“The Bloom affects me less because I’ve been exposed for years.” Her voice drops. Intimate. The kind of quiet meant only for one person to hear. “But less isn’t nothing. Every time you look at me, I feel it. Every time we’re in the same room. Every time you touch me—even accidentally, even briefly—my body responds in ways I can’t control.”
My hands curl at my sides. Fighting the urge to reach for her. Fighting the Bloom and myself and decades of isolation that never prepared me for wanting someone this much.
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to be honest.” She raises her hand. Slowly. Telegraphing the movement. Giving me time to refuse.
I don’t refuse.
Her palm presses flat against my chest. Right over my heart, where the organ pounds with a rhythm I can’t steady. The touch lands in my blood with the force of a blow—the Bloom magnifying every point of contact, making her hand feel branded against my skin even through the fabric of my tunic.
“Feel that?” Her fingers spread against my chest. “That’s you. The Bloom just stopped you hiding it.”
I can feel the warmth of her hand. Feel each individual finger pressing into my chest. Feel the blood rushing through my veins in response, the Bloom dancing with it, making every sensation sharper than it should be.
“I—” The words don’t come. Not the right ones. The Bloom has stripped away every filter I built over two and a half centuries, and what’s left underneath is something I don’t have language for. “This. You.”
“I know.” Her other hand rises. Joins the first. Both palms flat against my chest now, her body close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from her skin. “I don’t know either. Nine years of being touched by people who wanted to control me. Nine years of learning that desire means losing power. And now?—”
She stops. Swallows. I watch her throat work, watch the vulnerability she’s trying not to show.
“Now you’re here. And you look at me like I’m something worth protecting instead of something to be used. And the wanting—” Her voice catches. “The wanting is real, Zrynok. I just don’t know what to do with it yet.”
The Bloom roars in my blood. Every instinct it’s magnified screams at me to close the distance, to take what we both want,to drown the fear in sensation until neither of us can think anymore.
I hold myself still.
Because she needs me to. Because she asked me to be someone who doesn’t take. Because for the first time in a life measured in corpses, I care more about what someone else needs than what I want.
“Then we learn.” I press my forehead to hers. Feel her breath mingle with mine. “We figure it out as we go. And if you need to stop—if anything becomes too much?—”
“I’ll tell you.” She pulls back slightly. Meets my gaze. “I’m not good at telling people what I need. But I’ll try. For this. For you.”
Something shifts between us. Not resolve exactly. Not surrender. Something newer, more fragile, like roots taking hold in scorched earth.
“The Abbot,” I say, because strategy is safer ground and we both need it. “The Keepers. The whole cult—when we take them down, it’ll be for more than the mission. You understand that? This isn’t just burning a monastery anymore.”
“I know.” Her hands release my tunic. Smooth the fabric she crumpled. “The question is whether that changes anything.”
“It changes everything.”
She almost smiles. “Then I suppose we’re both dangerous now.”
Circe bursts through the doorway, her face flushed, words spilling out before she’s fully inside.
“The patrols changed. Tonight. The Keepers are doubling up, covering routes they usually ignore.” She gulps air, steadies herself against the doorframe. “Something’s happening. The Abbot—people are saying he’s mobilizing for something big.”
Arwen sheathes her knife. “What kind of mobilizing?”
“I don’t know. But there’s more.” Circe pushes herself upright, finds enough composure to deliver the rest. “BrotherCael—one of the younger Keepers—he’s been asking questions. About the escaped initiates. About you.”
“Questions?” My blade stays half-drawn. “What kind of questions?”
“Not hunting questions. More like... curiosity. Concern.” Circe looks between us, uncertain. “He wanted to know if you were safe. If you’d gotten out. He seemed... upset when he thought you might have been recaptured.”
Arwen goes still. I recognize the expression—calculation happening behind her eyes, possibilities being weighed and discarded and reconsidered.
“Cael.” She says the name slowly. Carefully. “I remember him. From before his transformation. He was different from the others. More... genuine.”
