Page 20

THORN

I t hits like fire to bone.

Not pain.

Life.

The Grove doesn’t whisper me awake—it wrenches me from stillness. My breath slams into my chest like I’ve been drowned and just broke surface.

I gasp.

Air burns through my lungs like lightning through dry wood.

The ward tree pulses—no longer dying, but thrumming with ancient, reckless power. Runes blaze along its bark. Roots pulse underfoot like veins, hot and wild.

And I feel it.

She did this.

The Grove is singing with her signature—bright and soft and stubborn. Not delicate anymore. Not apologetic.

A promise rooted in grief, lit up with love.

I rise, bark splitting at my joints, vines snapping loose like old shackles.

I’m not the same.

The Grove isn’t the same.

It’s alive again—and not in the quiet way it used to be. It’s roaring. Glorious. Untamed.

And I’m part of it.

I step out of the tree’s hollow and the world shifts .

The Grove ripples outward in concentric waves of energy—invisible, but unmistakable.

Magic rolls through the canopy like thunder.

Then I hear it.

A sharp whine from near the ward line.

And a voice—annoyed, clipped, familiar.

“What the—no, no, that’s not right?—”

Eliorin Vask.

His ward scanner—sleek, government-issue, enchanted to withstand Leyfield distortions—is vibrating violently in his grip.

I move toward him.

He’s at the Grove’s edge, brow furrowed, hitting buttons like the problem’s mechanical and not divine .

Then the scanner sparks.

Whines.

And explodes in his hands—nothing deadly, just a flash of white-hot light and the sound of shattering enchantment.

He stumbles back, clutching his wrist. The metal lands smoking at his feet, useless.

I step from the shadows.

The light flickers across my skin—bark and stone and root-bound magic reawakened.

His mouth opens.

He stares at me like I’m myth made flesh.

“Impossible,” he breathes.

“No,” I say, voice low and steady. “Just forgotten.”

He backs up slowly. “What… what are you?”

I step closer, vines winding down my arms like armor.

“I am the Grove,” I say.

“And you don’t belong here.”

He stares at me like I just cracked open the sky.

Not moving.

Not blinking.

The scanner still smokes at his feet, its enchantments scrambled beyond repair. The Grove hums with layered power, every branch and bloom alive with a resonance no instrument could ever quantify.

But I ?

I’m something else.

I step fully into the light.

For the first time.

No shadows or tree limbs cloaking my body.

Just me—formed of bark and stone and spellwork etched in the marrow of this land.

The light of the sun catches on my shoulders, dapples my skin like gold across old oak. My runes glow—not faint now, but steady. Whole.

He takes a half-step back, breath shallow.

“I didn’t believe,” he whispers. “I didn’t know .”

“You weren’t meant to.”

I take another step forward, and the ground beneath me blooms—wildflowers bursting from the soil with every movement, like the Grove is greeting its guardian.

“This forest doesn’t need your belief,” I tell him. “It never did.”

He opens his mouth to argue—but no words come.

Because for the first time, the Grove isn’t just visible.

It’s undeniable.

And I am no longer hiding.

I sense her before I see her.

The air changes, sharpening like the breath before a storm, only gentler. Warmer. The Grove leans forward, every leaf angling slightly in her direction.

“Thorn?”

Her voice, soft and shaking, cuts through the clearing like music.

I turn.

And she’s there.

Mouth parted, chest heaving like she ran the entire trail just to find me. Dirt smudged across her cheeks, her hair a mess of wind and wildflowers. Her eyes land on me—and they widen .

She sees me.

All of me.

Not hidden in mist or veiled behind trees—but here . Bark-skinned and rune-marked and standing in full sunlight. Guardian. Sentinel. Monster. Miracle.

For a moment, she doesn’t move.

She gasps so softly, like it’s torn straight from her chest.

“Thorn,” she whispers again, a prayer this time.

I take one slow step toward her.

She doesn’t flinch.

Instead, she drops her satchel and closes the space between us like gravity’s pulling her forward.

When she reaches me, her fingers hover—hesitant, trembling—as if she’s afraid I might vanish again. Her hand lifts to my chest, palm flat over my runes, warm against my cool, textured skin.

“You’re glowing,” she says, voice breaking.

“So are you,” I murmur.

Her laugh catches halfway, tangled in tears. “You’re—how are you here ?”

“You brought me back.”

I reach up, fingers brushing a stray curl from her forehead. She leans into the touch like she’s been waiting forever.

“I thought I lost you,” she breathes.

“You almost did,” I say quietly. “But you didn’t stop. You believed .”

“I didn’t have anything else,” she says, voice cracking. “And I couldn’t lose you too.”

The sunlight shifts around us, dappling the leaves in gold. The Grove is alive , singing in rustles and blooms. Pixies flicker in the corners, dancing between petals. Magic pulses in the soil, rich and full.

“I was afraid,” I admit. “That wanting you would destroy you.”

Clara’s gaze lifts to mine, unwavering.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” she says.

Then she rises onto her toes—and kisses me.

Not tentative. Not soft.

Real.

The kind of kiss you give when something buried finally breaks through. When you’ve been stitched together by grief and bloom and you finally dare to want again.

My hands curl around her waist, pulling her in like she belongs there, and she does —rooted, steady, home .

The Grove blooms brighter.

And in that moment, with Clara in my arms and the sun on our skin.

I know this is no longer just duty.

It’s love.

It’s life .

And I’m finally ready to live it.