I measure the storage chamber by pacing—ten feet one direction, eight feet the other. Not enough room to swing a blade properly. Not enough space to put adequate distance between myself and the girl huddled against the far wall.
Circe. That’s her name. The initiate we pulled from the altar, barely seventeen, watching me now with eyes that can’t decide whether I’m salvation or just another monster.
Given what’s crawling through my blood right now, she might be right to wonder.
The candle flame sputters. Arwen left it burning when she went for the herbs—a small comfort in the absolute darkness of these lower passages. The light casts shadows that jump and shift, and every movement makes my nerves sing with false alarm.
Not false. The Bloom doesn’t deal in false. It takes what’s real and twists it, amplifies it, makes the body a traitor to the mind.
The infection burns steadily. The hunger beneath it steadier still.
Two hundred fifty-six years I’ve walked this world. I’ve been stabbed, burned, poisoned. I’ve taken wounds that would kill most orcs and kept fighting because the job wasn’t done. Pain is an old companion. I know how to work through it.
This is different.
This isn’t pain. This is want. Bone-deep, blood-hot, impossible to ignore. The craving for touch, for closeness, for someone else’s skin against mine?—
I slam my fist against the wall. The impact splits my knuckles, sends bright pain lancing up my arm. Better. Pain I understand. Pain I can use.
Circe flinches at the sound. Draws her knees tighter to her chest, making herself smaller. The fear in her face is a knife between my ribs.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” The words come out rougher than I intend. My voice doesn’t sound like mine—too thick, too strained.
She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t believe me. Why would she? She’s spent however long in this place learning that men who say they won’t hurt you are usually lying.
I turn away. Put my back to her. Give her what space the small chamber allows and focus on the far wall, on the rough-hewn stone, on anything except the trembling girl and the hunger that keeps trying to consume my thoughts.
Time stretches. Distorts. I don’t know how long Arwen has been gone—could be minutes, could be hours. The candle burns lower. The craving burns hotter.
I catalogue the effects, the way I’d catalogue wounds after a battle. Heightened senses: I can smell Circe’s fear, sharp and acrid beneath the Bloom’s sweetness. I can hear her heartbeat, rapid and frightened, from across the room. Increased sensitivity: every brush of fabric against skin registers, every shift of air current feels significant.
And beneath it all, specific and undeniable: Arwen.
The thought of her cuts through everything else. The memory of her hands on my face in the chapel, pulling me back from the edge. The sound of her voice, sharp and demanding: want me to survive. Want to finish the job.
I wanted her before the spores. That’s what makes this worse. The infection didn’t create the desire—it just ripped away every barrier I’d built against it. Decades of learning not to want, not to need, not to let anyone matter enough to hurt me. All of it stripped away in the space of a breath.
She said the Bloom magnifies what’s already there. Doesn’t create it.
I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.
A sound from behind me. Circe, shifting against the stone floor, her breathing hitching in a way that suggests tears she’s trying to hide.
“She’ll come back.” My voice scrapes out. “Arwen. She knows this place. Knows how to move through it without being caught.”
“How do you know?” Circe’s question is barely a whisper.
I don’t turn around. Don’t trust myself to look at her without the hunger trying to twist into something it shouldn’t. “She’s a survivor. That’s not something that stops just because circumstances change.”
Silence. Then: “You’re not like the Keepers.”
“No.”
“You killed them. In the chapel. I saw—” Her voice breaks. “I’ve never seen anyone fight the Abbot’s will before. Never seen anyone stand up after the spores took hold.”
“Arwen pulled me back.” The admission costs something. I’m not used to acknowledging that I needed saving.
“What did she give you?”
