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“Morgott. Morgott.”
Morgott knows it’s Margit’s voice, but he can’t answer, or turn towards his separated self. He stays where he is in the snow, bent backwards to stare up at the sky between his own trembling fingers, arms curled to make space for where Vyke’s body had been, before it dissolved into ash.
Everything Vyke had been — Knight of the Roundtable, Lord Contender, Morgott’s erstwhile paramour and very nearly his friend — already burned away by the Frenzy, now irretrievable for good. Beaten into the snow, reduced to blood and ash by Morgott’s single-minded fear and fury.
He had tried to burn the Erdtree. He had given himself, in grief over his maiden, to the Flame of Frenzy.
Morgott should be furious at the betrayal, but the fire that burns in his throat is mostly grief.
Grief, and Frenzy.
That’s why Margit is here. He must have felt, through the thread of magic that connects the two parts of their single soul, what had happened.
Before Morgott had killed Vyke for the final time, the thing that had once been a Knight of the Roundtable had buried the tip of its spear between Morgott’s ribs, and the Frenzy had surged into his blood.
“Morgott,” Margit repeats, almost plaintively. He’s kneeling now. He places the veil over Morgott’s sweat-beaded brow, and Morgott’s body curls even further into itself, buried beneath the gauze of magic, made to be suitable, acceptable — even stained in blood, Madness sparking in the space behind his eyes.
Morgott does not answer. His back is twisted in a rigid arch, his hands clasped over his face. Even the veil cannot hide that.
Margit, however, does try — he curls his arms around Morgott’s veiled form as he carries him down the mountain, wraps him in his cloak to shield him from view as they descend the elevator and emerge onto the streets of Leyndell.
There are gasps of shock and alarm as Margit travels through the city, but Morgott does know if the people they pass are reacting to the Fell Omen, or to the Veiled Monarch still as a corpse in his arms.
Or, not still, Morgott realizes. Trembling. Trembling so badly his teeth chatter and his limbs jerk in miniature spasms.
They arrive, after some time that feels like an age, in Morgott’s chambers. Margit lays him on his bed, on his side so as not to crush his tail beneath him, hidden as it is by illusion.
“Morgott,” he says again. Soft, plaintive.
They almost never speak to one another. There is no need for it. Separated as they are, they have two minds and two wills, but they did not begin life as such, as some souls reborn from the Erdtree as twins do. Instead, they are simply intertwined, separated but never parted. What one knows, the other knows. What one desires, the other understands innately.
So Morgott knows, without Margit speaking the words, the plea — Hold on. Hold on.
Then he is gone — retrieving help, the intent reaches Morgott through the fog.
Morgott holds on.
When Margit returns, it is with a Perfumer.
Terror rolls through Morgott, icy against the Frenzy’s heat. No, no, he pleads, voiceless.
“I am Tricia,” the Perfumer says.
Morgott knows her, distantly. She’s of high standing in the Perfumer’s Guild, but not outside of it — she treats the curseborn and the grace-given equally. Noble children and Misbegotten cubs and Omen bairns are all the same to her.
Still. He cannot trust her. He cannot trust anyone with the secret that would ruin him.
Margit, though — “Perfumer Tricia,” he rumbles. “I must ask thee to keep a secret for us. If thou cannot, we may be required to put thee to death.”
Tricia seems unfazed. “So noted.”
Morgott struggles faintly, but Margit pushes him back down and pulls the veil from him.
“Oh!” Tricia says. Not with hatred or fury, not with fear or horror. “Oh, I see. I understand. No, this is quite all right. Your secret is safe with me.”
Margit exhales a tight, uncertain breath. “Thou wilt be able to help him?”
Tricia nods. “The treatment for the Frenzy is relatively straightforward.” She lays a hand on Morgott’s forearm, keeps it there even as he twitches and trembles. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve done this before.”
Morgott’s lips part to tell her that nothing will ever shake the fear from him. Nothing will ever convince him she is not a threat to him, the knowledge that she holds a knife forever at his throat.
Then her hands leave him, and return with something golden and seeping in her hands, coming to rest on the wound in his side, and the Frenzy leaps and burns and burns and burns and burns—
Morgott comes to with every muscle aching, the intense soreness of holding a position for too long. He stretches out, trying to ease the tension, goes limp against the mattress.
He’s damp all over with cooled sweat. His side throbs.
For a blissful moment, he doesn’t know why.
Ash in his palms. Red lightning crackling over dented armor. Empty eyes burning with golden flame. Vyke’s warm voice reduced to cruel jabs plucked from soft, shared memories, and then to throaty sobs of laughter, and then to nothing at all.
Some terrible Omen-sound breaks from Morgott’s throat, a wounded animal cry of pain and grief.
“There you are,” the Perfumer — Tricia — says from somewhere outside the blurry field of Morgott’s vision. “Just relax. Coming out of Frenzy is difficult on the body even if it doesn’t take. You’ll need to take it easy for a few days. I know that will be difficult for you, my king, but it must be done.”
Morgott clutches at his face. His eyes feel scorched, raw as if from weeping. “There is work to do,” he manages. “I must seal the doors—”
“You must rest,” Tricia repeats. “Or you may invite the Madness again.”
Before Vyke, before this, Morgott would have argued. But he knows the horror of it now. Knows if he invites it, as Vyke invited it, all will be lost.
Morgott cannot allow that to happen, or this will all have been in vain.
He goes limp, curls into himself, and lets the trembling win over. Two days. Maybe three.
Then the work resumes.