Xela
TWENTY-ONE
The King speaks.
Not with voice—I understand that now. The King doesn’t have vocal cords, doesn’t have a mouth in any conventional sense. What it has is presence. Will. The ability to press thoughts and feelings directly into a mind that isn’t prepared to receive them.
Little hunter.
The words bloom inside my skull like poison flowers, unfurling petals of hunger and patience and terrible, ancient malice. I feel the King’s attention focus on me—a pressure against my consciousness that makes my teeth ache and my vision blur.
I grip my blades tighter. Try to remember what Tharos said. Don’t trust it.
My hands are shaking. My blades feel heavier than they should, like they’re pulling me toward a decision I don’t want to make. Tharos is ten feet away, his eyes closed, his concentration focused entirely on the binding. His back is to me. Unprotected. Trusting.
All I would have to do is cross the space between us. Drive steel through the gap in his armor. Watch him fall.
The King would be free. The forest would die. Everything within reach would be consumed.
But Cyrilla would rest.
She would finally rest.
I take a step forward. Another. My feet move through bones that crunch and shift, the sound loud in the Heartgrove’s silence. Tharos doesn’t turn. Doesn’t hear me. He’s locked in his own battle, trusting me to watch his back while he fights.
Three more steps and I’m behind him. My blade is raised.
“I choose to trust the man who’s spent his entire life fighting you.
” I sheathe my blade. “I choose to believe that he knows what he’s talking about when he says you can’t release your victims. And I choose to accept that Cyrilla is gone, really gone, and that holding onto her ghost is just another way of feeding your hunger. ”
The King’s laughter fills the grove—not the persuasive chuckle of a moment ago, but darker. Angrier.
Then you will watch him fail. The presence pulls back, withdrawing from my mind like a tide going out. You will watch me break free. And when I consume everything you’ve ever cared about, you will remember this moment. You will remember that you could have saved her, and you chose not to.
“Maybe.” I face the King’s mass directly, forcing myself to meet those empty eyes in the bark, those mouths frozen in silent screams. “But at least I’ll know I made the choice. Not you.”
The King doesn’t respond. Its attention shifts away from me, turning back toward Tharos, toward the binding that’s still holding despite everything. I feel the pressure leave my mind, feel my thoughts become my own again.
I’m shaking. My whole body trembles with the aftermath of what I almost did. What I could have done. How close I came to betraying someone who trusted me.
I almost killed him.
The thought won’t leave. I almost crossed that space. Almost drove my blade into his back. Almost became exactly what the King wanted—a weapon to use against the only person standing between it and everything.
But I didn’t.
That has to count.