Crown of withered thorns

Chapter 4: The witch in the briar

The golden marrow in my bones hummed, a low-frequency vibration that made my skin itch with restless power. I didn't head for the mountains or the sea. I headed for the smoke.

The village square of Oakhaven smelled of dry pine, pitch, and the metallic tang of fear. A crowd had gathered, a circle of hollow-eyed peasants and sneering minor nobles. At the center stood the pyre. And lashed to the stake, her white dress fluttering in the wind like a broken wing, was Elowen Thorne.

"Purify the witch!" a man screamed, throwing a stone. It clipped her brow. Blood bloomed like a red flower on her temple.

I felt a snap in my chest. In my first life—that miserable, pathetic loop of failure—Elowen was the only soul who hadn't looked at me with disgust. She’d brought me bread when I was starving in the kennels. She’d treated me like a human being when my own father treated me like a footstool.

"Light it!" the High Priest bellowed, his robes shimmering with self-importance. "Let the sun reclaim what the darkness corrupted!"

The torches hit the oil-soaked wood. Whump. The flame took hold instantly, a wall of orange heat climbing toward her feet. Elowen didn't scream. She just closed her eyes, her lips moving in a silent prayer.

"Not today," I whispered.

I didn't run. I moved with the Ghost-Step, a blur of shadow that bypassed the outer perimeter of guards. As I reached the edge of the heat, I tapped into the golden reservoir in my marrow.

"Ichor-Vapour: Vacuum Draw," I commanded.

I didn't extinguish the fire; I fed it. I manipulated the oxygen in the immediate radius, forcing the flames to roar upward in a massive, vertical pillar. To the crowd, it looked like a divine explosion of wrath—a column of fire fifty feet high that blinded everyone within sight.

Inside the eye of the storm, the air was eerily cool. I stepped onto the pyre, the wood turning to ash beneath my boots.

"Cyprian?" Elowen gasped, her eyes snapping open. She stared at me through the wall of roaring flame, her face pale. "What... how are you standing in the fire?"

"Less talking, more leaving," I said.

I flicked my wrist. The dagger I’d taken from the vault cut through her enchanted hemp binds like they were spider silk. I didn't wait for her to find her footing. I slung her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry and launched myself off the pyre.

We cleared the circle of guards before the pillar of fire collapsed. By the time the High Priest stopped shielding his eyes, we were ghosts in the treeline.

I didn't stop until the village bells were a faint echo and the shadows of the Briar Forest swallowed us whole. I set her down gently near a moss-covered oak.

"We're safe for now," I said, wiping soot from my palms. "But Thalric’s hunters will be—"

A cold, sharp sting at my lower ribs cut me off.

I looked down. Elowen was standing inches from me, her eyes burning with a ferocious, terrified light. In her hand was a curved ceremonial dagger she must have lifted from the Priest’s belt during the chaos. The point was pressed firmly against my side, right between the ribs.

"Don't move," she hissed. Her voice was shaking, but her hand was steady.

"Elowen? I just saved your life," I said, raising my hands slowly.

"You aren't Cyprian Vane," she spat. "I knew that boy. He was a useless drunk who spent his days weeping in the mud and his nights hiding from his brother’s shadow. He didn't have gold in his veins. He didn't command the flames to dance."

"People change," I said.

"Not in ten minutes!" she retorted, pressing the blade harder. I felt a drop of blood trickle down. "You’re a demon. Or a shifter. Who are you? And what did you do with the boy who actually had a heart?"

I looked at her—really looked at her. The kindness I remembered was still there, but it was buried under layers of survival instinct I hadn't seen before.

"The boy you knew died on the Stone of Penitence," I said, my voice dropping an octave. "Thalric killed him. I’m what crawled out of the grave to finish the job. Now, put the knife down before you do something we both regret."

"I'll scream," she threatened. "The guards are still close enough to hear."

"And they'll kill you before they even see me," I reminded her. "The Sun-Lords are coming, Elowen. The sky is turning gold, the King is a puppet, and your village is a dinner plate. You want to stay here and argue about my personality, or do you want to live long enough to see the world burn?"

Elowen’s eyes darted to the horizon, where the sky was indeed beginning to shimmer with an unnatural, sickly amber glow. She looked back at me, her grip on the dagger wavering.

"How do you know about the Sun-Lords?" she whispered.

"Because I'm the one they're hunting," I said.

Suddenly, the forest went silent. Not the silence of peace, but the silence of a predator entering the room. The shadows around the trees began to lengthen, stretching toward us like reaching fingers.

"Cyprian..." Elowen’s voice was a ghost of a sound. She wasn't looking at me anymore. She was looking at the briars behind me.

The thorns were moving. They weren't swaying in the wind; they were uncoiling, turning into jagged, wooden limbs. From the darkness emerged a figure woven from dead vines and sharpened bone—a Briar-Witch, her eyes glowing with the same violet light I’d seen in the vault.

"The Warden and the Witch," the creature croaked, its voice like dry leaves grinding together. "The prophecy didn't say you'd come together. This makes the harvest... complicated."

Elowen didn't drop the knife. She turned it toward the creature. "What is that thing?"

"An appetizer," I said, my golden marrow beginning to pulse with a violent, hungry heat.

I stepped in front of her, my eyes locked on the Briar-Witch.

"Elowen, if you want to know how I command the flames," I said, the Ichor-Vapour beginning to roll off my skin in waves, "watch closely. And try not to blink."

The creature shrieked and lunged, but as it did, the trees behind it exploded into splinters. Something much larger, something made of golden light and screaming metal, smashed through the canopy, heading straight for our position.

I muttered to myself. "Here we go."