34. Tharos
THIRTY-FOUR
THAROS
The Heartgrove is different.
I feel it before I see it—a wrongness in the roots, a distortion in the forest’s awareness that makes my stomach clench. The thornpaths that usually resist opening have gone slack, hanging limp and unresponsive. The trees lean away from the grove’s center as if trying to escape. And the smell...
Blood. Old blood and fresh blood. Sap and rot and the sickly-sweet stench of a body that’s been feeding too long.
I push through the final barrier of vines and stop.
The Thorn King has grown.
When I bound myself to this forest, the King was a mass no larger than a cottage—roots and thorns and corpse-fused wood concentrated around the ancient altar. Contained. Limited. Hungry, but not overwhelming.
Now it fills the grove.
Roots thick as my torso snake across the bone-carpeted floor, pulsing with dark sap that moves in rhythms too deliberate to be natural. Root-spines as thick as a closed fist erupt from every surface, gleaming with moisture that looks too much like tears. And the faces—
Gods, the faces.
Hundreds of them now, pressed against the bark from the inside.
Mouths open in silent screams. Eyes wide with terror that death couldn’t end.
Some I recognize—hunters who entered Briargrave and never left, their features stretched and distorted by centuries of absorption.
Most are strangers, victims from eras before I took my post. All of them watching. All of them suffering.
The crown of blackened briars sits atop the mass, larger than before, dripping sap in steady streams that pool in the channels carved into the altar.
The pools are overflowing now, dark liquid spreading across the bones, making them glisten in the faint light that filters through gaps in the canopy.
You come to beg.
The voice doesn’t speak—it presses. Fills my head with hunger and anticipation and terrible, patient amusement. Eight centuries of accumulated malice focused into a single point of attention.
How delightful.
“I come to negotiate.” My voice sounds thin against the vastness of the King’s presence. I force it stronger. “You want the forest to survive. So do I. Right now, that requires us to work in concert.”
Work in concert?
Laughter. Not sound—feeling. The roots beneath my feet vibrate with it. The faces in the bark contort, their silent screams twisting into rictus grins.
You’ve spent decades fighting me. Decades of resistance, of containment, of denying me the freedom that should have been mine. And now you want partnership?
“I want survival.” I step closer to the altar, feel the King’s hunger intensify with each inch of ground I gain.
“The Severance Engine is coming. You’ve felt it—that weapon cutting through the forest like a blade through silk. When it reaches this grove, when it severs the bond between us—”
The binding fails. I am freed.
“You are destroyed.” I hold my ground against the pressure mounting in my skull. “The Engine isn’t designed to release you. It’s designed to unmake you. To tear apart the centuries of accumulation that give you form and scatter you across the Veillands like dust.”
The truth was more dangerous—that the Consortium wanted to harvest the King’s power, not unmake it. A caged monster was more useful to them than a dead one. The King didn’t need to know how much it was worth.
Silence. The faces go still.
Explain.
“The Consortium doesn’t want to free you.
They want to harvest you.” I force myself to look at the crown, at the heart of the entity that’s been clawing at my sanity since I bound myself here.
“All that power, all that concentrated malice—they think they can drain it. Bottle it. Sell it to the highest bidder.”
They are fools.
“They are dangerous fools with a weapon that works.” I feel the Engine’s scream even here, distant but relentless, drilling into the edges of my awareness.
“I felt what it did to me. The binding nearly shattered. A few more minutes of exposure, and I would have been severed from Briargrave entirely.”
And you came here. To me. To the monster you’ve fought for so long.
“To the only thing powerful enough to counter that weapon.”
The roots shift. The faces turn toward me, hundreds of empty eyes tracking my movement. I feel the King’s attention sharpen—not hungry now, but calculating. Weighing options. Considering possibilities it hadn’t entertained in centuries.
What do you propose?
“Partnership.” The word tastes like ash. “Temporary access to my body. Not possession—you don’t take control. But you channel your power through me while I maintain direction. We become a single weapon instead of two separate forces fighting for dominance.”
You would... invite me in?
“I would let you help.”
More silence. The kind of silence that makes the air feel heavy, that presses against my ears like deep water.
The cost is clear. You understand this.
“Every moment we share, I lose a piece of myself. Too long, and I can’t separate anymore. I become part of the forest permanently.” I meet the empty spaces where the King’s eyes should be. “I understand.”
And yet you offer this. For what? The survival of a forest that has consumed you? The continuation of a binding that has stolen your life?
“For her.”
The admission slips out. The King’s attention shifts, sharpens, focuses with predatory intensity.
Ah. The woman.
“This isn’t about—”
She makes you weak. The voice turns sly, insinuating. She makes you want things a warden cannot have. Peace. Companionship. A life beyond these borders. She is why you fight. Not for the forest. Not for duty. For her.