Xela
THIRTY-NINE
Not his true self. Not the man I know. Just emptiness where the binding used to be.
“Tharos!” I grab him, wrap my arms around his shaking body, try to hold him steady the way I did before. “Fight it! Don’t let that thing—”
“Can’t—” His voice is barely a whisper, all the layers stripped away, nothing left but pain. “It’s too strong. The weapon—it’s designed for this. Designed to—”
Another pulse. He convulses in my arms.
“No.” I hold him tighter, feel his body convulsing against mine. “No, you don’t get to leave. You don’t get to break. Not after everything. Not when we’re this close.”
“Xela...” His hand finds mine. Weak. Trembling. “If I can’t stop it... if the binding fails...”
“It won’t.”
“The King will be free. Everything I’ve kept caged—”
“Then we’ll contain it differently.” I grab his face, make him look at me. “You said the bond between us is almost as strong as your bond with the forest. You said the King could feel it. So use that. Use me.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Anchor yourself to me.” Instinct drives the demand. “The weapon can tear apart your bond with Briargrave, but it can’t touch what we have. It wasn’t designed for that. So hold onto me instead. Let me be what grounds you.”
His eyes flicker. Something moves through the pain in them—not just recognition of me, but recognition of an idea.
“The old records.” His voice is ragged. “There was something—secondary anchoring, an emergency measure—the wardens who wrote it said it had never been attempted. That you’d need someone who was already part of the forest’s awareness—”
“I bled on this ground four times today. The forest drank it. You told me that yourself.” I press my forehead to his. “Try.”
Another pulse from the Severance Engine. Vorn’s laughter echoes across the battlefield. Tharos convulses again, and I feel him slipping—the life draining out of him along with the binding, leaving behind a shell that won’t survive what comes next.
“Tharos.” I press my forehead against his. “I’m here. I’m real. The King can’t have this. The weapon can’t break this.” My hands frame his face, bloody and fierce and refusing to let go. “Choose me. The same way you chose me before. Choose me again.”
His eyes—dark and amber and everything between—focus on mine.
And I feel it.
Not the forest. Not the King. Not the binding that’s been the foundation of his existence since he first drank from the sap springs.
Me.
He’s reaching for me. Through the pain, through the tearing, through the emptiness where his power used to be. He’s reaching for the bond we built in a bone hollow, the promises we made in blood and sweat and shared vulnerability. He’s using me as his lifeline the way I told him to.
The Severance Engine pulses again.
This time, Tharos doesn’t scream.
He opens his eyes, and they’re clear. Not amber. Not forest-dark. Clear in a way I’ve never seen them—as if something has been stripped away that was blocking the truth of him.
“It’s still there.” His voice is rough, but it’s his. Only his. “The binding. It’s not gone. Just... redirected.”
“Redirected?”
“Through you.” His hand finds mine, squeezes. “You’re holding it now. Holding me. The weapon can’t sever what it wasn’t designed to touch.”
Vorn has noticed. His triumph has turned to confusion, then rage.
“Increase the power! Maximum output! Tear him apart!”
The runes blaze brighter. The screaming intensifies until I can barely think. Energy surges through the weapon—
And dies.
The Severance Engine sputters. Sparks fly from the runes. The sickly green light flickers, wavers, and goes out.
“No.” Vorn stares at the controls, jabbing at levers that no longer respond. “No, this is impossible. The weapon is designed—”
“Your weapon was designed to break one bond.” Tharos rises. I rise with him, still holding his hand, still tethering him to a bond the artificers never anticipated. “It wasn’t designed for this.”
The forest stirs.
Not the hungry, wild energy of before—this is different. Calmer. More deliberate. The vines that have been lying dead begin to move again. The roots that were still start to shift. The trees straighten, reaching toward the sky with renewed purpose.
Briargrave is waking up.
And it’s angry.
“We need to move.” I grab Tharos’s arm. “Whatever just happened, we need to press the advantage.”
“Agreed.” He looks at me, and there’s wonder in his expression—wonder and gratitude and something deeper that makes my breath catch. “Xela. What you did—”
“Later. Explanations later. Fighting now.”
He nods. And we turn to face what’s left of the Consortium army.
Twenty soldiers remain. Vorn is still at the useless controls of the Severance Engine, screaming orders that no one is following. The wall of protection they formed has crumbled—half their number dead, their weapon failed, their target somehow stronger than before.
They know they’ve lost.
They try to run anyway.
The forest doesn’t let them.