The Abbot’s attention shifts. I can feel the pressure of his gaze leaving me, focusing on the executioner who shouldn’t be able to move this well.
“Impossible. The chapel?—”
“The chapel accelerated what was already there.” Zrynok is moving steadily now. Closing the distance. “You can’t create desire, Verantus. You can only magnify it. And what I feel for her—” His jaw tightens. “—what I’ve felt since the moment she told me to be useful—that has nothing to do with your parasite.”
The Abbot’s expression flickers. Uncertainty cracking through the confidence.
“You can barely stand?—”
“I can stand well enough to kill you.”
Another step. The sword comes up. Ready position.
“The woman I love told me to survive. Told me to fight. Told me she’d burn the Bloom out of me if she had to.” His damaged eye catches the Garden’s filtered light. “I’m not going to disappoint her.”
Time stops.
The word echoes in my chest?—
love
—and for a heartbeat, I can’t breathe for reasons that have nothing to do with the spores. He said it. Out loud. In front of the monster who tried to break me.
The woman I love.
The Abbot sees my hesitation. Moves faster than I expected, his hand closing on my wrist with strength that shouldn’t exist in that ageless frame. The knife clatters from my grip as he wrenches me around, pulling me against his chest like a shield.
“Perhaps I was wrong about you, executioner.” His voice has lost its warmth. Gone cold. Hard. “Perhaps you are worth seeding after all. But first?—”
The vial rises. Positions itself above my head.
“—you’ll watch what happens when I take something you love.”
I feel the crystal brush my hair. Feel the Abbot’s arm tense to shatter it against my skull.
And then Zrynok moves.
Not staggering. Not struggling. Moving with the lethal precision of a man who has killed for centuries and sees no reason to waste motion. His sword sings through the air—a horizontal slash aimed at the Abbot’s extended arm.
The Abbot jerks backward. The vial flies from his grip.
Time resumes.
THIRTY-FOUR
ZRYNOK
Icatch her before she falls.
The Abbot’s grip releases when my blade opens his arm from elbow to wrist, blood spraying across the pavilion floor in patterns that match the flowers blooming all around us. Arwen stumbles free, and I’m there—arm around her waist, pulling her away from the monster, putting myself between them.
The vial arcs through the air. Tumbles end over end, crimson essence glowing within.
Hits the stone floor.
Shatters.
The concentrated Bloom explodes outward like liquid fire—spraying across the pavilion, coating the nearby cultivation beds, saturating the air with spores so thick they’re visible as a crimson cloud. The essence hits my boots, my legs, seeps through leather and fabric to reach the skin beneath.
