FORTY-EIGHT XELA
FORTY-EIGHT
XELA
The King tears itself free.
I watch it happen—watch the mass of roots and thorns and corpse-fused wood rip away from the altar with a sound like a forest being uprooted.
The ground shakes beneath my feet. The remaining bones on the floor scatter and bounce, skulls rolling, ribcages cracking apart.
And from the wound where the King once anchored itself, dark sap erupts in a geyser that sprays across the grove, coating everything in its path with viscous black liquid.
The smell hits me first. Rot and copper and something sweeter underneath—the concentrated essence of eight centuries of death. It coats my throat, makes my eyes water, makes every breath feel like drowning in a graveyard.
The entity that rises is smaller than before.
Whatever Tharos did when he separated it from Briargrave, it cost the King something essential.
The mass that once filled the Heartgrove has shrunk to half its size—maybe less.
Where before it had seemed infinite, stretching into the darkness beyond what my eyes could track, now I can see its edges.
Can see where it ends and the grove begins.
But it’s still terrifying.
Roots thick as my arm writhe through its form, coiling and uncoiling in patterns that suggest muscle, suggest intention.
Thorns the length of swords bristle from every surface, gleaming with moisture that burns where it drips onto the bone-covered floor.
Vines lash through the air, barbed and seeking, reaching for anything living. And the faces—
Gods, the faces.
They press against the bark from the inside, screaming, clawing, trying to break free.
Hundreds of them, victims consumed over centuries, their features stretched and distorted by the wood that holds them prisoner.
I recognize some of them from the Outer Graves—hunters who came to Briargrave and never left, their expressions frozen in the same agony they wore when the forest claimed them.
Their mouths open and close in silent pleas.
Their eyes track my movement with terrible awareness.
Cyrilla could be in there. Somewhere in that mass of stolen lives, my former partner might be screaming, might be watching, might be—
I shove the thought away. Can’t afford it. Not now.
The crown reforms atop the mass. Blackened briars knitting themselves back into shape, each thorn longer than my hand, dripping sap that sizzles when it hits the floor.
The oldest part of the King, the seed from which the rest grew.
I watched it shatter when Tharos separated the parasite from the forest. Now it’s rebuilding itself, drawing on whatever reserves the King has left.
The King’s presence washes over me—hunger and rage and ancient, patient malice concentrated into a single point of attention. It’s different from before. Desperate. Wounded. The calm confidence that defined its whispers has been replaced by something rawer, more primal.
You will not take what is mine.
The voice isn’t a whisper anymore. It’s a roar that shakes the trees, that reverberates through my bones, that makes my ears ring and my teeth ache. It presses against my mind—trying to find purchase, trying to slither inside the way it’s been slithering into Tharos for decades.
I shove it back. Hard.
“I’m not his.” My blades come up, settling into a fighting stance I’ve practiced since I was old enough to hold a weapon. “And neither is this forest. Not anymore.”
Behind me, I hear Tharos gasp. Hear him collapse against the altar, his body finally giving out after everything he poured into the separation. I don’t turn around. Can’t afford to. If I look at him now, if I see how broken he is, I’ll lose the focus I need to survive what comes next.
But I feel him. Through whatever bond has grown between us, through the awareness that pulses in my chest like a second heartbeat, I feel him watching. Believing in me. Trusting me to finish what he started.
I won’t let him down.
The King strikes.
It’s fast—faster than something its size should be.
Roots explode toward me from three directions at once, barbed and seeking.
I dodge the first, parry the second, twist away from the third with inches to spare.
The root that misses me slams into the ground hard enough to crack stone, sending fragments of bone flying.
I counterattack. My blade finds a gap between roots—a soft place where bark meets vine—and I drive it deep. Dark sap sprays. The King screams, a sound that’s more feeling than noise, rage and pain flooding my awareness in a wave that nearly drives me to my knees.
But I don’t stop. Can’t stop. Because stopping means dying, and dying means leaving Tharos alone in this grove with a monster that wants to consume him.
I promised him I’d finish this. I keep my promises.