Tharos
FIFTY-ONE
ONE WEEK LATER
Iwake to sunlight.
For a long moment, I don’t understand. Sunlight hasn’t touched the Heartgrove in centuries—the canopy was too thick, the trees too determined to block the sky.
I remember standing at this altar when I first bound myself to Briargrave, looking up at a ceiling of interlocked branches so dense that noon looked like midnight.
I remember decades of twilight, of shadows that moved even when nothing cast them, of darkness that felt like a living thing pressing against my skin.
But now, through gaps in the branches, golden light filters down to the forest floor.
I sit up slowly, every muscle protesting.
My body feels like it’s been disassembled and reassembled wrong—joints stiff, muscles aching, bones heavy with an exhaustion that sleep hasn’t fully erased.
I’ve been unconscious for three days, according to Xela.
It felt longer. It felt like years, lost in a darkness that wanted to swallow me whole.
But I came back. I’m here. I’m alive.
And in a way I’d nearly forgotten was possible, I’m alone in my own head.
The silence is... strange. I’ve grown so accustomed to the King’s whispers—the constant hunger pressing against my thoughts, the insidious voice offering power and release and the sweet promise of surrender—that its absence feels like a missing limb.
I keep reaching for it, keep expecting to feel that cold presence coiling at the edges of my awareness.
But there’s nothing. Just me. Just my own thoughts, uncontaminated by ancient malice.
I flex my hands, feel the binding pulse beneath my skin.
It’s still there—the ritual that tied me to Briargrave hasn’t faded.
I can still sense the forest around me, still feel the roots shifting beneath the earth, still taste the sap flowing through the trees.
But it’s different now. Cleaner. The infection that was the Thorn King has been excised, and what remains is just...
the forest. Old and dangerous and wild, but no longer hungry.
“You’re awake.”
Her voice comes from behind me. I turn—too fast, my body protesting the sudden movement—and find Xela sitting against a fallen tree, watching me with those gray eyes that have seen too much.
She looks better than the last time I saw her conscious. The wounds from her battle with the King have started to heal—the gash on her arm is scabbed over, the scratches on her face fading to pink lines. Her left arm is in a makeshift sling, but she’s using it anyway, stubborn as ever.
She looks like war made flesh, all scars and steel-gray eyes.
And somehow, impossibly, she chose me.
The thought settles into me with a certainty I’ve never felt before. Not a claim. Not a possession. Just... a truth. She chose me. Stayed for me. Fought a god for me. And I chose her back, am reaching for her, will keep choosing her every day until one of us stops breathing.
“How long was I out this time?” My voice comes out rough, unused.
“About eight hours.” She rises, moves to sit beside me. Her shoulder brushes mine, and I feel the contact like a brand. “You’ve been drifting in and out for days. This is the first time you’ve been fully coherent.”
“I remember... pieces.” Flashes of awareness between long stretches of darkness. Her face above mine. Her hands on my scars. Her voice calling me back when I drifted too far. “You stayed.”
“I promised I would.”
“Crowe.” He says it like he’s testing a word he hasn’t earned yet. “That was the name the silver-haired woman spat at you in the ravine. I don’t think I’ve ever said it out loud.”
“You haven’t. Almost no one has, in years.”
“Should I?”
“Sometimes. When it suits.”
He files it away with the same care he gives everything that’s mine.
“You didn’t have to.”
She makes a sound that might be a laugh, might be something else. “I didn’t have anywhere else to be.”
I reach for her. It’s instinct now—the need to touch her, to feel her warmth against my skin. My hand finds her hip, pulls her closer until she’s pressed against my side. She comes willingly, settling into the curve of my body like she’s been doing it for years instead of days.
“The forest is different.” She says it quietly, her head resting against my shoulder. “It registers. The thorns are still there, but they’re not hunting anymore. The vines don’t reach. Even the thornpaths are holding steady instead of shifting.”
“The King was the hunger.” I look around the Heartgrove—at the altar where I bound myself, at the bones that still carpet the floor, at the gaps in the canopy where sunlight streams through. “Without it, the forest is just a forest again. Dangerous, but not malevolent.”
“So it won’t try to kill me anymore?”
“It might still kill you if you do something stupid. But it won’t go out of its way.” I press a kiss to her hair. “Consider yourself a guest instead of prey.”
“Quite the upgrade.” She tilts her head back, looks at me with something soft in her expression. “How do you feel? Really?”
I consider the question. The honest answer is complicated—layers of exhaustion and relief and grief and hope all tangled up in ways I don’t know how to separate. But underneath all of it, there’s something simpler. Something that feels almost like peace.
“Like I can finally hear myself think.”
“And the binding?”
“Still there. Still part of me.” I flex my fingers, feel the forest respond—roots shifting far beneath the ground, leaves rustling in response to my attention.
“I don’t think I can leave Briargrave. Not permanently.
The ritual went too deep, changed too much.
I’m tied to this place in ways that can’t be undone. ”
“Is that a problem?”
“It could be.” I turn to face her fully. “I’m asking you to share a prison, Xela. A nicer prison than before, maybe, but still a cage. If you stay here—”
“I already told you.” She grabs my face, forces me to meet her eyes. Her grip is firm, her gaze unwavering. “You’re not a prison. You’re a choice. The first real choice I’ve made in years that wasn’t about survival or money or running from one disaster to the next.”
“And if you change your mind? If you wake up one day and realize you want more than a monster and his murder forest?”
“Then I’ll tell you.” Her thumb traces my cheekbone, catches on the rough texture of my skin. “And we’ll figure it out. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No. I can’t.” She smiles—slow, genuine, the kind of smile I’ve rarely seen from her. “That’s what makes it interesting.”