I don’t let it.
I hold the sword in place. Press deeper. Feel my blade carve through the mass of flowering tissue that keeps this thing alive. My blood mingles with its ichor—red mixing with black, human mixing with transformed, two kinds of Bloom fighting for dominance.
The monster’s struggles weaken. Its claws, still embedded in my shoulders, loosen their grip. The flowers covering its body begin to wilt—crimson petals turning brown, stems going limp, the terrible beauty of transformation fading into decay.
It dies slowly. Horribly. Fighting until the very end, even though the fight was lost the moment my blade found its heart.
When it finally goes still, I let go of the sword.
The world tilts. The ground rushes up to meet me.
Everything goes dark.
FIFTY-FIVE
ZRYNOK
There’s pressure against my chest.
Rhythmic. Insistent. A voice underneath it—not words, not yet, just sound shaped by someone who refuses to let go. Then breath against my mouth, forced in, filling lungs that had stopped asking for it. The pressure again. The breath. The pattern has the grim precision of someone who refuses to accept a thing until it is proven irreversible.
I know that precision. I’ve watched it direct a blade, negotiate a surrender, keep twenty-three people moving through a burning forest. Even now, with the world still dark at the edges, I would know it anywhere.
I wake to crying.
Not sobbing. Not the loud grief of someone who has lost everything. Quiet crying—the kind that happens when someone has been staying strong for too long and finally, finally lets themselves break.
I know those tears. I’ve heard them before, in the cells beneath the monastery, in the storage chamber where we first touched each other, in all the moments when Arwen let herself feel something beyond survival.
“Still here.” My voice comes out as a rasp, barely audible, my throat raw from smoke and screaming. “Told you I’d find you.”
The crying stops. A face appears above me—pale eyes red-rimmed and wet, dark hair tangled with ash and blood, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“You died.” Her voice shakes. “You stopped breathing. I thought?—”
“Not dead.” I try to move. Fail. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s been torn apart and reassembled wrong. “Maybe close. But not dead.”
“You were gone too long.” Her hand presses against my chest—feeling for my heartbeat, I realize. Confirming that I’m real. “Too long, Zrynok. Do you have any idea what that felt like?”
“No.” I manage to lift my hand. Find hers. Hold on. “Tell me.”
“It felt like—” She stops. Swallows. Starts again. “It felt like the monastery winning. Like everything we fought for being worth nothing. Like being alone again.”
“You’re not alone.”
“I know.” She leans down. Presses her forehead against mine. “I know. But for three minutes, I forgot.”
The clearing around us is quiet.
We’re some distance from the fire—I can see its glow through the trees, but the heat has faded to something bearable. The monster’s corpse lies nearby, already decomposing, the flowers that covered it turning to black sludge that sinks into the earth.
The infection has receded. Driven back, not killed.
I can feel it still there—will feel it every day for the rest of my life—but it’s quiet now. Beaten back by will or luck or the strange alchemy of nearly dying. The tendrils beneath my skin have faded from crimson to pale pink, barely visible in the firelight. They’ll resurface. For now, the blood beneath my skin is mine again.
“The survivors?” I ask.
“Cael took them. There’s a village half a day’s walk—they’ll be safe there while we figure out next steps.” Arwen’s hand is still on my chest. Still feeling my heartbeat. “Marceline has the documents. She knows people who can help us use them.”
