**Chapter Thirteen: The Crown of Thorns**
The throne room reeked of dying flowers and old blood.
Seraphine's boots stuck to the marble floor with every step, the once-gleaming tiles now crusted with the remnants of past executions. Someone had tried to mask the stench with burning myrrh, but the cloying smoke only made her eyes water. Above the dais, the obsidian throne twisted upward like a petrified spider, its legs ending in cruel barbs that still bore flecks of their last victim's skin.
Kaelan knelt before it, motionless as a statue.
The crown wasn't metal, but living bramble—the kind that grew in the palace's abandoned gardens, the kind Seraphine's nurse had warned would strangle curious children in their sleep. Thorns bit into his temples, sending thin trails of blood down his hollow cheeks. His breathing was all wrong. Not the ragged, pained rhythm of a wounded man, but the steady in-out of a bellows being worked by unseen hands.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
The Queen of Thorns descended the dais, her gown whispering across the fouled marble. Up close, the crown's true horror revealed itself—tiny tendrils burrowing beneath Kaelan's skin, pulsing as they fed.
Seraphine's fingers found the dagger hidden in her sleeve. The one Pip had given her three days ago, back when he'd still grinned around stolen sweets. "What have you done to him?"
The queen's smile showed all her teeth. "Nothing he didn't secretly want." She trailed a fingernail along Kaelan's jaw. "The crown doesn't create obedience, dear girl. It simply... amplifies what's already there."
A lie. It had to be.
Yet when Kaelan's eyes finally opened, the truth struck like a blade between the ribs.
That rich brown she'd watched darken with anger, soften with reluctant amusement—gone. Replaced by flat copper coins that reflected the torchlight without absorbing it. His mouth moved without sound, forming words that weren't his own:
"Kneel."
The guards forced Seraphine down so hard her knees cracked against stone.
Across the room, Rook thrashed in her chains. Brick roared, the hooks in his shoulders weeping fresh blood. But Kaelan—
Kaelan just watched.
And when the queen pressed a second crown of thorns into his hands, when she guided his fingers toward Seraphine's brow, his touch was terrifyingly gentle.
The first thorn pierced flesh.
Somewhere, a dove screamed.