I eased forward again, carefully, and peered through the carved stone.
Below, the dark-haired man had stepped closer to the thorns. He lifted his hand again, not to strike, not to force. He simply reached toward the vines.
The vines shifted.
Not violently. Not with snapping anger or protective power. Instead, they drew back with deliberate care, the thorned coils loosening as if granting access.
I sucked in a breath—the sound caught between shock and disbelief.
The barrier parted.
The man didn't look surprised. He moved as though he had expected the world to follow rules, and it had. He stepped through the opening without hesitation, his posture contained, his focus narrow.
The second man hesitated at the edge. He glanced upward again toward the balcony, and his jaw tightened. He didn't call out. He didn't lift his hand in greeting. He simply held my gazefor a fraction of a breath, then followed the other man into the gap.
The vines sealed behind them.
Seamless. Quiet.
As if nothing had disturbed them.
I stood frozen with my hands pressed to the stone, my heart beating too hard against my ribs. The warmth inside me coiled tighter, not painful, but insistent. My fingers pressed into my stomach, as if I could contain what had begun there by touch alone.
Father had told me there was nothing beyond these walls that could be trusted. He had told me the tower protected everyone else from me. He had told me I would destroy anyone who came too close, the way I had destroyed my mother.
Now two men had come and entered my tower. My sanctuary.
If these men had come to harm me, the tower wouldn't have opened for them. The thorns wouldn't have moved aside as if welcoming them. The tower had never welcomed anyone. Not in my memory. Not in the years that blurred together until seasons vanished.
Unless it had.
Unless the gaps in my mind were larger than I wanted to admit. Unless the mercy Father claimed he granted me had been something else entirely.
A chill moved up my spine and left gooseflesh along my arms. Below, the forest remained still, the clearing holding its breath in the wake of their entry. The tower’s hum continued beneath my feet, not frantic, not alarmed.
Alert.
Something inside me steadied around that sensation, as if it recognized the shape of it. The warmth didn't fade. It settled low, quiet and waiting, like an unlit wick.
What made these men different?
Malric
The tower didn't belong to the forest. That much was obvious. We hadn’t seen any fae or human settlements in days, so finding a tower appearing in a forest saturated with old magic seemed out of place and might just be what we were looking for.
Or it could be a trap, designed to kill any who sought the king’s weapon. It could go either way, really.
I approached it, slow and deliberate, my steps placed with care, expecting a trap. The Wyrdwood bent and twisted everywhere else, roots breaking stone, branches warping toward light, growth pressing until nothing straight remained. Here, the ground lay unnaturally even. Stones formed a rough circle around the tower’s base, half-sunk into the soil, their surfaces etched with warding work worn nearly smooth. Magic saturated everything until the air choked with it.
Old. Purposeful.
The tower rose from the center of that circle like a blade driven into the earth, gray stone, unmarred by moss or lichen despite the damp air. No cracks. No signs of collapse. Vines wrapped its sides in controlled spirals, not climbing at random but following a pattern that repeated every few spans. They didn't choke the structure. They reinforced it. Anchored it. Not high enough to reach the windows several levels high.
I stopped several paces from the thorn barrier and surveyed the clearing. No tracks beyond our own. No disturbedundergrowth. No sign of guards, magical or otherwise. If this place had been visited recently, the forest had swallowed the evidence whole.
That unsettled me more than any obvious defense.
The thorns themselves formed a living wall, dense and interwoven, each vine thick with long, sharp barbs that curved inward. Not outward. Defensive rather than aggressive. They shifted subtly as I studied them, responding to my attention with the faintest rustle, like a creature aware of being watched.
