Tharos
FORTY-TWO
Later—much later—we lie tangled in the hollow, her head on my chest, my fingers tracing patterns on her back. The setting sun has faded to twilight. She fits against me like she’s always belonged there, and I find I have nothing left to explain—only this.
She lifts her head, looks at me with those storm-gray eyes. “Is this your version of a proposal?”
“Would you say yes if it was?”
“I’d say we’re already past proposals.” She leans up, brushes her mouth against mine. “I chose you in a bone hollow while an army tried to kill us. I chose you when a god tried to tear you apart. I’m not going anywhere.”
The words settle into my chest like warmth after cold. Like belonging after exile.
“Then let’s go kill a god.”
The Heartgrove looks different now.
When we step through the final ring of trees, the altar waits in twilight shadows—but the mass that grew from it has changed. Swelled. The Thorn King has been feeding on the battle’s violence, drinking in the blood that soaked into the soil.
The faces have multiplied. And the crown of thorns burns with dark fire.
Xela’s hand tightens in mine. I feel her pulse spike—fear and determination tangled into something powerful. The forest carries her heartbeat to me now, echoing it through root and vine.
“It’s bigger,” she murmurs.
“The battle fed it. All that death, all that rage...” I study the entity that has been my enemy and my burden for longer than most humans live. “The Severance Engine’s failure didn’t weaken it. Just delayed the inevitable.”
You think you’ve won.
The King’s voice slides through my mind—not words, but feelings. Hunger and contempt and ancient, patient malice. The same voice that has whispered to me every day since the binding began.
You’ve only delayed what I am owed.
“It’s talking to you.” Xela’s voice is tight. “I can feel it. Like pressure at the edges of my awareness.”
“Good. That means the bond is holding.” I squeeze her hand once, then release it. “Stay back. Let me—”
The woman is mortal. The King’s attention shifts, focuses on Xela with cold calculation. She will die, warden. In decades, or in years, or in this battle. I have waited eight centuries. I can wait a little longer. And when she is gone, you will be alone again—and I will be here.
“It wants you to react.” Xela’s hand finds my arm, grounds me. “Don’t give it what it wants.”
I breathe. Count the thundering beats of my heart. The King is baiting me—testing the bond, looking for cracks it can exploit. It’s been doing this for longer than I can remember. The tactics haven’t changed.
But I have.
“You tried to take me.” My voice is steady. Calm in a way I don’t entirely feel. “During the battle with the Consortium. You tried to use what’s between Xela and me—to possess me while she distracted me with her pain.”
Yesssss. The word is a hiss of satisfaction. And I would have succeeded. If the weapon hadn’t interfered. If your little human hadn’t proven more... resilient than expected.
“You underestimated her.”
I underestimate nothing. The King’s presence swells, pressing against my mental barriers. The woman is a variable. A complication. But complications can be removed.
Thorns erupt from the ground—not aimed at me, but at Xela.
I don’t think. Just move. My hand catches the first thorn before it can pierce her throat, snapping it with strength I shouldn’t possess. More follow, a barrage of barbed projectiles, and I put myself between them and her, letting the thorns that I can’t stop sink into my flesh instead.
Pain. Sharp and immediate. But bearable.
“Tharos—”
“Stay behind me.” I pull a thorn from my shoulder; the wound seals slowly. “The King’s power is in them—the same venomous influence that makes Briargrave’s vegetation deadly. But I’m bound to that power too. It hurts, but it can’t consume me.”
Touching. The King’s voice drips with mockery. You would die to protect her. Just as your predecessors died to protect their weaknesses. How long do you think she’ll last, warden? A month? A year? Eventually, you’ll fail. Eventually, she’ll join the faces in my bark.
“Then I’ll cut you down before that happens.”
The King laughs. The sound shakes the Heartgrove, makes the faces in its bark twist and writhe.
You cannot destroy me without destroying yourself. We are bound, warden. Your life is my cage. Your death would be my freedom. The presence presses closer, colder. Would you risk releasing me to save her? Would you doom the world to keep one small human breathing?
It’s the same question the King has asked a hundred times, in a hundred variations. The same bargain it’s been offering since the binding began. Surrender. Let go. Stop fighting and become part of something greater.
The answer has never changed.
But the reason has.
“Choice.” The word comes out steady. Certain. “That’s what the binding never understood. That’s what you never understood. I chose to bind myself to this forest. I chose to contain you. And when Xela grabbed my hand during the Engine’s attack—when she refused to let go—I chose her.”
The King’s presence wavers. Uncertainty bleeding through its ancient malice.
“You thought the ritual made me your prisoner. But I was never trapped. I stayed because I chose to stay. Because containing you was worth the cost.” I step forward, feeling the bond pulse with each heartbeat.
Feeling Xela’s presence at the edges of my awareness—solid, steady, an anchor that the King can’t touch.
“Now I have something else worth choosing. Someone else. And that makes your cage stronger, not weaker.”
Impossible. I am eternal. I am the accumulated vengeance of centuries. I am—
“Hungry.” I cut through the King’s grandstanding with brutal truth.
“You’re hungry. And the binding limits your feeding.
I don’t have to destroy you. I just have to outlast you.
Every death in Briargrave goes through me first—gets filtered through my will before it reaches you.
That’s why you’ve been growing so slowly.
That’s why you’re still trapped here instead of spreading across the Veillands. ”
The King’s presence recedes slightly. Wariness entering its cold regard.
“Xela is bound to me now. Which means she’s bound to the filtering process too. Another layer between you and the vengeance you crave.” I smile—a predator’s smile, learned from the entity I’m facing. “You didn’t just fail to kill her. You made her into another prison wall.”
Liar.
“Truth.” I hold up my hand, show the bark-scars that lace my forearm. The same patterns are forming on Xela’s skin—faint for now, but visible. Evidence of the bond taking root. “She’s mine now. Part of the binding. Part of the cage. And every day she stays with me, the bars get stronger.”
The King’s rage hits me like a physical blow. The Heartgrove shudders. Roots erupt from the ground in every direction, thorns erupting from the bark, vines whipping through the air with killing force.
I stand my ground. Let the forest rage around me without responding.
And when it’s over—when the King’s fury has spent itself and the grove falls quiet again—I’m still standing. Xela is still behind me, protected by the bond that should have been the King’s weapon but has become its cage instead.
You think this changes anything. The King’s voice is quieter now. Sullen. The woman will die eventually. All humans do. And when she does, you’ll be alone again. Vulnerable again. I can wait.
“Then wait.” I take Xela’s hand, feel her fingers lace through mine. “I’ve got time.”
We turn our backs on the King. Walk out of the Heartgrove with our fingers intertwined, leaving the entity to stew in its impotent rage.
Behind us, the crown of thorns gutters. The dark fire dims.
The King may be eternal. But eternity is a long time to spend watching the bars of your cage grow stronger.