The red thorn

Chapter twelve

Panic roared in Elora’s ears, but beneath the panic, something older and far more dangerous snapped into place.

She stopped clawing at his wrist. Her vision narrowed to the glowing amber of Silas’s eyes, and in that split second, she stopped feeling like prey. A cold, absolute arrogance flooded her mind—a terrifying realization that she was not built to be choked out in a swamp by a lesser creature of the night.

*Release me,* she didn't speak the thought; she threw it like a spear straight into his mind.

Her eyes didn't just flash silver—they erupted into a blinding, cold white light.

The heat in her blood surged forward, not as a chaotic explosion, but as a razor-thin needle of localized kinetic force. A sharp, crackling arc of silver lightning burst directly from her chest into Silas’s sternum.

The impact sounded like a thunderclap across the stagnant marsh.

Silas was blown backward, his grip tearing free from her throat as he skipped across the surface of the black water like a thrown stone, crashing violently into a rotting hollow stump thirty feet away. The force of the blast sent a three-foot wave of murky water washing outward in all directions.

Elora slid down the trunk of the ash tree, her feet finding the muddy bottom. She leaned forward, clutching her throat, gasping for air as her lungs burned. Smoke curled off the front of her white robes where the light had torn through, and her hands were steady, vibrating with an intoxicating, terrifying electric hum.

Across the pool, the hollow stump splintered apart.

Silas pushed himself up out of the mud, coughing up a small spray of black blood. The front of his fine coat was scorched through, revealing a raw, silver-burned mark on his skin that was agonizingly slow to heal.

Yet, as he raised his head, he wasn't angry. A broad, feral grin stretched across his pale face, showing his elongated fangs.

"There it is," Silas rasped, wiping a line of dark blood from his chin. "That wasn't a scared girl swinging a stick. That was dominance."

Elora stood upright, stepping through the ripples toward him, her silver eyes slowly dimming back to their natural shade. "Do that again, and I won't aim for your chest."

"Duly noted," Silas said, pulling himself out of the mud and dusting off his ruined lapel with a low chuckle. "You learn fast, thorn. But don't get comfortable. That blast was loud enough to shake the dead."

He paused, tilting his head toward the deep, foggy northern expanse of the marshes. The grin vanished from his face, replaced by a sudden, rigid stillness.

"In fact," Silas whispered, his amber eyes narrowing, "I think you just rang the dinner bell."

From the dense fog ahead came the heavy, wet sound of dozens of footsteps marching in unison through the mud—accompanied by the distinct, terrifying clinking of iron armor