“Forever,” she confirms. “But manageable. That’s the best we can hope for.” She meets my eyes. “It’s enough.”
She begins. I let the tension drain from my muscles and hold the choice she gave me like a weapon.
The paste dries.The burning fades to a low thrum. The hunger... doesn’t disappear, but it becomes something I can hold instead of something holding me.
Arwen withdraws her hands. Leans back on her heels. Watches me with an expression I can’t quite parse.
“Better?”
“Different.” I flex my hands. The tremors have subsided. The infection still pulses beneath my skin, but it’s no longer screaming for attention. “Manageable.”
She rises. Crosses to check on Circe, who has fallen asleep in her corner, exhaustion finally claiming her.
“The treatment will need to be reapplied daily. Twice if the symptoms flare. I have enough herbs for maybe three more applications—after that, we’ll need to find another source or risk progression.”
“The mission.” I force myself to focus. “The Abbot. The monastery. We still have work to do.”
“We do.” She turns back to face me. In the candlelight, the shadows under her eyes are deep. She’s exhausted too. Has been fighting just as hard as me, in her own way. “But not tonight. Tonight we rest. Plan. Let the treatment take hold.”
“And then?”
“Then we finish it.” Her voice is quiet. Certain. No edge of performance in it—just the flat truth of someone who has waited too long for this. “Every last piece of what he built.”
She moves to the opposite wall. Lowers herself against the stone with the practiced ease of someone who has slept in worse places. Her eyes close, but I know she’s not really sleeping. Just resting. Conserving strength.
I watch her in the guttering candlelight. This woman who pulled me back from the edge. Who touched me without fear even when the infection raged. Who treats my desire not as threat but as fact—something to be acknowledged, accepted, worked with rather than against.
The Bloom pulses in my blood. The craving doesn’t fade. But sitting here, in this hidden chamber deep beneath the monastery, I find that I can hold it without being consumed.
I want her. The infection magnifies it, yes, but the core of it is mine. Has been mine since I first saw her standing in thatforest clearing, bleeding and terrified and refusing to break. She deserves better than a dying executioner with a parasitic fungus threading through his veins.
But she’s chosen to be here. Chosen to help me. Chosen to touch me when every survival instinct she’s developed says she shouldn’t.
Maybe that means something. Maybe it doesn’t.
Either way, I’m going to see this through. I’m going to watch the Abbot die. I’m going to burn this monastery to the ground. And then—if I survive—I’m going to figure out what to do with a hunger that won’t fade and a woman who makes me want to live.
I close my eyes and let the treatment do its work.
TEN
ARWEN
My hands won’t stop shaking.
I finish crushing the herbs with more force than necessary. The bitter scent rises—cutting through the air—and I breathe it in deliberately. Something real. Something that has nothing to do with Maret’s voice still threading through my skull.
Behind me, Zrynok lowers himself to the floor against the far wall, his breathing still ragged, the red tendrils visible beneath his skin worse than they were yesterday, pulsing with every heartbeat. Circe stirs in her corner—awake now, watching us with eyes that hold questions she’s too afraid to ask.
“What happened?”
Zrynok’s voice pulls me back. I glance over my shoulder—find him fixed on me with those uneven eyes. Reading me.
“In the gardens. You’re shaking.”
“I’m still thinking about Maret’s parting shot.” I add water to the paste and mix. He got the substance of it last night. What I haven’t told him is the piece she aimed specifically at him.
I turn to face him. Bowl in my hands. This is the part that matters.
