Chapter 003 Spite and Bone
The ground didn't catch us so much as break us.
We hit the earth hard, a tangle of limbs and momentum that sent the air rushing out of my lungs in a wet, wheezing gasp. I rolled, instinctively shielding my head, and slammed into something solid. A root. Thick as a waist, covered in moss that smelled like copper and rain.
My shoulder-the one the Prince had put a light-spear through-shrieked. Just a white-hot line of agony that drowned out the world for three heartbeats.
I lay there, staring up at the canopy. No sky. Just layers of interlocking branches, leaves the size of dinner plates, and the heavy, suffocating bioluminescence of the Thornwood. It was humid, the air thick enough to chew.
A sound to my left. Wet. Retching.
I dragged myself up. My vision swam, black spots dancing in the periphery. Not just the pain. The corruption. It was surging, triggered by the proximity to the Veil, eating away at the edges of my stamina.
Aria was on her hands and knees in the dirt a few yards away.
She heaved, her shoulders shaking violently, and vomited onto the pristine, glowing moss. It wasn't blood. It was dark, fizzy liquid. It smelled like artificial sugar and cherries.
Dr Pepper.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, gasping, her red hair matted with sweat and sap. She looked small. Pathetic. A fragile thing made of soft skin and breakable bones, shivering in a world that ate things like her for breakfast.
"Get up," I rasped. My voice sounded wrecked.
She flinched, turning toward me. Her shirt was torn at the collar.
And there it was.
I froze. The pain in my shoulder faded, replaced by cold, hollow rage.
The marks. They were glowing on her skin, right along the clavicle. Golden vines, intricate and shifting, pulsing with a light that was pure and old. They moved under her skin like they belonged there. Like they were happy.
Twenty years.
I had spent twenty years bleeding for the Root. I had carved sigils into my own flesh with obsidian knives, endured rituals that stripped the humanity out of me layer by layer, drank tinctures that tasted like battery acid and grave dust. All to be worthy. All to be a vessel.
And the Root had rejected (me). It had spat me out, leaving me with nothing but this rotting corruption in my veins and a death sentence.
But this girl? This random, soda-drinking human who didn't know a ward from a welcome mat?
She got the gold.
"You have got to be kidding me," I said. It wasn't a roar. It was a flat, dead statement of fact.
Aria blinked, eyes wide and terrified. "What? What is it?"
"The marks." I pointed a shaking finger at her chest. "Those shouldn't be there. You are a mistake."
"I didn't ask for this!" she snapped, voice cracking. "I was in my kitchen eating toast!"
"And now you're here. Wearing power you don't understand and certainly don't deserve." I grabbed a low-hanging branch to haul myself upright. The corruption in my blood swirled, agitated. "Josephine had a sick sense of humor."
"Don't talk about my grandmother."
"I'll talk about her however I want. She's the reason we're about to die."
The air pressure dropped.
It wasn't subtle. One second, the forest was noisy-insects buzzing, distant screeches, the groan of timber. The next, silence. A vacuum.
Light gathered in the clearing. Not the soft, organic glow of the Thornwood fungi. This was sharp. Sterile. It burned the retina.
"Found you," a voice said. Smooth. Cultured. Absolutely insufferable.
Luminae stepped out from behind a massive fern. He looked untouched. No dirt on his white boots, no sweat on his brow. The golden light clinging to him acted like a repellant for the grime of reality. He held his hand out, palm up, and a ball of concentrated sunlight hovered there, heavy and humming.
He glanced at me, then at Aria. His gaze lingered on her collarbone.
He laughed. A short, incredulous sound.
"Oh, that is rich," Luminae said, stepping closer. The moss withered where he walked, scorched brown by his presence. "The mongrel bleeds for decades, and the stray gets the collar. The irony is delicious, isn't it, Thalren?"
My hand went to the knife at my belt. My fingers felt numb. "Back off, Luminae."
"Or what? You'll bleed on me?" He tilted his head, smiling at Aria. "Come here, little thief. You have something that belongs to the Crown."
Aria scrambled backward, crab-walking until her back hit a tree trunk. She looked between us-the glowing prince and the rotting soldier.
"I don't know who either of you are," she said, "but you both suck."
"Charming," Luminae murmured. "I'll cut the marks out. You won't survive it, of course, but your corpse will be... decorative."
He raised his hand. The ball of light elongated, sharpening into a lance.
I should have let him do it.
It would have been justice. The universe balancing the scales. She had the prize I wanted; let her pay the price I would have paid. I could walk away. Disappear into the Hollows, find a hole to die in before the rot took my mind.
But I had made a promise. Not to her. To the old woman who had found me in the gutter when I was nothing but hunger and rage.
*Protect the bloodline, Thalren. Even when it costs you.*
"Damn it," I muttered.
I moved.
Not with speed-I was too hurt for that-but with weight. I threw myself between the girl and the prince just as Luminae released the lance.
I didn't block it. You don't block sunlight with steel. I caught it with the corruption.
I threw my left hand up, letting the black, oily shadows under my skin surge outward. They met the light with a hiss that sounded like raw meat hitting a hot pan.
Pain exploded up my arm. The smell of burning flesh filled the air. My flesh.
"Run!" I roared over my shoulder.
"I-what?"
"Move your legs, you useless human!"
I lunged at Luminae. He looked bored. He flicked his wrist, and a wall of force slammed into my chest, knocking me back. I hit the ground, rolling, tasting copper and bile.
"Pathetic," Luminae sighed. "Trust the Root, you said? Look at you. You're rotting from the inside out. The Bloom offers eternity, Thalren. The Root only offers compost."
He stepped toward me, raising a boot to stomp on my chest.
I grabbed his ankle.
My grip wasn't strong, but the corruption didn't need strength. It needed contact. I poured the rot into him-every ounce of bitterness, every year of failure, every jagged edge of my envy.
The white leather of his boot turned grey. The corruption ate at the fabric, seeking skin.
Luminae hissed, jumping back and kicking me in the face.
My head snapped back. Stars. Darkness. I spat a tooth onto the moss.
"Filth," he spat, checking his boot. "You ruined the leather."
He turned back to Aria. She hadn't run. Because of course she hadn't. She was standing by the tree, hands clenched into fists, staring at him.
"Leave him alone," she said. Her voice was shaking, but loud.
Luminae chuckled. "Or what? You'll throw a toaster at me again?"
"No," she said. She looked down at her chest. The golden vines were flaring, bright enough to see through her shirt. "I'll do... whatever this is."
She screamed.
It wasn't a scream of fear. It was frustration. Pure, unadulterated anger at the absurdity of her night.
The ground buckled.
Roots the size of Pythons erupted from the soil around Luminae. But they weren't just wood. They were white and jagged. Bone.
Things pulled themselves out of the earth. Remnants. Deformed skeletons of creatures that had died here a thousand years ago, fused with the root systems. A stag skull on a body of twisted oak. A ribcage fluttering with mossy wings.
They didn't roar. They clicked.
Luminae took a step back, his composure finally cracking. "What... what is this?"
"I don't know!" Aria yelled, waving her hands. "Get him!"
The bone-things surged. No strategy. Just a tidal wave of ancient, mindless hunger.
Luminae blasted the first one to ash with a wave of light, but three more took its place. He was forced to retreat, firing beams of concentrated solar energy into the mass of wood and bone. He raised his hand, summoning a portal-a shimmering tear in the air behind him.
"I will return!" he shouted, standard villain nonsense. "You cannot hide her from the-"
I saw the opening.
He was distracted, focusing his will on the recall coordinates.
I pulled the last scrap of magic I had from the pit of my stomach. It felt like swallowing razor blades. I formed it into a jagged shard of shadow-solidified entropy-and hurled it.
Not at him. At the portal.
The shard struck the shimmering edge of the tear. The pristine white light of the gateway flickered, turned a sickly, bruised purple, and destabilized.
Luminae stepped through just as it collapsed.
There was a sound like a thunderclap inside a sealed jar. Then silence.
The bone-creatures, sensing their target was gone, collapsed back into piles of inanimate debris.
I lay in the dirt, breathing hard. My shoulder was burning. My face throbbed where he'd kicked me. I probably had a concussion.
Aria stood there, chest heaving. The golden glow on her skin faded, leaving just the ink-like tattoos.
She looked at the pile of bones. Then at me.
"Did I do that?" she whispered.
"Yes," I groaned, rolling onto my side. "And you did it loudly. Everything in a five-mile radius knows we're here now."
"You're welcome," she said, wiping sweat from her forehead. She looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time. "You saved me. Again."
I spat blood. "Don't read into it."
"You took a spear for me."
"I took a spear for a debt. There's a difference."
I forced myself up. The world tilted, then righted itself. I grabbed her arm. It was solid, warm. Human. It made my skin crawl.
"We have to move," I said. "He's gone, but he'll bounce back once he figures out where I sent him. And the Hunt will be sniffing around those coordinates within the hour."
"Where did you send him?"
I grimaced. "Somewhere with a lot of teeth. Hopefully."
I dragged her into the tree line.
***
The Thornwood didn't do straight paths. The forest was a labyrinth of ancient growth, shifting topography, and aggressive flora. We scrambled over roots that shifted under our feet like sleeping snakes and ducked under vines that dripped sap acidic enough to smoke when it hit the ground.
Aria kept up, barely. She was gasping for air, stumbling every few yards, but she didn't complain. She just cursed under her breath-a steady stream of creative obscenities involving my mother, the trees, and the humidity.
"Slow... down," she panted after twenty minutes.
"No." I didn't stop. "Stopping is dying."
"Why are you... helping me?" She yanked her arm out of my grip, forcing me to turn. She was bent over, hands on her knees. "You hate me. You made that pretty clear."
I leaned against a tree, trying to keep my own legs from folding. The corruption was spreading faster now. I could feel the grey lines creeping up my neck, itching under the skin.
"I don't hate you," I said. "I am indifferent to you. I hate what you represent."
"Which is?"
"Waste. Inefficiency." I gestured to her chest. "Josephine stole the potential of a generation and hid it in suburbia. She gave a nuclear reactor to a toddler."
"Hey."
"I'm not a good person, Aria. Get that through your head right now. I'm not the dashing rogue who melts his heart of gold for the damsel. I am a hired gun who hasn't been paid, ensuring the merchandise doesn't get damaged so I can balance a ledger."
She stared at me. Her eyes were green. Too bright.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?"
"Better than the guy who wanted to cut me open for decoration." She straightened up, wincing. "Merchandise I can handle. Merchandise implies value."
She had a point. Annoyingly.
"This way," I muttered, turning back to the dense undergrowth. "And try not to scream when you see Xyl. He's sensitive about his appearance."
"Who is Xyl?"
"You'll see. If he tries to taste you, just smack his antennae. He respects boundaries, mostly."
"He tries to *what*?"
I ignored her and pushed through a curtain of hanging moss.
We stepped into the clearing.
It was a hollowed-out crater beneath the roots of a fallen Sequoia-a massive, cavernous space sheltered by the trunk. A campfire burned in the center, not with wood, but with blue stones that gave off heat without smoke.
The crew was there.
Zephyran was sharpening a longsword, her silver hair tied back in a severe knot. Vahr was meticulously dismantling a trap mechanism, his giant, calloused hands moving with surprising delicacy. Sylith was asleep-or meditating-hovering three feet off the ground in a tangle of wind currents.
And Xyl.
Xyl looked up from the pot he was stirring.
He was seven feet tall. His exoskeleton was a dark, iridescent blue, shimmering like oil. Four arms. Faceted, compound eyes the size of grapefruits. He clicked his mandibles together, the sound like dry twigs snapping.
Aria froze behind me. I felt her hand grip the back of my shirt.
"Thalren," Zephyran said, standing up. She didn't sheathe the sword. "You look like hell."
"Standard operating procedure," I said, limping toward the fire. "Where's the med-kit?"
"Who is the soft-skin?" Vorn rumbled from the shadows. The massive rock-skinned brute stepped into the light, causing the ground to tremble slightly.
"This," I said, grabbing Aria and pulling her in front of me, "is the package."
The crew stared. They looked at her torn jeans, her Converse sneakers, her messy hair. They looked at the terrified expression on her face.
Then Xyl chittered, tilting his head. "She smells... sugary."
"Don't eat her," I said. "She's the Bearer."
Silence.
Vahr dropped the trap mechanism. It clattered loudly on the stone.
"The Bearer?" Zephyran narrowed her eyes. "That's impossible. Josephine said-"
"Josephine lied," I cut in. "Or she improvised. Doesn't matter."
I reached out and yanked the collar of Aria's shirt down, exposing the clavicle.
The golden vines were dim now, but undeniable. The mark of the Root and the Bloom, entwined. The key to the Thornwood Throne.
The crew stared. Xyl's antennae twitched wildly.
"That," Sylith whispered, drifting closer, her feet not touching the ground. "That is... beautiful."
"It's a target," I corrected. I shoved Aria toward a log near the fire. "Sit. Don't touch anything. Don't answer questions."
I turned to the crew. My shoulder was screaming, my head was spinning, and I wanted nothing more than to pass out for a week. But I couldn't. I was the captain of this sinking ship.
"Luminae knows we have her," I said, scanning their faces. "He knows she has the Marks. The Hunt will be here before sunrise."
"So we fight?" Vorn asked, cracking his knuckles.
"No. We run," I said. I looked at Aria, who was watching Xyl with a mixture of horror and fascination as he offered her a bowl of stew. "We keep her breathing. We honor the debt. And if any of you get any ideas about selling her out to the Crown for a pardon..."
I let the corruption flare in my hand, wisping black smoke.
"...remember that I have very little left to lose."
Aria took the bowl from the giant bug-man. "Thanks," she whispered.
"You are welcome," Xyl clicked. "It is rat."
Aria paused, spoon halfway to her mouth. She looked at me.
I sat down on the dirt and closed my eyes. "Eat the rat, Aria. You're going to need the protein."