Chapter 025 Sixteen Failures
I came to slowly, like swimming up through cold syrup. My mouth tasted of ash and old pennies. The first thing I registered was the weight on my wrists-something alive and freezing that bit deeper every time I flexed. Chains, but wrong. They pulsed faintly, like roots drinking from my veins.
I opened my eyes to a ceiling painted with vines and stars that looked too perfect, like someone had copied a dream and missed the flaws. The bed under me was soft enough to drown in. Silk sheets, gold embroidery, the whole luxury-prison package. The air smelled of crushed petals and something metallic underneath, like blood left too long in a vase.
"Fuck," I muttered, yanking against the restraints. The chains answered with a soft chime and a burn that spread frost up my arms. My markings-those green-gold lines that had been crawling higher every day-shrank back like scolded cats. The bond with Thalren, which had been a low constant hum even when he was far away, went almost silent. Just a thread. A ghost.
Great. Root-forged cuffs. Because regular handcuffs weren't dramatic enough.
I sat up. The chains gave me just enough slack to move, not enough to feel human. A wide window showed the gardens outside cycling through bloom and rot in fast-forward-flowers opening, blackening, crumbling to sludge in minutes. The sky above was the color of a healing bruise.
A door opened without a knock. A girl slipped in, maybe twenty, carrying a pile of fabric. Her left cheek was swollen purple, fresh. She kept her eyes on the floor.
"Dinner," she whispered. "He's waiting."
"Lucky me." My voice cracked. I hadn't spoken aloud since the throne room.
She approached like I was a skittish horse. Up close I saw finger-shaped bruises on her arms. Someone had punished her for my mouth yesterday, probably. Guilt twisted in my gut, sharp and useless.
She helped me out of the ruined clothes I'd been wearing since the Hunt grabbed me. The new gown was green silk shot through with gold, heavy as guilt. It fit perfectly, which was somehow worse than if it hadn't. While she fastened the tiny buttons at my back, her hands shook.
"You don't have to do this," I said quietly.
She didn't answer. Just finished the last button and stepped away as the door opened again.
The Bloomguard who ducked through the doorway was built like a refrigerator with opinions. Diseased vines curled over his shaved scalp and down his neck, pulsing black. He grabbed my upper arm hard enough to promise bruises.
"Move."
I opened my mouth-because of course I did-and he backhanded me. Casual, almost bored. My ears rang. Copper flooded my tongue.
The girl made a small hurt sound.
I tasted blood and walked.
The corridors were wide and bright, mirrors everywhere so I had to watch myself being dragged in chains from every angle. A whole parade of guards escorted me-six, maybe seven. Mixed genders, same dead eyes. They didn't bother hiding their conversation.
"After the ritual, the garrison gets whatever's left, right?"
"Prince said so. Said there'll be plenty to go around."
"Hope she still screams by then."
One of the women laughed. "They always do at first."
I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The chains dragged across marble with a sound like distant wind chimes. The locket burned against my chest, steady and furious.
They shoved me into a small dining hall lit by floating orbs that gave off no heat. A table set for two. Crystal, silver, the works. Luminae was already seated, wearing robes that shifted between violet and oil-slick black. The corruption cracks on his chest peeked above the collar like frost on glass.
He rose when I entered. Polite. Always so fucking polite.
"Aria." He pulled out my chair. "Please."
I stayed standing. "Fuck you," I said pleasantly.
His smile didn't waver. "Sit. Or I'll have them make you."
The guards were still behind me. I sat.
Servants brought food I didn't touch. Luminae ate like this was normal-fork and knife precise, conversation light. He asked about the fit of the gown. I told him where he could shove it.
Eventually he sighed and waved a hand. A mirror shimmered into existence above the table. In it: Thalren.
He was in some rebel training yard I didn't recognize, tearing through practice dummies with his bare hands. Every blow left rot spreading-wood blackening, metal pitting, grass dying in perfect circles around his boots. Black veins crawled past his jaw now, threading up toward his eyes. His expression was empty. Focused. Terrifying.
"Entire groves withered to ash just from his presence," Luminae said softly. "He's burning himself out to reach you faster. Without the ritual, both of you will be dead long before Convergence."
I couldn't look away from the mirror. Thalren's mouth moved-no sound, but I knew the shape of my name on his lips.
Luminae dismissed the image with a flick. The mirror vanished.
"Let's speak plainly," he said. "You deserve the truth."
He told me.
Sixteen times this had happened before. Sixteen times I had lived some version of this life, fallen in love with some version of Thalren, watched the realm rot, and failed to stop it. Sixteen times the cycle reset, wiping conscious memory from everyone except him.
Because he remembered. Every single one.
"It was you, Aria," he said, voice almost gentle. "The first time. You were the human who fell through the rift. You reached for both powers-Root and Bloom-and the strain split them. Split the realm. Started the rot."
I laughed. It came out cracked. "So I'm patient zero. Fantastic."
He didn't smile. "I've watched you die sixteen different ways. Watched Kael die beside you. Watched everything I love turn to sludge." His fingers tightened around his wineglass. "I'm tired of being gentle."
The binding ritual, he explained, had never been tried. Merge Root and Bloom inside one vessel-me-force them to reconcile. Simple. Brutal. Permanent.
"And Thalren?" My voice sounded small.
"I'm going to let him reach you," Luminae said. "Right at the climax of the ritual, when you're most open. He'll either merge with you and stabilize the union... or the corruption will consume him completely and drag you down with it. Either way, the cycle ends."
He leaned forward. "I'm done losing."
The food sat untouched. My stomach was a stone.
He stood. "Eight days. Think about it."
The guards took me back.
Same corridors. Same taunts, louder now that Luminae wasn't watching. Someone grabbed my ass through the silk. I didn't react. Couldn't. My head was too full of sixteen ghosts.
They threw me into the room. The door sealed.
I stumbled to the window. Outside, a tree dissolved into black snow while I watched. The locket throbbed against my sternum, hot enough to brand.
I pressed my forehead to the cold glass. Reached for the bond again. The restraints still muffled it, but something flickered back-distant, pained, furious. A single clear pulse.
Alive.
I wrapped my chained hands around the locket until the metal burned my palms.
Sixteen times we'd failed.
Sixteen times we'd lost.
I closed my eyes. Felt the faint echo of Thalren's rage and fear braided together like barbed wire.
"Hold on," I whispered to the dying gardens, to the empty room, to whatever version of me had fucked this up the first time.
"This time has to be different."