It takes everything I have. When it’s done, I’m shaking. Covered in sweat and sap. Barely able to stand.
But I’m still me. Still in control. Still fighting.
“That was close.” My voice comes out as a rasp.
“Too close.” She doesn’t let go of my shoulders. “Can you move?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Her jaw sets. “Because those hunters are about to reach your Heartgrove. And I’m not letting decades of containment collapse because I couldn’t kill a few Consortium thugs.”
I stare at her. This woman who came here to kill me. This bounty hunter who followed me into the dark, who held my hand through the worst of it, who just talked me back from the edge of possession.
“Why?” The question escapes before I can stop it. “Why help me?”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then, almost too soft to hear:
“Because you’re not the monster I came here to kill.”
She releases my shoulders. Steps back. Draws her blades.
“Now,” she says, “show me the fastest way to that siege engine. We have a forest to save.”
The King’s laughter echoes in my skull.
EIGHT
XELA
We don’t reach the siege engine that night.
The King’s stirring forced Tharos to pull back twice on the approach—every step closer fed the hunger pressing against his binding, and we ran out of darkness before we ran out of distance. A bone hollow he led me to was cold and old and the safest ground he could offer. He spent an hour anchoring its edges against the King’s reach. Then he left to scout.
Tharos disappears into the forest before dawn.
I don’t sleep after that. Just sit in the hollow with my back to the curved wall of roots, listening to Briargrave breathe around me and trying to convince myself that the ache in my chest is exhaustion, not something more complicated.
He comes back two hours before sunrise.
I hear him before I see him—the subtle shift of the forest making way for its warden, the soft crunch of ancient bones. He moves through the hollow’s entrance and drops to a crouch across from me, close enough that I can see the exhaustion written into every line of his face.
“The scouts are dead.” His voice is barely above a whisper. “All eight of them. The forest took the last one near the ravine.”
“And the main force?”
“Still coming.” He leans his forearms on his knees, sap-dark hands hanging loose between them. “Fifty hunters at minimum. Armed with siege weapons I haven’t seen before. Something designed to breach the Heartgrove’s outer defenses.”
I digest this. Fifty hunters. A siege engine. The Consortium doesn’t send this many resources for a standard bounty contract.
“They’re not here for you alone, are they?”
His jaw tightens. “No.”
The fire between us burns low. Outside, the forest creaks and sighs, settling into the pre-dawn hours. The cold has deepened since we took shelter here, and I’ve had to press my knees to my chest to hold onto the warmth my body generates. Tharos doesn’t seem to feel it. Probably stopped feeling cold decades ago.
I watch him in the low light. The bark-ridges on his arms. The way his eyes occasionally lose focus, as if he’s listening to something I can’t hear. The warden of a forest that eats people, sitting three feet away from me, and I’m more worried about the army coming to kill him than I am about him.
That tells me something I’m not ready to examine.
