“What do the stories say?”
“That you’re a monster.” She looks back at me. A flicker crosses those sharp eyes—an emotion I can’t quite read. “That you’ve killed hundreds. That you enjoy it.”
“The first two are true.”
“And the third?”
The King’s laughter echoes through my skull. Tell her, warden. Tell her how good the killing feels. How the blood singswhen it hits the earth. How much you’ve learned to love the feeding.
I push the voice back. “I don’t enjoy anything. Haven’t for a long time.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “The path forward. Where is it?”
I close my eyes. Reach for the forest’s awareness—not the King’s, but Briargrave itself. The ancient consciousness that existed before the hunger took root. It’s harder to find now, buried under layers of malice, but it’s still there. Still fighting.
North—the path is north, hidden behind a screen of thorns, barely wide enough to squeeze through.
“This way.” I move toward the hidden gap. The thorns part reluctantly, their protest audible only to me. “Stay close. It’s going to get worse from here.”
“Worse how?”
The ground shakes. Somewhere ahead, fire roars. The Consortium is getting closer.
And in the Heartgrove, the Thorn King opens what might be eyes, and looks at me with eight centuries of hunger.
“Worse in every way,” I say. “Try not to die.”
We push through the thorns, and the darkness swallows us whole.
SEVEN
THAROS
The forest deepens.
That’s the only way to describe it. The trees grow thicker, older, more twisted. The air becomes heavy with the smell of blood-sap. The light—what little of it filtered through the canopy—disappears entirely, leaving us in a darkness broken only by the faint glow of phosphorescent fungus clinging to the bark.
I can see well enough. Decades of adaptation have changed my eyes along with everything else. But the woman is struggling, one hand trailing along the tree trunks to keep her bearings, her steps slowing as she tries to navigate by touch and sound.
“Take my hand.”
The words come out before I can stop them. She hesitates—I can hear it in the pause of her breathing—and then her fingers find mine.
Her skin is warm. Calloused from years of holding weapons, rough at the knuckles, scarred across the palm. I shouldn’t notice these things. I notice anyway.
“The path is narrow here.” My voice sounds strange. Too quiet. Too controlled. “I’ll guide you through. When I stop, you stop. When I move, you move.”
“Understood.”
We walk.
The thornpaths twist and turn, leading us deeper into territory I haven’t visited in years. The forest here is old—older than anything else in Briargrave, older maybe than the Veil itself. These trees were ancient when the High Witches still walked the land. They remember things that even the King has forgotten.
They’re also hostile. Not to me—never to me, not since the binding—but to anything foreign. Anything that doesn’t belong. The woman is a violation in their eyes. A wound that needs to be closed.
I keep her hand in mine. Feel the forest’s anger press against me, demanding that I release her, let the thorns take her, add her bones to the collection that carpets the Heartgrove floor.
I don’t release her.
