Thorns between us

four: The Seal

DRAYK’S POV

I woke up because it hurt.

Not a clean hurt. Not a cut or a bruise.

It was the kind of hurt that lives under your skin, like my bones were in the wrong place.

The air smelled like iron and wet dirt and old candles that had burned too long.

It was dark. Not night dark. Underground dark. The kind that presses on your eyes.

I tried to sit up and couldn’t.

Straps. Across my chest, my wrists, my ankles. Cold metal biting in.

“Hello?” My voice came out and I didn’t recognize it. Deeper. Rougher. Like someone had been using my throat while I was gone.

No one answered.

I opened my eyes. Stone ceiling. Torches stuck in brackets, throwing shadows everywhere. And on the walls — carvings. Circles inside circles. Lines that made my head ache if I stared too long.

A demon seal. I’d seen pictures in the old books. The librarian told me they were fairy tales to scare kids.

Footsteps. Slow.

A woman came into view. She wasn’t old. She wasn’t young either. Black coat, but it wasn’t just cloth. It looked sewn together from rags and gold thread and things I didn’t want to name. Hair cut short. Eyes too bright.

She smiled when she saw me looking at her.

“You’re awake,” she said. Like we’d been waiting on tea.

“Who are you.”

“I’m the one who pulled you out of the ground,” she said. “Your Highness.”

She said Highness like it was a joke she was tired of.

My head was full of pieces.

The courtyard. The noise.

Dionne on her knees.

The look on her face.

The blood.

“She killed me,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

The woman nodded once. “She did.”

She walked to a table and picked up a knife. Not for me. She dragged it across her own palm. Blood dripped into a clay bowl. Drip. Drip.

“What did you do to me,” I asked.

“I made a trade,” she said simply. “You were dead for three days, Drayk. Three. Nothing living would take you back. The priests wouldn’t touch you. Your father was already picking out a coffin.”

She dipped two fingers in the blood and came to me.

“So I used what we had left. The last demon seal in the kingdom.”

Her fingers were cold. She drew a line down the center of my chest.

It burned.

The floor under me lit up red. The seal.

And then something hit me. Not in my body. In my head.

Like someone shoved a second person into me and told them to make room.

It was big. Old. Hungry.

_“Mine,”_ a voice said. Inside my skull. Not out loud. “This is mine now.”

I pulled against the straps. “Get it out. Get it—”

“Can’t,” the woman said. She sounded tired. “You were dead. I bound a demon to your soul to bring you back. That’s the deal. You’re alive. He’s along for the ride.”

She stepped back.

“Congratulations. You’re the only demon in the kingdom now. The only one who can walk in daylight.”

I thrashed again and the straps didn’t snap.

They rotted.

Right off me. Leather turned to dust and fell to the floor.

I sat up too fast. The room spun.

The woman didn’t flinch.

“Careful,” she said. “He’s new. And he’s pissed.”

“Who.”

“The demon you’re wearing,” she said. “Go look.”

There was a bowl of water on the table. I went to it.

Same face. Same hair.

But my eyes were gold. And the veins under my skin were black, moving slow.

My shadow on the wall moved a second after I did.

_“We are hungry,”_ the demon said, and it used my mouth.

The woman threw me a cloak. Heavy. Black. “You’ll need this. And you’ll need to eat. Start with animals. Deer. Boar. Don’t go for people yet. You’ll lose control.”

“Why,” I said.

“Because you have a job to do,” she said.

She said her name before I asked.

“Dionne,” she said. “They threw her in the marsh. The marsh gave her back. Different. You two are tied now. By what happened. By death.”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. And then her voice dropped. “I was there, Drayk. Before. She came to me.”

My chest went cold.

“She asked for a spell,” the woman said. “To stop you. Said you were cruel. Said you hurt the servants. Said the kingdom would be better without you. I told her it would cost her. She said she didn’t care. And when the spell didn’t work fast enough, she did it herself. In the courtyard. With everyone watching.”

_“She planned it,”_ the demon whispered. Reasonable. Calm. _“She used us. And then she threw us away.”_

I remembered Dionne’s hands. Warm.

I remembered thinking she was the only one who didn’t look at me like I was a weapon.

“She was scared,” I said. It came out quiet.

“She was smart,” the woman said. “Scared people shake. She didn’t.”

Rage came in slow. Like cold water.

It filled me up until there wasn’t room for anything else.

“She did this to me,” I said.

“She did,” the woman agreed. “And if you let her live, she’ll do it again. To you. To someone else.”

“Kill her,”the demon said. “Before she kills us again.”

I stood. My legs felt wrong. Too light. Too fast.

“Two rules,” the woman said. “Keep your eyes covered around priests. And don’t talk to her. Not until you’re ready to end it.”

We went up the stairs. Out into night air.

It was cold. It felt good on my skin.

The castle was far off, lights in the windows. Music.

They were having a funeral feast for me.

And somewhere in there, she was.

“I’m going to look for her,” I said.

“Good,” the woman said. “But not at the palace. Not yet. You’ll be seen. You’ll be stupid. Hunt first. Feed first. Get used to him.” She nodded at my chest, like the demon was standing next to me.

So I didn’t go to the palace.

I went to the woods.

I went to farms.

I found a deer and it was over in seconds. The blood was hot and it didn’t taste like anything I remembered.

“More,”the demon said.

“Later,” I said.

I walked for hours.

Through villages. Past fields.

I kept my hood up. Kept my eyes down.

I asked questions. Quiet ones. To merchants. To travelers.

“Have you seen a girl? Dark hair. About this tall. She’d look... wrong.”

No one had.

“Dead girl walking? Marsh girl?”

People laughed. Or crossed themselves.

She wasn’t at the edge of the marsh. I checked.

She wasn’t in the next town.

She wasn’t anywhere I looked.

_“She’s hiding,”_the demon said. _“Like a coward.”

“Or she doesn’t know I’m alive,” I said.

The thought made it worse.

By dawn I was back in the woods outside the castle.

I could see the walls. I could smell the food from the kitchens.

I could go in.

But the woman was right. I wasn’t ready.

I didn’t know what I was yet. And if I saw her now, I’d do something stupid.

So I waited.

In the dark.

Watching the castle.

Thinking about her.

Dionne.

The girl who planned it.

The girl who killed me.

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