58. The Prince of Thorns
The Prince of Thorns
“The fire cannot be contained.” Green flames rush out of me and blow the Winter Prince and his foolish words back.
He lands in a heap on the other side of the cavern and doesn’t rise. His new armor resists even a single scratch.
Doesn’t matter. Everything will burn beneath the Green Flame.
Tame it. The words pulse through me.
Kel’s hurt. I run to him. To help, to destroy… I scream, my mind ablaze with this magic, this power, consuming everything I am.
“Kill him and free yourself,” my father says as he makes his way toward Ezryn.
The Spring Prince won’t be able to hold him back long, not with how fast Aurelia is fading.
My breath hitches. Who am I?
The Prince of Thorns? Caspian? Heir to the Green Flame?
I’ve been all three, but never all at once.
Tame it.
Keldarion rises to his feet, forming two ice blades in his hands. His eyes flick up to mine.
I rush toward him, feeling myself slipping, but manage to spit out, “I was born this monster, twisted and wrong.”
“I know,” Keldarion says gruffly. “And I’ve loved you every damn day of it.”
A terrible scream tears out of me. This fool, this damned fool. A blade of thorns forms in my hands, and I slice at him. Ice chips and showers us.
My father drifts closer. “Do you think love will save him? Do you think it’s strong enough to unmake me? He was created for destruction, Winter Prince.”
Ezryn steps between us and the Baron, hammer raised again. “Maybe he was. But he gets to choose what he becomes.”
The baron smiles, slow and cruel. A blast of green flame erupts from his palm, slamming into Ezryn and sending him shooting across the cavern.
“Ezryn!” Keldarion cries.
“You’re getting stronger, Father,” I say. “Soon, you shall be here with us fully, at the death of the queen.”
“Two great powers ruling the Vale, one my mate and one his sire.” Rosalina’s voice carries across the chasm. I look over at her. She’s kneeling beside Ezryn, but when she catches my gaze, she rises slowly, as if we have all the time in the world. As if all her other mates aren’t about to perish.
I prowl over to her. “You’ll be at my side, willing or not.”
“I wonder who will truly rule.” She places a finger to her lips. “The sire, who the power stems from but who is still and will always be a visitor to our world…or you?”
“My home is wherever I make it.” Malekai turns his attention toward her.
Careful, my mate, I say in her mind. Don’t displease him.
So we bow to someone? she replies in my mind before facing my father. “Where is your own home then? Why the need to claim ours?”
“All the worlds shall be mine,” he snarls.
Rosalina tilts her head, curls falling over her brow. “I see. You don’t have a home of your own, do you?”
I have never seen my father so much as flinch, but he stalls, only for a second, horrors playing across his face. Then he turns to me, the mask firmly in place. “Muzzle your whore, son, or I will.”
But my mate’s words are still spinning in my mind. So we bow to someone?
I turn to my father. Is his power greater than mine?
My gaze drifts to Farron and Dayton, his former pawns, now freed and facing my mother with their own magic. They were bound to his will, because he gifted them a seed of his power…
But I was born with it. It is in my blood.
“Caspian, listen to me,” my father booms, ancient voice echoing off the stones.
“No,” I say. Or the Prince of Thorns says. Something synergizes inside me. My two wills agree.
We are not his pawn.
His magic may run through my veins, but it is not his to control.
“Caspian!” Keldarion grips me by the shoulders.
I whirl. My face reflects in his armor: eyes green, then purple, then green. A ringing sounds in my head, and flames flicker up and down my arms. I cry out, briars breaking free from the earth and wrapping around my legs.
Rosalina yelps. The baron shoots a ball of green fire toward her, and she throws up a golden briar in time to block it. She calls up more, and Ezryn stands, swinging his hammer.
“Rosie!” Farron yells, he and Dayton still locked in the endless dance with Sira.
“Cas!” Keldarion growls, gripping my shoulders and forcing me to look at him. “They need us. Our mates need us. Need you. All your power.”
Tears burn down my cheeks, and I feel it, something breaking inside me. The cage I’ve spent my whole life shoving the Green Flame into, locking it away. I thought control meant silence. Containment. Denial.
But every time I buried it, it only grew wilder. Hungrier. Until it wasn’t mine anymore—it was his. My father’s will. The lure of power. The promise of never being weak again.
But power always comes with a price.
And I’ve paid for it in pieces of myself.
“You’ve been fighting the Green Flame your whole life,” Keldarion growls. “Time to stop. Tame it, Cas.”
“What if I’m not strong enough?” I cry.
Keldarion’s eyes crinkle at the sides as he looks at me, even now, with so much love. “You have to be.”
As if it’s that simple.
Because either I can wield it, or I can’t.
Either I become the weapon, or I break beneath it.
The fire inside me surges, screaming for control, begging to be let loose. It wants to consume. To burn everything, starting with the ones I love most.
My fingers tremble. My breath shudders. “And if I lose myself again?” I whisper.
Keldarion leans closer, forehead pressing gently to mine, his voice a quiet storm.
“Then I’ll be there to pull you back.”
I believe him. With everything I am, I believe him.
“When the stars wove my fate,” he murmurs, eyes closed, a surrender to me, to the Prince of Thorns, Cas, all of me, any form, “they made a tapestry of light and fire and frost…”
“One that always ends with me loving you.”
I turn to Rosalina. The green shadow of my father draws closer to her, massive sword dragging on the ground behind him.
The Green Flame writhes beneath my skin, furious, untamed, alive. It’s never been quiet. Not once. It’s clawed at the edges of me, whispering with my father’s voice.
I’ve tried to fight it. Tried to bury it. I thought that was strength. That if I locked it away, I could be good. Safe. Worthy of a prince and princess’s love.
Because a monster could never have them.
But it was never the flame that made me dangerous. It was the fear of it.
The fear made me cruel. Made me cold. Made me run from the very things that make up who I am.
But Keldarion’s here, holding me. Ezryn stands guard like a mountain, unshaken. Dayton and Farron refuse to give up. And Rosalina looks away from death and stares at me.
In any form, I will love you.
And even George is here, tearing his hands apart trying to free the woman he loves. The woman who saved me once before.
“When you can’t stop the storm,” I murmur, “you find another way out.”
They’re still fighting.
For me.
I look down at the flames flickering along my arms. A birthright, a burden. You decide what to do with the magic you bear.
I take a breath and close my eyes.
Not to smother the fire. Not to cage it.
But to claim it.
I draw it in, deep and burning. It floods through my veins. It screams and thrashes…
But there isn’t only fire in my blood. There is shadow and thorn too.
I bring it all to the surface, weave it together in a way my father never could. The magic of the Below, the magic of the Vale, and the magic of the world beyond, united.
And mine.
Keldarion stumbles away, the pulse of magic too strong even for him.
I scream. Flames and shadows and briars writhe around me like a storm. But if a camel can find her way out of one, then so can I.
You. Are. Mine, I cry to my mind, to my soul, inside and out. And the green fire along my arms begins to bend.
Change.
I gasp, back arching, as the magic inside me flares.
And for the first time in my life, I choose not to fear the part of me that burns.
The Green Flame yields.
My eyes open, glowing green and steady, reflected in Keldarion’s armor.
“Hello, lover,” I purr. And I see for a second that flicker of confusion on his face, that worry of just who he’s talking to. And as much as I long to tease him, there will be forever to do that. “Let’s go save the world. I’m tired of always letting you be the hero.”