I hold her back. Breathe in the scent of her hair—smoke and sweat and something underneath that’s purely her. Feel her heartbeat against my ribs, steady and alive and proof that not everything in this place is dead.
“We’re burning it.” My voice comes out steadier than I expected. “All of it. Tonight. Making sure no one ever has to see what I just saw.”
“Yes.” She pulls back enough to look at me. Her eyes are red, her face streaked with tears, and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. “But there’s something else first. Someone I didn’t tell you about.”
I wait.
“There’s one more prisoner.” She takes a breath. Steels herself. “In the Abbot’s sanctum. In cells that even his inner circle didn’t know existed.”
“Who?”
“Someone who knows things. About the cult’s patrons. About the nobles who funded this place.” Her jaw tightens. “About why the Abbot was able to operate for so long without interference. The reason I escaped when I did—it wasn’t just opportunity. I overheard things. Enough to know that destroying thismonastery isn’t enough. There are people outside these walls who need to answer for what happened here.”
She takes my hand. Squeezes once.
“I have to get her out. Even if it means going back into the worst part of this place.”
I should argue. Should tell her we’ve done enough, freed enough, killed enough for one day. Should suggest we rest, recover, gather strength for whatever comes next.
Instead, I nod.
“Then we go. Both of us.” I meet her gaze. “Whatever’s in that sanctum, whatever she knows, whatever it costs. We finish this.”
She rises on her toes. Presses her lips to mine—brief, fierce, a promise and a thank you wrapped in a single gesture.
“Then let’s move. We’ve got a sanctum to breach and a prisoner to rescue.”
She pulls me toward the stairs. Toward the upper levels. Toward whatever final horror waits in the Abbot’s private domain.
And I follow. Because that’s what I do now.
I follow her.
FORTY-THREE
ARWEN
The spiral staircase winds upward into darkness.
Each step I climb brings memories rushing back—the cold stone beneath my bare feet during those first terrifying weeks, the way my legs trembled after hours of kneeling, the particular quality of light that filtered through the tower’s narrow windows at dawn. I climbed these stairs dozens of times during my captivity. Climbed them when summoned. Climbed them knowing what waited at the top.
The Abbot’s sanctum.
The place where he broke me.
Zrynok’s hand closes on my shoulder, and I realize I’ve stopped moving. Frozen on the landing where a faded tapestry depicts the Bloom’s supposed divine origins—crimson flowers rising from the bodies of the faithful, their expressions twisted into something the weaver probably intended as ecstasy.
“We can turn back.” His voice is low. Private. “The prisoner has waited five years. Another hour won’t matter.”
“It will to me.” I force my feet forward. One step. Then another. “If I don’t do this now, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have.”
“Wondering what?”
“If I’m really free.” The words come out harder than I intended. “The Abbot is dead. The Garden is destroyed. But this place—” I gesture at the staircase, at the tapestries, at the tower that rises above us like a monument to everything I survived. “This is where he really had me. Not in the cells or the Chapel or even the Garden. Here. In his private space. Where he taught me what I was worth.”
Zrynok doesn’t offer comfort. Doesn’t try to tell me that my worth isn’t defined by what happened in these rooms. He just stays close, his presence a steady warmth at my back, and lets me climb.
I’ve never been more grateful for his silence.
