that hand directly onto the black, purulent flesh of her shoulder.
"By the blood I have shed," she whispered, her voice steady as rock. "By the name I no longer have. Heal."
She did not ask the Lady to do it. She ordered her own body to do it, using the divine energy that now flowed freely within her. From her hand, a gentle light did not spring forth. Instead, a blue fire erupted, violent and crackling. Lay on Hands. Geneviève screamed in pain as the sacred power burned the infection. She heard the necromancy sizzle and die, vaporized by the purity of her energy. The black skin shriveled and fell away like ash, revealing red, living flesh, scarring over before her eyes under her touch.
When she pulled her hand back, panting and covered in sweat, the mortal wound was gone. Only a white scar remained, in the shape of a hand, branded onto her shoulder. An indelible mark of her power.
Geneviève let herself fall back against the wall, laughing weakly. A hoarse, hysterical laugh, but alive. She looked at her right hand. It looked the same as always, but she felt the residual tingling of a power that could snap the bones of the undead or close a gash in a soldier's belly.
She stood up. The weight of the armor, which before seemed unbearable, now seemed strangely comforting, like the weight of an old friend. She picked up the pauldron and clasped it back on with precise movements. The sickness was gone. The weakness had been burned away. Geneviève had not just survived the night. She was reborn, once again. She was no longer just a warrior who prayed; she had become a conduit. A vessel of sacred power walking in the mud.
She exited the tower. The rain had ceased and, to the east, a blade of pale light cut through the black clouds. Geneviève mounted up. The horse felt the change: there was no longer the hesitation of fatigue in the reins, but a grip of steel. Sir Gilles still had a long way to go. And now, she had fire in her hands to light the path.