No. Not cheering. The hunters are crying out, but not from the siege engine’s failure.
They’re crying out because the ground is eating them.
Roots surge upward through the camp, impaling hunters where they stand. Vines descend from the canopy, wrapping around throats and limbs and dragging bodies into the trees. The forest has turned against the Consortium with a fury I’ve never witnessed—a violence that makes Tharos’s controlled attacks look gentle by comparison.
The King. The King is doing this.
The realization hits me like a physical blow. The Binding Breaker is destroyed, but so is Tharos’s concentration. The King is using the chaos to push through, to seize control of the forest, to feed on the violence it’s been denied for so long.
I need to find Tharos. Now.
I fight my way through the carnage, ignoring the hunters being torn apart around me. The forest seems to recognize me—or maybe it’s just too busy with other prey—because the roots don’t reach for me, the vines don’t strike. I’m invisible in the midst of slaughter, searching desperately for the orc who’s supposed to be containing this.
I find him braced against the base of the ruined siege engine, one hand pressed flat to the blackened iron, his body upright but barely. His scars have split. His eyes are wrong before I’ve even said his name.
“Tharos.”
He turns toward my voice. The movement is slow—too deliberate, too controlled. Not his control.
“She will feed me well.”
The voice that comes from his mouth isn’t his. It’s layered, ancient, hungry—the same voice I’d heard during the possession attempt in the forest.
The Thorn King is speaking through him. To me.
“Such devotion,” the King says with Tharos’s lips. “Such fierce loyalty to a man you’ve known for mere hours. I wonder—will you taste as sweet as your predecessor? Will you call his name at the end, the way Cyrilla called yours?”
The cold tries to find me again, the way it did in the clearing when the King first reached for that wound. This time I’m ready for it. I let the chill rise and pass without taking root. The King is reaching for the same lever. I won’t keep handing it back.
“Get out of him.” My voice is steady, even though my hands are shaking at my sides. “Whatever game you’re playing, it ends now.”
“Oh, little hunter.” The King’s laughter echoes through the clearing, through the dying cries of Consortium hunters, through the very roots of the forest. “The game is just beginning. And you—” The thing wearing Tharos’s face leans closer, its breath hot against my skin. “You will feed me well indeed.”
The forest shudders. The killing stops. And in the sudden silence, I realize the terrible truth.
The King isn’t trying to break free. It’s already loose. And it wants me.
SEVENTEEN
THAROS
The King has Xela’s name in its mouth when I tear myself back.
I don’t know how—there’s a moment of her steel against my skin, her voice somewhere far above the hunger, and then the King’s grip on me snaps like a rotten cord and I’m in my own body again, on my knees, with black roots erupting around us and Xela hauling me upright with one hand still on her blade.
We flee the manifestation for half a mile before I can contain it. Brute force, nothing elegant, costing me more than I want to spend. By the time the tainted growth retreats into the earth, Xela has a cut across her forearm and I have a headache that feels like the forest grinding against the inside of my skull. We shelter in a narrow cleft between two ancient oaks long enough to breathe and take stock. The main Consortium force is still moving. The ravine is still the best ground we have.
We move before the silence can settle.
We descendinto the ravine through paths that don’t exist until I will them into being.
The forest parts before me, thorns retracting, roots smoothing into steps that lower us down the sheer walls without effort. Xela follows close behind, her footsteps nearly silent on the forest floor. She’s learned to move with Briargrave rather than against it. Learned that resistance only makes the forest push back harder.
I’ve watched hunters spend days in this territory without understanding what she’s grasped in hours. It should worry me. Should make me question whether the King is somehow influencing her, smoothing her path, preparing her for some purpose I can’t see.
Instead, I find myself wanting to trust her. Wanting to believe that the woman fighting at my side is exactly what she appears to be—a survivor who’s chosen her battlefield and refuses to retreat.
The ravine floor is carpeted with old bones and older debris. Rusted weapons poke up through the leaf litter like grave markers. The walls rise on either side, sheer stone wound through with vines that move slightly when I’m not looking directly at them. Above, the canopy closes tight, blocking the sky until only scattered shafts of light penetrate.
