And the Garden screams.
Not a human sound. Something deeper. Something that seems to come from the flowers themselves, from the transformed bodies in the cultivation beds, from the very soil that’s drunk blood for three hundred years. The Bloom flowersconvulse—petals shuddering, stems writhing, the human-hybrids in the beds thrashing with sudden, terrible awareness.
“The essence is destabilizing.” Arwen’s voice cuts through the chaos. “The whole Garden is going to?—”
She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to.
The first flower explodes outward, sending petals like razors in every direction. I shove Arwen down, cover her body with mine, feel the petals slice across my back in lines of fire. More flowers follow. The careful cultivation of centuries is tearing itself apart.
But the Abbot is still alive.
Clutching his ruined arm. Retreating toward the pavilion’s rear exit. Screaming for Keepers who are too far away to help.
I push myself up. Find my sword where it fell. Meet Arwen’s gaze.
“Go.” Her hand presses against my chest—quick, a touch that says everything words can’t. “I’ll handle the Garden. You handle him.”
I don’t argue. Don’t hesitate. Just press a fierce kiss to her temple—goodbye and promise and everything we haven’t had time to say.
Then I turn and follow the Abbot into the dying Garden.
THIRTY-FIVE
ARWEN
The Garden is destroying itself.
Flowers explode in chains, each detonation triggering more, the concentrated essence creating reactions that should be impossible in natural organisms. The human-hybrids are screaming now—actual voices emerging from throats choked with petals, consciousness returning in their final moments with horrible clarity.
I move through the chaos.
Not running. Not fleeing. Moving with purpose, toward the cultivation beds, toward the transformed initiates who never had a chance to escape. Some of them are beyond help—bodies splitting apart as the Bloom inside them loses cohesion. Others are still mostly human, still reaching toward salvation even as flowers bloom from their wounds.
“The fountain.” An older man, his arms transformed but his face still recognizable. “The fountain controls the irrigation. Destroy it, and the whole system collapses.”
I don’t ask how he knows. Don’t waste time on questions that don’t matter.
I run.
The central fountain rises from the Garden’s heart—the basin that hasn’t held water in decades, filled instead with soil from which the largest blooms emerge. The irrigation system beneath it feeds every bed in the Garden, carrying concentrated essence to the flowers that need it most.
Destroy the fountain. Destroy the delivery system. Let the Garden die.
I reach the basin as another chain of explosions tears through the nearest beds. The soil within is rich and dark, and when I plunge my arms into it, searching for the irrigation mechanisms beneath, the concentrated spores hit my bloodstream with devastating intensity.
The wanting surges. Overwhelming. Absolute. Every desire I’ve ever felt magnified until I can barely remember my own name.
Zrynok. His hands on my skin. His voice in the dark. The way he said he loves me.
Want him. Need him. But that need is mine. Chosen. Real.
The Bloom didn’t create it. And the Bloom can’t take it away.
I find the irrigation mechanism—stone and copper and something organic that pulses beneath my fingers. I tear it free.
The Garden’s death rattle shakes the ground beneath my feet.
THIRTY-SIX
