What relief I felt a moment ago turns to ash. I take a wobbly sidestep, placing myself between Ezryn and the intruder.
The Nightingale is dressed in similar armor to the last time I saw her: form-fitting, with jewel tones that change shade like a pool of oil. Her mask shrouds the bottom half of her face, revealing only her piercing blue eyes. Even with only that visible, I can tell she’s smiling.
With feline grace, she glides away from the willow tree and chucks something through the air.
A seed. A seed just like the one Caspian gave us to grow a portal to the Below.
Light and darkness shimmer together as thorns burst up, forming an iridescent door. And through it charges hundreds of soldiers and goblins.
They form obedient ranks behind her, and she stands at the front, pride glittering in her eyes. The armored soldiers—the Dreadknights, she’d called them the last time—stand at attention holding blades and bows. She twirls a short and slender sword in each hand. Her goblins chitter excitedly at the back; thankfully, this lot isn’t burning with green flame.
Though, I’m not sure that’s going to make much of a difference right now.
The Nightingale steps forward. “Well, this could not be any more perfect. Your dear prince seems to be having a hard time. Perhaps he’d like to be put out of his misery?”
A thorn erupts beside me, “I’ll never let you hurt him.”
She throws her head back. “This is so fun! Here I was thinking we’d be playing cat and mouse all night. But your little thorn trick led me straight here.” She gestures to the thorns I created to stifle the hallucinogenic pollen. “Now, I get to watch your face as I bleed your prince out, prick by prick.”
My heart careens in my chest, and I stagger backward. Ezryn is completely oblivious to their presence, still trapped in his nightmare, pacing and muttering to himself. Farron! I cry out in my mind. Help!
Rose? His voice is faint in my mind. Are you okay? We’re heading up the mountain. Hold on—
Hurry!
The Nightingale’s sharp laughter interrupts my thoughts. “It really is my lucky day.” She flicks a look behind her at her knights and the goblins. “Hold position. This one’s mine.”
I need to get us out of here now. I snatch my necklace and quickly, desperately, feel for my connection to Castletree. The air before me shimmers with pearlescent waves.
“Come on, Ezryn! We have to go home now!” I cry.
But Ezryn’s fallen to his knees, staring up at the sky, a low-pitched keening coming from his throat. What is he seeing in the depths of his mind?
I run over and heave on his arm. “Come on! Come on!” But he’s too heavy.
Thorns it is, then. Using my bracelets from Caspian, I summon a surge of thick briars to shoot up toward Ez—
An oily black vine smashes on top of them, pinning mine down.
What? The only people capable of wielding briars are me and Caspian.
“Not so fast,” the Nightingale chides. “I’m not nearly done with you.”
She bolts toward me. There’s no time to do anything before I’m backhanded so hard, I collapse to the ground.
I struggle to my elbows to see her pacing over me. I can’t even compare her to a predator because a predator is grateful for its prey. She instead looks down at me with such disdain, hurt blossoms in my chest.
“That necklace should not belong to you,” she snarls. “You do not deserve it. Look at you. Soft. Weak. You disgust me.”
“Yeah, well,” I murmur, slowly sending one of my vines to creep up behind her, “I don’t really want to be besties with you either.”
My briars snag her around the waist and whip her hard against a tree. Despite that, she’s standing within seconds. That playfulness gone.
“I will fucking kill you!” she screams.
Every maneuver Dayton taught me during our training flies from my brain. I turn and sprint, but she’s so much faster, bowling me over despite her smaller frame.
I hit the ground, twist to my back, and she’s right in my face, driving those thin blades down. I barely roll out of the way.
“Look at you, dressed like a little doll,” she snarls, scrambling after me. “That’s all this is to you, isn’t it? Castles and dress-up?”
I duck around a tree and heave a burst of briars up to throw her back. “You forgot to mention the delicious food.”
“You spoiled brat,” she screams. With a roar, her own iridescent black briars surge up, destroying mine.
With a yelp, I take off running. What am I going to do? My portal to Castletree has closed, but even if I had a moment to summon one again, I can’t chance this lunatic following me there. And if she can destroy any of the briars I make, I’m trapped here.
Ez, I cry out. Please wake up.
But he’s still on the ground, head rocking back and forth. “I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying.”
There’s only one choice. I’ll have to stall her until Farron and Dayton arrive.
And then hope the three of us can take on this bitch and her little army.
I shoot a blast of white fire out behind me, but her briars lift her up, projecting her over the flames. “The Golden Rose, they call you,” she sneers. “I don’t see any gold. Or roses. How can someone like you ever think themselves capable of saving anyone?”
I yelp as a briar wraps around my ankle and pulls. I slam hard to the ground, then am ripped backward. Her small hands are all over me, blades tossed to the side, as she shoves me on my back.
Then she’s straddling my waist, clawing at my eyes like a vicious cat. “You can’t even fight! You’re weak! So weak!”
By some miracle, I catch her wrists and rip them away. The words are out of my mouth before I have a chance to think: “Why do you hate me?”
For a moment, there’s silence in the clearing. “Because,” she breathes, “you got him. And I got nothing.”
Then briars lace around my wrists, pinning me down, and her hands are on my neck.
I can’t move. There’s nothing but the Nightingale. Tears fall from her eyes and land on my cheeks.
I gasp for breath, but can’t take anything in. Farron…
I’m almost there, Rosie. Almost down the mountain. Hold on!
But I can’t hold on. The breath is being squeezed out of me, and my mate will find my body here, and this fae woman who hates me for a reason I don’t understand will kill Ezryn and he’ll never know I forgive him for what he did in his past.
How I want to move forward with him into a new future.
My vision blackens at the edges. The Nightingale squeezes tighter, and she’s sobbing now, full-on sobbing, but she keeps her hands wrapped around my throat. And I’m so sad. Because I never told each of them how much I love them.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of something. An eruption of thorns.
But these are different.
These are thorns frosted with ice.
53
Keldarion
“So, you still snore.” A voice cuts through my haze of sleep. “I suppose you don’t realize, as you spend most nights as that mangy beast.”
The Prince of Thorns leans in the doorway, his black cloak covered in snow, moonlight glinting off his pink nose and cheeks.