A Vow of Vengeance and Silk

The third thorn burrowed deep, and Seraphine's vision exploded into white-hot agony. Blood poured down her face in thick rivulets, each drop sizzling as it hit the marble floor, sending up acrid tendrils of smoke that stank of burning flesh and spoiled wine. The living crown tightened its grip, thorned vines pulsing as they drank her essence, threading deeper into her skull with every beat of her faltering heart. Kaelan's wink haunted her. Had she imagined it? That fleeting dip of his left eyelid, there and gone in an instant before his face smoothed back into that terrifying blankness? The doubt lasted only a moment before the screaming began. It was Pip's voice. She'd know that sound anywhere , the way it cracked on the high notes when he was truly frightened. But that was impossible. She'd watched him die, had seen the light leave his eyes as his lucky coin rolled away across blood-slick stone. The Queen of Thorns spun toward her obsidian throne, jeweled slippers clicking sharply against the marble. "Who dares?" The shadows behind the throne twisted unnaturally, not from flickering torchlight but with deliberate, sinuous movement like a serpent coiling to strike. The temperature plummeted so suddenly that Seraphine's next breath fogged in the air, her skin prickling with gooseflesh. Kaelan went rigid beside her. A figure emerged from the darkness. Not Pip.

Not quite. It had Pip's lanky frame, his too-big hands, the stubborn cowlick at the back of his head. But its skin stretched taut over bone, the color of week-old bruises. Its eyes were pits of absolute blackness. And its mouth... its mouth stretched wider than any human jaw should allow, revealing rows of needle-thin teeth that glistened with something darker than saliva. "Sera...phine..." it rasped in a voice that was both Pip's and something else entirely, the syllables dragging like claws across stone. The Queen stumbled back, her golden crown slipping sideways. "What is this?" The thing that was-not-Pip tilted its head at an impossible angle. Then it smiled. From the dungeon depths below, a chorus of other voices - all horribly familiar - took up the scream. Rook's ragged battle cry. Brick's thunderous roar. Her mother's icy command. Even Kaelan's voice joined the cacophony, though his lips never moved. Kaelan's hands spasmed around the crown of thorns he still held. Seraphine opened her mouth to scream. And every torch in the throne room guttered out at once. Darkness swallowed them whole. In the absolute black, Seraphine felt the vines in her skull writhe with renewed hunger. The crown was feeding on her terror, growing stronger with every panicked heartbeat. Somewhere to her left, the queen was cursing, her words slurring as if her mouth was filling with blood. Then, light. A sickly green glow pulsed from the not-Pip creature's chest, illuminating the throne room in ghastly relief. The shadows it cast moved independently of their sources, stretching and contracting like living things. The creature took a shambling step forward, its too-long fingers flexing. "Missed you," it said in Pip's voice, and this time the words were perfect, exactly as she remembered. The familiarity made her stomach lurch. The Queen had backed herself against the throne, her usual composure shattered. "This is impossible. The dead don't walk in my kingdom." The creature's grin widened further. "Not walking." Its voice shifted, deepening into something ancient and terrible. "We're waking." As if in response, the marble floor beneath them began to tremble. Cracks spiderwebbed outward from the base of the throne, and from those fissures poured a thick, black mist that smelled of opened graves and rotting flowers. Shapes moved within that mist , suggestions of limbs, of faces, all of them hauntingly familiar. Kaelan made a strangled sound beside her. His hands were clawing at the crown of thorns now, blood streaming down his wrists as the brambles fought to maintain their hold. His eyes, his real, brown eyes ,met Seraphine's for one glorious, terrible moment. "Break it," he gasped, the words clearly costing him dearly. "Before they're all." His body jerked violently as the crown reasserted its control, but the damage was done. Seraphine understood. The dead were rising. All of them. And the crowns were the key. With a scream that tore her throat raw, Seraphine reached up and grabbed the thorned circlet buried in her skull. The pain was beyond anything she'd ever known - white-hot and all-consuming, but she pulled anyway. The vines resisted, thorns sinking deeper in protest. Blood poured from her scalp, hot and relentless, but she kept pulling, even as her vision grayed at the edges. Somewhere in the chaos, the not-Pip creature laughed, a sound like breaking glass. The queen was shouting orders to guards who no longer obeyed. The black mist had reached the walls now, and from it emerged more figures - some barely recognizable, others perfect in their horror. With one final, desperate yank, Seraphine tore the crown free. The world exploded. A shockwave of force radiated outward, sending the queen sprawling. Every torch flared back to life at once, the sudden light revealing the full nightmare unfolding around them. The mist recoiled, the figures within it shrieking as if in pain. Kaelan collapsed to his knees, his own crown falling from limp fingers. The not-Pip creature howled, its form flickering between the boy Seraphine remembered and something far worse. The queen was the first to recover. "Kill her!" she shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at Seraphine. "Kill her now!" But the guards didn't move. Couldn't move. Because emerging from the mist behind each of them stood their own personal ghosts - mothers, fathers, lovers, all taken too soon by the queen's reign. The throne room had become a gallery of the dead, and their anger was a living thing. The not-Pip creature leaned close, its breath like a winter grave against Seraphine's ear. "Told you I'd bring you luck," it whispered in Pip's voice, before dissolving into smoke. In the silence that followed, Seraphine realized two things: The crowns were broken. And the dead had come to collect what was owed.