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“He did not seem so very interested,” I said, the old rage stirring low in my gut, “when that shadow was raging across my kingdom. When it wore my brother like a glove and butchered my people. When it bled through the Rift into a world full of innocents who had never even heard his name. Where was the master of shadows then?!” I snapped in anger.

“Perhaps he did not know.” Theron’s voice never changed despite my anger. “He does not concern himself with the troubles of other realms, Atlas, no more than I do. No more than you did before the darkness came to your own door. A king is jealous and narrow-minded where his own borders are concerned, and blind past them by choice. You and I are not at war, you and the Shadow King are not at war, but the absence of a war has never yet made two kings allies.”

“And yet,” I straightened and held his gaze. “Here you stand, in my chamber, at my queen’s bedside, looking very much like one to me. You said it yourself, I have acquired an ally.”

Something passed across his face.

Not quite a smile, but something equally knowing.

“And now,” I went on, slower, the shape of it settling into place as I said it aloud, “we both have a reason. You have your own… gods know I have stopped trying to guess the half of them. And he…” I looked down at her, at the black creeping up her throat “…he has one too, whether he knows it yet or not. His own power, stolen and defiled and turned loose on the worlds. So, you might be right after all. If I show him that, show him the proof of it living in her veins, then perhaps even a king out of legend will care to do something about a thief.”

“Now you begin to sound like me.” Theron inclined his head, and there was something almost like respect in it. “So. What have you to lose by trying, Atlas… beyond the obvious?” He said these last three words softly, as if they pained him in some way, too.

The obvious that was my living nightmare.

To lose her would be the death of me.

I sat on the edge of the bed, and I let the rest of them fall away. The room, the argument, the impossible road ahead, until there was only her. I ran the backs of my fingers down her cheek, and her skin was cold and damp beneath them. Clammy as river clay, when it should have been warm. Should have been flushing with temper at being spoken of as though she were not in the room. I pushed a loose strand of red hair back from her face. Even fever-gray and fading, she was the most beautiful thing I had ever been blessed enough to love.

The veins throbbed once beneath her skin, dark and slow, like something turning over in its sleep.

That right there decided it.

That, more than any king, any myth, or any bargain ever could. I would carry her to the gates of the underworld itself and hammer on them with my bare fists if it bought her one more hour. A fabled story was not too great a thing to gamble on. Nothing was.

I rose then, and by the time I turned, the man had left my face entirely, and only the king remained.

“Aster.” He came to attention out of long habit, the jest dying on his lips when he saw my eyes and the order before I spoke it, “Prepare the men. Prepare the horses. We ride the moment they are saddled.”

We rode as though death itself were at our backs, which, I supposed, it was.

I had Alexandra before me on Acelin, the great stallion, healed at last and stamping with all his old fire. The horse she had worried for like he was her own.

There was a cruelty in that I did not let myself dwell on. That she should be carried to her last hope on the back of the creature she had prayed would return to full health, and now here she was, with me doing the very same.

I held her against my chest, her head tucked beneath my chin, one arm locked across her so that not even the hardest gallop could jar her loose. I felt the faint, failing flutter of her breath against my throat and let panic drive me forward.

Theron rode at the head of us, and he did not falter once, did not so much as glance at a map or a marker. He led us off the King’s Road and into the wild lands past the eastern marches. To where Theïkós thinned into territory no banner claimed, and the further we went, the stranger the country grew.

The trees leaned wrong, and even the light soured. Birds stopped singing until finally, there were no birds at all. Only a great waiting hush, and a cold that had nothing to do with the season that crept into the marrow of every man who rode with us. My soldiers were hard creatures, blooded a hundred times over, and I watched them go quiet and gray-faced one by one as the land turned against them.

Lazaros drew his mount up alongside mine for a stretch, his jaw tight, his eyes flicking again and again to the woman in my arms. Yet he said nothing. But then, there was nothing to say, was there? He stayed there, riding at my flank the way he had since we were boys. And I was more grateful for it than I had words to tell him.

We rode through the failing afternoon and into a dusk that came too early. At last, Theron lifted a hand, and we drew to a halt at the edge of a thing I will not soon forget.

It rose out of a hollow in the dead land. Trees…if they could be named as such…vast and black and twisted beyond all nature. Their trunks fused and knotted together, their branches and roots woven into a single towering arch that framed a circle of fog. The mist within looked as if it were waiting.

And all through the gnarled wood of that gateway ran channels and grooves worn smooth as old bone. Each channel dark-stained, leading down and inward like the veins of some enormous sleeping monster.

Even the horses wouldn’t go near it. Acelin, who had carried me through three pitched battles without flinching, planted his hooves and refused the last twenty paces, and honestly, I didn’t blame him.

“The way in,” Theron said, swinging down from his saddle with practiced ease. “The horses will go no further than this. Nor will your army.” He turned to face the men ranged behind us, and for once, there was no mockery in him at all. “Beyond this point, only blood passes. The realm takes its toll at the threshold and admits those it deems worthy. The rest it turns away, gently, if they are wise enough to stay back.”

“And the toll is…?” I asked, wanting to be clear, despite already knowing the answer.

“Blood, freely given.” Theron replied and stepped to the twisted gateway. Then he laid his palm flat against it, and only as he dragged it slowly downward did I see them.

Thorns.