Chapter 9
Chapter nine
The hand on her shoulder belonged to nightmares.
Briar jerked awake to find Thaine crouched beside her bed, his face too close, his smile too wide. Darkness pressed against the windows, true darkness, not the forest's eternal twilight.
"Rise and shine, rabbit," he whispered, his voice carrying barely contained delight. "Time for your gardening lesson."
Cold dread crept through her as memory returned. The bone garden. One night. The way even hardened fae had recoiled at the sentence.
"It’s the middle of the night," she said, voice rough with sleep.
"His lordship was very specific about the timing." Thaine straightened, moving to her wardrobe with disturbing familiarity. "Midnight to dawn. The garden prefers those hours. It’s far more... responsive."
He pulled out clothes, casting garments aside until finally producing one made of practical leather and thick fabric, nothing like the delicate dresses she'd been given before. "Up. Unless you'd prefer I dress you myself? I'm told I have very cold hands."
She snatched the clothes from him, clutching them against her chest. "Get out."
"Such modesty. How human." But he turned his back, studying her bookshelf with exaggerated interest. "I did try to warn you, you know. About the price of defiance. But no one ever listens to poor Thaine."
Briar dressed quickly, fingers fumbling with unfamiliar buckles. The leather was soft but sturdy, covering her from throat to wrist to ankle. Protection, she realized. Or at least the illusion of it.
"A thoughtful gesture," Thaine said when she finished, not bothering to hide that he'd been watching in the mirror's reflection. "Though don’t think too highly of it. Leather won't help much where you're going. The marrow vines are quite persistent when they're hungry."
"Marrow vines?"
His grin widened. "Did no one explain? How delightfully cruel. Yes, marrow vines. They have such, ah… voracious appetites."
Dread coiled tighter in her stomach. Marrow vines. The name alone made her skin crawl with implications she couldn’t begin to fathom.
He gestured to the door with a flourish. "Shall we? The garden does hate to be kept waiting."
With no small amount of reluctance, she followed.
Not because she wanted to, but because refusing would only delay the inevitable.
The halls beyond were empty, everyone tucked away in their quarters.
Even the ever-present watching sensation felt muted, as if the castle itself had withdrawn from what was to come.
Thaine’s steps were light, almost giddy in anticipation of what was to come.
She was tempted to ask what else the garden held but lacked the courage.
They descended stairs she hadn't seen before, each stone carved step taking them deeper into the earth.
The walls eventually shifted from living wood to smooth stone, and finally something older.
The temperature dropped with each turn until her breath misted in the air.
"Nervous?" Thaine asked, his tone light. "Your heart's racing. I can hear it from here."
She was, not that she would admit it. "Should I be nervous?"
"Oh, absolutely. The bone garden is one of his lordship's finest creations.
So elegant. So efficient." He paused at a heavy door of petrified wood.
"A few helpful hints, since I'm feeling generous.
The moss? Don't trust it. It remembers things.
And the Rooted... well, they used to be people. Try not to think about that too much."
Used to be people. Her throat constricted. How many had Eliam sent here before her? How many were still there, transformed into whatever the Rooted were?
He produced an iron key that looked far too old for the lock it turned. The door swung open on silent hinges, revealing a moonlit path that shouldn't exist this far underground.
"One more thing," he said as she stepped through. His teeth gleamed as he gazed down at her. "Do try to stay alert. It would be a shame if you didn't last until dawn."
The door began to close.
"Wait! What am I supposed to do?"
"Tend the garden, of course. You'll find tools by the gate. Weeding, mostly. His lordship is very particular about weeds." The gap narrowed to a sliver. "Oh, and rabbit? Whatever you do, steer clear of the vines…They’re patient hunters."
The door shut with finality.
Briar stood alone on a path of crushed bone meal, staring at what lay ahead.
At first glance, it seemed almost peaceful.
Gnarled trees stretched overhead, their dead branches creating a canopy of interlocked fingers.
Grayish moss covered everything in a soft blanket.
Here and there, limp vines hung from the branches, swaying gently in a breeze she couldn't feel.
It didn't look as nightmarish as she had feared. If anything it looked withered and dead.
Hope, small and desperate, fluttered in her chest. Maybe the court's fear had been exaggerated, an act meant to scare her. Perhaps this was just another test of endurance, unpleasant but survivable.
She followed the path to a rusted gate where gardening tools waited.
There was a trowel, shears, and a basket woven from something that might have been hair.
Briar had no desire to examine it further.
A patch of ground near the gate showed clear signs of weeding needed.
Thin, silvery plants pushed up between larger growths, delicate as frost patterns.
Briar knelt and reached for one.
The first cut was so fine she didn't feel it. Only when she saw blood beading on her palm did the pain register. It was sharp and clean, like the worst paper cut imaginable. She jerked back, but her hand brushed another weed, earning matching cuts across her knuckles and another line of crimson.
"Careful," she muttered, reaching for the trowel instead.
But even through the leather gloves she found nearby, the weeds fought back.
Each one removed left her hands stinging, tiny cuts accumulating faster than she could track.
Worse was the sap they bled when cut. It was clear at first before taking on a greenish tinge that burned wherever it touched exposed skin.
She'd cleared maybe a square foot when her knee brushed the moss.
The world tilted as pain beyond comprehension crashed through her. She could feel thorns burrowing deep, the king's laughter as he pronounced sentence, No please I didn't mean—
Briar gasped, jerking away from the moss. But the memory fragment clung, replaying a man's final moments in nauseating clarity. He'd died here. Died badly.
Her stomach churned as she carefully repositioned, trying to avoid the moss.
But it was everywhere, coating trees and stones and ground.
Her hands trembled as she reached for the trowel again, muscles tense with the effort of holding herself away from any surface.
The moss seemed to pulse in her peripheral vision, waiting for her to slip or fall into another person's final agonizing moments.
Each accidental brush brought with it a new horror.
Flesh peeling away in strips while something laughed—
Her whole body convulsed at that one, bile rising in her throat. She could feel it, the sensation of skin separating from muscle, the wet sound it made. Her own skin crawled with phantom sensations.
Buried alive, dirt filling her mouth, her nose—
She couldn't breathe. Even though she was above ground, in the open air, her lungs seized with the memory of suffocation. She forced herself to take deep, shuddering breaths that tasted of earth and decay.
The vines, oh god the vines were inside, growing through—
Briar pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to block out the unwanted memories, but they layered now, each one lasting longer, dragging her deeper into dead minds. Her body shook uncontrollably, cold sweat breaking across her skin despite the garden's warmth.
How many had died here? How many had the moss absorbed?
She crouched frozen, afraid to move, to breathe too deeply. The simple task of weeding had become a minefield of horror.
Her fingers began to cramp from gripping the trowel too tightly and when she forced herself to reach for another weed, her hand shook so badly she could barely grasp the stem. No matter how she tried to avoid it, the moss was everywhere.
There was no safe place to put her hands. No clear ground to kneel on.
A whimper escaped her throat as she tried to find a position that didn't involve contact with the moss.
But every adjustment brought some part of her closer to those memory-soaked surfaces.
The garden had been designed for this, to make avoiding the moss impossible and force whoever was sentenced here to experience death after terrible death.
"Help..."
The whisper made her freeze. It hadn't come from the moss.
"Please... water..."
She turned slowly, tracking the voice to what she'd taken for a twisted tree. But looking closer, she could see the truth. The bark wasn't bark. It was skin, transformed and hardened but still somehow alive. Features pressed against the surface, the suggestion of a face, hands reaching.
"Water... just a drop..."
One of the Rooted, she assumed. Thaine had warned her they used to be people.
"I can't," she whispered.
"Please!" The voice grew stronger, more desperate. "So thirsty... years... decades... please!"
More voices joined the first. All around her, trees she'd thought dead revealed themselves as prisons. Men and women transformed but not killed, all suspended in endless torment.
"Help us!"
"Free us!"
"Water, just water!"
Their pleas hammered at her as she tried to return to weeding. But knowing they were there, knowing they watched, made every movement feel traitorous. She was free to move while they remained trapped. Free to leave come dawn while they stayed forever.
"Selfish thing," one voice turned bitter. "Look at her, whole and healthy."
"She ignores us. Let us suffer."
"Just like the others. Just like all of them."