Book II: Chapter 5 – These Woods
I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it.
Enora stood there with both arms wrapped around Ed, her fitted black robe and soft curves pressed against thorn, vine, and old bone. The embrace should have hurt. It probably did. A few of Ed’s thorns caught at the fabric near her sleeves, tugging dangerously close to skin, but she didn’t pull away.
If anything, she held tighter.
For one strange second, I thought she was crying because of pain.
Then I saw her face.
Not clearly. The shadow of her hat hid most of it, and her white hair spilled forward in messy strands, but the sound that broke out of her wasn’t grief. Not the raw, hollow kind that had filled that little room at the Feisty Dwarf.
These were softer tears.
Joy, maybe.
Or relief so deep it hurt on the way out.
I wasn’t the only one staring.
Kit had gone utterly still beside me, ears angled forward, all sharpness gone from her expression. Raka stood with her hand near her axe, not because she expected trouble, but because she didn’t know what else to do with something this delicate. Even Ed remained motionless, thorn-wrapped arms held carefully away from Enora’s back, as if the dead thing I had summoned was somehow afraid of harming her.
The bond hummed around us.
We could all feel the importance of the moment, even if none of us understood it.
Perri stepped forward quietly, ears soft, eyes already wet. She didn’t ask permission. She didn’t try to explain the moment or fix it or pull Enora away from the thorns.
She simply slipped in beside her and wrapped both arms around Enora from the side.
Enora stiffened for half a breath.
Then she broke again.
This time, Perri held her through it, cheek pressed gently against Enora’s shoulder, one hand smoothing slow circles along her back.
“It’s alright,” Perri whispered. “Whatever this is… it’s alright.”
Ed’s gaze turned toward Perri.
Roses bloomed from his shoulder, unfurling against bone and black vine.
“Love,” he said again.
Enora laughed through her tears.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Exactly, Edwin.”
I reached out carefully. One hand settled on Ed’s shoulder, or what passed for one among blooming roses. The other found Enora’s wrist.
Not to pull her away. Just enough to keep her from pressing herself deeper into the thorns.
A few barbs had already caught in her sleeve. One had kissed dangerously close to skin. Enora didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she did and simply didn’t care.
“Enora,” I said gently.
Her laughter faded into a shaking breath as she loosened her embrace just enough to look at me.
For the first time in days, the brim of her hat didn’t hide her face. Her purple eyes were damp and red-rimmed, but alive. There was a spark in them I hadn’t seen since before the Briar Witch. Before everything broke.
Concern tightened through the bond.
Kit felt it. Raka felt it. Perri, still tucked against Enora’s side, held a little firmer.
I kept my voice low.
“How do you know Ed?”
Enora blinked at me like the question itself was strange.
Then her gaze dropped to my hand. To the ring.
“The Ring of Sanguis,” she said.
Like that answered everything.
“Yes,” I said slowly. “We got it from a loot box here in Bushmen Forest.”
Enora stared at me.
Then corrected me.
“It’s not a loot item,” she said.
Kit moved closer at once, her earlier stillness breaking into careful concern. Her ears angled forward, eyes narrowing slightly as she looked from Enora to Ed, then to the ring on my hand.
“What do you mean?” Kit asked.
Enora’s fingers tightened around Ed’s vine-wrapped arm.
I looked down at the ring. The dark metal sat cold against my finger, suddenly heavier than it had any right to be.
“I cast Identify on it,” I said. “Back when we found it. The spell didn’t work. The ring resisted it.”
Enora’s purple eyes widened.
For one heartbeat, I thought it was fear. Then I saw the faintest spark of mischief slip through the tears.
“So,” she said slowly, “you found a ring that resisted Identify, probably cursed… and just put it on?”
The silence that followed was deeply unfair.
Kit looked at me.
Raka looked at me.
Perri looked at me.
Even Ed’s hollow gaze turned slightly in my direction.
I cleared my throat. “It summoned a thorn revenant.”
“That is not a defense,” Enora said.
Her voice was still rough from crying, but there it was. A little edge. A little academic horror. A little life.
“You didn’t have a mage cast Lore on it?” she asked. “Or a bard sing its Lore Song? You didn’t consult a guild appraiser, a relic scribe, a curse-breaker, anyone?”
I suddenly felt very sheepish.
Which was impressive, considering I was being scolded by a grieving black mage hugging my undead rose monster at the edge of Bushmen Forest.
Enora’s mouth curved into the smallest half-smile.
“Did you ever even talk to him?”
Kit stepped in immediately, ears flicking with loyal outrage.
“In Master’s defense,” she said, “Ed only says a handful of words. We love him dearly, but he’s not exactly a conversationalist.”
Enora chuckled. Small, but beautiful enough to make the whole clearing go quiet.
“True,” she said. “But he says enough.”
She looked back at Ed, still holding him carefully at arm’s length now, fingers resting between thorns with practiced tenderness.
“And if you spend the time with him…” Her thumb brushed one of the blood-red roses along his ribs. “If you listen properly… you can have whole conversations.”
Her voice softened, “I did.”
Then something shifted in her posture. Grief standing up straighter.
Her tone became sharper, more certain, touched with the schooling precision of someone who had spent far too many hours buried in books, arguments, and dangerous magical theory.
“The Ring of Sanguis isn’t random loot,” she said.
Enora swallowed, then she kept going.
“It’s a quest item.”
Her hand tightened against Ed’s vine-wrapped body.
“My party…”
The words caught. She breathed through them.
“My old party had one too.”
What followed was the deeply tragic and beautiful tale of Sir Edwin Duvain.
Not all at once.
At first, Enora’s words came slowly, as if each one had to be pulled through the wreckage still sitting in her chest. Her fingers remained curled around Ed’s arm. Perri stayed close at her side, quiet and steady, while Kit, Raka, and I listened with the kind of attention usually reserved for bards, old legends, and stories that knew exactly where to put the knife.
Because somehow, standing in the safe clearing outside Bushmen Forest, with the morning air cold against my face and my summoned revenant standing motionless beneath Enora’s hands, I realized we had stumbled into a story that had been waiting for us long before any of us opened that loot box.
“Sir Edwin Duvain,” Enora said softly, “was a knight of the old marches.”
Her mouth twitched faintly as the clearing seemed to hold still around her.
“He swore himself to a young baroness. To watch over her. To keep her safe. That was the oath.”
Enora looked down at Ed’s thorn-wrapped hand, and when she continued, her voice had gone quieter.
“At first, that was all it was. A knight and his lady. A protector and the noblewoman he served. He walked behind her carriage. Stood outside her doors. Rode beside her through roads where brigands watched from the trees. If someone threatened her, they met Edwin first.”
A faint breath.
“And for years, that was enough.”
Perri’s hand remained gentle against Enora’s back.
“Then came the arranged marriage.”
The softness left Enora’s mouth.
“Her husband was not cruel in the dramatic way stories prefer. Not at first. That would have been easier, I think. He did not lock her in a tower or strike her in the hall where servants could whisper. He simply took her hand, her title, her future… and left her heart untouched.”
Her purple eyes lifted slightly, unfocused now, seeing the shape of the tale instead of the clearing.
“The marriage became duty. Duty became silence. Silence became loneliness.”
Kit had gone utterly still.
“In the gardens near the forest, rare flowers bloomed. Old flowers. Fey-touched flowers. They opened only beneath certain moons, and their petals were said to remember every secret spoken near them.”
Enora’s thumb moved over one of Ed’s roses with practiced care.
“The baroness walked there when her husband was away. At first, Edwin followed because it was his duty. Then because she asked him to. Then because neither of them knew how to stay away.”
Her voice softened around the words.
“That was where it happened. Not all at once. Never all at once.”
She took a breath.
“A shared silence. A hand offered over wet stones. A laugh where there had not been laughter in months. A knight who knew when she was cold before she said it. A woman who realized the only person who truly saw her was the man sworn never to want her.”
Ed’s hollow gaze lowered toward her.
“Love,” he said.
Enora closed her eyes for half a breath.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Love.”
When she opened them again, the spark in her eyes had grown steadier. For a moment, she held my gaze.
“For years, they lived in stolen hours. In garden paths. In letters never signed. In the absences between her husband’s departures. They were happy, sometimes. Torn apart by duty, yes, but happy in the terrible little spaces life allowed them.”
Then her expression changed.
“But the forest was listening.”
Raka’s jaw tightened.
“The old fey spirit in those woods…”
Enora lifted one hand and pointed toward Bushmen Forest.
“These woods.”
Her voice dropped.
“It was jealous. It saw their love blooming among its flowers and decided the shape of it belonged to the forest.”
The wind moved faintly through the branches.
“So it whispered to her.”
Enora’s voice turned quieter.
“It seduced her. Not only with desire. With answers. With power. With the promise that she could become more than a woman trapped inside a name, caught forever between love and duty.”
Her fingers tightened against Ed’s arm.
“All it asked for was blood.”
No one spoke.
“Her husband’s blood.”
Perri’s ears lowered.
“The fey did not force the blade into her hand. It tempted. It arranged. It opened the door. It placed every answer within reach except mercy.”
Enora’s breath trembled, but she kept going.
“And she chose.”
The words sank into the clearing.
I didn’t look at Kit.
I felt her anyway.
A small tightening in the bond. Not fear or doubt. Something older and quieter than either.
Choice.
That word had carried us from the start. It was the foundation I kept building on, the answer I gave myself whenever the uglier parts of my subclass whispered too loudly.
Kit chose me.
Raka chose us.
Perri chose the bond with tears in her eyes and hope trembling in both hands.
But magic had been there too.
Kit’s fingers brushed mine, barely there, but the smile that followed stopped my spiral.
I let out a breath I hadn’t meant to hold.
Enora kept speaking.
“After that, she was free.”
Enora’s expression saddened.
“That was the cruelest part. The fey kept its promise. Her husband was gone. No one stood between her and the man she loved.”
Ed stirred.
“But blood is not a key you turn once and forget. It stays. It roots. It drinks. Guilt became madness. Love became hunger. The flowers bloomed brighter every year, and every bloom pulled her deeper into the forest’s will.”
Enora looked up at Ed again.
“He saw what was happening. He begged her to stop. He fought the servants she changed. He burned the first briar altar with his own hands. He rode for priests, mages, curse-singers, anyone who might know how to break a fey corruption rooted in their love.”
Her voice tightened.
“Sir Duvain knew what she had done. He knew what she was becoming.”
Her voice cracked, just slightly.
“And still his love never wavered.”
Ed did not move.
“Neither did his oath.”
A long silence followed.
“Even when she raged. Even when she begged. Even when the darkness in her would have killed him just to keep him close.”
Enora’s eyes shone again.
“In her last clear moment, she wished him away. Banished him before her corruption could destroy him too.”
Her fingers curled around the thorns.
“She loved him enough to send him from her.”
Ed’s hollow eyes turned toward Enora.
“And he loved her enough to keep guarding what remained.”
Enora drew a slow, unsteady breath.
“In the end, the fey spirit hollowed her out through the very things Edwin loved most. Her longing. Her brilliance. Her hunger to be more. It took all of that and wrapped it in thorns.”
The clearing felt colder.
“The Briar Witch,” Kit said.
Enora nodded.
“And Edwin remained bound to her by the one thing that mattered to him most.”
Ed’s gaze drifted from the clearing to the deeper parts of the forest.
Then he finished her thought.
“Love.”
The roses along his ribs bloomed red as fresh wounds.
I worked the story over in my mind.
The tragic part of me wanted to sit with it. Edwin. The baroness. The forest. Love twisted into thorns until it became something that killed everyone who came too close.
A story that somehow felt familiar.
But another part of me, the tactical part, was already turning the pieces around.
I looked from the vines curling through Ed’s chest to Enora’s damp purple eyes.
“Enora,” I said slowly, “if your companions had a Ring of Sanguis…”
Her gaze lifted from beneath her hat.
I nodded toward Ed.
“Why didn’t we see Edwin fighting with them?”
Enora looked down, one hand still resting against Ed’s thorn-wrapped arm.
“We could never get it to work,” she said. “Not really.”
Her voice had shifted again, less storyteller now and more mage. Tired, wounded, but thinking.
“Keeping Edwin summoned is a significant mana drain. Most persistent summons are.” Her eyes flicked toward Ed. “Defensive ones especially.”
Ed remained still.
“I have my Creepies for that sort of thing. Small constructs. Cheap to maintain. Ugly little darlings, but efficient.”
Something almost like fondness touched her voice.
“Our priest was a channeler, so she held onto the ring, but she couldn’t really make use of it either. She already burned mana fast.”
Enora swallowed.
“We never had the mana to spare for him.”
Her fingers brushed one of the roses along Ed’s shoulder, gentle as an apology.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
Ed’s hollow gaze lowered toward her.
“Always.”
The brim of her hat lowered as that one word took some of the air out of the clearing.
Enora blinked hard, then shook herself back into focus. Her purple eyes narrowed slightly as she looked from Ed to me, then to the ring on my hand.
“Wait.”
I didn’t like how that word sounded.
“How long do you usually keep him summoned?”
I could see where this was going.
“He’s been with us for hours at a time,” I said reluctantly. “Whole days, even.”
Enora stared at me.
Not a little.
A lot.
“I have increased mana regeneration,” I added, suddenly aware of how weak that sounded. “Enough that his drain is… manageable.”
“Manageable?” Enora repeated.
Her eyes moved across us slowly, no longer seeing just companions standing in a clearing.
Seeing a structure she did not have a name for yet.
“What exactly,” she asked quietly, “is your subclass?”
The question settled between us.
I couldn’t very well hide it.
So I said it with as much confidence as I could muster, considering I was suddenly very aware of how ugly the words would sound to someone hearing them for the first time.
“Harem Master.”
The roses along Ed’s ribs bloomed a little wider.
Not as wide as Enora’s eyes.
Then I corrected myself.
“Technically… Harem Guildmaster now, apparently.”
Enora went very still as her eyes moved from Kit to Raka to Perri, and then back to mine.
“Oh.”