“You forget yourself, failed prince,” he said softly. “You have no authority here. No right to claim anything.”
My corruption responded to the threat, spreading faster, darker. The shadows around us writhed, and I felt that familiar edge where control became suggestion, where I could either direct the rot or become it.
“And you forget,” I said, smiling with too many teeth, “that I have nothing left to lose.”
I let the corruption explode outward.
The shadows hit Auradelle like a physical force, sending him stumbling back. His perfect composure cracked, and for a moment, I saw what he hid beneath—not beauty but hunger, not wisdom but desperation.
“You dare—”
“I dare everything,” I snarled, corruption spreading up my jaw, across my temple. It hurt—God, it hurt—but pain was just currency now, and I was ready to spend. “You took everything from me. My parents. My future. My purpose. You will not take this too.”
“This?” He laughed, power coalescing around his hands. “You mean this pathetic human girl who doesn’t even know what she’s carrying?”
“This debt.” I moved between him and Elle, who was on her knees again, marks glowing wildly across her skin. “Josephine asked me to protect whatcame through. I thought it would be an artifact. Maybe a weapon.” I laughed, and it sounded like breaking things. “I didn’t know it would be her. But a debt is a debt.”
“You’re protecting her out of obligation?”
“I’m protecting her out of spite.” My corruption reached my eyes, and suddenly I could see everything—every thread of power, every weakness, every lie Auradelle told himself. “You want her. Therefore, you can’t have her.”
“Childish.”
“Effective.”
We moved at the same time. His light met my darkness with a sound like reality tearing. The Thornwood around us recoiled, ancient trees that had weathered centuries of storms bending away from our violence.
Auradelle fought with the precision of someone who’d been trained since birth—every gesture calculated, every attack measured. But I’d learned to fight in the spaces between civilization, where the only rule was survival.
I let the corruption guide me, became the rot that ate at the edges of his perfect light. Where he was form, I was chaos. Where he was beauty, I was the thing that made beauty decay.
His blade of condensed sunlight met my shadows, and the collision sent both of us flying. I hit a tree hard enough to crack the ancient bark, tasted blood and something worse. But I was up before he recovered, moving through darkness itself.
“You’ve gotten stronger,” he said, wiping golden blood from his lip. “The corruption is consuming you faster than I thought.”
“Good thing I don’t plan to live long.”
“And her? What happens to your precious debt when you’re dead?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because he was right—I was dying, had been dying since I carved the first mark. But I’d be damned if I died before I saw him lose something he wanted.
Behind us, Elle screamed. Not in pain this time—in fury. Golden light exploded outward from her marks, but it wasn’t the gentle warmth of healing magic. This was Root-power in its rawest form, wild and angry andcompletely uncontrolled.
The ground beneath her feet cracked open.
Things pulled themselves out of the earth. Not plants—though they moved like growing things, fast and grasping. Wood twisted through bone, or bone calcified into bark—impossible to tell which came first. They were ancient things, remnants of the Thornwood’s earliest days when it was still learning what it meant to be alive.
They surged toward Auradelle without strategy or intelligence, all grasping limbs and snapping joints, making sounds like trees breaking in a storm.
“Impossible,” he breathed, actually taking a step back. “She hasn’t been trained. She can’t—”
“She’s Josephine’s blood,” I said, understanding finally hitting. “Did you really think Jo would send her here defenseless?”
One of the creatures wrapped around Auradelle’s ankle, wood splintering as it tried to pull him down. He destroyed it with a gesture, but three more erupted from the ground to take its place. They weren’t strong—Elle didn’t have the control for that—but they kept coming, wave after wave of mindless hunger.
“This isn’t over,” he snarled, portal already ripping open behind him. Light spilled through—wherever he was going, it wasn’t anywhere near here.
“No,” I agreed, grabbing Elle’s arm and hauling her to her feet. “But it’s a start. Now run.”
