12. Farron
Farron
Briars snag on my clothes and pull on my hair. I keep running, shoving myself deeper into the thicket, holding my arms up to shield my eyes. Branches snap beneath my boots, and wilted roses float from their stems.
Another scream shatters the air, as clear and violent as the last. Rosalina’s scream. I’ve never heard her so terrified, in such pain…
I have to get to her. My vision tunnels, heart pounding, lungs burning as I dive deeper and deeper into the Briar. She’s somewhere in here. Someone’s hurting her. Killing her.
My skin is tattered ribbons by the time I fling out into a clearing. Blinking against the blaring sun, I peer around. There’s nothing but dark fog hovering over the ground—
Not fog. Shadow.
And from the shadows, a figure forms, a gargantuan woman with tendrils of darkness wisping out from her skirt like tentacles. Her hair is a black cloak behind her, and her face is elegant and cruel. Lightless, joyless eyes peer down at me, and her mouth curls into a smile.
“Welcome, Farron, Autumn blood. Are you ready to join your family?”
Sira, Queen of the Below, laughs, the sound blowing her shadows away and revealing a sight that staggers me.
I fall to my knees, reaching out, hand grasping empty air—but there’s nothing to hold on to.
Huge, snaking briars jerk in awkward angles from all around her.
Pierced on the ends of her barbs are my family.
Father, Billy, Dom, Nori…hanging like puppets who have had their strings cut.
On the other side, a thorn pierces through the chest plate of Ezryn’s armor.
His helmet lies upside down below him, filling with blood from the dripping slice across his neck.
Keldarion hangs limp beside him, impaled through the stomach.
His lifeless eyes stare upward, mouth agape in a silent scream.
“Did you think you could save them all?” Sira cackles. “You couldn’t even save her!”
A briar spears through the ground right in front of me.
Rosalina looks like a paper doll, blowing in the wind. Her face is pale, long hair waving in the breeze. But a thin streak of blood runs from her perfect lips. I follow its trail, down her chin, along her neck, over the crest of her bosom—
To her ribs, which are splayed open by a jagged thorn.
Sira laughs. The sound assaults me on all sides, ringing between the briars, hitting me like arrows.
I throw my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut. This can’t be happening, this can’t, this can’t—
I rock back and forth in the mud, the sickening smell of wilted roses assaulting me along with Sira’s relentless laughter. I open my eyes, begging to be anywhere but here, but only see Rosalina’s dangling corpse before me, hanging like wet laundry.
“What do I do?” I cry out. “What do I do?”
“There’s only one way to protect them!” a voice calls in response.
I know that voice. Joyful and bright as a Summer afternoon. The epitome of a hero.
A streak of green light arcs above me as someone leaps over my head. The figure skids to the ground before the limp dolls that were once my family, and when he stands, silhouetted in emerald flame, he is like the sun rising itself.
Dayton twirls his dual blades and flashes me a smile. “Save them, Farron, like you saved me.”
Then with a burst of flame, he scythes his blades through the briars. My family falls to the ground, then Kel and Ezryn and finally Rosalina.
I rise on shaky legs. Their bodies are wrapped in Dayton’s green fire, and it’s as if a warm breeze has chased away the chill. One by one, they stand, smiles on their faces, eyes burning with emerald hearths.
“You did that,” Dayton says. “You can protect them all. Just remake them as you did me.”
I thought it was Dayton’s fire…but my hands burn with flames. I saved them?
I saved them.
Now, a new voice says, one that comes on the wind, you must kill the one who hurt them. You must kill Sira.
I turn my attention to the woman cloaked in shadows. She’s not laughing anymore. In fact, she looks terrified at the growing inferno surrounding her.
But it wasn’t her shadows who killed my family.
It was briars.
His briars.
My teeth clench so hard, a muscle pulses in my jaw. Great waves of fire leap up, licking and snarling with a twist of my hand.
“I will burn all the Briar to the ground,” I say lowly, “until the Prince of Thorns is nothing but ash upon the wind.”
A blaze erupts around me, the hiss of flame mixing with screams, so many screams my skull is thick with them, and I—
I awaken in a cold sweat. My heart thumps so loudly, I rub my chest to make sure it’s staying put.
My room is dark except for the large moon hanging outside my window, casting ghostly shapes upon the floor. I reach for the water glass beside my bed, but my hand trembles so much, it clatters to the ground.
It was just a dream. A dream like the one I had last night and the night before and the night before that. A dream like I’ve had every night since Rosalina sank to the Below.
Rosalina is gone, and Dayton will not smile at me like that again.
I’m shivering, but I can’t stay in here. It feels suffocating, as if there’s not enough oxygen. I cross to the balcony and open the door, stepping out into the cool night. I’m only wearing sleeping trousers, so Autumn’s night wind sends goose bumps skittering across my chest.
With a sigh, I collapse on the railing and stare out over my realm.
The moonlight plays over Coppershire and the realmlands.
Hills of heather glow in the silver light, their usual purple hues muted.
Beyond the quiet farmlands and woods, where the land fades into mist, the Briar looms at the very edge of the horizon.
It is a jagged scar, destroying my home.
I should burn it down. I could do it. Raze the entire wicked place with green flame, killing every goblin that lives within. How would Caspian like that? His precious Briar nothing more than ash?
But what of Castletree?
My thought pulls me away from images of smoke and fire. Caspian’s bloody briars are the only thing holding Castletree up. Without them…
A low rumble followed by a whistle sounds behind me, and I jump. Someone’s bundled in a cloak, fast asleep by the door to my balcony. I would never have noticed them if it weren’t for the snoring.
I walk over and kick my brother’s boot. He jerks awake, snatching his falchion from its scabbard and leaping forward. I duck out of the way. “Steady there, Aeneas, great warrior!”
Billy—I know it’s him by the pattern of freckles across his nose—blinks as he recognizes me, then lowers his blade. “Hah hah, very funny.”
I cross my arms. “Mind telling me why you’re armed and holed up on my balcony? Do you not have a perfectly good room with a bed?”
Billy gives a sheepish grin and shrugs his shoulders. He meanders over to the railing and assumes a position much like mine moments ago. Except he’s at the age where he’s all arms and legs, gangly as a willow tree’s branches. “Oh, you know. Dom and I are just looking out for you.”
I peer around the balcony, searching for another shape.
“He’s watching your front door,” Billy mumbles.
I run a hand over my short beard and level my brother with a watchful gaze. “Care to explain why you two are standing guard?”
Billy stares out across the horizon. Fae age slowly in adolescence compared to our human counterparts, but I can’t help but think he and Dom have grown up so fast in the last few years. But what other choice do you have? War steals the innocence from us all.
“We thought…you seemed like you needed someone to look out for you, Fare. You’ve been a smidge on edge lately.” Billy turns to me and flashes a crooked grin. “So we’re here to keep you safe.”
Words catch in my throat. “Oh, Billy.” I wrap an arm around him and tug him close. He smells like cloves and pumpkin and memories. “You don’t worry about that, okay? Keeping us all safe—that’s my job.”