TEN XELA
TEN
XELA
The second engagement goes wrong.
We’re moving through a dense section of forest—thornpaths so narrow we have to go single-file—when the ambush hits. Not from the hunters. From the King.
The wave of pressure comes without warning. Not the gradual building I’ve felt before—not the slow tightening that gives you time to brace. This is immediate, like something tearing.
Tharos goes to his knees.
“The Heartgrove.” His voice is barely recognizable. “They’ve reached the outer defenses. They’re—”
The forest shudders—and Tharos drives himself back from the edge alone.
His hand closes around my throat.
Not tight enough to choke. Not yet. But the threat is clear. The thing looking at me through his eyes isn’t Tharos anymore.
“Tharos.” I don’t struggle. Don’t fight. “I know you’re in there. I know you can hear me.”
“He can hear you.” The possessed orc leans closer.
I can smell the wrongness on his breath—decay and hunger and eight centuries of accumulated malice.
“He just can’t stop me. Not this time. The attack on the Heartgrove has weakened him.
And you—” The hand around my throat tightens slightly.
“You’ve weakened him more. He cares about you, little hunter.
Against all wisdom, against all instinct.
He’s been alone so long, and you looked at him like he was more than a monster. ”
“Let him go.”
“Why would I do that?” The Thorn King’s voice drips with amusement. “This is the closest I’ve been to freedom in decades. The Consortium’s attack is perfect—so much violence, so much fear, so much beautiful vengeance. And when the warden falls, when his control finally breaks...”
“He won’t fall.”
“Such faith. Such foolish, fragile faith.” The hand releases my throat.
The possessed orc steps back, studying me with eyes that hold nothing of the man I’ve been fighting beside.
“You interest me, little hunter. Your grief is so fresh, so raw. The woman you loved—Cyrilla, yes?—she cried out for days before the forest finally absorbed her. She called your name at the end. Did you know that? She begged for you to save her.”
The words hit like physical blows. I feel them in my chest, my gut, my bones.
Cyrilla. Crying out. Calling my name.
“You’re lying.” My voice doesn’t waver. I refuse to let it waver. “You’re trying to break me. It won’t work.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” The King tilts Tharos’s head, an alien gesture that looks wrong on his body.
“But consider this: what if I’m not lying?
What if every word is true? What if your precious Cyrilla is still here, somewhere in the forest, her consciousness trapped in wood and root and eternal suffering? ”
“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t change anything.” I draw my blade. “You’re still not getting through me.”
“Getting through you?” The King laughs—Tharos’s voice, but twisted, wrong.
“Child, I don’t need to go through you. I just need to keep the warden distracted long enough for the Consortium to finish their work.
Once the Binding Breaker reaches the Heartgrove, once my prison shatters, I’ll be free. And then—”
The voice cuts off. The possessed body convulses.
And I see it—the fight happening inside. Tharos, clawing his way back to control. The King, trying to hold on. Two wills battling for dominance in a single body.
I don’t think. Just act.
My blade presses against his throat. Not cutting. Just... present.
“Listen to me.” I pitch my voice low, steady. “Whatever’s happening in there, whatever fight you’re having—you need to win it. Right now. Because if you don’t, I will cut your throat. I will end you before that thing gets free. Do you understand?”
The body goes still. The eyes flicker—burning, then dark, then burning again.
“Xela.” Tharos’s voice. His real voice, strained and desperate.
“I’m here.” I don’t lower the blade. “Come back. Fight it. Whatever you have to do.”
“I can’t—it’s too strong—”
“Bullshit.” The word comes out hard. “You’ve been fighting it for decades. You’ve been holding it back while the world forgot you existed, while hunters came and died and came again. You didn’t break then. You don’t get to break now.”
A sound escapes him—half laugh, half sob. “You don’t understand. The attack—the violence—it’s feeding the King faster than I can contain. I can’t hold it and fight the Consortium at the same time.”
“Then don’t.” The idea forms even as I speak it—reckless, possibly suicidal. “Let me handle the Consortium. You focus on the King.”
“You can’t fight seventy hunters alone.”
“I’m not going to fight them. I’m going to slow them down. Sabotage. Guerrilla tactics. I’ve been doing this my whole life.” I press the blade just slightly harder against his throat. “But I need you to win this fight first. I need you to come back.”
The eyes flicker again. Dark. Burning. Dark.
Then—purely burning. Bright with pain and exhaustion and what looks almost like gratitude.
“You should have run when you had the chance.” His voice is his own again. Rough. Broken. But his.
“Probably.” I lower the blade. “Too late now.”
He sags against me. Heavy. Exhausted. His scars have split, and his skin is fever-hot where it presses against mine.
“The things it said.” His voice is rough, each word an effort. “About Cyrilla. The King was manipulating you. She is not in the bark. I would know every face in this forest.”
I catch him. Hold him up. My hand finds the back of his neck, and his forehead drops against my shoulder, and for one moment, we’re just two people holding each other up in the dark.
The King’s claim settles into its proper shape—a lie, exact and targeted, designed to find the gap in my armor. I believe him. He would know.
“The Consortium,” he manages. “They’re still coming.”
“I know.”
“The King will try again. As soon as I’m weak enough.”
“I know.”
“Then why—” He pulls back. Meets my eyes. “Why stay? Why risk yourself for a forest that wants to kill you and an orc who might lose control at any moment?”
I think about Cyrilla. About the five years I’ve spent running from her memory. About the contract in my pocket and the money it promises and the life I could have if I just walked away.
Then I think about the way he looked at me in that clearing. The way he said I defied expectation. The way he’s been holding back a monster for decades, alone, forgotten, waiting for the end.
“Because the alternative is worse,” I say.
The words hang between us. His expression shifts—surprise, then a deeper emotion. One I don’t have a name for.
He starts walking. I follow.
The forest shrieks.
Not the distant rumble I felt before. Not the gradual building of pressure in my skull. This is immediate, overwhelming—a wave of pain and rage that drops me to my knees.
Tharos catches me before I hit the ground. His hands are under my arms, holding me up, and the contact burns where it shouldn’t—not pain, something else.
“The Heartgrove.” His voice is barely recognizable, scraped raw. “The siege engine has reached the outer boundary. The runes are active.”
Blood wells dark from the wound in his shoulder. He presses his palm against the puncture, and I watch the skin begin to knit. Not fast, but faster than any wound I’ve ever seen heal.
“The forest,” I say. “It’s healing you.”
“One of the benefits of the binding.” His voice is dry. Almost amused. “The forest keeps me alive. Needs me alive. As long as I’m bound to Briargrave, I can survive injuries that would kill anyone else.”
“And if you weren’t bound?”
The almost-amusement fades. “Then I’d be one more body on the forest floor.”
I shouldn’t care. He’s still my target. The contract is still valid—more valid, now that the Consortium has made their intentions clear.
If I kill him, I can still collect. Still disappear.
Still become someone who isn’t standing in a forest that eats people, holding up an orc who should be my enemy.
Instead I’m cataloguing the way his breathing has steadied. Noting the point where his weight shifts from mine back to his own. Taking up exactly as much of my attention as the siege engine moving toward the Heartgrove.
“Accelerate,” he says. “The fire weapons are clearing a path faster than I expected. And now that the scouts are dead...”
“The main force will know we’ve hit their scouts. They’ll accelerate.”
“Yes.”
We should move. He knows it. I know it. Neither of us moves yet.
“The Consortium,” he says finally. “We can stand here, or we can figure out how to stop them. Your choice.”
A flicker crosses his expression. Almost a smile, though it doesn’t quite form.
We turn toward the distant glow of fire. The siege engine is closer now—I can hear its runes crying out, can feel the wrongness of its magic pressing against my skin.
“There’s a path,” Tharos says. “Through the bone hollows. It’ll bring us up behind their main force.”
“Then let’s go.”
He leads. I follow.