Lyssara's POV
"Wait!" I stumble backward, but the Thorn King's guards—creatures made of twisted vines and shadow—grab my arms before I can run. "You said this changes everything! What does that mean?"
The Thorn King doesn't answer. His storm-gray eyes study me like I'm a puzzle he can't solve. Then he turns away, his thorn crown catching the dawn light.
"Bring her," he commands.
"No!" I dig my heels into the ground, but the vine-guards are impossibly strong. They drag me toward the forest boundary. "Please, if you're not going to kill me right away, at least tell me why!"
He stops. Slowly turns back. For a heartbeat, something almost like pity crosses his inhuman face.
"Because you broke the rules," he says quietly. "And I want to know what happens when the covenant is given a lie instead of truth."
Before I can ask what that means, a woman's voice rings out across the crowd.
"Stop!"
Everyone freezes.
High Inquisitor Sariel pushes through the masses of people, her red robes billowing like blood. She's beautiful in a sharp, dangerous way—like a knife wrapped in silk. And I know that face. I see it in my nightmares.
She's the woman who lit the fire that burned my mother alive.
"Your Majesty." Sariel bows to the Thorn King, but her eyes never leave me. "Forgive the interruption. But there are... formalities that must be observed."
The Thorn King's expression turns cold. "The bride crossed the boundary. The forest has accepted her. There's nothing more to discuss."
"Actually, there is." Sariel's smile doesn't reach her eyes. She walks right up to me, and I can smell smoke on her clothes. Always smoke. "This girl is not the chosen bride. She's a replacement. A fake."
Murmurs ripple through the crowd. Father steps forward, his face pale.
"The covenant accepts any daughter of my bloodline—" he starts.
"The covenant accepts many things," Sariel interrupts, still staring at me. "But it rewards truth and punishes deception." She reaches out and yanks off my veil. My face is exposed to thousands of watching eyes—the split lip, the bruises on my throat, the terror I can't hide.
"Does this look like a willing bride?" Sariel asks the crowd.
The silence is deafening.
"Does this look like someone blessed and prepared since birth for glorious sacrifice?"
More silence. People are starting to whisper, to point.
Sariel turns back to the Thorn King. "I invoke the Right of Clarification. Before the bride enters the forest, all deceptions must be revealed. All lies must be spoken aloud. So that the covenant knows exactly what it's receiving."
The Thorn King's jaw tightens. "You're stalling."
"I'm following ancient law." Sariel's voice turns sharp. "Or have you forgotten the old ways, locked in your forest for a thousand years?"
Something dangerous flashes in the Thorn King's eyes, but he nods. Once. Sharply.
Sariel's smile widens. She grabs my chin, forcing me to look at her. Up close, I can see the fever in her eyes—the same wild certainty she had when she pronounced my mother guilty.
"Tell them," she hisses. "Tell everyone the truth about what you are."
My heart hammers against my ribs. "I don't know what you—"
"Liar!" Her fingers dig into my jaw. "You're your mother's daughter. You have her cursed power flowing through your veins. I can smell it on you—life magic, forbidden and foul."
Gasps explode from the crowd. Father's face goes white. Lady Morganna actually stumbles.
"No," Father says weakly. "She doesn't have—I suppressed it, she can't—"
"She healed a dying child last night," Sariel announces to everyone. "Thomas, the blacksmith's son. He was dead or dying, and this girl brought him back with her filthy magic. I have witnesses. I have proof."
The crowd erupts. People scream. Some pray. Some demand my immediate execution.
Through the chaos, I hear Thomas's mother crying out: "She saved my boy! She's not evil—she saved him!"
But her voice is drowned out by hundreds of others calling me witch, demon, cursed.
Sariel releases my chin and addresses the Thorn King. "So you see, Your Majesty, this is what the kingdom offers you. Not a pure, willing sacrifice. Not a blessed bride. But a heretic's daughter with forbidden magic, sent to die because her family found her too shameful to keep."
The Thorn King is absolutely still. I can't read his expression.
"Does the covenant accept such a bride?" Sariel presses. "A liar, a witch, a girl who was never chosen, never willing, never blessed?"
"The covenant," the Thorn King says slowly, "accepts what I bring it."
"But what about the forest?" Sariel gestures to the dark trees. "What happens when you feed it lies instead of truth? When you give it unwilling magic instead of willing sacrifice?"
For the first time, I see uncertainty flicker across the Thorn King's face.
That's when I understand. Sariel isn't trying to save me. She's trying to make him reject me—to send me back so she can burn me herself, publicly, the way she burned Mother. The forest is too quick, too private. She wants everyone to watch me die screaming.
"I know what you're doing," I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "You want him to refuse me so you can have your execution."
Sariel's eyes glitter. "I want the covenant to remain pure. You're a contamination."
"My mother wasn't a contamination. She was a healer who saved lives."
"Your mother was a heretic who died screaming your name." Sariel leans close, her whisper meant only for me. "She begged me to spare you. Promised she'd confess to anything, accept any torture, if I just let her daughter live." Her smile is poison. "I told her I'd think about it. Then I lit the fire anyway."
Something inside me snaps.
Before I can think, before I can stop myself, my magic explodes outward. Not the gentle healing warmth I usually control—this is rage given form, grief turned to power.
Golden light bursts from my hands. The chains around my wrists shatter like glass. Sariel is thrown backward, crashing into the crowd. The vine-guards holding me catch fire—not burning them, but making them bloom into roses and crawling vines that release me immediately.
The entire crowd screams. People run. Guards draw weapons.
But the magic doesn't stop. It pours out of me like water from a broken dam. The dead grass beneath my feet suddenly sprouts flowers. The withered trees at the forest edge burst into bloom. Life magic floods everything it touches, wild and uncontrolled.
"Seize her!" Sariel screams, climbing to her feet. "Kill the witch before she—"
A wall of thorns explodes from the ground between us.
The Thorn King stands in front of me, his back to me, facing the entire kingdom. The thorns around him writhe like living snakes, creating an impenetrable barrier.
"Enough," he says, and his voice carries the weight of a thousand years. "She crossed the boundary. She belongs to the forest now. To me."
"She's dangerous!" Sariel shouts. "Her magic is out of control—"
"Yes." The Thorn King glances back at me, and I can't read his expression. "Which makes her very interesting."
Before anyone can move, he spins and grabs my wrist. The moment his skin touches mine, something impossible happens.
A shock runs through us both—like lightning, like recognition, like two puzzle pieces clicking together. I gasp. He freezes.
For one heartbeat, I feel everything he feels. A thousand years of emptiness. Loneliness so deep it has no bottom. And beneath it all, buried so far down I almost miss it—hope. Desperate, terrifying hope.
Then he yanks me through the thorn barrier into the forest.
The trees swallow us instantly. Behind us, I hear Sariel screaming orders, hear the crowd's chaos, hear Father shouting something that might be my name.
But the forest is already closing around us, branches interweaving, thorns creating walls. Within seconds, we're alone in green darkness.
The Thorn King releases my wrist and steps back. He's breathing hard—actually breathing, like he forgot how and just remembered.
"What was that?" I gasp. "What just happened when you touched me?"
"I don't know." He stares at his hand like it betrayed him. "That's never happened before."
"The feeling? Like we were—"
"Connected." The word seems torn from him. "I felt your fear. Your rage. Your grief." His eyes snap to mine. "That's impossible. I'm dead. I don't feel anything."
"You felt that," I point out.
"I felt you." He looks almost angry about it. "Your life force. Your magic. It's so loud I can barely hear my own thoughts."
My magic is still crackling under my skin, golden sparks dancing across my fingers. The broken chains on the ground are covered in blooming roses.
"I didn't mean to lose control," I say. "But she told me about my mother—what she said before—" My voice breaks. "I couldn't stop it."
"Good." The Thorn King's smile is sharp. "Your High Inquisitor is a liar and a murderer who deserves every ounce of that rage."
I blink at him. "You believe me? About my mother?"
"I believe that woman has been burning innocent people for decades and calling it holy work." His expression hardens. "The forest remembers. It always remembers the blood spilled in its name."
Something in my chest loosens. Someone believes me. After years of being called cursed, shameful, tainted—this ancient monster believes me.
"What happens now?" I ask quietly.
The Thorn King studies me for a long moment. Then he holds out his hand.
"Now," he says, "we find out what happens when an unwilling bride with forbidden magic enters a covenant built on willing death."
I stare at his outstretched hand. Behind us, I can hear Sariel's forces trying to break through the forest barrier. She won't stop. She'll hunt me until one of us is dead.
Forward is the Thorn King and whatever death waits in his forest.
Backward is Sariel's fire.
I take his hand.
The moment our skin touches, that lightning-shock returns—stronger this time. The forest around us pulses with light. Every tree, every thorn, every blade of grass suddenly glows gold.
The Thorn King's eyes widen. "What are you doing?"
"I don't know!"
The light grows brighter, spreading through the forest like wildfire. And somewhere deep in the trees, something ancient wakes up.
The forest itself begins to speak.
Not in words. In feelings, images, sensations that flood both our minds at once.
Wrong bride. Right magic. Balance broken. Balance restored. Queen. Queen. QUEEN.
"No," the Thorn King whispers, but he doesn't let go of my hand. "That's impossible. The forest can't choose—"
The ground beneath us suddenly gives way.
We're falling through earth that transforms into light, through roots that part like water, through darkness that tastes like ancient magic.
The last thing I hear before we hit bottom is the forest's voice, singing one word over and over:
Finally.