Then came the knock that wasn’t a knock—three distinct strikes reverberating through the air rather than wood.The sound of attention.
The Forest Lords did not enter so much as arrive.
Light sifted through the rafters, dissolving the dimness.Voices lived within it, layered, neither male nor female, their tone like wind through standing stones.
Triktapic.
The word rolled through him, heavy and intimate.It wasn’t accusation.It was sorrow.
He closed his eyes, pain flaring beneath his breastbone.“Don’t.”
You asked for guidance once.You swore your throne would never again bow to the dark.
“I swore I wouldn’t let it command me,” he answered, barely above a whisper.
Then what would you call this?
Images struck him, Cassie’s face turning toward the clearing, the quiet steadiness she wore when she should have been afraid.His child’s heartbeat nested inside her.The Chamber’s voice calling themkey.He’d promised himself he would never feed that kind of fury again, and now it was all he had left.
Trik looked to the ceiling where their light dripped like molten silver.“You could stop this.You couldendthem.Yet you stand there reminding me of vows while they use my mate as bait.”
The light brightened, answering with silence.It didn’t deny him; it simply waited.
“How can you ask me to do nothing, when you refuse to bend,” he bit out.
Behind him, the Book whispered his name like a lover rediscovered.Triktapic.
Cush stepped in front of it, aura blades flickering along his arms.“Ignore it.You know that tone.It’s deception pretending to care.”
Trik’s voice was low.“And if it’s the only thing I can use strong enough to tear through this prison?”
“Then you choose to ask for help from something else,” Cush pressed.“You don’t take power from one who would not give it without cost.”
He is right,the Forest Lords said.The air trembled with warmth instead of judgment.We cannot bless the darkness, but we can strengthen the light within you if you ask.
He wanted to ask.Gods, he wanted to.But asking meant waiting, and while he waited, Cassie breathed in a forest possessed by something that had already called herworthy of ruin.
“She doesn’t have time,” he said quietly.
Trust is never wasted time, child.
“Tell that to the one carrying my heart inside her body,” Trik roared, unable to control the fear that held him in its grip.
The candle nearest him guttered out; the smoke smelled of iron.The Chamber’s presence slid along his skin, smug and familiar.His reflection on the mirror across the room stared back, eyes silvered, dark sigils crawling faintly along his neck as he pulled on the darkness that had been hiding in the pages of the Book of the Elves.The glass distorted around the edges, waiting.
Cush’s voice cut through the tightening air.“Trik.You go down that road again, it doesn’t end at Cassie.It ends with you burned from the inside out.”
Trik’s laugh was quiet and terrible.“Maybe that’s what the fire’s for.”
Stone screamed.The wards cinched until shelves splintered and maps spiraled through the air.Myrin shouted something from the corridor, muffled by seething magic.
The Forest Lords’ light intensified, their presence pressing against him like the weight of memory.Righteous anger brings justice.Selfish anger brings chains.Which are you forging now, Triktapic?
He felt the question hammer his bones.The answer came too fast, too raw.“Whichever sets her free.”
The Book flared open.Black tendrils unfolded like wings, veined with faint light.His shadow stepped forward, grinning where he couldn’t.Power leapt from it into his veins, expanding him until he thought his skin would split.
Myrin’s muffled cry mixed with the roar of magic.“Remember why you turned away, my king!”
