His eyes find mine across the chaos.
And he smiles.
“Farron, princeling, so grateful you could join us. You’ve been quite obnoxious of late, murdering so many goblins living on your lands.”
My jaw tightens so hard, I think my teeth may crack. I take off toward him at a run, lance raised.
He doesn’t even flinch. “Now, I do have the most nagging feeling you’re not here for a dinner invitation. Do I perhaps have something you want? Like this?”
A shadow appears beside him—a figure, tall and curved as an hourglass, with waves of hair formed by curling tendrils of smoke.
Rosalina.
I stop.It’s only an illusion.
Caspian smiles at my hesitation anyway. “Or this?”
He holds out his hand, the shadows twisting into the shape of a rose floating over his palm.
Another illusion, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Hedoeshave what I want. And I will kill him to get them back.
The shadow of Rosalina puffs away into smoke. Caspian drags a finger along the rose, ever so gently disturbing its form. “Do you know how I got this little treasure?”
I stagger toward him, knuckles white on the lance. “You stole it like the beggar prince you are.”
Caspian clicks his tongue. “Oh, tut-tut, Farron. So rude. And you’re a guest in my home! No, it wasgivento me.” He narrows his eyes and smiles a serpent’s smile. “Dayton is such a beautiful puppet, isn’t he?”
Dayton. My chest tightens. No. He used Dayton again. Took control of the Green Flame within him and twisted it to his will, like he did in Frostfang. “I’m going to kill you.”
“What a fickle heart you have. And I thought we had a connection.” His emerald gaze blazes with mockery.
A growl starts at the bottom of my belly and works its way up my ribs and through my throat. He thinks no one can stand against him. But I too have the Baron’s power. Malekai Furiondemius knows his trueborn son is a wicked, reckless monster, so he chosemeto wield his magic. I am a conduit of theGreen Flame. And I will make the Prince of Thorns rue the day he challenged me in my realm.
I prepare to charge Caspian, wreathing my lance in emerald fire.
Caspian only glances to the horizon, bored. “It appears all your ranks are well within the Briar now. As lovely as our time together has been, I have places to be. Princesses to fuck. Gladiators to manipulate. You know, important things.”
The Briar begins to scream.
Not with sound but with movement.
The earth beneath my boots lurches. Thorn walls twist and convulse, writhing like serpents disturbed. Above, violet brambles rupture, splintering skyward, then crashing down in jagged bursts, sharp as spears.
The Briar isalive.
And it’s hungry.
My soldiers cry out. One is impaled clean through the chest, lifted off the ground like a rag doll. Another disappears into the tangle, his golden armor vanishing in a sea of thorns. Blood mists the air.
The battlefield collapses into pandemonium.
“Shields!” I roar, though I know it’s useless. There’s no direction to defend against. The attack is coming from everywhere. Above, below, behind. What briars we burned earlier are immediately replaced with new ones, the brush springing up around us in violent bursts.
A thorn javelin rips through a young footman, and he crumples, mouth open in shock, already dead. He couldn’t have reached peak manhood. Couldn’t have been older than Dom or Billy.
Another wall of briars explodes up between my ranks, cutting off my vanguard from the rear guard. Dom. Billy. They wereright beside me, weren’t they? But I can’t see them. Can’t hear them.
“Dom!” I shout, turning in a circle, lashing out with fire, trying to burn a path through the thorns. But for every thatch I destroy, five more rise in its place. “Billy!”
