“What do I do?” I cry out. “What do I do?”
“There’s only one way to protect them!” a voice calls in response.
I know that voice. Joyful and bright as a Summer afternoon. The epitome of a hero.
A streak of green light arcs above me as someone leaps over my head. The figure skids to the ground before the limp dolls that were once my family, and when he stands, silhouetted in emerald flame, he is like the sun rising itself.
Dayton twirls his dual blades and flashes me a smile. “Save them, Farron, like you saved me.”
Then with a burst of flame, he scythes his blades through the briars. My family falls to the ground, then Kel and Ezryn and finally Rosalina.
I rise on shaky legs. Their bodies are wrapped in Dayton’s green fire, and it’s as if a warm breeze has chased away the chill. One by one, they stand, smiles on their faces, eyes burning with emerald hearths.
“You did that,” Dayton says. “You can protect them all. Just remake them as you did me.”
I thought it was Dayton’s fire…but my hands burn with flames. I saved them?
I saved them.
Now, a new voice says, one that comes on the wind,you must kill the one who hurt them. You must kill Sira.
I turn my attention to the woman cloaked in shadows. She’s not laughing anymore. In fact, she looks terrified at the growing inferno surrounding her.
But it wasn’t her shadows who killed my family.
It was briars.
Hisbriars.
My teeth clench so hard, a muscle pulses in my jaw. Great waves of fire leap up, licking and snarling with a twist of my hand.
“I will burn all the Briar to the ground,” I say lowly, “until the Prince of Thorns is nothing but ash upon the wind.”
A blaze erupts around me, the hiss of flame mixing with screams, so many screams my skull is thick with them, and I?—
I awaken in a cold sweat. My heart thumps so loudly, I rub my chest to make sure it’s staying put.
My room is dark except for the large moon hanging outside my window, casting ghostly shapes upon the floor. I reach for the water glass beside my bed, but my hand trembles so much, it clatters to the ground.
It was just a dream. A dream like the one I had last night and the night before and the night before that. A dream like I’ve had every night since Rosalina sank to the Below.
Rosalina is gone, and Dayton will not smile at me like that again.
I’m shivering, but I can’t stay in here. It feels suffocating, as if there’s not enough oxygen. I cross to the balcony and open the door, stepping out into the cool night. I’m only wearing sleeping trousers, so Autumn’s night wind sends goose bumps skittering across my chest.
With a sigh, I collapse on the railing and stare out over my realm. The moonlight plays over Coppershire and the realmlands. Hills of heather glow in the silver light, their usual purple hues muted. Beyond the quiet farmlands and woods, where the land fades into mist, the Briar looms at the very edge of the horizon.
It is a jagged scar, destroying my home.
I should burn it down. I could do it. Raze the entire wicked place with green flame, killing every goblin that lives within. How would Caspian like that? His precious Briar nothing more than ash?
But what of Castletree?
My thought pulls me away from images of smoke and fire. Caspian’s bloody briars are the only thing holding Castletree up. Without them…
A low rumble followed by a whistle sounds behind me, and I jump. Someone’s bundled in a cloak, fast asleep by the door tomy balcony. I would never have noticed them if it weren’t for the snoring.
I walk over and kick my brother’s boot. He jerks awake, snatching his falchion from its scabbard and leaping forward. I duck out of the way. “Steady there, Aeneas, great warrior!”
