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Ezra looks at it for a long moment.

Then raises his eyes to the thing that has owned him for two hundred and thirty-five years.

“No.”

The Harvest extends the seed. PLANT.

Ezra doesn’t take it. “Fuck you.”

The creature screams.

The Brides scream.

The crowd screams.

The entire farm convulses.

The Harvest’s hand jerks, and the red kernel slips from its palm.

It lands on my stomach.

I scream.

Ezra swipes it away so fast it should disappear into the dirt.

It doesn’t.

Something snaps tight between us.

I look down.

The kernel hangs several inches above the ground.

A thin white root stretches from it to my stomach.

For one confused second, my brain refuses to understand what I’m looking at.

Then the root moves.

It pulses.

Once.

Twice.

And burrows deeper.

White-hot pain tears through my abdomen.

I scream so hard something rips in my throat.

“SAGE!”

Ezra grabs the kernel and yanks.

The root stretches.

So does something inside me.