Page 130 of Crowned By Roses

The castle moves.

Roots erupt from the ground, long, skeletal limbs straining toward the sky, forming branches draped in rotted leaves that crumble to ash in midair. Bark peels back in weeping strips, leaking red sap that hisses as it eats through stone. The air reeks of mildew and decay.

Sira’s body stretches with it, becoming taller, wider. The wood stretches out from her torso, becoming a thick trunk. Her arms grow into branchlike appendages, fingers tapering into dripping, clawed twigs. Her hair lifts, tangled and heavy with hanging moss, and unfurls into a canopy of dead foliage. An inhuman quality consumes her face—jaw unhinging, eyes sunken yet burning.

And she grows. And grows. And grows…

I fly back as the ground twists and writhes below me, and I see my mates desperately trying to stay balanced as everything shifts.

A scream pours from her like a gale, wind and rot and ruin all at once.

She looms over us now, rooted in the earth, towering and terrible. A woman made tree, a tree made monster. Her voice is no longer only Sira’s—it’s the voice of decay, of endings, of a world long drowned in shadow.

“I am power,” she thunders. “I am the Vale.”

Fear trembles through me, lacing with horror and disgust. But I do not look away.

We don’t just have to fight Sira.

We have to fight Castletree.

57

Rosalina

My gaze travels, up, up, up. A hundred feet into the air, no, hundreds. Castletree looms over us, a walking, living, monstrous thing. And up near the top, staring down from a hollow within the trunk, is Sira.

Her limbs are tangled with the branches, skin and bone melding into wood and stone. She’s turned herself into part of Castletree. Her breast still heaves with breath, and her eyes still glint with that fae cleverness, but her hair dangles with black leaves, and I struggle to see where her arms and legs end and Castletree begins.

My heart thuds against my chest. I turn to my left. Dayton and Farron stand beside me, their faces a mix of horror and confusion as they look up at what was once our home. On my right, Keldarion, Caspian, and Ezryn are there, weapons drawn.

It’s now or never. We’re all together, standing up. Just like my father told me.

“Careful,” I say lowly. “If we strike too hard and too fast, we risk destroying the rose.”

“Piece by piece then.” Dayton grins wildly. “I can make that work.”

“You’re too late!” Sira bellows over the battlefield. Her voice has taken on a haunting quality, as if carried on a gale through a stone hallway. “I couldn’t kill your precious tree, so I have claimed it. Aurelia thought herself the grand creator, but I will show everyone what I am capable of. What I have always been capable of!”

“We won’t let you destroy the Vale like you’ve destroyed everything else you’ve ever touched,” Kel roars.

“You don’t have a choice,” Sira says. “Anything that Aurelia touched will turn to ash. Starting…with my son.”

She raises one of her tree trunk arms—a giant, hanging thing, thick as a castle turret—then smashes it down. Right where Caspian is standing.

“Cas!” I scream, but he’s quick. Purple briars erupt from the ground, tossing us all out of the way. Caspian himself is flung back by his own briars, narrowly avoiding the hit.

“If you want to destroy Aurelia’s influence, you’ll need to start with yourself,” Caspian calls. “For she lives in your mind more than any other part of the Vale.”

A guttural snarl seethes from the tree monstrosity. With her other giant arm, she reaches down, ripping a chunk of earth out of the ground. “Die!”

The rubble whirls toward us, but Ezryn leaps forward and holds up his hands. The clump stops in midair, then swings back at the tree, smashing into the trunk. Sira cries out.

“You can take our castle, but you can never take our home!” Ezryn yells.

A barrage of fireballs shoots toward the midsection of the tree. As each one hits, Sira screams in pain. Farron’s outstretched hands are red-hot, his gaze bright with the reflection of his flames. “You will never take our home,” he echoes.

My hair whips around my face, and I’m nearly pushed back as a storm blows past us. Dayton and Kel stand together, their bodies moving in unison. Dayton sends a powerful blast of hot air, which mixes with Kel’s cold front, creating what feels like a hurricane as it smashes into the monstrosity.