She straddles me. Takes control in a way she didn’t that first frantic time in the hollow, when we were channeling violence into passion and barely knew each other’s names. Now she knows me. Knows every scar, every mark, every inch of skin that’s been touched by nothing but violence for decades.
She lowers herself onto me slowly. I watch her face as she takes me in—the flutter of her eyelids, the parting of her lips, the way her breath catches when I’m fully seated inside her. She’s beautiful. She’s fierce. She’s everything I never knew I needed.
“Gods,” she breathes. “I’ve missed this.”
“It’s been three days.”
“Longest three days of my life.” She starts to move—slow rolls of her hips that make my vision blur. “Watching you lie there, not knowing if you’d wake up. Wanting to touch you but not wanting to hurt you.”
“You couldn’t hurt me if you tried.”
“I could.” She braces her hands on my chest, picks up the pace. “But I’d rather do this instead.”
I let her set the rhythm. Let her take what she needs while I explore her body with hands that know her now. My fingers find her nipples, roll them between thumb and forefinger. She moans—a sound I’m learning to draw from her, a sound I want to hear for the rest of my life.
“Tharos.” My name on her lips is a prayer. A promise. A claim that matches the one I’ve made on her. “I need?—”
“I know.” I sit up, wrap my arms around her, change the angle so I’m driving deeper with every thrust. She cries out, her nails scoring lines down my back. “Take it. Take everything.”
She does.
When she comes, it’s not shattering—it’s grounding. A choice made flesh. An anchor forged in pleasure instead of pain. I feel her body clench around me, feel the waves of her release ripple through her, and I follow her over the edge.
We stay tangled for a long time after, breathing hard, our bodies still joined. The sunlight shifts across the grove as time passes, and neither of us moves to separate.
“The binding is still there,” she says eventually, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on my chest. “I can feel it. You’re still tied to this forest.”
“I told you.” I cover her hand with mine. “That’s not going to change.”
“I know.” She lifts her head, meets my eyes. “But now you’re tied to something else too.”
“Something better?”
“Something that chose you.” She presses a kiss to my chest, right over my heart. “Is that what you need?”
I think about all the years I spent alone in this forest. All the decades of isolation, of containing horrors, of believing I deserved solitude and eventual death. I think about the man I used to be—the mercenary who sold his violence to whoever paid best—and the monster I became when I bound myself to Briargrave.
And I think about the woman in my arms. The hunter who came to kill me and ended up saving me instead. Who looked at a monster and saw a man. Who chose to stay when every instinct should have told her to run.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s enough.”
FIFTY-THREE
THAROS
Two weeks after the King’s death, I find Xela standing at the edge of the forest with her pack at her feet.
Not wearing it. Not walking. Just standing, looking out at the world beyond the treeline, her back to Briargrave.
I watch her from the shadows of the thornpath, unsure whether to speak. This is the moment I’ve been half-expecting since she first said she’d stay—the moment when the adrenaline fades and the decision has to be made with a clear head instead of a blood-soaked one. The world beyond these trees is real. Contracts, cities, freedom of movement, a life that doesn’t involve living in a forest that used to eat people.
She’d be within her rights to choose it.
After a long moment, she picks up her pack. Turns around. And walks back into the trees.
She doesn’t say anything when she passes me. Just reaches out and touches my arm once, brief and certain, before heading toward the Heartgrove.
That’s all. No speech. No declaration. Just a choice, made in private, witnessed only by the forest and me.
