I pull my attention back to what matters. “The Abbot will know I’ve escaped by now. He’ll mobilize hunting parties at first light. Standard protocol is to sweep the forest edge, push escapees deeper into the Thornwood where the spore concentration is?—”
A scream cuts through the dawn.
Human. Female. Coming from the monastery’s direction, carrying on the still morning air with terrible clarity.
Every muscle in my body locks tight.
“That’s Circe.” The name rips out of me. “New initiate. Seventeen. They must be punishing someone for my escape.”
Another scream. Longer. More desperate. The sound of someone begging for mercy from people who don’t understand the word.
I’m on my feet before I finish thinking, the cloak falling from my shoulders as I move toward the hollow’s opening. The direction is clear—back toward the monastery, back toward everything I’ve spent years trying to escape.
Back toward a girl who’s suffering because I ran.
“We can’t help her.” The orc’s voice is flat. Practical. “We’re not ready?—”
“Then get ready faster.”
I turn to face him. Hold his gaze with everything I have—the fury, the guilt, the desperate need to make this mean something.
“You’re an executioner. Execute.” My voice doesn’t shake. I won’t let it. “Or are you only useful against people who can’t fight back?”
The words land. I see them hit—the flash of something in his damaged eye, the slight tension in his jaw. Not anger, exactly. Something else. Something I don’t have time to analyze.
Circe screams again. The sound breaks off abruptly, which is worse.
The orc is on his feet. His hand finds his sword hilt in a motion so smooth it looks choreographed.
“Show me the fastest route.”
We move through the Thornwood faster than should be possible.
The orc navigates the undergrowth with a fluidity that defies his bulk—every movement economical, precise, like water finding its path downhill. I struggle to keep pace, my exhausted legs screaming protest while my lungs burn with spore-thick air.
The wanting surges with every breath. Worse now. The forest is thickest here, the Bloom’s influence concentrated in the shadows between ancient trees. My skin feels too tight, toosensitive, every brush of branch against arm sending signals my body interprets wrong.
Turn back. The whisper is louder now. Surrender. Let him take you. Let someone else make the choices?—
No.
I focus on the map in my head. The route through the trees. The monastery walls growing closer with every step. Focus on the mission, on the girl who needs rescue, on anything but the heat building in my blood.
The orc glances back at me. Once. Brief.
“You’re slowing.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re breathing too deep. The spores?—”
“I know what the spores do.” Sharper than I intend. “I’ve been managing them since I was fifteen. I can manage for another hour.”
He doesn’t argue. Just adjusts his pace slightly—not slowing, exactly, but making his movements more visible, easier to follow. A concession he won’t name as such.
The monastery’s outer wall comes into view through a gap in the trees. Ancient stone, covered in flowering vines, the red petals vivid even in the weak morning light.
Beautiful, from a distance. The thorns don’t show until you get close.
