16. Xela
SIXTEEN
XELA
The plan is simple, which means it will probably go horribly wrong.
Tharos will use the thornpaths to approach the siege engine from below, coming up through the root system to get close enough to touch the machine’s base.
Once he’s in position, he’ll feed the Binding Breaker a surge of concentrated power—raw forest magic, unfiltered and overwhelming.
The runes will overload. The machine will fail.
And in the chaos that follows, the Consortium hunters will scatter.
My job is distraction.
“You want me to attack an army by myself.” I say it flatly, not quite a question.
“I want you to get their attention.” He’s moving through the forest ahead of me. “You don’t need to kill them all. Just make enough noise that they focus on you instead of what’s happening beneath their feet.”
“And if they focus on me with crossbows and fire weapons?”
“Then move fast and don’t get hit.”
“Brilliant tactical advice.”
His shoulders shift—might be a shrug, might be suppressed laughter. It’s hard to tell with him.
“I know your plan. Let’s move.”
This time he does laugh—a low, rough sound that does strange things to my stomach. “Too late to back out now.”
The forest thickens around us as we travel, the trees growing closer, the air growing heavier with the smell of decay and sap.
I’ve been in Briargrave long enough now that the smell doesn’t bother me anymore.
It’s become background—part of the forest’s character, like the constant creaking of living wood or the subtle movement of vines when I’m not looking directly at them.
“The Consortium will have sentries.” I keep my voice low, though I’m not sure the hunters could hear us even if I shouted.
“Standard formation—outer ring watching the perimeter, inner ring protecting the siege engine. If I’m going to get their attention, I need to hit the outer ring hard enough that the inner ring responds. ”
“Agreed.” He pauses at a gap in the undergrowth, scanning the space beyond. “There’s a ridge ahead, overlooking the Consortium’s position. You’ll be able to see the whole formation from there.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be underground.” He turns to face me, and his expression makes warmth spread through my belly.
Not quite concern. Not quite affection. An emotion in between that I’m not ready to name.
“If the sabotage fails, the Binding Breaker activates. The King breaks free. And when that happens, nothing I can do will protect you from what comes next.”
“Then make sure the sabotage doesn’t fail.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I reach out before I can think better of it and close my fingers around his forearm, over the bark-ridged scars where the binding lives under his skin. His pulse beats there, slower than a human’s but just as steady.
“You’ve survived this forest longer than I’ve been alive. You’ve contained an entity that wants to eat the world. You can handle one siege engine.”
His free hand covers mine, pressing it harder against his arm. The contact sends heat racing up my arm, pooling low in places I’m trying very hard to ignore.
“You have more faith in me than I deserve.”
“Maybe.” I don’t pull away. Don’t want to. “Or maybe I’m just good at reading people. And everything I’ve read about you says you don’t know how to quit.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, his hand warm over mine, holding me in place. The forest seems to hold its breath around us, waiting.
Then he releases me and steps back.
“The ridge is that way.” His voice is rougher than before. “Wait for my signal before you attack. You’ll know it when you see it.”
“What will it look like?”
“Like the ground is trying to swallow the Consortium’s siege engine.” That almost-smile flickers across his face again. “Hard to miss.”
He turns and walks into the forest, the thornpaths closing behind him like water filling a void. Within seconds, he’s gone—swallowed by the trees as if he’d never been there at all.
I stand in the gap for a moment longer, my hand still warm where it pressed against his arm. Then I shake myself, check my weapons, and start moving toward the ridge.
The Consortium is waiting. The King is stirring. And somewhere beneath my feet, an orc who should have been my enemy is about to risk everything to save a forest that’s been his prison.
I really am terrible at this job.
The ridge overlooks a scene from a nightmare.
I crouch in the shadows of the treeline, surveying the Consortium’s position through gaps in the undergrowth.
They’ve made camp in a natural clearing, the trees pushed back by fire and force to create a staging area for their assault.
Tents dot the perimeter. Hunters move between them, checking weapons and armor.
And at the center of it all, surrounded by a ring of guards, sits the Binding Breaker.
It’s bigger than I expected. The siege engine rises high into the air, a mass of blackened iron and glowing runes that hurt to look at directly.
The runes pulse with a light that shifts between red and sickly green, and even from this distance, I can feel the wrongness of them.
Magic designed to tear. To sever. To destroy.
More hunters than I can easily count. The guards around the siege engine carry weapons I don’t recognize—long rifles with glowing chambers that suggest fire magic or worse.
This is going to be ugly.
I settle into position and wait for the signal. The forest is quiet around me, but it’s a tense quiet—the silence of a predator holding its breath before a strike. The Briarbound Dead are absent here; the Consortium’s fires must have driven them back, or destroyed them entirely.
Time stretches. I count heartbeats. Watch the guards cycle through their rotations. Note the patterns, the gaps, the moments when attention wavers.
Then the ground begins to move.
It starts subtle—a tremor that could be mistaken for nothing. Then the earth beneath the siege engine splits, roots erupting through soil that should be too packed to penetrate. The guards shout. Hunters scramble for weapons. And in the chaos, I see him.
Tharos rises from the ground like a creature out of legend, roots and soil falling from his massive frame, his hands already reaching for the Binding Breaker’s base. The runes on the machine flare bright—too bright, painful to look at—and then everything goes wrong at once.
Fire weapons discharge. Hunters close in from all sides. And the siege engine shrieks, its runes blazing with light that shifts from green to blinding white.
I don’t wait to see what happens next. I’m already moving, bursting from the treeline with blades drawn, aiming for the nearest cluster of hunters with murder in my heart.
Time to make some noise.
The first hunter dies before he knows I’m there—blade through the gap in his armor, twisting, withdrawing.
The second manages to turn, to raise his weapon, before my other blade opens his throat.
Blood sprays hot against my face, and then I’m moving again, dancing through the chaos, making myself impossible to ignore.
“Contact! Contact at the eastern perimeter!”
Good. Notice me. Focus on me. Don’t look at what’s happening beneath the siege engine.
More hunters converge on my position. I fall back into the forest, using the trees as cover, letting the undergrowth slow pursuers who don’t know how to move through it.
A fire weapon discharges, and a tree trunk explodes inches from my head.
I roll, come up running, circle back to strike from an unexpected angle.
More hunters fall. I lose count, because the world has narrowed to blades and blood and the desperate need to stay alive long enough for Tharos to finish his work.
The siege engine’s shriek reaches a crescendo. Light blazes through the forest, bright enough to cast shadows even in the depths of Briargrave’s canopy.
And then silence.
The Binding Breaker goes dark. The runes gutter and die. And from the Consortium’s camp, I hear a sound I never expected to hear in this forest.
Cheering.
No. Not cheering. The hunters are crying out, but not from the siege engine’s failure.
They’re crying out because the ground is eating them.
Roots surge upward through the camp, impaling hunters where they stand.
Vines descend from the canopy, wrapping around throats and limbs and dragging bodies into the trees.
The forest has turned against the Consortium with a fury I’ve never witnessed—a violence that makes Tharos’s controlled attacks look gentle by comparison.
The King. The King is doing this.
The realization hits me like a physical blow. The Binding Breaker is destroyed, but so is Tharos’s concentration. The King is using the chaos to push through, to seize control of the forest, to feed on the violence it’s been denied for so long.
I need to find Tharos. Now.
I fight my way through the carnage, ignoring the hunters being torn apart around me.
The forest seems to recognize me—or maybe it’s just too busy with other prey—because the roots don’t reach for me, the vines don’t strike.
I’m invisible in the midst of slaughter, searching desperately for the orc who’s supposed to be containing this.
I find him braced against the base of the ruined siege engine, one hand pressed flat to the blackened iron, his body upright but barely. His scars have split. His eyes are wrong before I’ve even said his name.
“Tharos.”
He turns toward my voice. The movement is slow—too deliberate, too controlled. Not his control.
“She will feed me well.”
The voice that comes from his mouth isn’t his. It’s layered, ancient, hungry—the same voice I’d heard during the possession attempt in the forest.
The Thorn King is speaking through him. To me.
“Such devotion,” the King says with Tharos’s lips. “Such fierce loyalty to a man you’ve known for mere hours. I wonder—will you taste as sweet as your predecessor? Will you call his name at the end, the way Cyrilla called yours?”
The cold tries to find me again, the way it did in the clearing when the King first reached for that wound. This time I’m ready for it. I let the chill rise and pass without taking root. The King is reaching for the same lever. I won’t keep handing it back.
“Get out of him.” My voice is steady, even though my hands are shaking at my sides. “Whatever game you’re playing, it ends now.”
“Oh, little hunter.” The King’s laughter echoes through the clearing, through the dying cries of Consortium hunters, through the very roots of the forest. “The game is just beginning. And you—” The thing wearing Tharos’s face leans closer, its breath hot against my skin. “You will feed me well indeed.”
The forest shudders. The killing stops. And in the sudden silence, I realize the terrible truth.
The King isn’t trying to break free. It’s already loose. And it wants me.