Four becomes three. Arwen takes one while I’m engaged with another, her knife finding the gap between his armor and his hardened skin. Cael handles the last two—his Keeper abilities turned against his former brothers, his claws doing work that human hands never could.
When it’s over, we stand in the command quarters surrounded by bodies. Blood pools on the stone floor. The air is thick with the copper smell of opened veins, the sweet undertone of Bloom-infected flesh, the sweat of exertion and fear.
I’m breathing hard. Every muscle aches. The crack in my ribs sends pain lancing through my side with every inhale.
But I’m alive. We’re all alive.
“We need to go.” Arwen’s voice cuts through the aftermath haze. “The noise will have alerted the main monastery. Reinforcements are coming.”
She’s right. I can hear them now—shouts echoing from beyond the barracks, the sound of running feet, the organized response we knew would follow once the alarm was raised.
“The Garden.” The words come out thick, exhaustion dragging at every syllable. “We should hit it now. While they’re scrambling.”
“You can barely stand.” Her hand settles on my arm—not gripping, just resting. The touch sends warmth flooding through my blood, the Bloom responding to her proximity the way it responds to violence. “You need treatment. Rest. We attack the Garden when you’ve recovered.”
“That might be too late.” The Crimson Seed. The mass transformation ceremony. Everything Cael told us about the Abbot’s plans. “If he completes the weapon?—”
“Then we deal with it.” Her eyes hold mine. Steady. Unflinching. “Tonight, we survive. When morning comes, we finish this.”
The Bloom screams protest. It demands more killing. More violence. More of the sensation that comes from ending lives and watching blood spill across stone floors.
But Arwen is right. She’s been right about everything since the night I found her in the forest.
“When morning comes,” I agree. “We finish this.”
We escape through the drainage system.
The same route that brought us in carries us out—cramped passages, cold stone, the ever-present moisture that makes every surface slick with something I don’t want to identify. Cael leads the way now, his transformation-enhanced senses detecting patrols before we encounter them.
He’s wounded. I didn’t notice during the fighting, but the sleeve of his robe is dark with blood, and he moves with the careful gait of someone protecting an injured side. One of Mallus’s guards must have caught him while he was securing the armory.
“Can you make it?” Arwen’s voice from behind me, pitched low to avoid carrying.
“I’ve survived worse.” Cael’s response is strained but steady. “The barracks are crippled. Mallus is dead. The Abbot’s enforcement arm is broken.”
“Is it enough?”
“It’s enough to change the balance. The Garden ceremony requires guards—protection during the ritual. He’ll have to pull forces from elsewhere. Create vulnerabilities we can exploit.”
Good news. Strategic advantages earned through blood and violence. The kind of progress that should feel like victory.
It doesn’t feel like anything. The Bloom has drained too much, demanded too much, left me hollow in ways that have nothing to do with physical exhaustion.
We emerge from the drainage system into the servant passages Arwen knows so well. The monastery’s stone wallspress close, familiar and suffocating. Somewhere above us, the Abbot is learning about the slaughter in his barracks. Learning that his enforcers have been decimated. Learning that the executioner and the escapee are still alive, still fighting, still determined to destroy everything he’s built.
“This way.” Arwen guides us through twisting corridors that all look the same to me. “The storage chamber is close. We can?—”
A sound cuts through the passage. Not footsteps. Not pursuit.
A voice.
TWENTY-SIX
ZRYNOK
The speaking tubes.
I’d forgotten the monastery has them—an ancient communication system built into the walls, allowing messages to carry from chamber to chamber without the need for runners. Arwen mentioned them once, during our early planning sessions. Mentioned that they were rarely used, that most of the faithful had forgotten they existed.
