35. Tharos
THIRTY-FIVE
THAROS
Idon’t answer. Don’t have to. The King can feel the truth of it through the binding we share—can taste the way my thoughts turn toward Xela even now, wondering if she’s surviving, hoping she’s fighting, terrified that I’ll return to find her body among the Consortium dead.
Kill her, and our partnership will be... smoother.
“No.”
She is a weakness. A vulnerability. The Consortium will use her against you. I will use her against you. Everyone who wants to break you will find her first.
“She’s not part of this.”
She’s part of everything now. The roots shift, reaching toward me. I feel your feelings for her. They burn almost as brightly as your bond with me. Almost as strong. The faces in the bark twist into expressions of cruel amusement. That makes her dangerous. Dangerous things should be destroyed.
“She’s not part of this.” I hold my ground as the roots coil around my ankles. “That’s my condition. She lives, or we both die when the Severance Engine arrives.”
The King considers. I feel it weighing options—calculating the value of Xela’s death against the risk of the weapon reaching the grove. Centuries of patience warring with the practical necessity of survival.
Very well.
The roots retreat. The pressure in my skull eases, slightly.
For now, the woman lives. But when this is over—when the forest is safe—we will discuss her future.
“Agreed.”
Then let us begin.
The King’s presence surges forward. Not an attack—an offering. I feel it pressing against the walls I’ve built in my mind, asking for entry rather than demanding it. A door where there was once only barrier.
I don’t open it. Not yet.
“When I return,” I say. “When the Consortium is at the gates and there’s no other choice. Then I’ll let you in.”
Cautious. Even now.
“Cautious is how I’ve survived this long.”
Cautious is how you’ve become so very, very alone. The King’s voice softens, almost gentle. Go, then. Find your woman. Protect her from the army that seeks to destroy us both. And when the moment comes—when you are ready to stop being cautious—I will be waiting.
I turn and run.
The thornpaths open for me with desperate speed—Briargrave recognizing the bargain I’ve made, the alliance that might be its only hope of survival.
Trees bend out of my way. Roots smooth into solid ground beneath my feet.
The forest is terrified, and its terror makes it cooperative in ways I’ve never felt before.
I smell smoke before I see the battlefield. Burning wood and burning flesh, blood and steel and the acrid tang of flame weapons discharging.
The Engine’s scream has reached a fever pitch, drilling into my skull with relentless intensity.
Then I crest the final ridge, and I see her.
Xela stands in a field of corpses.
She’s covered in blood—her own and others’—her armor slashed in a dozen places, her movements slower than they should be. Bodies litter the ground around her, at least fifteen, maybe twenty. Consortium soldiers who thought a single human woman would be easy to bypass.
They thought wrong.
Three soldiers circle her now, pressing an attack she’s barely holding off. Her left arm hangs at a bad angle—dislocated, from the look of it. A gash across her temple drips blood into her eyes. She’s exhausted, wounded, outnumbered.
And she’s glorious.
She parries a blow meant to take her head, pivots, drives her blade through a gap in her attacker’s armor.
He goes down screaming. The other two close in, and she meets them with the same ferocity she’s shown since the moment she entered my forest—the bloody-minded refusal to die that makes her the most dangerous thing I’ve ever encountered.
I don’t think. Just move.
Roots explode from the ground, catching one soldier by the legs and dragging him down.
Vines whip from the branches overhead, wrapping around the other’s sword arm and wrenching the blade from his grip.
Xela doesn’t hesitate—sees the opening and takes it, her blade finding his throat before he can recover.
She turns, weapons raised, and freezes when she sees me.
“Took you long enough.”
“Traffic.” I close the distance between us, checking her injuries with my eyes. Bad, but not fatal. She’ll survive if we can get her somewhere safe. “The King—”
“Later.” She grabs my arm with her good hand, pulls me toward a gap in the burned trees.
“More coming. Engine’s a hundred yards from the grove. Maybe less.”
We run.
The hollow she leads me to is small—barely big enough for two people, hidden beneath a tangle of roots that have somehow escaped the fire. We tumble inside, and the darkness swallows us.
For a moment, we just breathe—soldiers shouting in the distance, the Engine’s scream a constant pressure against my thoughts. But here, in this cramped space with her body pressed against mine, everything else fades.
“Your arm.”
“Dislocated.” Her voice is tight with pain she’s refusing to acknowledge. “Happened about ten soldiers ago. Can you—”
I don’t let her finish. Just grab her shoulder, feel for the joint, and wrench it back into place before she can tense.
She swears—a string of profanity that would make a dock worker blush—and sags against me.
“Warn me next time.”
“You would have braced.”
“I would have been prepared.”
“Same thing.”
Her breathing steadies. I feel her hand on my chest, fingers curling into the leather of my armor. She’s shaking—adrenaline, exhaustion, the comedown from the battle she’s been fighting alone.
“You came back.” Her voice is quieter now. Vulnerable in a way I’ve rarely heard from her.
“I promised.”
“Promises don’t mean much. People break them.”
“I don’t.”
She lifts her head. Even in the darkness, I can see the glint of her eyes, the blood on her face, the fierce intensity that hasn’t dimmed despite everything she’s been through.
“What happened with the King?”
“We made a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“The kind that might kill me.” I run my hand through her hair, feel her lean into the touch. “When the time comes, I’m going to let it in. Channel its power. Use everything I’ve spent decades containing to destroy that weapon and everyone behind it.”
“And the cost?”
“Every moment the King shares my body, I lose a piece of myself. Too long, and I won’t be able to separate from it.”
She’s quiet. I feel her processing the information, weighing the implications.
“Then we’ll have to be fast.”
“Xela—”
“Don’t.” She grabs my face, forces me to look at her. “Don’t tell me to run. Don’t try to protect me by pushing me away. I’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime.”
“I might not survive what comes next.”