Chapter 3
Kaelren
She fell through the door like debris—graceless, pathetic, wrong—and I threw myself after her, my shadows still coiling from Auradelle’s last strike.
The crossing burned. Every ward I’d carved into my skin screamed in rage as I tumbled through folded space.
Every drop of corrupted magic in my veins recoiled in recognition and fury.
I hit the moss of the Thornwood hard, rolling to my feet with corruption already gathering in my hands. Where was he? Where was—
Auradelle’s portal ripped open ten paces away, spilling golden light across the clearing.
He stepped through with that insufferable grace, crown of thorns still writhing from battle-fury, not even winded.
“Fascinating,” he said, his eyes fixed on something behind me.
“She survived the crossing. Most humans don’t. ”
I spun.
The girl—Elle—was on her hands and knees in the moss, retching bile and what smelled like that insipid Earth drink. Dr Pepper. Pathetic. This was Josephine’s precious cargo? This was what I’d sworn to protect?
But that wasn’t what made my corruption flare with rage.
It was the marks.
The marks were choosing. After twenty years of nothing, of silence, of rejection—the marks were finally choosing.
And they were choosing her.
Golden lines spread across her collarbone, elegant and perfect and absolutely wrong. A human. A worthless, mewling human wearing marks that should have been mine.
Where her hands touched the moss, things grew—small shoots, barely visible, but the Root recognized her. Welcomed her. After all my sacrifices, all my bleeding, all my careful carving of marks that never quite fit—the Root welcomed her like she was coming home.
I wanted to kill her. The thought came so naturally, so easily, that I’d already taken a step forward before I caught myself.
Josephine’s favor. I’d sworn. And I kept my word, even when it burned.
“Pity,” I said flatly, meaning it. My hands were still clenched, corruption spreading up my wrists in response to my rage.
Auradelle’s perfect eyebrow arched as he moved closer, his portal sealing behind him. “Such hostility, Kaelren. One might think you’re… disappointed.”
“One might think many things. Most would be right.” I forced myself to step back, to put space between myself and the girl who was now muttering something about brain tumors. “This is what Josephine wanted protected? This weak, useless thing?”
Elle was pushing herself up now, that garish red hair matted with sweat and bile. At least she had some grasp of how wrong her presence here was.
“She has no idea what she is,” Auradelle mused, his attention fixed on her with disturbing intensity. “Josephine kept her ignorant.”
“Josephine was a fool.” The words tasted like betrayal, but they were true. “She should have let the girl die human rather than become this… mockery.”
“The marks chose her.”
“The marks are wrong.” My corruption flared, shadows gathering without conscious thought. “Twenty years, Auradelle. Twenty years I prepared. I bled. I carved these failures into my skin because the real marks wouldn’t come. And now they choose her?”
“Jealousy is such an ugly emotion.”
“It’s not jealousy. It’s rage.”
He smiled that perfect smile, taking another step toward Elle. “Even uglier.”
The girl—Elle—finally managed to stand, swaying like a newborn colt. When she saw us, her eyes went wide with the appropriate amount of terror. Good. She should be terrified.
“What—who are you?” she gasped.
“Your executioner, if I had my way,” I said, and meant it.
Auradelle laughed. “Kaelren, always so dramatic. Ignore him, dear. He’s having a bit of a crisis. You see, those marks you’re wearing? They were meant for him.”
Elle looked between us, then down at her skin where gilded vines spread from her collarbone. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” I snarled. “You understand nothing. You ARE nothing. A mistake. A cosmic joke at my expense.”
“Kaelren—” Peeble started, materializing on the girl’s shoulder.
“Don’t.” My voice could have frozen flame. “For years you whispered prophecies in my ear. Years of ‘chosen one’ and ‘destiny’ and ‘patience.’ And this is what you were waiting for?”
“The Root chooses—”
“The Root is senile.” I moved closer, and Elle stumbled backward. Smart girl. “Or cruel. Or both.”
“Now, now,” Auradelle said, power gathering around him like silk. “We can’t have you killing her before we understand what she represents.”
“She represents nothing but theft.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps she represents opportunity.” His crown writhed faster. “She needs training. Guidance. Protection.”
“Then protect her yourself.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
That’s when I understood. Auradelle didn’t just want her for her marks—he wanted her to hurt me. To parade my replacement, my failure, in front of the entire realm. The girl would be his trophy, proof that the great Kaelren had been found wanting.
No.
I’d sworn to protect what came through the door. I hadn’t sworn to do it nicely.
“She’s mine,” I said, the words tasting like ash.
“Yours?” Auradelle’s amusement was nauseating. “You just said you wanted to kill her.”
“I do. But Josephine asked me to protect her, and unlike you, I keep my word.”
“Josephine is dead.”
“And yet her debts remain.” I grabbed Elle’s arm, none too gently. She made a sound of protest that I ignored. “The girl comes with me.”
“I think not.”
Auradelle moved, faster than thought, and suddenly his hand was around my throat. Not squeezing—not yet—but present. A reminder of power disparities.
“You forget yourself, failed prince,” he said softly. “You have no authority here. No right to claim anything.”
My corruption responded to the threat, spreading faster, darker. The shadows around us writhed, and I felt that familiar edge where control became suggestion, where I could either direct the rot or become it.
“And you forget,” I said, smiling with too many teeth, “that I have nothing left to lose.”
I let the corruption explode outward.
The shadows hit Auradelle like a physical force, sending him stumbling back. His perfect composure cracked, and for a moment, I saw what he hid beneath—not beauty but hunger, not wisdom but desperation.
“You dare—”
“I dare everything,” I snarled, corruption spreading up my jaw, across my temple. It hurt—God, it hurt—but pain was just currency now, and I was ready to spend. “You took everything from me. My parents. My future. My purpose. You will not take this too.”
“This?” He laughed, power coalescing around his hands. “You mean this pathetic human girl who doesn’t even know what she’s carrying?”
“This debt.” I moved between him and Elle, who was on her knees again, marks glowing wildly across her skin.
“Josephine asked me to protect what came through. I thought it would be an artifact. Maybe a weapon.” I laughed, and it sounded like breaking things.
“I didn’t know it would be her. But a debt is a debt. ”
“You’re protecting her out of obligation?”
“I’m protecting her out of spite.” My corruption reached my eyes, and suddenly I could see everything—every thread of power, every weakness, every lie Auradelle told himself. “You want her. Therefore, you can’t have her.”
“Childish.”
“Effective.”
We moved at the same time. His light met my darkness with a sound like reality tearing. The Thornwood around us recoiled, ancient trees that had weathered centuries of storms bending away from our violence.
Auradelle fought with the precision of someone who’d been trained since birth—every gesture calculated, every attack measured. But I’d learned to fight in the spaces between civilization, where the only rule was survival.
I let the corruption guide me, became the rot that ate at the edges of his perfect light. Where he was form, I was chaos. Where he was beauty, I was the thing that made beauty decay.
His blade of condensed sunlight met my shadows, and the collision sent both of us flying. I hit a tree hard enough to crack the ancient bark, tasted blood and something worse. But I was up before he recovered, moving through darkness itself.
“You’ve gotten stronger,” he said, wiping golden blood from his lip. “The corruption is consuming you faster than I thought.”
“Good thing I don’t plan to live long.”
“And her? What happens to your precious debt when you’re dead?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because he was right—I was dying, had been dying since I carved the first mark. But I’d be damned if I died before I saw him lose something he wanted.
Behind us, Elle screamed. Not in pain this time—in fury. Golden light exploded outward from her marks, but it wasn’t the gentle warmth of healing magic. This was Root-power in its rawest form, wild and angry and completely uncontrolled.
The ground beneath her feet cracked open.
Things pulled themselves out of the earth.
Not plants—though they moved like growing things, fast and grasping.
Wood twisted through bone, or bone calcified into bark—impossible to tell which came first. They were ancient things, remnants of the Thornwood’s earliest days when it was still learning what it meant to be alive.
They surged toward Auradelle without strategy or intelligence, all grasping limbs and snapping joints, making sounds like trees breaking in a storm.
“Impossible,” he breathed, actually taking a step back. “She hasn’t been trained. She can’t—”
“She’s Josephine’s blood,” I said, understanding finally hitting. “Did you really think Jo would send her here defenseless?”
One of the creatures wrapped around Auradelle’s ankle, wood splintering as it tried to pull him down.
He destroyed it with a gesture, but three more erupted from the ground to take its place.
They weren’t strong—Elle didn’t have the control for that—but they kept coming, wave after wave of mindless hunger.
“This isn’t over,” he snarled, portal already ripping open behind him. Light spilled through—wherever he was going, it wasn’t anywhere near here.