“I’m strong enough to kill one old man.” His hand catches mine where it still presses against his chest. The contact sends heat flooding through my veins—the Bloom in my own blood responding to his proximity. “After that...”
He meets my gaze. The wanting is there. Has been there since the chapel. But beneath it, grief surfaces. Raw and unexpected.
“After that doesn’t matter.”
The words hit me with physical force.
After that doesn’t matter. A man who has survived things that would have broken anyone else, and he’s ready to throw it all away because the infection is winning.
Because he doesn’t think there’s anything worth surviving for.
“It matters to me.”
The confession escapes before I can stop it. Before I can weigh the words, calculate their impact, protect myself from the vulnerability they expose. Every survival instinct I’ve honed screams at me to take it back. To deflect. To retreat into the guarded distance that’s kept me alive this long.
I don’t.
Zrynok goes still. His hand tightens on mine, fingers interlacing with an intimacy that feels more dangerous than any weapon he’s ever wielded.
“Arwen...”
“I spent years learning not to want anything.” The words flow now, unstoppable. Rushing out before I can cage them again. “Not to need anyone. The cult took everything I had—my family, my freedom, my sense of who I was. And I survived by becoming empty. By making myself into someone who didn’t need.”
I move closer. Sit beside him on the cot. Don’t touch beyond where our hands connect, but close enough that I feel the heat radiating from his infected skin.
“Then you came. And for the first time in nine years, I wanted someone close enough to hurt me and didn’t flinch from the wanting. You protected me even when protecting me made your mission harder. You wanted me—the Bloom made that obvious—but you never tried to take what I didn’t offer.”
“I would never?—”
“I know.” I reach for his other hand. Complete the circuit. His scarred fingers dwarf mine, calluses rough against my palm, and the contact sends warmth rushing through us both—the Bloom’s influence magnifying every point of touch. But beneath the infection’s artificial hunger, truth pulses. A current that started before the spores and will outlast them.
“That’s why I’m saying this.” I hold his gaze. Let him see what I’ve been hiding. “I want you, Zrynok. Because you’ve shown me that wanting doesn’t have to mean losing control.”
Silence stretches between us.
Not uncomfortable. Not expectant. The kind of silence that holds space for decisions being made, for defenses being reconsidered.
I watch the conflict play across his face. The executioner’s discipline warring with the man underneath. The Bloom’s hunger pressing against whatever resistance he’s maintained. The grief I saw moments ago transforming into hope, maybe, or the first fragile shoots of a want he’s been denying.
“You should run.” His voice comes out rough. Strained. “From me. From this place. Take Circe and escape while there’s still time. I can hold the Keepers off long enough?—”
“No.”
“Arwen—”
“I said no.” I release one of his hands. Reach up to cup his jaw, feeling the stubble against my palm, the tension locked in his muscles. “I’ve been running since they took me. From the cult. From what they did to me. From the parts of myself I was afraid to claim.”
My thumb traces the line of his cheekbone. His breath catches. The Bloom pulses in my blood, demanding more, and for once I don’t fight it.
“I’m done running. Whatever happens tonight, tomorrow, a week from now—I’m choosing to face it. With you.”
His hand comes up. Covers mine where it rests against his face. The gesture is careful. Deliberate. The touch of someone who doesn’t know how to be gentle but is trying anyway.
“I’ve spent my life killing.” The confession carries the same gravity as mine. “Killed people who deserved it and people who didn’t. I stopped believing in anything beyond the next execution. Made myself into a weapon because weapons don’t need purpose—they just need targets.”
He turns his head. Presses his lips to my palm. The contact burns through my skin, and I feel my pulse spike in response.
“Then I found you in the forest. And you looked at me with fear, and calculation, and something that might have been hope. And I thought—I thought if I could just keep you alive, maybe that would be enough. Maybe that would be the purpose I’d stopped looking for.”
