Leo nods. Doesn't turn around. But his shoulders drop half an inch, and I know he heard me.
We sit in silence for a few minutes. The house settles around us, creaking, breathing, doing whatever human houses do when they're full of fae refugees and a gnome on a power trip. Kevin comes down from the refrigerator and lands on Mora's knee. She strokes his fuzz with one finger, and he makes a soft buzzing sound that means he's content.
"Guys," Leo interrupts.
Something in his voice makes us all look up.
He's staring out the window. Sarah has gone still beside him, her hand gripping his forearm.
I get up and cross to the window. Outside, the garden is moving again. The vines along the fence are twitching. The sunflower stumps are trembling. Something dark is pushing up through the soil near the elm tree, like a fist pressing through wet clay.
Raskel appears at my elbow. He looks out the window for a long moment, then sighs—a deep, weary sound that carries the weight of four hundred years of guarding a backyard that keeps trying to destroy itself.
"Well," he says, gripping his stick. "Time to get back to work."
Mora is already standing, knife in hand. Leo is reaching for the broom. Kevin buzzes once, sharp and ready.
I crack my knuckles, roll my neck, and head for the door.
"For the record," I announce to no one in particular, "I'd like it noted that I am doing this sober. One hundred percent caffeine-free. And it is significantly less fun."
Raskel whacks my ankle as I pass.
"Noted," he says. "Now move."
The next iteration smells off before we even finish falling through the gate.
Sweet. Cloying. The kind that makes my throat close and my eyes water. I hit the ground on my feet this time, an improvement over the last crossing, and immediately pull my collar over my nose.
Peeble lands on my shoulder, antennae twitching in every direction. "Oh. Oh, that’s revolting."
"Agreed."
"It smells like someone dumped perfume into a compost heap."
I check the locket. The pulse is there, but faint. She’s not here. Some part of me already knows that. But I’ve been wrong before, and I can’t afford to leave without being certain.
We’re standing at the edge of a river delta, the Cradle of Silt, if the geography matches what I remember from Wynmire’s southeastern territories. Wide, flat, crisscrossed by slow-moving channels of brown water. Mud banks rise like the spines of buried creatures. Everything is bright green.
There’s something different about the green here. The grass along the waterline grows higher than it should, moving in a steady rhythm even though the air is still. Vines hang thick from the trees, layered and dense, and the trunks twist into shapes that don’t look accidental, arching overhead, narrowing into tight passages, bending inward as if shaped over time by pressure rather than chance.
From a distance, it’s striking in its beauty. The hills are covered in wildflowers, and the canopy above is full and unbroken, rich enough to look almost painted. It would be easy to call it paradise at first glance.
Up close, the flowers have teeth.
Not figurative teeth. Real ones, small, translucent, needle-sharp, lining the inner edges of petals that open and close in slow, steady pulses. I watch one clamp down on a dragonfly mid-flight. There’s a soft, wet crunch. The wings twitch once between the petals before disappearing. The flower stills afterward, its surface smooth again, as if nothing had happened.
"It appears that in this iteration the Bloom over-corrected," I say, crouching to examine a cluster of moss that’s slowly creeping toward my boot. I pull my foot back. The moss changes direction to follow. "The rot isn’t spreading here. The Bloom weaponized the plant life instead."
"Ahh, yes," Peeble says. “Iteration Fourteen, the carnivorous garden. Keep your wits about you, Kaelren. I’m too gorgeous to be some plant’s afternoon snack."
We move carefully through the delta, sticking to the mud banks where the vegetation is thinnest. It doesn’t take long to find the first body.
A fae male lies half-submerged in a shallow channel. Vines have grown through him, slipping in at the joints and pushing out through his chest. His eyes are open. His mouth is caught mid-scream. Where the vines pierce his skin, small white flowers have bloomed, their petals shifting faintly in the still air.
Peeble lands on a nearby rock and tilts their head, studying the body with the calm detachment of someone long accustomed to death. “Well,” they say after a moment, “that’s a look. Bold choice. Very ‘nature reclaims its own.’ I’ll give it a six out of ten for presentation.”
"Peeble."
