Chapter 5 #3
"My personal favorite was the noble who tried to set the forest on fire.
He made him cold, all the way to his core.
No flame could warm him, no coat could help drive away the chill.
Ice in his veins that never melted. He begged for death by the end, but even that was too warm a mercy.
" Thaine's smile was fond. "I do hope he lets me watch whatever he chooses for you. It's been so long since—"
He stopped mid-sentence, head snapping to the left. The whistling died.
"What—" Briar began.
"Quiet." All playfulness vanished from his voice. His hand moved to a blade at his hip that she hadn't noticed before. "We're not alone."
The forest had gone silent. No insects, no wind—even the vines had stilled. Thaine turned in a slow circle, eyes scanning the darkness between the trees.
"I know you're there," he called. "This is Court business. Interference will garner quick and—"
An arrow of pure starlight split the darkness, striking the ground at his feet. Where it hit, the earth hissed and steamed.
"The only interference," a voice said from above, quiet but carrying, "is yours, Thaine."
A figure dropped from the canopy, landing in a crouch that barely disturbed the forest floor.
He rose slowly, bow in hand, another arrow already nocked.
Tall, lean, with dark hair and eyes that held their own light.
Everything about him seemed slightly wrong—too bright for the darkness, too still for the living forest.
"Arion." Thaine's voice shifted, calculation replacing amusement. "The Star Court's wayward son. How... interesting."
"Let her go, Thaine."
"You have no business here, no claim. She belongs to Eliam, she bears his mark." Thaine's hand drifted to his blade, casual but ready. "You of all people know what breaking such laws costs."
"His claim is built on cruelty and coercion." Arion raised the bow, the arrow flickering with cold fire. "I don't recognize it."
Thaine tilted his head, studying the arrow. "That light won't last long here. This deep in his domain? You're already fading." He turned his back on Arion with deliberate insult, addressing Briar directly. "Time to go, little rabbit. Your lord is wait—"
Water erupted from the ground beneath Thaine's feet, a precise strike that swept his legs. He rolled with it, came up soaked but balanced. A woman materialized from the spray, her form shifting between solid and liquid.
"Hello, Thaine," she said, her voice heavy with barely contained emotion. "Still doing his dirty work?"
"Sian." Thaine's blade cleared its sheath in one smooth motion. "Still playing with puddles?"
"Focus." Arion's command cut through their exchange.
Two more figures emerged from the underbrush moving in practiced synchronization—a male carrying a staff of white wood, the female's hands already weaving air into shapes.
"Ferria. Halian." Thaine's smile returned, sharp but appreciative. "The whole band together. How quaint. How long have you been following us?"
"Long enough," Halian said quietly.
Thaine moved before the words finished echoing, blade carving through air where Arion had been.
The arrow fired, but Thaine was already spinning, using Sian's water strike from his left to propel himself toward the twins.
His blade met Halian's staff with a crack that echoed wrong—metal on wood shouldn't sound like screaming.
Ferria's illusions bloomed, but they weren't perfect copies. They moved a half-second behind, shadows of possibility rather than false flesh. Thaine cut through two, used the third as cover to close distance.
"Your magic's weakening," he observed, parrying Halian's thrust. "How many times have you crossed the border? How much of yourself have you spent on these rescue missions?"
Sian flowed around them, trying to bind Thaine's legs, but he kept moving, never still long enough for water to grip. His blade opened a line across Halian's ribs—shallow but precise.
"First blood," Thaine noted. "Your sister flinches when you bleed. There—she's lost two illusions."
He was right. Ferria's concentration wavered, her constructs flickering.
"Get the girl," Arion commanded, loosing three arrows in rapid succession. Thaine deflected two, dodged the third, but it bought space.
Arion reached the vines holding Briar, his hands glowing with that same cold fire as his arrows. He pressed his palms against the thick growth, and where light met green, the vines blackened and recoiled, writhing away from the burning radiance.
"Who are you people?" Briar gasped as the plants finally released her, leaving smoking marks on the ground where they retreated.
"Not important right now." Arion caught her arm as her knees buckled. The moment she tried to stand, agony erupted through the mark, thorns grinding against bone. She couldn't stop the cry that tore from her throat. "We're here to—"
His words cut off as he saw her wrist. The mark was writhing, dark lines spreading up her forearm in real time, following her veins like poison.
"Hold still." He dropped to one knee beside her, hands hovering over the mark. Behind them, the battle intensified—she could hear Thaine's blade singing through air, Halian's grunts of effort, water crashing and reforming.
"Your friends—"
"Can handle themselves." Arion's fingers began to glow with that cold fire. "This will hurt."
He pressed his palms around her wrist, bracketing the mark.
Light poured from his hands, not gentle but invasive, seeking.
Where it touched the dark lines, her skin became a battlefield.
She could see it happening—golden threads of light wrestling with thorned darkness, weaving between the black patterns like luminous serpents.
The mark fought back, thorns flaring, trying to pierce through the light.
Briar bit down on her sleeve to muffle her screams. Her arm felt like it was being pulled apart and rewoven, every nerve ending alive with competing sensations.
The light pressed deeper, wrapping around each thorn, coating them in radiance that made them withdraw—not destroying them but forcing them dormant.
"Almost there," Arion murmured, sweat beading on his forehead. The light was costly for him too.
Behind them, she caught glimpses of the fight.
Thaine moved like liquid shadow, forcing Halian to give ground with each exchange.
Ferria's illusions flickered and multiplied, trying to confuse his strikes, while Sian lashed at him with whips of water that turned to ice mid-air.
They were skilled, coordinated—and barely holding him.
"That's temporary," Thaine called between strikes, not even breathing hard. "My lord's mark goes deeper than light can reach."
The golden threads finished their work, weaving a net of light just beneath her skin. The mark still showed, but muted now, contained. Arion sagged slightly.
"Can you stand?" he asked, helping her to her feet.
She managed a nod, though her legs shook. That's when she saw it—Thaine's subtle shift in stance, his blade angling differently. He wasn't trying to break through anymore. He was positioning himself.
"Arion—" she started.
Thaine moved. He feinted high at Halian, used the staff's block to vault over it, and came down between the defenders and their target. His blade swept toward them in a perfect arc.
Arion shoved Briar aside and drew in one motion—a blade from his back, silver-white, singing as it cleared the sheath. He caught Thaine's strike inches from Briar's neck.
"Take her," Arion commanded without looking back. "Run. Now."
"We're not leaving you," Halian said.
"That's an order."
The forest itself seemed to recoil from Arion's blade. Where Thaine's weapon ate light, this one created it—not gentle illumination but harsh, painful radiance.
They met in the center of the clearing, the impact sending shockwaves through the ground. The earth actually cracked, moss blackening where their power bled into it. They moved too fast for Briar's eyes to follow properly, just indistinguishable blurs of dark and light.
Mesmerizing and terrifying at once, Briar couldn't bring herself to look away.
"Go!" Ferria grabbed Briar's arm, jerking her from whatever strange spell had settled over her.
Thaine disengaged, spinning away from Arion's strike.
His free hand dipped to a pouch on his belt and came up with a handful of what looked like dirt.
He threw it, not towards them, but at the trees they were fleeing towards.
The substance wasn't dirt but dark seeds that burst on impact, sprouting into thorned barriers.
"No one leaves until this is finished," he said, breathing hard for the first time. Blood ran down his arm where Arion had cut him. "The forest is already calling him. He'll be here soon, and then—"
Arion struck again, driving Thaine back. "Then you'll get to explain why you let her escape."
"Let her?" Thaine laughed, parrying desperately now.
The sunforged blade was taking its toll, the skin of his arm blackening where the blade had touched him.
"Do you think this changes anything? The mark remains despite your meddling.
The bargain stands. All you've done is buy her hours instead of minutes. "
"Sometimes hours are enough," Sian replied. She'd been gathering water from the air, from the soil, from the trees themselves. Now she released it, not at Thaine, but at the ground beneath the barriers. The earth turned to mud, the thorned walls sinking and toppling as their foundation gave way.
"Clever," Thaine said, then cursed as Arion's blade found his shoulder. The cut went deep this time, causing him to stagger back and land hard on one knee.
"Go! Now!" Arion commanded.
They ran. Ferria maintained what illusions she could, but they flickered and failed. Halian limped, one hand pressed to his side. Sian was barely corporeal, exhausted from the fight.
Behind them, Thaine's laughter echoed through the trees, but it held no triumph now. "You are fools if you think you can protect her! He's already moving, already hunting! Do you think your little sanctuary will hold against him?"
"Don't listen," Arion said, suddenly beside them. His blade was sheathed, but light still bled from him in wisps. "Keep moving."
"You didn't kill him," Briar said, though it wasn't really a question.
"Couldn't. Killing him would..." Arion shook his head. "Result in complications we can't afford."
As if affirming his words, the mark on her wrist pulsed, Arion's dampening already fading. Soon it would burn again, call again.
"This won't stop him," Thaine's voice carried on the wind, fainter now but still reaching them. "Nothing stops him when he wants something. And he wants her more than you can possibly understand!"
They ran deeper into the forest, away from Thaine's warnings and toward an uncertain sanctuary.
The trees grew different here, less oppressive, more neutral.
Border territory. The ground beneath their feet changed from soft moss to packed earth, and the air lost that cloying sweetness that marked Eliam's domain.
Exhaustion weighted Briar's legs with each step. The mark on her wrist throbbed in time with her heartbeat, Arion's dampening spell fading with every passing moment. She could feel it calling, pulling her back toward the darker woods, toward him.
"Why isn't he following?" she asked when they finally slowed, one hand braced against a silver-barked tree as she struggled to catch her breath.
"I don't know." Arion's admission came quiet, troubled. He kept glancing back the way they'd come, arrow half-nocked despite his severed bowstring. "Thaine doesn't give up easily."
"Maybe he can't cross here?" Halian suggested, but his voice carried no conviction. He pressed his hand harder against the wound in his side, and Briar saw blood seeping between his fingers—more than she'd realized during the fight.
"Or he's choosing not to." Sian materialized fully for the first time since they'd run, her form solidifying from the mist she'd been traveling as. Her clothing was damp and water dripped from her dark hair. "Which is worse."
The silence that followed pressed against Briar's ears. Everyone kept checking over their shoulders, hands on weapons, magic held ready but flickering with exhaustion. The forest around them felt too quiet—not the oppressive silence of Eliam's domain, but something expectant. Waiting.
"Why help me?" Briar asked when her breathing finally steadied. She studied these strangers who'd risked everything for her and tried to make sense of it.
"Because someone should," Ferria answered simply, though she swayed on her feet.
Blood trickled from her nose—backlash from broken illusions.
She wiped it away with the back of her hand, the gesture tired but practiced.
"Because what's happening to you is wrong, even if you were foolish enough to make a bargain with him. "
"We've seen what the Forest Lord does to those he claims." Halian's quiet words came between shallow breaths. His staff served more as walking stick now than a weapon. "We couldn't stand by and watch it happen to someone else."
Arion watched her carefully. "What deal did you make?"
"My life... for my sister's," Briar replied. "She was dying. When I agreed I thought..."
"Thought you could outsmart him?" Ferria scoffed and shook her head. "You humans will never learn. Promises with fae are binding contracts."
"Save your breath." The water sprite's voice wasn't unkind, but her gaze stayed fixed on their backtrail. "We should keep moving. We're not safe yet."
She was right. Briar could feel it in the mark's increasing burn, in the way the trees seemed to lean toward them despite no wind. They'd escaped Thaine, but something told her that had been the easy part.