“What did I ever do but admire you? Were you so desperate for Mother and Father’s love you could not bear if they gave any to me? Did you stop them from loving me?”
Crash. I’m hurtled against the ground. My sword flies out of my grip and clatters away.
Images and light swirl before my eyes. The throne room fades, replaced by green. Then Kairyn’s standing above me.
Mossy plants coil one over another, growing underneath my back, then arching up, forming a dome around the two of us. He’s barricaded us in our own chamber of mulch and moss.
Warm wetness drips down my face. I start to pull myself up—
Kairyn stands over me, then drops the hammer on to my chest. What breath I had left flies out in a gasp. Pain staggers through my ribcage, my spine. The crushing pressure is like no agony I’ve ever known.
“And now we have come to this.” The owl helm quirks to the side. “The end.”
I want to tell him it doesn’t have to be like this. But it’s not only the weight on my chest that stops me.
It’s also because I know the Ezryn that would offer him forgiveness died.
The Ezryn who believed in mercy died.
So it does have to be like this. Me. Or him.
Then Kairyn moves strangely. He puts his hands on either side of his helm and lifts.
My brother shakes his head, his long black hair falling free. Dark eyes peer back at me.
I remember them.
I remember them, lit up as he ran through Meadowmere, chasing fireflies. I remember them looking up at me as we flipped through picture books in our shared bedroom. I remember them staring at me with both fear and admiration as I donned my first helm and never saw his face with my naked eyes again.
Until now.
Kairyn’s lip trembles and his voice cracks. “You would choose death rather than stand by my side?”
I fight against the breathlessness in my chest, the great weight. “It would not be to stand by you, brother, but to kneel before you. And that is something I cannot do, not with what you have done.”
A hardness falls across his features. “Then you will die.”
I close my eyes. For some reason, it brings me peace to have seen my brother’s face one last time. I only hope Kel and Rose can find a way out of this. That there will be peace for them.
My Petal. I’m so sorry.
Kairyn grips the hilt of the hammer. Even the smallest bit of extra pressure on my chest sends me gasping. “Look at me as I end your life.”
He pushes down.
My first rib breaks with a snap. I can’t even scream, all the wind ripped from my lungs. Kairyn’s face is soft as he pushes down and down. “It’s okay,” he murmurs as he kills me. “Look at me. Shush, shush. Look at me. It’s okay.”
My chest is caving in. Agony ripples out from my ribs to my fingertips, my legs, my skull. Kairyn’s face fades in bursts of blackness.
I know it now for good.
I’m going to die.
And I hope she knows … I hope she knows how much I loved her.
There’s the sound of plant fibers shredding, and something flashes in my peripheral vision. I fight through the darkness to see it.
Another similar sound and flash occur on my opposite side. I turn my head.
A thorn. Dark purple.
Another thorned vine erupts out of the ground, then another, tearing open the dome. Kairyn releases the hammer and quickly puts his helm back on, looking around. “What’s going on?”
I recognize these thorns. They feel like home.
A huge briar spurts up, cracking through the stone ground, and slams into Kairyn. He flies backward, hitting the floor hard. Then it’s as if a whole briar appears, tearing down Kairyn’s dome. One of the thorned vines wraps around the hilt of the hammer and pulls.
I gasp in a rattling breath, relief flooding through me at the release of pressure. I force myself up. At least one rib is broken, maybe two, a couple more bruised.
I turn to the huge bramble bush. And floating above it, held aloft by thorned vines, is Caspian.
His arms are crossed, a smirk on his face.
He looks horrible. His skin is ghastly pale. A black goo oozes out from his nose and mouth. And though his eyes are bruised and lined with dark circles, there’s a defiant look there that I’ve never seen him without.
Caspian. The Prince of Thorns. My enemy.
Saved my life.
The thorned vines float Caspian to the ground. He walks over to me, hips swaying side to side as if he were attending the fanciest dinner party. “Why, Ezryn, I adore the new look. You’re certainly not hideous. What a treat.”
I look from him to my brother, lying in a pile of rubble, to Kel and Rose still fending off the knights.