Page 87 of Forged By Malice (Beasts of the Briar #3)

86

Caspian

A curtain of briars around the bed. Yes, she would like that. I craft it, red petals interweaving in a flowing sheet. Perfect. In my mind, my thorns are not blighted purple things, but the bright green vines of a rosebush. I need to keep building this imaginary house bigger, reinforcing the windows, letting nothing of the outside world in. Taller walls, more vines, more roses—

Crack.

Pain radiates through my body. A substantial part of my pretend house shatters, bursting into flame. Glimpses of reality break through in fiery bursts of agony: the rusted manacles digging into my wrists, the decaying post I’m chained to, the ground where my bare feet can’t find purchase on the blood-soaked stone. But I’m still standing. There’s that, at least.

I heave in a breath, preparing for the next assault, trying to build up this barrier in my mind against the real world. More roses, more—

Crack.

The flail comes down across my back, spreading its barbed flame tips. I bite my teeth so hard, I think they’ll break. I won’t cry out. I won’t give him that satisfaction.

My cheek scrapes against the wooden post. It stands like a sentinel in Nether Reach’s square. Through the black edges of my vision, I see quite a crowd has gathered to witness the Prince of Thorns’ punishment. There are chittering goblins and soldiers alike. There’s even a cave troll or two in the back.

Can’t blame them. I’d watch me get whipped, too.

My mother’s not here, though. I think she left after the first fifty lashes.

“Decided to join us, pretty?” A voice sneers behind me.

I curse the delay of the next strike. It’s easier to disappear in the rhythm of it, but the pause only amplifies the impact of the pain. Groaning, I glance over my shoulder. The Queen of the Below must be furious with me, as she assigned him .

No one remembers his real name, or they don’t care to, but in the Tower of Nether Reach, he’s known as Emberlash, a twisted deserter of the Autumn Realm with a disposition for fire. He’s enchanted his barbed whip with flames.

It’s stupidly effective at not just breaking apart the skin but searing through the muscle down to the bone. The pain jolts me fully back into reality, and I silence another cry. Stars , it feels like he’s stripped my whole spine bare.

“Did you hear me, beautiful?” Emberlash jeers. He’s filed his teeth into points, giving his words an airy hiss. “Ready to cry for mercy now?”

“Just woke up from a nap,” I call, trying desperately to hide the hoarse quaver in my voice. “Barely felt a thing so far.”

The fae gives an animalistic sort of snarl. Anyone who ventures to the Below has to be somewhat unbalanced, and Emberlash is no exception.

Perhaps to my own detriment.

With a swift, malicious swing, the flail cracks down upon my back. The barbs, wickedly sharp, tear through what’s left of my flesh. Waves of heat engulf me, and it smells like burning. Seven realms , is that my own skin? Don’t cry out, don’t cry out.

I need to disappear deep into my mind. I built these retreats, these escapes, not just to hide from the pain, but to block out the whispers.

Not the goblins’ jeering or Emberlash’s taunts.

But the whispers within.

The Green Flame, slithering through me like a snake waiting to strike. You could annihilate them all, crumble this tower, and never submit.

If I used that magic.

I lost control of it once. I won’t again.

It’s what she wants. Sira wouldn’t care if I destroyed this tower with green flames. No, she’s hoping for it. Hoping for the day I get so fed up with these punishments, I give in to it.

But it’ll take a lot more than this to break me.

So, I build the house of roses. I escape into it, because today, she’s here.

Rosalina looks half made of flowers in my imagination. You’re here because of me, she says.

My mother found out I lied and that I knew of her power all along. Now, like me, Sira knows exactly who Rosalina is.

And she isn’t happy I kept that from her.

The whipping continues, and I feel my feet slipping. It’s worse being held up only by the chains. She sentenced me to two hundred lashes, but Emberlash will keep me here until his arm gives out, or until I give him a scream or a beg. I’ve lost count, and surely there must be no more skin on my back.

I pull Rosalina down on the bed. I imagine kissing her. Because I did kiss her. A stupid, reckless, amazing kiss. A kiss to get me through what was to come. She liked it. I know she did.

My knees buckle and slam to the ground. I’m coughing up blood now. Taunts and shouts breach my barrier. The roses are turning to cursed thorns. They’re dying. Reality crashes in.

Rosalina.

She kissed me in a way that makes me want to rethink everything. Because if Farron succeeds at what I asked him to do, would that shatter what’s between us?

Stars, stars. Every sane part of me hopes so.

And all the other parts pray it doesn’t.

Luckily, there’s no one to listen to my prayers.

There’s only a curtain of petals between me and oblivion. I think I’m choking on blood now. Gods, it’s disgusting.

I don’t pray, but all my hopes are in that princeling.

Fare.

I kind of wish he didn’t hate me.

I would hate me too if I were him.

The roses rot, and Rosalina disappears. I’m left with the post and the manacles, the goblins and this pain. Damn, it hurts. A miserable begging cry waits on my lips, and a green coil rises within me. I don’t know which one’s going to win, only that either way, I lose.

“That’s enough.” A familiar voice cuts through the fragments of my mind. The Nightingale stands before Emberlash.

“The Prince of Thorns hasn’t finished his punishment.” He cracks his neck, looking down at her. The fae man’s nearly three times her size, but she just raises her chin.

How long has she been watching? I don’t understand why she would want it to stop. She should relish in this. I killed her Dreadknights.

“My mother ordered two hundred lashes. You’ve done more, by my count.”

“Only one hundred seventy-five.” He licks his lips. “And the Queen won’t mind him taking a bit more, anyhow.”

I don’t know who’s lying.

The Nightingale puts a hand on her hips, but a few of her prismatic thorns break through the stone. “Perhaps, but if she sides with me, I’m going to request to deliver your punishment myself. Would you like to find out how I’d do it?”

“Can’t give lashes if you can’t take them. You don’t scare me, Princess.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do something so barbaric as the whip,” she trills, the hint of a laugh in her words. More thorns burst from the ground. “I’d wrap my thorns around each of your five appendages, and pull and pull and pull, just to see which one breaks off first.”

“F-five?” Emberlash gulps, gaze flicking down.

The Nightingale steps forward, and the man staggers back. “I bet I know which small, scraggly part of you would snap first. Get out of my sight.”

Emberlash coils his fiery whip and spits on the ground before slinking away.

I want to collapse; I want to fade into oblivion. But I can’t. The hardest part is coming.

There’s the click of a lock. My wrists are raw and cut from the rusted metal. The Nightingale’s gloved hand is on my arm. “Stand if you can,” she hisses at me. “Everyone is watching.”

My voice cracks. “I can’t—”

“Stand.”

I know she’s right, so I do it, vision blurring. Gently, she weaves a thin thorn into my palm, and I squeeze down on it, the sharp bite of pain helping me forget about my aching back for a moment.

They’re all watching, this host of goblins and soldiers. They’ve seen me beaten before, of course, but Sira hasn’t been this upset in a long time. I can’t show them just how badly she’s hurt me.

Casually, I run a hand through my sweat-soaked hair. “Nothing like a session from Emberlash to really get the blood flowing.” I wink, gesturing to the bloody stone. “I’d recommend it anytime you need a boost.”

The faces of the crowd are completely shocked. Awed that I’m standing, awed that I’m speaking. Lastly, I fix them with a glare, a dark look that says: that pain was nothing to me, and if they ever disobeyed, this would be a fraction of what I inflict on them.

“Well, sister dear, shall we take our leave?”

I couldn’t summon briars right now if I tried. She knows it. The Nightingale fixes her own menacing glare on the crowd and prismatic thorns coil around us. Being oddly careful of my back, she drags us under.

* * *

The moment we push up through the ground and I recognize my own room, I cry out and collapse. Birdy’s thorns don’t let me fall, encircling my arms and placing me face down on my bed.

I writhe, screaming into my pillow, and try to reach around to touch my searing back.

“Don’t.” Birdy smacks my hand away.

“Is there even any skin left?” Through my blurred vision, I see her grimace, the quirk of her lip. My sister doesn’t often get squeamish.

“Be grateful Mother forbids anyone from laying a hand on your face.” She holds a bottle to my lips. “Drink.”

It could be any one of her concoctions, but I drink anyway. I should feel more worried, figuring the last time I saw her, I annihilated her squadron.

But … that’s not how it is between us.

Swallowing, the world fades away.

When I come back to myself, everything is hazy. My skin still throbs, but it’s settled down to a dull ache. I crane my neck and see Birdy has laid thin ointment-laden strips of fabric across my back. She’s kneeling over her bag of supplies, no longer dressed in her armor, but in a long black tunic and leggings, short hair tied up.

She looks so much younger like this.

“What time is it?” I ask, voice hoarse.

“Just past midnight.” She comes and sits down on the floor by the side of my bed.

Mentally, I work out the timing of it all. “Only a few hours until Ezryn’s trial, then.” It was one of the last things I had learned before I was moved from detainment to the square. The Spring Prince had been witnessed without his helm and was to go on trial.

And, of course, there was the matter of his mate bond.

“You killed my Dreadknights.”

I don’t break her blue gaze. “I thought you’d be sadder about it. Not even a tear? I know you’re able to pull out all manner of emotions at will.”

Her stone face doesn’t crack. “You destroyed them for what? For Keldarion? For those princes you’re obsessed with? Or was it for Rosalina? The Dreadknights were all I had, Cas.”

Maybe she thought they were her path to freedom. I can’t blame her for trying. I try, too. All the horrible things I’ve done—the trickery of my bargain with Farron, the goblin siege in Autumn—are only minor consequences compared to what will happen if I fail to escape the Below.

“The Dreadknights may have taken your orders,” I say, “but they were loyal to Sira. What was the first lesson I taught you?”

“You can’t trust anyone in the Below,” she answers.

“You can’t trust anyone in the Below,” I repeat.

A question lingers between us, unsaid: Can I trust you?

I don’t think either of us knows the answer to that. But I say what I can. “Birdy, they weren’t all you have.”

“What do you know about it? I had my Dreadknights and my thorns! That’s it!” She rises, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm. “You have your shadows and your thorns and whatever that green magic—”

“Trust me,” I say, “you want nothing to do with that.”

“And she …” the Nightingale continues. “She has thorns and fire, and who knows what else? Not that she’s any good with either. But these briars are all I have left now.”

“How do you know, Birdy?”

Her face cracks, and she shakes her head. “Stop squirming.” She lifts the edge of one of my bandages. “They’re healing.”

“Is Kairyn going to sentence the High Prince to death?”

The Nightingale stills. Says nothing.

“You don’t know, do you?” I ask. “Have you even talked to your metal dog? Last I saw, he had his hands around your throat.”

“Kairyn is conflicted. I never thought that idiot High Prince would actually make him steward. Kairyn has to realize it’s not enough. It can’t be enough.”

“Maybe it’s enough for him. The love and acceptance of a High Prince is a tantalizing thing.”

“He could be a High Prince,” Birdy hisses, pacing. “As the steward, it’s his right to pass judgment, and their creed demands death for such crimes as Ezryn committed. Kairyn could inherit Spring’s Blessing; he could get everything he’s ever wanted.”

I shift slightly. “Would any of that matter to Kairyn if Ezryn is too dead to witness it?”

Birdy lets out an enraged growl, knocking a whole row of books off my shelf. “He can’t choose Ezryn over me!” Her eyes widen. “I mean our plan. Our vision for Spring, for the Enchanted Vale.”

“We’ll see.”

She shakes her head and begins to forcefully tug on her armor. “Get better, Cas. Kairyn isn’t my only plan in motion. All flowers rot, even roses. I will prove my worth to Mother.”

“Wr—Wait.” I push myself up on my forearms. “If you kill Rosalina, it will destroy you, too.”

She pulls her mask over her face, thorns rising around her. “Don’t worry, big brother. I died a long time ago.”

The thorns carry her under, and I fall back down to the mattress. She’ll try to go after Rosalina again. The only thing that keeps me racing after her is a single thought: she’s underestimated Rosalina.

The world has. And when the time comes, she’ll glow so brightly, no one will be able to stop her.