“We need to move.” My voice cuts through whatever moment they’re having. “The fire’s spreading.”
Arwen looks up. Her face is streaked with tears and crimson, her expression carrying the hollow burden of someone who has just lost something important. But her voice is steady.
“Maret is dead.”
“Good.” I don’t ask for details. The body at the altar’s base tells the story clearly enough. “The survivors?—”
“Are in the courtyard. Cael took them toward the forest edge.”
“Then we go there too.” I reach for Circe’s arm, supporting the shaking girl so Arwen doesn’t have to carry her alone. “Can you walk?”
Circe nods. Can’t speak. I don’t push.
We move toward the chapel’s rear exit. The smoke thickens with every step. The flames climb higher. Behind us, the altar catches fire, the blood-stained marble cracking from the heat.
The chapel is consuming itself. Centuries of horror finally being reduced to ash.
FORTY-EIGHT
ARWEN
Minutes earlier, while Zrynok cuts through the wing?—
Maret stands before the altar like a queen awaiting supplicants.
Her robes are pristine despite the battle raging around us. Blood that isn’t hers spatters her face, her hands, the blade she holds with the casual confidence of someone who has used it many times before. Her eyes find mine across the distance, and she smiles.
Not a threat. Not a challenge.
Welcome.
“You came back.” Her voice is gentle. Warm. The voice she used during my first weeks in the monastery, when she held my hand and promised that the suffering would teach me something valuable. “I knew you would, eventually. The Bloom calls to all of us.”
“The Bloom is dying.” I circle to her right, keeping the altar between us. My blade feels inadequate against the history between us. “The Garden is destroyed. The Abbot is dead. Whatever power this place had is fading.”
“Power doesn’t fade, Sister. It transforms.” She mirrors my movement, maintaining the distance. Her grip on the bladeis steady—not the grip of someone planning to attack, but of someone prepared to defend. “The Abbot was just a vessel. The Bloom itself is eternal. It lives in the stones of this chapel, in the soil of the Garden, in your blood and your executioner’s blood.”
“You’re talking about a fungus. A parasite. Not a god.”
“What’s the difference?” Her smile widens. “Both demand sacrifice. Both reshape those who serve them. Both offer purpose to lives that would otherwise be meaningless.”
Behind us, Zrynok is cutting through the remaining loyalists. I can hear the clash of his blade, the screams of the dying, the steady rhythm of an executioner doing what he was born to do. He’s given me space to handle this. Trusted me to finish what needs finishing.
I won’t disappoint him.
“You ruined everything.” Maret’s voice remains gentle despite the words. “The Abbot offered us purity. Surrender. Peace beyond wanting. And you destroyed it.”
“I destroyed a prison.”
“You destroyed a home.” She takes a step closer. The blade in her hand catches torchlight, reflecting flames across her face. “I was broken when I came here, Arwen. Just like you. Just like everyone the cult saved. And the Abbot rebuilt me. Gave me purpose. Gave me peace.”
“He gave you chains. You just learned to call them comfort.”
“And what did your executioner give you?” Her eyes flick toward Zrynok, still fighting, still killing, blood coating him from head to toe. “Different chains? Or do you tell yourself those don’t count because you chose them?”
The words hit harder than they should.
I remember the Abbot’s claims in the Garden—that everything I felt for Zrynok was manufactured, that the Bloom created the wanting, that my choice was just another form of surrender.
