FORTY-SIX THAROS
FORTY-SIX
THAROS
The Heartgrove is dying.
I feel it the moment we cross the boundary between forest and sanctum—a wrongness that seeps into my bones, a weakness that echoes through the binding like a hollow note.
The massive roots that once arched overhead to form a living cathedral now sag against each other, cracked and weeping dark sap.
The canopy that blocked all light has thinned, letting shafts of pale sun pierce the perpetual twilight after eight hundred years of darkness.
And the bones underfoot crunch differently. Softer. Less vital. As if the forest’s grip on its dead is finally loosening.
Xela’s hand tightens in mine. I haven’t let go of her since we started running—can’t bring myself to.
The awareness between us pulses with every heartbeat, and her fear and determination bleed through as clearly as I feel my own.
Her palm is warm against mine, calloused and strong, and the contact grounds me in ways I couldn’t have imagined before she entered my life.
“It looks different,” she murmurs. “Smaller.”
She’s right. The King’s mass has shrunk to a fraction of what it was when I last stood here.
The roots that once filled the grove—writhing, pulsing with dark sap, reaching for anything living—have pulled back toward the altar at the center.
They lie slack against the bone-carpeted floor, motionless, deflated.
Some have split open, revealing hollow cores where dense wood should be.
The faces in the bark have finally gone silent.
No more screaming, no more watching with those empty, agonized eyes.
They’re still there—I can see them pressed into the wood, victims of centuries of feeding—but they’ve stopped moving.
Stopped suffering. Whatever the Severance Engine did, it gave them peace at last.
I pause at the edge of the grove, taking in the devastation.
For decades, this place has been my burden and my battlefield.
I’ve stood at this altar more times than I can count, feeling the King’s hunger pressing against my mind, fighting to maintain control.
Now it feels... diminished. Empty. Like a predator that’s finally met something it can’t consume.
For now, at least, they are still.
“The crown.” Xela’s voice draws my attention to the altar.
The blackened briars lie shattered across the stone—the crown that sat atop the King’s mass since before I took my post, dripping sap that looked too much like blood. Now it’s scattered like ash, petals of dark wood strewn across the ancient channels carved into the altar’s surface.
“The oldest part of the King.” I release Xela’s hand—reluctantly—and step closer. “The seed from which the rest grew. If it’s destroyed...”
“Is it destroyed? Or just broken?”
I reach for the binding. Let my awareness sink into the roots beneath my feet, the sap flowing through the forest’s veins, the pulse of life that connects every corner of Briargrave.
The King’s presence is there—diminished, yes, wounded, but not gone.
It gathers at the edges of the grove, a cold malevolence that’s licking its wounds and plotting its next move.
“Broken. Not destroyed.” I turn back to her. “The Severance Engine severed something essential—cut off part of what was feeding it. But the core is still there. Still aware. Still...”
Wounded.
The King’s voice slides through my mind—thin now, reedy. A whisper where there used to be a roar. I feel Xela flinch beside me, and I know she heard it too. The bond has made her sensitive to the King’s presence, even if she can’t feel it as deeply as I do.
Dying.
“Good.” The word comes out harsh. Satisfying.
I approach the altar, stepping over scattered bones, feeling the binding shift and pulse with each step.
“You’ve been a parasite on this forest for centuries.
You’ve fed on death until Briargrave became synonymous with horror. Maybe it’s time for that to end.”
You can’t destroy me.
The King’s presence flickers, desperate. It tries to rally—trying to gather the strength it’s lost, to reform the mass that once dominated this grove. But whatever the Severance Engine did, it cut deep. The King can barely maintain coherent thought, let alone physical form.
We’re bound, warden. You die, I die. That’s been true since the ritual was completed.
I stop at the altar’s edge. Look down at the shattered crown, the empty channels, the dark sap pooling in places it never touched before. And I feel something I haven’t felt in longer than I can remember.
Hope.
“No.” My hand finds the altar’s stone—cold, ancient, older than the forest itself.
“I’m bound to Briargrave. I’m bound to the forest.” I close my eyes, let the binding fill me.
“But you’re not the forest. You’re just what grew here when the forest was left to suffer.
You’re a tumor. And tumors can be cut out. ”
Silence. For the first time since I took my post, the Thorn King has nothing to say.
“Tharos?” Xela’s voice pulls me back. She’s moved to stand beside me, her shoulder brushing mine. The contact steadies me in ways I couldn’t have imagined before she walked into my forest. “What are you thinking?”
“The binding ritual.” I don’t open my eyes.
Can’t—I need to stay connected to what I’m feeling, to the threads of power that connect me to every root and branch and stone.
“I’ve spent decades believing I was bound to the King.
That killing it would kill me, and freeing it would doom everyone within reach. ”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not so sure.” I trace the channels carved into the altar’s surface—the same channels that ran with my blood when I bound myself here, that drank my sacrifice and made me part of Briargrave.
The stone is cold beneath my fingers, older than the forest itself.
Its history flows through me—not through magic, but through the accumulated wear of centuries.
“The ritual wasn’t about the King. It was about the forest itself.
The land. The trees. The living system that existed before the King took root. ”
“But the King was already here when you did the ritual.”
“Yes. It had attached itself to the forest—grown into it, fused with it. I thought I was binding myself to both.” I open my eyes, turn to face her.
The light filtering through the damaged canopy catches her features, painting them in gold and shadow.
She stands there in the dying light, blade ready, willing to face a god for me.
“But what if I wasn’t? What if the King just...
hitched a ride? Pretended to be part of what I was connecting to, when really it was something separate? ”
Understanding dawns in her gray eyes. “You’re saying you might be able to separate them.”
“I’m saying I have to try.” I step away from the altar, cross to where she stands.
Need to be closer to her. Need to feel her presence before I do something that might kill us both.
“The ritual has layers. Depths I’ve never fully explored because the King was there, watching, waiting to exploit any weakness.
But now it’s wounded. Distracted. If I reach deep enough, if I can find where the King ends and the forest begins... ”
“You can cut it out.”
“Or I can lose myself trying.” I cup her face in my hands. Her skin is warm against my palms, her jaw strong beneath my fingers.
“What happens if you’re wrong?”
“I die. The King breaks free. Everyone within reach of Briargrave suffers.”
“And if you’re right?”
“The King dies. The forest survives. Changed, but alive.” I reach for her hand. Need the contact. Need the grounding she provides. “And I might survive too. Might even be able to leave this place, if I want to.”
Her fingers lace through mine. “That’s a lot of mights.”
“I know.”
“And the bond?” She turns my hand over in hers, tracing the bark-scars on my forearm with her thumb. “What I’ve become to the forest—does that change when the King is gone? Am I still bound?”
“I don’t know what it looks like without the King.” The admission costs something. “The bond was forming around its presence—around the binding that contains it. With it gone...” I pause. “Different. Changed. But I don’t think it disappears. Briargrave chose you. That was never the King’s doing.”
“So I might stay bound to a forest that no longer wants to kill me.” She almost smiles. “There are worse fates.”
“There are.” I tip her chin up with two fingers, hold her gaze. “We’ll figure out the rest. After.”
“And you’re going to try anyway.”
“I have to.” I pull her closer, wrap my free arm around her waist. She comes willingly, fitting against me the way she has since that first desperate night in the hollow.
“The King won’t stay weak forever. It’s already trying to heal, to regather its strength.
If I wait too long, it’ll recover. And then we’re back to containment, back to the endless battle that’s defined my existence for decades. ”
“And you don’t want that.”
“I want it over.” The admission costs something. “I want to stop being a warden of horrors. I want to be something else. Someone else.”
“Someone with options.”
“Someone who can choose to stay instead of being forced to.” I press my lips against her temple, breathe her in. “Someone who can choose you because he wants to, not because you’re the only thing keeping him sane.”
She laughs—soft, raw, a little broken. “You already chose me.”
“I want to choose you again. And again. Every day, by choice, not necessity.”
Her hand finds my face. Cups my jaw with a tenderness that still surprises me. “Then do what you have to do. I’ll be here when it’s over.”
“It’s going to hurt.”
“Everything hurts.”
“The King won’t go quietly. It’ll fight back, try to drag me down with it. If I lose myself in the separation—”
“I’ll pull you back.” Her eyes are fierce. Certain. “I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again.”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then I’ll end it myself.” She kisses me—brief, hard, a promise as much as a goodbye. “But that’s not going to happen. Because you’re stronger than it. You’ve been stronger for a long time.”
I want to believe her. Want to let her certainty carry me through what’s coming.
But I’ve spent decades fighting the King, and I know what it’s capable of.
I know how it twists and manipulates, how it finds weaknesses and exploits them.
Even wounded, even dying, it’s still the most dangerous thing I’ve ever faced.
“If I don’t come back from this, run. Get out of Briargrave.”
A short, joyless breath of a laugh escapes her. “You know I won’t do that.”
“I know. But I had to ask.”
“Stubborn orc.”
“Impossible woman.”