“The Abbot is planning something. Something worse than anything he’s done before.” Cael addresses Zrynok directly now, meeting the orc’s damaged gaze without hesitation. “He’s been in the Garden for hours every day, concentrating the Bloom’s essence into a new form. Portable. Deployable. More potent than anything the cult has created in three centuries.”
“Weaponized spores.” I’ve seen that before—concentrated doses used to recapture escapees who made it past the forest edge. “He’s done it?—”
“Not spores.” Cael cuts me off. His transformed features tighten—the closest thing to human anxiety his altered face can express. “He calls it the Crimson Seed. A condensed infection designed for immediate transformation. No gradual progression. No adaptation period. Just—” His hands make a spreading motion. “Blooming. Within hours.”
The cold that washes through me has nothing to do with the cellar’s temperature.
“Hours,” I repeat. “That’s not possible. The Bloom requires time to integrate with human physiology. Days at minimum, weeks for full transformation?—”
“He’s refined the process. Eighty years of experimentation. Thousands of subjects.” Cael’s voice drops. “The Crimson Seedbypasses the body’s resistance entirely. It doesn’t integrate—it overwhelms. Forces blooming before the victim even understands what’s happening.”
Zrynok’s hand has gone white-knuckled on his sword hilt. “He’s planning to use it on me.”
“On both of you.”
The words land in my chest with physical force.
Both of us. Not just the infected orc who represents a threat to the cult’s operations. Both of us.
“He hasn’t stopped talking about your return.” Cael’s attention shifts to me, and grief crosses his inhuman features—raw and undisguised. “How you were his greatest achievement. How the years of conditioning, the careful cultivation—none of it compared to what you’ve become on your own. A survivor who escaped and came back. Who found someone to want despite everything the Bloom taught you about desire.”
My throat tightens. I force words through it anyway. “What does he plan to do?”
“Seed you both. Let the transformation bind you.” Cael’s glowing eyes hold mine. “You’d become something new. Unable to exist without each other. Eternally dependent, eternally wanting, eternally his. The most beautiful specimens in his Garden. Proof that the Bloom’s gifts are inescapable.”
The horror of it crystallizes in my mind—images I can’t stop from forming. Zrynok and I, transformed beyond recognition, flowers blooming from our flesh, trapped in bodies that need each other the way lungs need air. An eternal prison made of our own desperate hunger. Unable to think beyond the craving. Unable to exist beyond each other’s touch.
Everything I escaped. Bound forever by the very desire I’ve been learning to trust.
“No.” The word comes out harder than I intend. Sharper. “That’s not happening.”
“Then you need to destroy the Garden.” Cael steps closer—close enough that Zrynok’s blade rises in warning—and stops. “The Crimson Seed requires the concentrated Bloom essence to function. Destroy the Garden, burn the cultivation beds, eliminate the source. Without it, he can’t complete the weapon.”
“And the Keepers?” Zrynok’s voice is flat. Assessing. “They’ll die defending the Garden. Every transformed servant the Abbot commands.”
“Some will. The fully transformed, the ones who’ve lost everything human inside them.” Cael’s hand rises to touch one of the flower buds on his shoulder. A gesture that looks almost unconscious. “Others might... choose differently. If given the option.”
“You’re suggesting some of them would defect.”
“I’m suggesting that not everyone who serves the Abbot does so willingly. The conditioning is powerful, but it’s not absolute. There are others who question. Others who remember who they were before.” He meets Zrynok’s gaze. “Others who might help, if they believed there was something worth helping.”
TWENTY
ARWEN
Iwatch Zrynok process the information. His face reveals nothing—the executioner’s mask firmly in place—but I’ve learned to read the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers flex on his weapon’s grip, the slight narrowing of his damaged eye when he’s calculating odds.
“Why?” The question comes out rough. “Why help us? You’ve served the Abbot for five years. Enforced his will. Hunted people like her.” A gesture toward me. “What changed?”
Cael is quiet for a moment. When he speaks, his voice has lost some of its Keeper roughness—something more human bleeding through the transformation.
“I remember what I was. Before the Bloom. Before the Garden. Before I convinced myself that surrender was strength and obedience was freedom.” The light behind his eyes flickers—dimming slightly, then brightening again. “Every day I feel myself forgetting more. Losing pieces of who I used to be. Soon there won’t be enough left to question anything.”
He turns to me. The flowers on his shoulders shiver.
“You showed me the passages. Years ago. After Sister Maret’s session left you bleeding, and I found you hiding in the kitchen corridor. You showed me because I offered you water and askedif you were hurt.” A pause. “I’ve never forgotten that. Even when I forgot almost everything else.”
The memory surfaces with painful clarity. Cael’s face, still human then, still soft with the concern that would later be burned away. The cool water against my cracked lips. The first genuine kindness anyone had shown me since my parents died trying to protect me from the cult’s recruiters.
