FOUR THAROS
FOUR
THAROS
She follows me.
I feel her before I hear her—a disturbance in the forest’s awareness, a heartbeat that doesn’t belong.
Briargrave knows every creature within its borders.
Every bird, every insect, every drop of blood that falls to the forest floor.
The woman registers as wrong. Foreign. A splinter in the flesh of the woods.
The undergrowth seals behind me as I move, but I leave gaps.
Small ones. Barely visible unless you know where to look.
The forest wants to seal her in, wants to drag her down into the roots and add her face to the Briarbound Dead, but I hold it back.
Keep the paths open just enough for her to follow.
I don’t examine why.
The canopy thickens overhead. I climb without thinking, fingers finding holds in bark that yields to my touch, vines lowering themselves to wrap around my wrists and pull me upward.
Four decades of this, and movement through Briargrave has become instinct.
I don’t navigate the forest anymore. I flow through it.
From above, I watch her.
She moves well. Better than most who enter my territory. Her footsteps are nearly silent, body low and balanced. A hunter’s walk. She reads the ground ahead before she commits to each step, checking for roots that might shift, thorns that might strike. Professional.
The scars on her hands tell a story. So do the scars on her face, her arms, the one that disappears beneath the collar of her armor. She’s been fighting since before she was old enough to understand what fighting meant. I recognize the type. I was that type, once. Before the forest claimed me.
She pauses at a fork in the path. Left leads deeper toward the Heartgrove. Right loops back toward the outer reaches—eventually, if she survives long enough to walk it. The forest has offered her a choice: pursue me, or retreat.
She doesn’t hesitate. Turns left. Keeps moving.
Stubborn, reckless—probably going to get herself killed.
My chest tightens at the thought. I ignore it.
The Consortium hunters are making noise three miles to the east.
I feel them through the roots—twenty-three sources of heat and fear and poorly concealed malice, crashing through the undergrowth with fire and steel.
They’re burning a path. Cutting down anything that grows in their way.
The forest shrieks with each tree that falls, and the sound echoes in my skull until my vision blurs.
They don’t understand what they’re doing. Every death feeds the Thorn King. The fire they’re using isn’t just destroying trees—it’s feeding what should stay sleeping.
I can feel the King stirring in the Heartgrove. Not awake. Not yet. But closer to consciousness than it’s been in years. The hunger presses against my mind like a blade trying to find the gap in armor.
Soon, the King whispers. Soon you will fail. Soon I will feed.
I shut it out. I’ve been shutting it out for decades. Some days are harder than others.
Today is going to be hard.
The woman is still following me. She’s lost ground—the forest’s shifting veins have been testing her, forcing her to backtrack twice—but she hasn’t given up. I can taste her determination on the air. Sharp. Bitter. Tinged with grief.
I should kill her. Let the thorns take her, quick and clean, before she becomes a complication. The Consortium hunters are threat enough without adding a bounty hunter to the equation. If she stays in Briargrave, she’ll die anyway. Everyone does, eventually. Might as well make it fast.
But I don’t give the order. Don’t even reach for the forest’s awareness to direct the strike.
Instead, I drop from the canopy and land in her path.