Chapter 11
eleven
. . .
Solenne
Tansy sleeps curled on her side in the center of my bed, one arm tangled in the trailing vines that drape down from the carved headboard.
Her fingers rest loosely around a single heartbloom, still pulsing with faint light.
The petals shift gently with each breath she takes, as though exhaling in tandem.
I watch her from the edge of the mattress, knees drawn to my chest, hands clasped too tightly in my lap.
She looks soft here. Peaceful. A little smudged with garden dirt still, and there’s a curl of hair stuck to her cheek. But she is luminous in a way I don’t have words for.
It terrifies me.
The grove has not spoken tonight.
The forest has gone quiet. That silence carries meaning.
I know what the pact demands when heartblooms take root.
And still, I can’t look away from the freckle just above her lip. Or the faint trail of dried flower dust down her neck. Or the way her mouth curves, not quite smiling, not quite frowning, as though even in sleep, her heart is in motion.
I rise.
My bare feet touch the wooden floor, and the cottage hums a little in response.
It’s still adjusting to her presence. Rooms that haven’t changed in decades now creak and stretch like waking limbs.
Cabinets shifting their contents. Shelves offering up long dormant tea blends.
A kettle that now sings when she laughs too close.
I step outside.
The air is cool, not cold. Crickets murmur in the underbrush, their rhythm like a memory. I walk past the garden gate, past the weeping fig that’s grown two new limbs overnight. My hands brush over lavender and night-blooming jasmine as I go. I don’t need light to guide me. The grove is part of me.
And yet, tonight, something is off.
There.
A glint. Not moonlight.
Something silvery, pulsing faintly, just beyond the tree line. I duck low, easing into the shadows. I’ve seen this kind of magic before.
A gloved hand, silver threaded, bearing a family seal I recognize from stories, reaches past the veil. Just a fingertip. A testing touch.
Then it withdraws.
The air shivers in its wake.
They’re coming.
Tansy’s family. They’ve followed her scent. Her spell. A sliver of her wildness, left unbound.
I press my palm to the trunk of the oldest tree at the boundary. It’s quiet. Not asleep, but withholding.
You let her in, the wind seems to murmur. You let her bloom.
I don’t deny it.
I step back toward the cottage, heart pounding in rhythms I haven’t felt in years. At the window, the heartbloom still glows where Tansy left it, nestled in a chipped clay bowl on the sill. It pulses faintly in the dark.
Inside, she stirs in her sleep, turning toward the warmth of the vine-laced quilts. I pause at the doorway.
If I were wise, I’d send her away.
If I were obedient, I’d begin the rooting. Return to the soil. Make my offering. Mend the pact.
But she called something awake in me that I thought long dead.
Her laughter. Her spellwork. Her grief. Her stubbornness.
The way she looks at the world like it still owes her wonder, and she’s going to find it even if she has to charm every kettle in the forest to sing about it.
She’s messy. And wild. And too much.
And maybe, maybe, I am, too.
The land knows. The bloom has spoken.
I don’t know what will happen when the hedge witches cross into this grove. When the rules are shattered completely. When the pact breaks under the weight of what we’ve done.
But for now, I walk back inside.
I climb into bed beside her.
And I let the heartbloom glow.
Tansy mumbles something in her sleep, reaching out instinctively. Her hand finds mine.
I don’t pull away.
I hold on.
And the vines above us sway, just slightly, in the dark. A promise. Or a warning.
Tomorrow, the garden will answer.
But tonight … I choose to bloom.