Lyssara's POV
"Stop!"
The word rips from my throat, but it's too late.
My father uncorks the vial. Golden light—my mother's magic, stolen and stored for twenty-three years—spills into the air like liquid sunshine.
But he doesn't pour it on Celestine.
He drinks it himself.
"What are you doing?" Celestine shrieks. "That was supposed to restore me—"
"Restore you?" Davian laughs, and his voice is changing. Getting stronger. Younger. "You stupid girl. Did you really think I'd waste this power on you?"
The magic floods through him. His gray hair darkens to black. The wrinkles on his face smooth away. His bent back straightens. Within seconds, he looks thirty years younger—and his eyes glow with golden light.
"This magic was always meant for me," he says, flexing his fingers. "Your mother was a fool, Lyssara. She could have lived forever with this power. Instead, she wasted it healing peasants for free."
Rage burns through my exhaustion. "You monster—"
"I'm a survivor." He walks toward me and Kael's body. "And now I have enough life magic to do what should have been done from the start. Complete the ritual. Properly."
He grabs my arm, yanking me to my feet. I'm too weak to fight. Through the bond, I feel nothing from Kael. His heart isn't beating.
He's gone.
The thought breaks something inside me.
"Let me go," I rasp, but Davian just drags me toward the altar—the same black stone where this all started.
Elara tries to stop him. "You can't! She's dying—"
"That's the point." My father throws me onto the altar. The stone is cold and hard beneath my back. "The covenant requires death. The Thorn King is dead. So I'll complete the sacrifice myself, and the forest will choose a new king. Someone worthy."
"You," Celestine breathes, understanding. "You're going to become the new Thorn King."
"Finally, you understand something." Davian raises his hands, and thorns—actual thorns, black and twisted—grow from his palms. "This magic your mother had? It wasn't just for healing. She could control plants. Make things grow. And now, so can I."
Horror washes over me. He's right. If he kills me on this altar, if he performs the ritual, the forest might accept him as the new guardian. He'll have everything—immortality, power, control.
And I'll be dead.
I try to summon my magic, but there's nothing left. I used everything fighting Sariel. I'm completely empty.
"Any last words?" my father asks, and he actually looks happy. Like he's been waiting my whole life for this moment.
"Yes." I spit blood at his feet. "I hope you rot."
He smiles. "Close enough."
The thorns in his hands sharpen into a blade. Just like Kael's moonlight blade, but made of darkness instead of light.
He raises it over my heart.
"Wait!" Celestine's voice cracks. "Father, you promised—you said if I helped you, I'd become important again. A hero!"
"You are important," Davian says without looking at her. "You're the witness. Now shut up."
The blade starts to fall—
And suddenly, hands grab my father's wrist.
Dead hands.
Kael's hands.
"She said no," Kael growls, and he's standing. Barely. His skin is pale as death, and black veins spider across his chest where his heart should be beating. But his eyes—his eyes are burning with fury.
"Impossible," my father gasps. "You're dead—I felt your heart stop—"
"I was dead for a thousand years." Kael's grip tightens, and I hear bones crack. "What's a few more minutes?"
He rips the thorn-blade from my father's hands and throws him across the clearing. Davian crashes into a tree hard enough to snap branches.
Then Kael collapses onto the altar beside me.
"You're alive," I sob, touching his face. His skin is ice-cold. "How—"
"I don't know." His voice is weak. "I was gone. Completely gone. Then I felt you through the bond. Your fear. Your rage. And I couldn't—" He coughs, blood on his lips. "I couldn't let him hurt you."
"But your heart—"
"Still not beating." He tries to smile. "I'm running on borrowed time. Or maybe I'm just too stubborn to die properly."
Around us, chaos erupts. Davian staggers to his feet, golden magic crackling around him. Celestine is screaming at the soldiers to do something. Elara is trying to help her unconscious mother.
And the forest—the forest is growling.
Not a sound you hear with your ears. A vibration you feel in your bones. The trees are angry. The ground trembles.
"The covenant is breaking," Kael gasps. "Your father drank stolen magic and tried to claim the ritual by force. The forest is rejecting it."
As if to prove his point, roots burst from the ground around Davian. They wrap around his ankles, yanking him down. He blasts them with golden light, but more grow to replace them.
"The forest knows he's wrong," I realize. "It won't accept him."
"But it still needs balance." Kael's eyes meet mine. "Life and death. That's what the original covenant was supposed to be. Not sacrifice. Not murder. Balance."
"Like us," I whisper.
"Like us." He takes my hand. Through the bond—that thin golden thread that's all that's left connecting us—I feel a flicker. Faint, but there.
An idea forms. Crazy. Impossible. But maybe...
"When you died just now," I say quickly, "where did you go?"
"I don't know. Nowhere. Darkness." His grip tightens. "Then I heard you, and I followed your voice back."
"The bond brought you back."
"It shouldn't be possible. I have no heartbeat. No life force. I'm an empty shell running on—" He stops. "On your life force. Through the bond."
We stare at each other.
"That's why you're still moving," I breathe. "I'm keeping you alive. We're sharing one life between two bodies."
"That's insane."
"So is everything else about us."
Davian roars, tearing free from the roots. His stolen magic is burning brighter, but it's wrong—corrupted by his greed and hate. Where Kael's death magic is cold and clean, this is sick. Rotting.
"If he completes the ritual with that magic," Kael says, "he'll poison the entire forest. Everything will die."
"Then we stop him." I try to sit up, but my body screams in protest. "We have to—"
"Lyssara, we can barely move. We're both dying."
"We're both living!" I grab his face, forcing him to look at me. "You came back from death. I survived when I should have died on this altar. We're not supposed to be possible, but here we are. Still fighting. Still breathing."
Something shifts in his expression. That cold, empty look he had when we first met is completely gone. Now he just looks human. Scared and determined and alive.
"What do you want to do?" he asks.
"Something stupid." I pull myself upright, ignoring the pain. "We can't complete the ritual like it was. We can't be like the thousand brides before me. So we make our own ritual."
"How?"
"I don't know yet." I slide off the altar, my legs shaking. "But it starts with us standing. Together."
Kael takes my hand and rises beside me. We're both swaying, both barely conscious. But we're standing.
My father sees us and laughs. "You think you can stop me? Look at you—you're corpses pretending to be alive!"
"Maybe," I call back. "But we're still here. And you're still the man who let his wife burn and sold his daughter for gold. Tell me, Father—which one of us is really the monster?"
His face twists with rage. "I'll show you monster!"
He gathers all his stolen magic—every drop—into one massive attack. The golden light turns sickly green, corruption spreading through it like poison. It's enough power to level the entire clearing.
"Run," Kael says.
"No." I squeeze his hand. "We do this together, remember?"
"Together might mean dying together."
"Then we die." I look at him—really look at him. This beautiful, broken thing who tried to kill me and ended up saving me instead. "I'd rather die standing with you than live kneeling to him."
Kael's eyes widen. Then, impossibly, he smiles. A real smile. "You're completely insane."
"Takes one to know one."
My father releases the attack. A wave of corrupted magic screams toward us—enough power to erase us from existence.
I close my eyes and reach for the bond. That golden thread connecting my heart to Kael's silent chest.
And I pull.
Not to take from him. To give. I pour everything I am—every memory, every emotion, every spark of life I have left—through the bond and into him.
His dead heart stutters.
Beats.
Through the bond, I feel his shock. Feel his death magic surge in response, flowing back into me. Not to kill, but to balance. Light and dark. Life and death. Two halves making one whole.
The corrupted magic hits us—
And we don't die.
The bond between us explodes outward, forming a shield of golden-dark light. The attack crashes against it like waves against stone. My father's magic is powerful, but it's stolen. Forced. Wrong.
Ours is chosen. Earned. True.
The shield holds.
When the light fades, we're still standing. Davian is on his knees, gasping. His stolen magic is gone—burned away trying to destroy us.
"Impossible," he whispers.
"You keep saying that," I tell him. "Maybe you should learn: some things are stronger than death. Stronger than greed. Stronger than hate."
The forest rumbles its agreement.
Then something changes. The altar behind us starts to glow. Not with golden light or dark shadows, but both together. The black stone cracks, and something grows from beneath—a sapling. Tiny, fragile, with leaves of gold and bark of silver.
"The Heart Tree," Kael breathes. "It's being reborn."
The forest is speaking, not in words but in feelings that flood through both of us: Finally. Balance. Covenant restored.
"Wait," I say. "We didn't complete any ritual—"
"We did." Kael looks at our joined hands, at the marks on our skin—his flowers, my thorns. "We've been completing it since the moment your magic refused to let you die. Life and death, bound together. That's the real covenant."
The sapling grows faster, reaching toward us. Its branches wrap gently around our wrists.
And the forest makes its choice.
You are the covenant now. Both of you. Life-Bringer and Death-Bearer. Queen and King. Until the forest falls, you are bound.
Power floods through me. Through us. Not stolen like my father's magic, but given freely. The forest is offering itself to our care.
But there's a cost. There's always a cost.
The sapling's thorns pierce our skin. Blood—mine red, Kael's black—drips onto the roots.
To be the covenant is to be changed. To give up mortal death. To serve until the ending of all things. Do you accept?
I look at Kael. He looks at me.
We're both terrified.
We both nod.
The sapling explodes with growth. Within seconds, it's a tree—within a minute, it's massive. The Heart Tree, reborn and pure, its branches spreading to cover the entire clearing.
And Lyssara and Kael scream as the transformation takes them.
Pain. Worse than anything before. Their bodies are being rewritten, remade, bound to the forest itself.
When it ends, they collapse together at the tree's roots.
And fifty feet away, Lord Davian sees his daughter stand.
Her eyes are glowing gold.
Thorns and flowers grow in her hair.
And when she speaks, her voice echoes with the forest's power.
"You wanted a monster, Father?" Lyssara smiles, and it's terrible and beautiful. "Congratulations. You made one."