Then Halian entered, and the world seemed to stop.
His gaze found Ferria immediately, and all color drained from his face. The cheerful demeanor he wore like armor cracked and fell away entirely.
"No." The word came out broken, barely audible. He moved forward in a daze, his legs giving out as he dropped to his knees beside his sister's body. "Ferria. Please, no—"
His hands hovered over her, trembling, as if touching her would make it real. When he finally pressed his fingers to her throat, searching for a pulse that wasn't there, his whole body seemed to crumple.
"She dragged me here," Briar said, her voice rough and strange. "She attacked me. I didn't mean—" The lie stuck in her throat. She had meant it. In that moment, she'd wanted Ferria dead. "She was going to kill me."
"You don’t have to explain," Eliam said, his thumbs still tracing her cheekbones, keeping her focused on him rather than Halian's grief. "She's been betraying us from the beginning. This should have been done when we learned of her deception."
"She's my sister." Halian's voice cracked on the word. His hands were on her shoulders now, shaking her gently as if she might wake up, as if this might be some terrible mistake. "She was my sister."
Blood was seeping into the knees of his pants where he knelt in it. His sister's blood. Briar watched him try to smooth Ferria's hair back from her face, his hands so gentle, and felt something break inside her chest.
"She made choices, Halian," Sian said quietly, moving to kneel beside him. Her hand found his shoulder, water gathering and falling away repeatedly as her own composure wavered. "Terrible choices that led to this."
"I know." His voice was hollow. "I know what she did. Who she was. But she was still—" He stopped, pressing his palms against his eyes. "She was all the family I had left."
The safe haven felt too small suddenly, the warm light that had seemed comforting now oppressive. Briar could smell the blood, metallic and wrong, could see how it had splattered across the root-bench where Ferria had been sitting. Could see the holes the thorns had left, ragged and fatal.
"You did what you had to," Thaine said quietly from behind her. She turned to find him studying the scene with a hunter's eye, reading the evidence of struggle in the disturbed dust, the blood patterns. "She would have killed you or delivered you to Malus. Either way, you'd be dead."
"Doesn't make it easier," Briar said.
"No," he agreed. "It doesn't."
“She said Malus was coming here,” Briar said suddenly.
Karse moved from the entrance, circling the space once before stopping near Halian. "We need to move. There’s no telling how long it will be before he shows up."
"Give him a moment," Arion said sharply, his light flickering with emotion.
"A moment to grieve won't bring her back." Karse's tone wasn't cruel, just practical. "And staying here might get the rest of us killed."
Eliam's hands dropped from Briar's face to her wrists, working at the rope binding them. The rough fibers had rubbed her skin raw, and she hissed as they pulled away. He caught her hands immediately, examining the damage with dark focus.
"Can you ride?" he asked quietly.
She nodded, though she wasn't sure it was true. Everything felt distant and unreal, her body moving without her conscious direction.
Halian stood slowly, his movements mechanical. He wouldn't look at Ferria's body again, keeping his eyes fixed on the middle distance. "We should burn her," he said, voice empty. "She deserves that much."
"We don't have time—" Karse started.
"We'll make time." Sian's voice carried unusual steel. "She was one of us once. Whatever she became, she deserves proper rites."
They filed out of the safe haven in silence, Halian carrying Ferria's body with a care that made Briar's chest ache. She'd done this. She'd taken someone's sister, someone's family, and ended them with thorns and golden light.
The worst part was knowing that given the choice again, she'd still do it. Ferria would have handed her over to Malus, would have watched her die to get what she wanted. Self-defense, survival, necessity—all true.
But Halian's grief was true too, and Briar would carry the weight of causing it for the rest of her life.
The smell of smoke still clung to Briar's hair, even though the pyre had burned down to embers an hour ago. She stood at the edge of their makeshift camp, watching Halian methodically pack his sister's few remaining possessions—a silver hair comb, a ring with a stone the color of deep water, a small leather journal he didn't open. His movements were mechanical, precise, the kind of careful control that came when the alternative was complete collapse.
The corrupted forest pressed in around them, wrong-colored leaves rustling in wind that felt too thick, too warm for the season. Every shadow seemed to shift when she wasn't looking directly at it, every sound carried an undertone that made her skin crawl. The safe haven had been a bubble of normalcy in this twisted landscape, but now they were exposed again, vulnerable.
"We need to move." Karse's voice cut through the uncomfortable silence. He'd been ranging their perimeter for the last twenty minutes, his agitation growing with each pass. "The smoke will draw attention. Things hunt here that shouldn't exist."
