Page 22 of What Blooms from Death

After so much time in the darkness outside of this grove, the effect was blinding.

Squinting against the light, I carefully picked my way down a narrow path. Even as my eyes adjusted, the brightness made my head ache. Deeper inside the grove, the trees grew more scattered, which meant less petals to blind me—but countless other things seemed to be glowing at this point, too; the veins of leaves; clusters of berries; little mushrooms lining the trails. And the warm, close air, while pleasant at first, soon became sweltering. Paths crisscrossed in a labyrinth-like fashion—well-manicured, yet leading nowhere clear.

I finally caught up with Phantom at the center of four of these paths.

(I think we should leave this place. It was a mistake to enter it.)

I was nodding along with him before he finished the thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to follow him as he turned and slinked away in search of an exit.

Something in the distance had caught my eye.

I stumbled a few steps closer, until I was certain of what I saw, and I froze.

Less than a hundred feet away, reclining against a massive silver tree with his eyes closed, was a man who lookedexactlylike the King of Elarith.

Chapter Six

“Impossible,”I breathed.

Phantomlet out a low snarl.(If the King of Light is here, then who is that on the throne in Elarith?)

“Good question.”

I crept closer.

How could I not?

For seven years, this face had haunted my nightmares. For seven years, I had been working to heal the damage he’d done.Sevenyearsof planning my revenge against him and all the curses he’d brought upon the world above. Upon mykingdom. Uponme.I’d hoped to face him myself, to someday personally introduce my dagger to his neck, but this man sitting before me now…

It couldn’t have been the King of Elarith.

He wasn’t moving, aside from an occasional slow, deep breath. A stunning statue of taut muscles and tense, frozen limbs, seemingly alive underneath its stone casing. He looked eerily similar to my mother and all the partygoers caught in their frozen poses back at Rose Point.

(Be careful,)Phantom warned, as I came within a few feet of the reclining man.

I gripped my bracelets. Not necessarily for the sake of spells, but for comfort. Everything felt as if it was tilting around me, but squeezing my familiar charms—reminding myself of the power they could channel—kept me balanced.

I was balanced. I was solid. Not a ghost, the way I usually was whenever I visited my mother in the living tomb that was my old home—and I couldn’t help but crouch down and reach my solid hand forward, eager to touch and see what one of these statuesque beings might truly be made of.

Aleksander’s face was not comprised of stone after all, though it felt similar. His cheek was incredibly firm and shockingly cold beneath my fingertips…but it gave slightly beneath my touch, and after a few seconds of pressing against him, the pulse of life underneath became apparent.

A pulse that clearly grew stronger for every moment I kept my fingers against him.

It felt like the opposite of the sort of energy my magic usually created. And I hadn’t even called upon any of that magic—yet his body was clearly reacting to my touch. I couldn’t pull myself away from the strange sensation of his stirring, even as my own pulse started to pound and my skin flushed uncomfortably hot.

Phantom slithered closer, his lithe body arching up as he reached me, his bright eyes searching the trees with purpose.

A single word hissed into my thoughts: (Company.)

I jerked my hand away from the frozen king. There was movement all around us an instant later—the brush shivering, the ground trembling, the light flickering. I could sense gazes settling in our direction, too. We were being surrounded. But by what, I couldn’t say; I couldn’t take my eyes off Aleksander.

Because he had just startedglowing.

Like the flora strewn throughout this grove, only brighter, and with warmer tones woven through the strands of light—the fiery oranges and golds of a faint, dreary sunrise.

I reached a tentative hand back toward him, wondering if the light felt as warm as it looked.

It was hot enough to burn.

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