“I know. I felt it.” His other hand gestures vaguely at his chest. “It’s quiet in here now. No more whispers. No more hunger pressing against my thoughts.”
“How does it feel?”
“Empty.” He considers the word. “But not bad empty. Like... like a wound that’s finally been cleaned. It hurts. But it’s going to heal.”
I lean down. Press my lips against his. The kiss is soft—softer than anything we’ve shared before. Not desperate. Not claiming. Just... present. Real.
When I pull back, his eyes have drifted closed again. But his breathing is steadier now. His heartbeat stronger against my palm.
“Rest.” I settle beside him, let my head fall against his shoulder. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
His arm wraps around me. Pulls me closer. Even now, even barely conscious, he wants me near him.
“Promise?”
“Promise.” I press a kiss to his jaw.
The forest is silent around us. Not the hostile silence of a predator waiting to strike—something gentler. Something that feels almost like peace.
Briargrave has lost its master. The Thorn King is dead, its centuries of accumulated horror finally ended. And in the ruins of the Heartgrove, surrounded by the dust of what once was, two people who spent their lives running have discovered a reason to stop running.
I close my eyes. Let the exhaustion take me.
FIFTY-ONE
THAROS
ONE WEEK LATER
Iwake to sunlight.
For a long moment, I don’t understand. Sunlight hasn’t touched the Heartgrove in centuries—the canopy was too thick, the trees too determined to block the sky. I remember standing at this altar when I first bound myself to Briargrave, looking up at a ceiling of interlocked branches so dense that noon looked like midnight. I remember decades of twilight, of shadows that moved even when nothing cast them, of darkness that felt like a living thing pressing against my skin.
But now, through gaps in the branches, golden light filters down to the forest floor.
I sit up slowly, every muscle protesting. My body feels like it’s been disassembled and reassembled wrong—joints stiff, muscles aching, bones heavy with an exhaustion that sleep hasn’t fully erased. I’ve been unconscious for three days, according to Xela. It felt longer. It felt like years, lost in a darkness that wanted to swallow me whole.
But I came back. I’m here. I’m alive.
And in a way I’d nearly forgotten was possible, I’m alone in my own head.
The silence is... strange. I’ve grown so accustomed to the King’s whispers—the constant hunger pressing against my thoughts, the insidious voice offering power and release and the sweet promise of surrender—that its absence feels like a missing limb. I keep reaching for it, keep expecting to feel that cold presence coiling at the edges of my awareness.
But there’s nothing. Just me. Just my own thoughts, uncontaminated by ancient malice.
I flex my hands, feel the binding pulse beneath my skin. It’s still there—the ritual that tied me to Briargrave hasn’t faded. I can still sense the forest around me, still feel the roots shifting beneath the earth, still taste the sap flowing through the trees. But it’s different now. Cleaner. The infection that was the Thorn King has been excised, and what remains is just... the forest. Old and dangerous and wild, but no longer hungry.
“You’re awake.”
Her voice comes from behind me. I turn—too fast, my body protesting the sudden movement—and find Xela sitting against a fallen tree, watching me with those gray eyes that have seen too much.
She looks better than the last time I saw her conscious. The wounds from her battle with the King have started to heal—the gash on her arm is scabbed over, the scratches on her face fading to pink lines. Her left arm is in a makeshift sling, but she’s using it anyway, stubborn as ever.
She looks like war made flesh, all scars and steel-gray eyes.
And somehow, impossibly, she chose me.
The thought settles into me with a certainty I’ve never felt before. Not a claim. Not a possession. Just... a truth. She chose me. Stayed for me. Fought a god for me. And I chose her back, am reaching for her, will keep choosing her every day until one of us stops breathing.
