The flowers grow from bodies.
Human forms twisted into living trellises, flesh split open to allow stems to emerge, faces still recognizable beneath the petals that bloom from eye sockets and open mouths. Some of them move—subtle shifts of flowering limbs, turns of heads that should no longer turn. They watch us with awareness that hasn’t died despite the transformation claiming their flesh.
Prisoners in their own bodies. Gardens growing from human soil.
“Don’t look at them.” Arwen’s voice is flat. Professional. The voice she uses when describing horrors she’s processed so many times they no longer register as horror. “There’s nothing we can do for them. Focus on the objective.”
I tear my gaze away from a woman whose chest has become a cascade of crimson petals, her hand still reaching toward something she’ll never grasp. Force myself to focus on the paths ahead. The pavilion at the Garden’s far end. The Abbot who waits there with weapons designed to turn us into more decorations for his collection.
“Stay behind me.” I draw my sword. The blade feels heavier than usual—the infection sapping strength I can’t afford to lose. “If anything moves toward us?—”
“I’ll handle it.” Her knife appears in her hand with practiced ease. “I know these paths. Know which flowers are just flowers and which are... something else.”
We move through the Garden like ghosts.
THIRTY-ONE
ARWEN
The Garden hasn’t changed.
That’s the worst part. Years of absence, and every stone, every flower, every twisted body is exactly where I remember. The meditation benches with their restraint rings. The fountain basin overflowing with soil instead of water, the largest blooms emerging from its heart. The careful spiraling patterns of cultivation that took the Abbot decades to perfect.
I spent so many hours in this place. Forced to kneel between the beds, breathing in spores until my thoughts became honey-thick with wanting. Forced to watch initiates transformed, their screams becoming gurgles as flowers bloomed from their throats. Forced to tend the garden itself—feeding the soil with blood drawn from willing and unwilling donors, pruning flowers that had grown too large, harvesting petals for the Abbot’s rituals.
Now I’m back. Not as a prisoner. As an executioner’s partner.
Zrynok moves beside me, his massive frame somehow silent despite his size. Every few steps, his hand brushes mine—not grasping, just touching. Reassuring us both that we’re still here. Still human. Still ourselves despite the spores coating our lungs with every breath.
The casual contact would have terrified me a week ago. Touch meant danger. Touch meant someone taking something I hadn’t offered. Touch meant losing whatever control I’d managed to claim.
Now his fingers against mine feel like safety. Like home.
Focus. You can think about what he means to you when the Abbot is dead.
We round a cultivation bed taller than Zrynok’s head, and I freeze.
Keepers.
Two of them, patrolling the path ahead. Their transformation has progressed since I last saw them—skin hardened to bark-like texture, Bloom flowers sprouting from shoulders and backs, luminous gazes that can spot movement in near-darkness. They haven’t noticed us yet. Their attention is fixed on the pavilion, on whatever ceremony the Abbot is preparing.
Zrynok grips my hip. Pulls me behind him. The protective gesture is automatic now—as natural to him as breathing, despite the spores making every breath dangerous.
I lean close. Press my lips to his ear. “Wait for Cael’s distraction.”
His jaw tightens. I can feel the tension coiling through his muscles, the hunger for violence that the Bloom has magnified into something barely controllable. He wants to charge them. Wants to carve through them the way he carved through their brethren in the barracks.
But he waits. Because I asked him to. Because he trusts my judgment in matters concerning this place.
The seconds stretch. The Keepers continue their patrol. The spores continue their work on my blood, on his, on whatever time we have before the infection claims everything.
Then—distant, muffled—a crash. Shouting. The sound of combat from somewhere outside the Garden’s walls.
Cael’s distraction.
The Keepers react instantly, their gazes snapping toward the source of the commotion. They exchange a look—communication that no longer requires words—and then they’re moving, abandoning their patrol route, heading toward the sounds of fighting.
“Now.” I grab Zrynok’s hand and pull him forward. “Move.”
