Chapter 29
Elodie
The silver cage feels as though it has moulded itself to my body. Every few hours, the monotony of my misery is broken by the heavy clacking of armoured boots.
This is my ‘mercy’.
A girl who befriended a talking mushroom.
God, I hope Pip’s okay.
I hope he’s hiding in the dark where no one can find him. And I’m the girl who fell in love with a knight.
Rowan.
Thinking of him causes my chest to ache with the memory of his hands, his rough voice, and the way he looks at me, like maybe I am something more than ordinary. But as I sit here, shivering on the cold metal floor, a treacherous thought takes root.
If I ever find a way out of here… could I leave him?
But could I stay in a world that keeps trying to bleed me dry?
Every time I look at the beautiful, terrifying landscape of Greyhollow. I see the pain it has caused me. The choice feels like a blade at my throat
I loved him enough to save him, but do I love this world enough to live in it?
Thankfully, I doubt it’s a choice I’ll ever actually have to make. My chances of escaping here are slim with every passing hour. The more the king eats of the Widowsbloom, the more this castle obeys him. The guards arrive, but I’d already used my last washroom visit up an hour ago.
“What’s going on?” I ask, fear lacing my tone.
“You’re being moved to the Throne Room. King wants his quarters back.” I’m not even sure how much time has passed.
I feel as though my entire being is fading, my spirit thinning out until eventually I will turn to dust. I don’t respond, only sit back as they throw a heavy cover over me and lift the cage.
Feeling more than ever like a trapped bird.
When the velvet shroud is finally ripped away, I stare at my surroundings.
I’ve been here. They took me here when I first came through the gate.
How ironic this is now the place I am being held like an ornament on display.
Aldric sits upright on his throne.
He looks almost radiant.
His sun-kissed glow is now a stark contrast to his vivid blue eyes.
“Don’t look at me with such hatred, my little gardener,” he drawls, his voice vibrating with power. “You should be proud of yourself. Giving your king a second chance at life. You have much to learn, Elodie.”
“You will never be my king,” I seethe. He clicks his fingers once, firmly, and I feel that white-hot pain soar through me once more.
It’s not just shock.
It’s a violation.
It feels like molten lead being poured into my veins.
I collapse in on myself in the cage, my breath hitching in a silent scream.
“I would be careful now,” Aldric says, his voice devoid of any humanity.
He leans forward on his throne. “I’ve had Thora cast a rune on the cage.
At the click of my fingers, I can turn that cage of yours into the centre of a lightning storm.
” I whimper in pain, unable to conjure any words.
Fear is now causing me to bite my tongue.
He turns away from me now, his golden cloak cascading down the side of his chair.
“Your friends are likely ash by now. My guards warned me of a breach — a petty attempt, really — my Aethelings are likely turning them to dust as we speak. There is no one left to—”
The massive iron doors of the throne room don’t just open.
They explode open wide.
The King whirls around, his golden smile flicking to a sudden, sharp agitation.
The guards level their pikes as three figures emerge.
They don’t exactly look like the knights in shining armour that they are, more like demons that the forest has spat out — covered in mud, drenched in blood, and radiating a silent lethality.
“Well,” Kael’s mocking drawl echoes through the room, “this is awkward timing. Did we interrupt something?” He asks with dangerous arrogance.
He steps forward, blade loose at his side, grin sharp.
Sam steps forward next, his eyes dark and swirling with shadows.
Or should I call him Masen? He definitely doesn’t look like the Sam I know back home.
He adjusts the leather straps of his gauntlet, pulling them tight with precision.
“Surprised to see me, my king?” Masen smiles, calm and lethal.
The King recoils, colour draining from his freshly rejuvenated face.
“You,” he breathes. “That’s impossible.”
But it’s the third figure that makes my heart stop.
Rowan lunges into the centre of the room. He doesn’t say a word.
He doesn’t have to.
The air around him is vibrating so intensely that I’m surprised the windows haven’t shattered.
He looks at the king, then his eyes shift to me.
I see the moment he notices the way I’m hunched on the floor, trapped behind iron bars, the way my hands are still shaking from the pain of the King’s cruelty. And then I smile.
The Reaper has arrived. And God help anyone that stands between him and this silver cage
“Stay back!” The king shouts, raising his fingers into the air. “The cage is runed. I can turn her to dust with the snap of my fingers.”
“You do that, and I will make your death so agonisingly slow you will beg for the ground to rot your bones,” Rowan growls, his eyes absolutely feral.
“Guards, kill them,” the king says, sitting back down on his throne. He doesn’t show the signs of fear I expect him to.
And then I remember… they’re oath-bound.
They can’t hurt him.
The guards hesitate, knowing they will meet their death either way. At the hands of the king. Or fighting the men who trained them. I can see the faint tremor in their hands.
They are caught in a nightmare.
Kael steps forward, swinging his sword forward, pointing it toward the guards.
“Drop your weapons, boys,” Kael says, his voice surprisingly soft. “You do not need to die here today.”
“They can’t,” Aldric sneers. “They are mine now. Their oath-bound magic now beckons to my every command.” The three knights all share the same sorry look.
The room descends into a chaotic, heartbreaking blur.
Kael uses the flat of his blade, slamming the men into walls with enough force to knock them unconscious but careful enough not to kill them.
Sam, or Masen, moves as if he never left this kingdom.
Like the knight that lives in him has reawakened with a vengeance.
“Kael, Masen, don’t kill them if you can help it,” Rowan orders his voice straining. “Just get me to that cage,” he says, his eyes locking onto mine.
“Stay back!” Aldric shrieks. Rowan does not stop. He reaches the cage as he grips the rune-etched silver.
“Masen, now!” Rowan roars. It’s a distraction.
Aldric’s eyes dart toward Masen, expecting an attack, but Masen isn’t looking at the King.
He slams his palms against the marble floor.
Shadows surge upward, wrapping around the silver bars as the lock snaps loose.
Rowan drives his shoulder into the silver door, wrenching it upward as the metal twists like wet paper.
He pulls me against his chest, his armour cold and wet with blood.
His hands find my face as he searches my expression for any signs of pain.
“I’ve got you,” he breathes. “I’ve got you, Hawthorne.”
“How?” Aldric gasps. He looks at Masen, who steps forward, blade pointed at Aldric.
“Do you remember why I fled those years ago?” Masen says softly, pushing forward towards the king. Aldric’s face drains of colour completely as he looks between Masen and then me.
“She isn’t here by coincidence, is she?” Aldric’s voice wobbles. “You found the true heir.” Masen gives me a tragic look full of regret before turning to the king once more.
“I did. And you’ve had her caged next to her throne.”
The words don’t just hit me.
They hollow me out.
My breath vanishes as the room flickers around me. The revelation hits me like a physical blow to the chest. All this time I thought I was a prisoner in some foreign place. A girl from a small suburb who had been snatched by mistake.
Her throne.
I look past the guards, past the blood, to the high-backed chair of obsidian and gold behind Aldric. My blood is pulsing in my ears. When the ground reacted to me when I bled into the soil. It wasn’t magic. It was recognition. Not because I am a stranger to the land.
But because it knows me.
“I’m sorry, Elodie,” Masen whispers to me.
“I spent years trying to hide you from this. Protect you. I didn’t realise how deep your blood was connected to this realm.
” I look down at my hands — dirty, trembling.
I thought it was a fluke, that I was sent here by a complete mistake.
This world hasn’t been trying to imprison me.
It’s trying to free me.
“I am the King!” Aldric screams. “You cannot kill me. I don’t fear you, Masen, your blood is bound to me!”
Masen stops just inches from the dais. A slow, terrifying smile spreads across his face.
“That’s the thing about magic, Aldric,” Masen says, his voice dripping with satisfaction. “It requires a connection. When you sealed the gates and cut me off. You severed the tether. You undid my oath.” Masen leans in closer, his blade against Aldric’s throat.
“So actually, Aldric…I can kill you.” He doesn’t hesitate, thrusting his blade forward, the steel sinking into the king’s throat with a sickening wet slide.
I turn away as Rowan pulls me into his chest, guarding my view from the savage scene of blood and bone.
The king is gone. The room goes completely still.
The knights look at each other, a knowing expression on their faces.
Suddenly, the floor beneath Aldric’s body seeps thick emerald green vines.
We all watch breathlessly as it spreads through the floor, ivy pulling itself over the marble floor, over the unconscious bodies of guards.
Trailing over the broken wood and glass until they reach Rowan.
The moment the first vine touches his boot, Rowan’s body jerks, his back arching backward.
He lets out a sound that isn’t a scream but a groan of pure agony. Dropping to his knees, his fingers claw at the marble as the green vines sink into him. I watch in horror as emerald light pulses beneath his skin, turning a solid black like molten poison.
“Rowan!” I shriek, reaching for him. “Help, someone help!” Kael and Masen are beside me in a breath. They look down at him with expressions of profound, crushing grief. Rowan’s teeth snarl in a pain so intense his nose bleeds a thick black line of blood.
“What is happening to him!? Make it stop!” I cry out, my hands trembling.
“He’s the next king,” Kael whispers as he falls to his knees beside us, placing a firm hand on Rowan’s chest.
He looks at me, his eyes wet with heartbreak I didn’t think I would see on a man wrapped in layers of steel.
“He has the king’s curse. He’s tied to the soil now. This land will rot him from the inside out,” Kael says, his voice sounding almost hollow.
I look at Rowan- the man who had become my entire world in a place I never thought I belonged. A man who has taken on the weight of so many scars, so much violence.
“Sam, there must be a way to stop it,” I say, looking up at him. He meets my gaze, his expression so full of despair it makes my stomach drop.
“There is a way,” he says, his voice a ghost of a whisper. “It’s you, Elodie.”
“What?”
“The land is only taking from him because it’s starving for you. Your blood is the ultimate cure,” he says, his eyes flickering back to Rowan.
“Okay. What do I need to do?” I ask.
“Elodie, there is something you should know first,” he says, his words feeling heavier than ever before.
“If you choose to claim this throne, you can never return home. You wouldn’t just be living in Greyhollow.”
My stomach drops. “What do you mean?”
His expression crumples. “You would belong to it.”
Belong to it?
“Forever,” he whispers.
I look at Rowan, broken at my feet.
And the choice feels like a blade at my throat.
I can have my life back.
Or I can give him his.