I need to be reckless.
I think of Tharos. Of the way he looked at me that first night—not with fear or contempt, but with curiosity. With recognition. Two killers seeing the same darkness reflected back. I think of the night in the hollow, his hands on my skin, his voice rough with emotions he’d forgotten how to express. I think of every moment since then—every touch, every kiss, every whispered promise we made to each other in the darkness.
I’m not losing him. Not now. Not after everything we’ve survived.
I charge.
The King’s response is immediate. Roots erupt from the ground beneath my feet—I leap over them, using one as a springboard to launch myself higher. Vines whip toward my face—I slice through them without slowing, my blade singing through the air. Thorns punch toward my chest—I twist, feel them tear my armor, feel one score a line of fire across my ribs, and I keep going.
My left arm has gone numb. Blood loss or nerve damage—doesn’t matter. I switch my blade to my right hand, let the other hang useless at my side. One weapon instead of two. It’ll have to be enough.
Because I can see it now. Between the writhing roots, behind the wall of faces, deep in the center of the King’s mass?—
The heart.
A core of pure black wood, pulsing with dark energy. It’s the size of my head, maybe larger, covered in a lattice of veins that glow with sickly green light. The source of everything. The seed from which the rest grew until it became something that could think. Something that could want. Something that could kill.
If I can reach it—if I can drive my blade through that pulsing core—the King dies. Everything it’s built, everything it’s consumed, everything it’s stolen from this forest and the people who wandered into it—it all ends.
The King sees what I’m doing. Feels my intention through whatever awareness it has of the world. Its attacks become frantic, desperate. The coordinated assault becomes chaotic, roots and vines striking at me from every angle without strategy. Just raw survival instinct, a wounded predator thrashing against the thing that’s trying to kill it.
Roots slam into me from all sides. One catches my hip, spins me around. Another slams into my shoulder hard enough to crack bone. A vine catches my ankle and I stumble, nearly fall, catch myself on a root that was reaching for my throat and use it to pull myself upright.
Thorns open wounds across my back, my arms, my face. I feel skin split, feel muscle tear, feel blood flowing from cuts I don’t have time to count. The pain is everywhere now—a constant roar that threatens to overwhelm my senses.
Blood runs into my eyes. I blink it away. Keep moving.
The heart pulses. Faster now. Like it knows what’s coming. Like it’s afraid.
I drive forward. Through roots that grab at my legs. Through vines that wrap around my sword arm and try to pull the blade from my grip. Through a wall of thorns that shreds what’s left of my armor and scores lines of fire across every inch of exposed skin.
The King screams.
No. You cannot. I am eternal. I am Briargrave. I am?—
“Dead.”
I plunge my blade into the heart.
FIFTY
XELA
The King doesn’t die quietly.
The scream that erupts from its mass is like nothing I’ve ever heard. Not sound—force. A wave of pure agony that slams into me, throws me backward, sends me crashing through a wall of roots that collapse around me like falling timber. I hit the ground hard, the air driven from my lungs, my blade still buried in the thing I came here to kill.
The grove shakes. Trees outside the Heartgrove groan and crack. Bones scatter across the floor as the earth itself convulses.
But I can feel it working.
Through my grip on the hilt, through the steel that connects me to the King’s core, I feel the black wood crack. Feel dark energy spill out in waves that make the air taste like copper and ash. Feel eight centuries of accumulated horror begin to unravel, thread by thread, layer by layer.
The faces in the bark are screaming now. Not in agony—in release. Their features twist, stretch, finally fade as the wood that held them prisoner begins to disintegrate. One by one, they go still. One by one, their long torment ends. I watch them find peace—the hunters, the soldiers, the travelers who wandered into this forest and never came out. They’re finally free.
Cyrilla is not among them. She never was—Tharos told me so, and watching the bark go quiet now is the closest thing to a funeral the freed have ever had.
I twist the blade. Drive it deeper.
