Page 12

THORN

S omething's wrong.

The Grove alerts me before I see it—roots pulling tight, air thinning like breath before a scream. It’s there in my chest, just beneath the ribs, where my bond with the ward tree sits like a second heartbeat.

Someone’s crossed a line.

I don’t wait.

I move.

The air blurs around me as I shift through the shade, trees bending gently aside. The southern perimeter, near the collapsed runestone arch—that’s where the breach is. It was always weak there. Too many feet have tread near without respect.

When I reach it, the barrier is cracked.

Thin blue light flickers along the invisible line, sparking like nerves misfiring. And on the wrong side of it, flailing in the ferns, is a boy. Small. Pale. Reeking of borrowed magic.

He’s on his hands and knees, eyes wide, one hand still gripping a wand too big for his frame.

“Back,” I growl.

He gasps, then freezes as I step from the trees.

Good.

Let him be afraid.

The barrier hums dangerously. If he pushes further, it’ll collapse. I plant my palm in the moss and whisper the Grove’s binding word— Silthaloren —and the light seals shut with a quiet snap.

The boy yelps and scuttles backward, dropping the wand.

“I didn’t mean to—” he stammers.

“You nearly broke the ward.”

“I got lost,” he blurts. “I thought it was a shortcut back to the cabins—I didn’t know it was... alive.”

I crouch low, looming over him like the thing he thought was just campfire legend. “This Grove does not suffer intrusions.”

He nods rapidly, shoulders hunched. “I won’t—I swear, I didn’t mean?—”

“I believe you,” I say.

He stops shaking.

Then I lean closer.

“But if you return, even by mistake, you will not walk back out on your own legs. Do you understand me?”

His face goes pale.

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Good.”

I rise. “Now go.”

He scrambles away, boots catching on underbrush, eyes never leaving me as he stumbles toward the trail.

Once he’s gone, I place both palms against the ward line and hum the stabilizing rhythm. The trees groan. The magic binds tighter.

Only when the air stills do I let myself exhale.

The Grove is safe again.

But I stay.

Not because of the boy.

Because of what this means.

The ward lines are weakening. Not from decay—but from activity .

Clara’s presence stirs the Grove. That’s the truth. Her joy brings bloom. Her breath carries resonance. She’s bringing life where there was stillness.

But life invites motion.

Motion draws attention.

And if that boy had been more reckless—if it hadn’t been a child, but a caster with greed in his mouth and flame in his fists…

I clench my jaw.

I would burn the world before I let it touch her.

I stay long after the boy’s scent has faded.

The Grove feels it too—agitated, the roots near the edge flexing, leaves twitching at invisible tension. It remembers pain. Fire. Screams. The last time someone crossed a ward with magic in their veins and destruction in their eyes.

And now Clara walks those same paths every day.

Unshielded. Unaware.

She’s no threat to the Grove—but what if others see her as a bridge?

The girl who talks to trees.

The girl who draws life out of the roots like a song.

What happens when the wrong eyes notice?

I grind my fingers into the dirt, jaw locked tight. My palms burn with the effort of keeping the ward sealed.

Clara doesn’t understand how visible she’s become. To the Grove. To me.

To them .

Casters. Collectors. Anyone who feels the tug of ancient magic like a scent on the wind. Her presence disturbs the balance—and balance is what predators watch for.

She thinks this place is safety.

And for now, it is.

But the more the Grove stirs around her, the more the veil thins.

And when that veil finally tears, she’ll be the first they come for.

I don’t meet her at the clearing the next evening.

Or the next.

I stay hidden, deeper in the Grove’s spine, pressed into the cool hollows of bark and silence. The trees hush around me, sensing the shift. Even the vines recoil slightly when she arrives.

I hear her voice.

“Thorn?”

It’s soft. Hesitant.

Hopeful.

And it cuts through me like a blade made of moss and guilt.

She steps into the usual glade, sketchbook clutched to her chest. Her eyes scan the canopy, the roots, the stone. Her hands twitch at her sides. She doesn’t sit. Doesn’t read.

She just waits.

For me.

I don’t move.

Not even when she sighs and whispers, “Okay. Maybe you needed space.”

She leaves behind a small clay cup filled with wildflower water.

Then she turns and walks away, slower this time, like part of her is still waiting to be called back.

But I don’t call her.

Because if I draw her closer, I’ll only make her more visible.

More vulnerable.

And if anything ever harmed her because I let her in …

I wouldn’t forgive myself.

I am bark and root and shadow.

She is light.

And I don’t know if I can protect her from what that light will attract.

The Grove feels it.

Even if I don’t speak it aloud—my sorrow seeps into the soil.

The vines closest to my resting hollow hang lower tonight. The moss curls tighter, not in bloom, but in retreat. A patch of foxglove that Clara coaxed into blossom has withered at the tips, browned too soon.

I sit with my back to the ward tree, arms crossed over my chest, eyes locked on nothing.

I shouldn’t feel this.

But I do.

The ache. The absence.

Her laughter no longer hums through the canopy. Her scent has faded from the stone. And the Grove feels heavier for it. Dimmer.

A part of me whispers that this isn’t balance.

That it was never just hers growing here.

But I clench my jaw and hold the silence like armor.

Because letting her come back—welcoming her—would only make the danger worse. If she stays, she’ll glow brighter. Call louder. Draw everything the Grove was meant to keep out.

Better to let her wonder than to let her burn.

I press a hand into the soil.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

The Grove doesn’t answer.

But the wind through the trees sounds like mourning.