Page 27 of When Roses Burn

“Nothing, but I told him I’d free him, and I can’t walk away from that. I won’t let him die.”

“But you could put me here to rot.”

She shot a look over her shoulder. “I did no such thing.”

Her scowl deepened as she grasped the vines. The wrinkling of her nose was the only indication that the vines had pierced her flesh again. The coppery scent of fresh blood filled the air.

My gaze shifted back to the elf. As much as I wanted out of this shithole, with its all-too-familiar and hated scents, memories, and horrors, I couldn’t turn my back on a man who was staring me in the eyes. I had no problem walking out of here without any of the others, but I was too close not to free this one.

“Back up,” I commanded Briar. “Retreat to the corner of the room.”

Briar glanced nervously at the elf before backing into the corner near Devnair’s nightstand.

“If you try to cast a spell, I’ll break your hands,” I told her.

Surprise flickered over her face before she closed her eyes and nodded. I waited to make sure she’d remain where she was before entering the room.

The sorcerer’s heels dragged across the ground as I hauled him toward the bed. I tossed him on the mattress and retracted my claws. Without me penetrating his brain, he’d start healing, but not fast enough to escape.

“Don’t move from there,” I told Briar.

She clasped her hands together before nodding again. Without hesitation, I gripped the vines and ignored the sting of pain from the thorns piercing through flesh to scrape my bones. I’d experienced their bite countless times before and was used to it.

My blood fell to mingle with the elf’s and Briar’s as the beast started to emerge. I’d spent seven years in here with only one part of the beast appearing to protect me from the degradation of this place, but on the day I reached maturity, at the age of twenty-five, something more materialized.

And it was something the casters never could have prepared for, and it allowed me to tear through these vines. I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I could become still didn’t fully surface on that day; that wouldn’t happen until I was far from the harem and alone.

On the day I escaped, enough of it emerged to break me out of the vines, but the spells the casters wove over the harem kept some of that monster suppressed. I’d created a fair amount of damage to the room, but I couldn’t do anything about that.

Despite my thirst for freedom, I managed to get myself under control again before fleeing my room with the caster who’d entered it. Even in the throes of my first shift toward the creature I could fully transition into, I’d known its existence had to remain hidden.

I couldn’t free everyone in here, and I wouldn’t have them telling the casters what they’d seen. That was my secret to unveil when the time was right; not even Pierce, Dromon, or Lyra knew what I could fully shift into.

The animal I’d felt lurking beneath the surface throughout my earlier years of life, the one who marked Briar, was destroyed by the casters and buried beneath the beast that rose to replace it. But there were more levels to the curse they’d bestowed upon me and my kingdom. Levels that Marina, in all her arrogance, didn’t know existed.

While I didn’t have time to free everyone, I could free the three other shifters within. I wouldn’t leave here without my kind. I could never return to Wildwood to face my father or their families if I left Lyra, Pierce, and Dromon in the harem. It turned out it didn’t matter.

Now, I didn’t let the full power of my creature out, but I drew on its strength as I pulled at the vines.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Briar

As I remained in the corner, I tried to puzzle together why Seth hated me so much.

No, not Seth, I reminded myself.

He went by Knox now, and Knox was everything Seth wasn’t and everything he’d never wanted to be. He was distant and ruthless like his father. Knox was a version of a man who was never supposed to exist, yet he stood only a few feet away from me.

My mother did this to him because of me.

When he grasped the vine, I winced as my bloody hands throbbed in sympathy with him. My flesh and bones still ached from where the thorns had embedded in them.

As Knox gripped the vine, the muscles in his shoulders and arms bulged as they swelled. Two jagged tears sliced across his pants as they tore.

His movements caused his tattoo to shift and stretch. I’d been so focused on the man, and what he’d become, that I hadn’t really taken in his tattoo.

Dismay gripped me, and I managed to stifle a small cry as I realized the markings were twisting, black vines with thick thorns lining them. Those vines and the thorns were identical to the one he gripped.