The Nightwood swallowed me whole the moment I crossed the treeline, branches clawing at my shift, roots rising to snare my bare feet. But I didn’t stop running.
I couldn’t.
Kill my father.
The Shadow Prince’s father was King Aeron Thorne, the man who’d murdered my mother, who’d planned to use me as a weapon against innocents, who’d held children hostage to ensure my obedience.
The bastard prince wanted to commit patricide.
And somehow, I was supposed to help him do it.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d spent most of my captivity fantasizing about watching the king burn. But being rescued by his own son? Being dragged into some twisted royal family reckoning?
That was a level of madness I wasn’t prepared to survive.
So I ran.
The forest floor was a minefield of thorns and fallen branches, each step sending fresh pain lancing up my legs. My feet were already bleeding, leaving dark smears across moss and leaves, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the chaos in my mind.
The places where the targeting sigils had been carved into my arms still burned like brands, and my magic felt wrong, disjointed. As if someone had taken it apart and reassembled it incorrectly.
Luckily, the aftereffects of the drugs Thaddeus had administered persisted, numbing the pain and allowing me to keep running.
The trees pressed close on all sides, their branches forming a canopy so thick I couldn't see the stars. Ancient oaks with trunks wide enough to hide entire armies. Willows drooping toward the ground like mourning veils. And everywhere, the sense of being watched. I ignored the sensation and ran until it was fully dark. I didn’t dare stop.
The Nightwood was alive in ways other forests weren't. I could feel its attention on me, curious and calculating. A branch caught my shoulder, tearing fabric and skin. I stumbled, caught myself against a tree trunk, and realized I was crying.
Not from pain. I'd lived with worse wounds for months. I was crying from exhaustion and terror I didn’t want to admit I felt. From the overwhelming sense that I was a piece on a game board I couldn't even see, moved by players whose rules I didn't understand.
It had been so long since I felt like I knew who I was. Since the day I smelled the ash and smoke of my mother’s body, I’d thought of nothing but survival. Before I knew it, I had become a tool. A weapon.
The longing for my parents that I had shoved deep down to survive resurfaced at the worst possible time. I had so many questions to ask, but they were long gone. All I had left was a desperate will to survive.
Soon, only the soft hum of the Nightwood’s magic filled the silence of my unanswered questions. Once again, I was alone. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, the crippling weight of longingand loneliness might have paralyzed me. But years of survival forced my body into motion.
I needed water. The single sip I’d taken had only made me realize how dehydrated I was. My throat felt like sandpaper, and the drugs they’d given me left a bitter aftertaste coating my tongue. More importantly, I needed to think. To figure out what the hell I was going to do now that I was free, but not free. Rescued, but not safe.
The sound of running water drew me deeper into the forest. A stream, probably fed by mountain springs, clear enough to see the stones at the bottom even in the moonlight filtering through the canopy. I fell to my knees at the water’s edge and cupped it in my hands, drinking desperately.
It tasted like snow and starlight, cold enough to make my teeth ache. Better than anything I’d had in months. I drank until my stomach cramped, then splashed water on my face, washing away the grime and dried blood from the ritual chamber.
When I looked up, he was there.
Daemon Thorne stood on the opposite bank as if he’d materialized from the shadows themselves, still dressed in black leather that seemed to absorb the moonlight, silver eyes reflecting the water’s surface.
I felt him before I saw him, a sudden coldness in the forest’s warmth that had nothing to do with temperature. A familiar darkness. He stood there, and I knew he had not just arrived.
He had been watching me.
“Running won’t change what you are,” he said, his voice carrying easily across the narrow stream.
I scrambled backward, water dripping from my hands, but didn’t take my eyes off him. “Stay away from me.”
“You can’t escape your nature forever.” He stepped onto the water itself, shadows solidifying beneath his feet to support his weight.
Magic like that should have been impossible. But the Thorne bloodline was different. Evil coursed through their veins. Generation after generation, they committed heinous acts in the name of conquest.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
