Chapter 9
Elodie
By the time I reach the glasshouse the next morning, mist still blankets the glass domes, and the doors are unlocked, just as I expect them to be.
The space is still a little worse for wear, but it’s certainly an improvement from what it was yesterday.
The air is still damp, condensation coating the glass walls.
There is less of a rotting smell, more damp earth now. I don’t know how long I’ll be here.
That thought still surfaces.
Sharp and unwelcome, but it doesn’t cause the same level of panic as it did before. I have a way home now.
I just need to focus and get through this.
If I were back home now, I’d likely have just grabbed my morning coffee from the same place I went to every morning. God, what I’d give to have a flask of coffee here right now.
Do they have coffee here?
Shaking my head, I try to focus on what I need to do. If I let the panic crush me, I won’t make it through.
Rolling up my sleeves, I tie back my hair into a loose bun.
I’ve swept the broken pots and dead leaves away so I can clearly see the floor now, brick intertwined with stone.
I sweep my hand across the freshly cleaned worktable, taking a deep breath.
The little mushroom greets me again, this time on the workbench as it nibbles on a pile of dead leaves I left on the top.
I smile over at it, laughing at the way its little body sits on the wooden worktop.
“You don’t happen to know exactly how to grow this special plant, do you?” I ask. Of course, no response, only a few blinks with its eyes before returning to its breakfast. I shake my head.
“Worth a try.”
Paper rustles beneath my hands as I sort through the scattered notebooks and loose sheets, but my thoughts drift elsewhere.
To last night. To the chessboard between us.
A quiet breath escapes me. The way he sat opposite, steady and unreadable.
His eyes tracking the board, then lifting, briefly, deliberately, to my hands whenever I made a move.
He never hurried. Never hesitated. After the first loss, he didn’t dismiss me. He simply adjusted and played harder.
Focus, Elodie.
The notes are all stacked neatly now. Attempting to sort them into some kind of order, I’ve used handwriting to pair pages together. I read over the notes, seeing one word appear again and again.
Widowsbloom.
I frown, pulling one page closer. The writing appears in a dozen different hands. Some underlined it, others circled. Sketches accompany it.
The flower is beautiful.
A tall, slender stem paired with leaves set opposite each other, the flower resembles a milkweed. Clusters of blooms rather than a single flower, but the colour is stunning: a pale, almost washed-out purple inked darker in the bloom's heart, a violet mixed with lavender. It should be familiar.
It almost is.
But something is off.
The leaves feel unnatural, the petals curving inwards rather than outward towards the light.
If they were doing so many tests, growing this Widowsbloom repeatedly, they must have had a supply of seeds.
And I doubt they’d keep it out in the open, especially not out here where there were rotting plants.
I glance back over my shoulder, spotting Thomas sitting on the bench outside the glasshouse.
He isn’t looking at me, watching the surroundings instead.
Edging out the back door, I make my way to the knight.
“Morning, Thomas.”
“Morning, Miss,” I roll my eyes at his formality before taking a seat next to him.
The bench is large.
You could easily get another person between us, but he shuffles slightly anyway.
“Do you know where they archived the cultivation materials?” He looks at me as if I had just spoke another language.
“Seeds… where did they keep their seeds?” I ask.
“I’m not sure, miss. Sorry,” I blow out a breath at his response, staring at the forest ahead.
“But,” he says. “There’s a cold store beneath the glasshouse. It hasn’t been opened in years. You could try there?”
“That sounds promising. Would you be able to show me where, please?”
“Sure.” He stands, walking back round the glasshouse, and I follow him through to the far side.
There is a section of floor where the stone appears discoloured, a seam cut into it, almost invisible if you weren’t looking for it.
He bends and lifts the stone, revealing a wooden staircase leading into darkness.
He gestures for me to enter, tilting his head towards the hole in the floor.
The room turns a warm orange as I descend.
I’m not entirely sure how, but I’m just glad it’s not pitch black.
Sure enough, there are rows upon rows of seeds in small paper bags, each meticulously labelled.
Wooden shelves line the walls from floor to ceiling, each stacked with jars, cloth, and shallow trays.
Some jars are filled with seeds, a wax cover over the top.
Others are in glass vials stoppered tight with cork and twine.
There is no clutter like there was upstairs.
In fact, the place is pristine. Perfectly organised.
I scan the area labelled ‘flowers’ until I find it.
Widowsbloom seeds.
They sit in a glass jar, pale as bone. For a moment, I just stare at them. They look ordinary. Too small to be something an entire kingdom relies on. I reach for the jar, it’s lighter than I thought it would be. My stomach tightens. I tilt it gently, the seeds sliding against the glass.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
That’s it.
And then I realise what the catch is. And why this kingdom seems to have lost all hope.
There are only four seeds left.
Four chances of survival.
“Where’s the High Warden?” I ask, my voice coming off a little shorter than I planned. Thomas looks down at me as I climb back up the staircase, closing the door with a slam.
“Is everything okay, Miss?” Thomas asks me, his eyes wide.
“This flower that’s so important to your people, is it called Widowsbloom?” I ask, my hands shaking at my sides.
“That’s the one, miss. The one the butterflies need.” I furrow my brow, pushing all the butterfly nonsense to the back of my mind.
“There are four seeds left, Thomas. Four.”
Thomas looks at me, confused.
“Where is he?” I ask again, more firmly this time, but before he can answer, his eyes flick behind me. I hear the clanking of metal armour before his footsteps come to a stop right behind me.
“Is everything okay?” Rowan’s voice cuts through the space, bouncing off the glass walls. I spin on my heel, finding myself eye-level with his chest plate. Pausing for a second before craning my neck up, I meet his brooding eyes. I take a deep breath, willing myself to speak.
“No, everything is not okay, Warden.” He flicks a deathly glance at Thomas, who turns a bright red shade before heading out of the glasshouse.
“What happened?” he asks, his voice akin to a growl.
“There are four seeds. Four.”
“And?”
“Rowan. Where are the other scholars? What happened to them?” I don’t know why I didn’t think to ask earlier, when it looked like someone abandoned the place mid-action.
I know what it means to be a lover of plants, to care for them.
No one just leaves their glasshouse to die, especially not if it’s their job.
Something happened here.
“The king executed them,” he states, holding my stare.
“They were what?”
“They failed too many times, warned the King they couldn’t continue without risking using the last of the seeds that were left. They said once the seeds were gone, there was no going back. So he ordered them to be killed the same day. His anger took over. There was nothing we could do.”
“Do you not think it would have been fair for me to know this before I entered this… this deal?” I exclaim, waving my hands around.
“The deal would have been made whether you wanted it or not, Elodie,” he says with brutal honesty.
“Then I am no better than a prisoner. "
He doesn’t respond, only confirming my admission.
I shake my head, panic rising, as I pace back and forth.
I have four attempts. Only four chances to get this right.
I sink to the floor beside a chunk of stone, burying my head in my hands.
I feel tears fill my eyes. The silence in the glasshouse is heavy and unforgiving.
The only sound coming from my shallow breathing. When he finally steps closer to me, it’s slow and measured. As if any sudden movement might shatter me whilst I’m already cracked. I lift my head to him, blinking through the tears.
“You have four seeds,” he says firmly. “But that doesn’t mean it has to be four attempts. "
“What do you mean, of course—”
“They failed because they rushed. In a time when the kingdom was at its most unstable. Full of fear and adrenaline, they panicked.”
I laugh weakly. “And you think I’m not panicking?”
“I think,” he says, cutting in, “that you’re sitting on this stone floor in defeat of something you haven’t even started.” Stiffening at his words. “You’re afraid,” he says. “That means you understand the cost. No one else has a chance of doing this, Elodie.”
“But what if I can’t do this? What if I fail?”
“Failure after effort is merely a bruise, but failure from fear is a lifelong scar.”
I hold his stare, letting his words settle somewhere beneath my ribs.
What do I have left to lose?
Home is a memory.
My life exists in fragments now, ivy-covered stone, mist-coated skies and men in steel armour.
Everything familiar is already gone. Stopping now would be easier and safer.
But I didn’t survive being uprooted here just to wilt at the first sign of resistance.
Failure here isn’t embarrassment. It’s final.
The risk is obvious. This land is dying.
And then I fall through a wall of ivy with a degree in plant science.
The timing is absurd.
Impossible.
Or deliberate.
It can’t be a coincidence.
Can it?
“I just don’t think I am the answer the King thinks I will be.”
“Good,” he says. My eyes blink as I narrow them at him. “Be the answer you want to be for yourself.”
“But Rowan, if I fail, the king will…”
“It will not be your blood on this floor.”
What does he mean by that?
The words settle in me, terrifying and steadying all at once. I have no choice but to try.
Succeed or fail, I have four chances.
Four.
I spent the rest of my day looking through the scholars’ notes.
I wanted to know what they had ruled as completely useless and if there was anything that they were hopeful about.
They had tried almost every variable: light manipulation, water saturation, wind, temperature control — everything I would have reached for instinctively.
But they altered and adjusted every attempt.
There was no baseline, no record of what the seed did when left alone.
So I concluded that I’d risk the first seed not as a solution but as a control.
Normal soil, normal moisture, no forced cycles, no intervention beyond what would happen naturally in the wild.
And that is all I could bring myself to do, for now.
It was a start, at least. I locate a clean seed tray and prepare the bed as I would normally do.
The soil here is richer than what I’m used to. Darker and thicker, so I need to assess how it handles water throughout the day. That’s what my control is for.
The seed rests in my palm.
I stare down at it longer than I need to before I place it into the soil, covering it over with a dusting of dirt and place a cover over the top.
I don’t know if it needs dark or light to germinate, but if I’m going off the knowledge I have from home.
Most seeds prefer the dark for germination, so I’m going with my gut.
The little Rustcap has made its way over to the patch of soil I’m working on, watching me carefully.
It never seems to come too close, but is always nearby.
“You look after this seed, okay?” I say to it before I hear footsteps behind me, followed by a soft call from Thomas telling me it’s time to leave.
I follow him back into the darkness of the garden, my eyes helplessly searching for Rowan.
Three more seeds remain.
The thought rests heavily on my shoulders, the number repeating itself like a curse.
Three seeds.
Three chances.
Three. Three. Three.
When sleep finally calls to me, I don’t dream of the glasshouse. I don’t even dream of back home. I dream of the way Rowan said my name, as if it meant something. Like I was someone worth betting on.