A Vow of Vengeance and Silk

The dagger felt like ice in Seraphine's hand. The queen's reflection watched her, black eyes unblinking, the crown pulsing slow and hungry on its thorned pedestal. Choose, the whisper slithered through her mind again, vibrating in her molars. In the mirrors, Kaelan faltered, a skeleton's claw raked his thigh, spraying blood across wet stone. His pained grunt echoed in the silence of the mirrored hall.Seraphine's fingers tightened on the mother-of-pearl hilt."Cut out the thorn. Take your place. Save him." The images flashed again….Tristan's eyes bursting vines, Pip's small body jerking, herself kneeling hollow-eyed on a throne of bones. The crown's promises were poison wrapped in silk; power that is without pain, vengeance that is without cost, safety without sacrifice.But Kaelan's voice cut through the static, raw and real in her memory: "It always lies." She met the queen's empty gaze in the glass. "You want this thorn?" Her voice scraped raw. "Come and take it." She reversed the dagger in a single, fluid motion, and plunged it not into her own temple, but into the floating crown. A shriek tore through the mirrored hall, not of human, not of beast, but the sound of roots being ripped from bedrock. Green light exploded from the wounded crown, lashing out like vipers. The mirrors shattered.it did not cracked, shattered, exploding inward in a storm of glittering shards. The false queen's shriek merged with the crown's. Her perfect face rippled, skin sloughing away like wet parchment to reveal roiling darkness beneth, a core of tangled, shrieking vines and gnashing thorns. The hall itself convulsed, the marble floor buckling, the ceiling raining dust and debris. "NO"! The thing that was not the queen lunged, thorned fingers grasping.

Seraphine wrenched the dagger free just as a massive shard of mirror sliced down between them, embedding itself in the floor like a guillotine blade. The impact threw her backward. She hit the ground hard, the breath knocked from her lungs, the dagger skittering from her grip. Through the settling dust and falling glass, she saw it: the crown lay broken on the pedestal, split nearly in two by her strike. Thick, viscous sap, black as pitch and stinking of gravesoil, oozed from the gash. The vines wrapping it withered visibly, curling in on themselves like dying insects. But the victory was hollow. Cold spread through Seraphine's veins where the thorn still burned in her temple. She scrambled to her knees, searching the chaos…Kaelan.He lay on his back near the archway, half-submerged in the black water. Motionless. Blood pooled dark around him, mingling with the river. Three skeletal figures stood over him, their thorned vines limp now, heads hanging like broken puppets.Dead? Or merely discarded Seraphine stumbled toward him, her boots crunching on glass. "Kaelan!" He didn't stir.

She fell beside him, her hands trembling as she pressed them to his chest. His skin was cold. Too cold. The gash on his thigh was deep, bone glinting pale in the dim light. But beneath her palms, a heartbeat. Faint. Fluttering like a trapped bird. Alivebut For now. Relief was a knife to her own chest. She tore a strip from her already-ruined sleeve, pressing it hard against the wound. His eyes fluttered open, just slits, and the brown that met hers was clouded with pain, but his. "Stubborn… viper," he breathed, blood flecking his lips. A wet, gurgling laugh echoed from the center of the hall. The broken crown twitched. The vines around it spasmed, trying to knit the fissure closed. Sap bubbled furiously from the wound. The thing that had worn the queen's face was gone, only a shifting mound of blackened thorns remained, heaving like a dying animal. "Clever… girl," it rasped, the voice fractured, weak. "But the thorn… is rooted… deeper than bone."A fresh wave of agony lanced through Seraphine's skull. She cried out, clapping a hand to her temple. Something warm and wet trickled down her neck. Not just blood. Thick, dark sap. She looked down at her hands. Thin black veins snaked beneath her skin, spreading from her wrist toward her elbow. They pulsed with a faint, sickly green light. The crown's final gift. Kaelan's hand closed weakly over hers. His eyes held no pity, only grim understanding. "What… did you do?" Seraphine stared at the spreading corruption beneath her skin. The crown's whisper was faint now, broken, but still there, a persistent itch in the back of her mind. " I wounded it" she whispered, the words tasting like ash. " ….but I think it wounded me back.