Page 35 of The Withering Wood

Scattered throughout the blackened forest, numerous, shimmering pits of green glowed. Shards of skeleton fragments sheared through treetops and branches, pierced through wood, and protruded from the snow-covered ground. The explosion runes must’ve been carved into all those bones.

In the distance, past where the forest transitioned to Evriel’s Plains, one enormous bone, larger than any she’d seen before, rose from the earth. Taller than Tyrnoraen Keep and half as wide, the necrotic pool at the base swallowed the surrounding grasslands.

“The rib,” the prince said with dread and awe.

Purple lightning sparked throughout the necrosis and twined up around the bone, crackles and booms reverberating through the air. No larger than an ant, a figure stood at the perimeter of the rib’s curse, only visible due to the sparkle of the same violent, violet lightning cascading from the silhouette to the blight.

Vraethik.

PART THREE

The Necromancer

Chapter Twelve

“We must hurry,” Cerise said. “If we leave now, we can reach him before nightfall.”

“Are you certain that’s wise?” the prince asked, gaze flicking to her leg.

“Careful where your eyes wander, prince, or I’ll shove you off the ledge.”

“I’m sorry, Cerise, I just—” Oberon sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “Wouldn’t it be best to split the day, set up camp closer and reach him tomorrow? Then we have a place to rest and recuperate after. Assuming we survive, of course.”

“We will survive. But only if we leave now. I know that magic. See how it twines up and around the bone like muscle and ligature?” Cerise pointed at the curving, sparking streaks of lightning that surrounded the rib. “That’s exactly what it’s doing. Rebuilding the body. While it would take several days to repair Azkanix’s full form, we must assume Vraethik has considered this and has a method for restoring it quicker. An artifact. Remnant of his spirit. Both. No, there is no time to waste. We will certainly die if we are beneath the Lich God’s cursed feet when he rises once again. Then there will be no stopping him.”

“The Celestials could return.”

Cerise barked a laugh. “They’ve long since abandoned us, prince. If they had any more help to offer, they’d have given it already. Now, stop thinking and move.”

He glanced at her, a wicked smirk tilting his lips. “I like it when you tell me what to do.”

A pleasant heat rose in her body, his words conjuring images of how they’d stood just minutes before, his body pressed against hers, mouth on her neck and hips between her legs. Before she could respond, he bent and leapt to the broken stairs, sliding as he landed on the frosty top step. He regained his footing and faced her, waiting.

With the distant thunder of magic raising a dead God at her back, she jumped from the ledge. The prince’s powerful hands clasped the side of her ribs, thumbs just below her breasts as he helped her land.

A strange sensation, being caught. While uncomfortable in how new, how different, it was, a fragile gentleness bloomed in her chest. A surprising welcomeness at the safety she’d never felt from another’s embrace. The knowledge that even though she couldn’t see her back, someone else watched it.

And when they’d first heard the bones erupting, shards splitting against the stone behind them, the prince had lifted his arms to shield her head, pressed his body harder against hers to protect it.

That was usually her role. How many times she’d sheltered Eirwen from cruel children and perverted clerics. How many soldiers she’d shielded from undead maws and decayed claws. Thanks to her height and strength, she was always the protector. Never the protected.

Yet here, beneath the prince’s brilliant gaze and hands somehow larger than her own holding her firmly in place, she thought maybe she’d be able to close her eyes without worry.

“If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to kiss you,” Oberon said, voice a low rumble in his throat.

Cerise cleared her own and dropped her hands, which had found the thick muscle of his biceps without her conscious command. Swallowed by her thoughts, she’d stared at him, not realizing the long seconds that had stretched between them once she’d landed.

She hadn’t registered the burst of pain through her knee as her legs met the steps, absorbed as she was by the prince’s touch instead. Yet it ached now, the swelling skin pushing against the prince’s carefully wrapped bandage.

“Come on, we have a necromancer to kill.” She snatched Beloved and moved around him to step down the icy-slick stairs.

“You didn’t threaten to stake me with Beloved if I kissed you,” he said, sounding too smug as he stepped behind her.

“And?”

“And it seems to me that means perhaps you want me to.”

Cerise remained silent, not wanting to stroke his ego but unable to voice the lie.