Seven left.
A crossbow bolt takes me in the thigh.
THIRTY-EIGHT
XELA
Idon’t see who fired it. Just feel the impact—the shock of penetration, the grinding agony as the bolt lodges against bone. My leg buckles. I go down on one knee, and the soldiers close in.
Three of them die before they reach me. Not my kills—the forest. Vines exploding from the earth, thorns erupting through their boots, roots catching their ankles and dragging them down into the waiting soil. Tharos, fighting his own battle, somehow still aware of what’s happening behind him.
But he can’t be everywhere. And there are still four soldiers left, circling me, watching for an opening.
I push myself up. My leg screams protest. Blood runs down my arm, my thigh, dripping to the ground where it’s swallowed by earth that’s learned to love the taste.
“Four against one.” I settle into a fighting stance that shouldn’t work with my injuries but will have to. “Fair odds for someone like me.”
They don’t appreciate the joke. Two attack from the front while two circle for my flanks.
I kill the first one. Turn his own blade against him, use his body as a shield against his partner’s strike. The second one getsthrough my guard while I’m tangled with the corpse. His blade opens a gash across my ribs—not deep, but painful, another wound to add to my growing collection.
I’m slowing down. Too much blood loss. Too many injuries. My arms feel heavy. My reactions are a half-beat off.
The third soldier sees his opening. Raises his blade for a killing stroke.
He doesn’t get to finish it.
Tharos is there. Not flowing through the trees this time—exploding from the earth itself, roots and vines and dark sap coalescing into the shape of a man. His hand catches the soldier’s arm mid-swing and wrenches. The crack of breaking bone is audible even over the chaos of battle. The soldier screams.
The sound cuts off when Tharos tears his throat out.
The fourth soldier tries to run. Vines catch him by the ankles, drag him down, and thorns rise from the ground to pierce him in a dozen places. He dies slowly, his screams fading to wet gurgles as the forest feeds.
Tharos turns to me.
His eyes are darker than before. The forest-shadows have deepened, spreading from his pupils to consume the whites. Sap flows freely from every scar on his body, and the glow has intensified—not faint now, but blazing, like fire burning beneath bark.
“You’re hurt.”
His voice is barely recognizable. The layers have multiplied—his voice and the King’s and the forest’s all interwoven into a sound that vibrates through my bones.
“I’ll live.”
“They hurt you.” His hand reaches toward my face, and I see his fingers have changed—the nails thick and dark, curved into claws that could tear through steel. “They touched what is mine.”
“I’m fine.” I grab his wrist, feel the bark-rough texture of his transformed skin beneath my fingers. The same skin I traced with my mouth less than two hours ago. “Tharos. Look at me. See me.”
His dark eyes focus. The swirling shadows slow.
“I see you.”
“Stay with me.” My hand slides up his arm, finds his shoulder, the place where the scars are thickest—the place I kissed in that cramped hollow while the world burned outside. I dig my fingers in, use the familiar touch to anchor him. “Don’t let it take you.”
His eyes flicker. For a moment, amber shows through the dark—his color, his warmth, fighting to surface through the King’s influence.
“Xela.” My name on his lips. Just my name. But the way he says it—reverent, desperate, like it’s the only word that matters—makes my chest clench. “I can still feel you. Even with all this power flooding through me... you’re the clearest thing.”
“Good. Keep feeling that.”
