Emrys let days turn into nights in the Dark World. He tried not to sleep. Whenever he did, he became lost in foul dreams. Dreams of his sister being violated. Dreams of the bone tree, skulls braking through its bark, all laughing at him, mocking him for his servitude towards it.
When he had first gotten his powers, Emrys had treated the bone tree with respect. He followed Emrys’s instructions carefully as he tended to it, pruning its branches and offering it sacrifices of meat and blood. Now he couldn’t face joining in as Dara worked. He hated the bone tree. He hated what it had taken from him, without being able to give him what he really wanted.
His Kingdom was gone. He couldn’t set foot in it again. He didn’t have the strength to destroy Gwern’s armies, and there was no other way of f
