Chapter 19 Chloe
CHLOE
The rosemary was dying.
Chloe knelt in Freya's back garden, her basket half-full of salvageable herbs, and stared at the browning needles on what had been a thriving plant just last week. The spread was accelerating. Whatever was poisoning the land wasn't content to creep anymore. It was running.
She reached for the next plant, a cluster of thyme that still looked healthy, and began cutting stems with careful precision.
The morning was cold but clear, the kind of February day that hinted at spring without delivering it.
Her breath fogged in the air as she worked, her gloves stiff with frost.
She hadn’t even stuck her hands in the dirt to feel that the soil felt wrong.
She'd noticed it the moment she'd started working, that familiar sourness seeping up through the frozen ground, but not the same as the disease that was spreading through the plants.
This was something else. But she'd pushed through it, telling herself she was being paranoid, that the unease was just residual from the other night.
She was halfway through the thyme when the dizziness hit.
One moment she was cutting a stem, the next the world tilted sideways and her vision blurred at the edges. Her hands went numb. The shears slipped from her fingers and landed somewhere she couldn't see.
"Chloe?"
Freya's voice came from far away. Or maybe close. She couldn't tell anymore.
The soil was pulling at her. That was the only way to describe it. Like something beneath the surface had wrapped invisible fingers around her bones and was dragging her down, down, down into the cold dark earth.
She tried to stand. Her legs wouldn't cooperate.
"Chloe!"
Hands caught her shoulders just before she fell forward. The world spun, colors bleeding into each other, and then she was on her back, staring up at the gray February sky.
Freya's face appeared above her, copper hair haloed by clouds. Her green eyes were wide with alarm.
"Stay still. Don't try to move."
"I'm fine." The words came out slurred, unconvincing.
"You're not fine. You just collapsed." Freya's hands were on her face, her wrist, checking her pulse. "Your skin is ice cold. What happened?"
Chloe tried to gather her thoughts. They kept scattering, slipping away like water through fingers. "The soil. I felt... it was pulling."
"Pulling how?"
"I don't know. Like it wanted something from me." She closed her eyes against another wave of dizziness. "Like it was trying to take something."
Freya swore softly. "Can you sit up?"
"Maybe."
With Freya's help, she managed to get upright. The world swayed but didn't spin. Progress. She sat there on the cold ground, her back against Freya's raised bed, and tried to remember how to breathe normally.
"This isn't coincidence," Freya said quietly. "The land sickness, the way it's spreading, and now this. Something is targeting you specifically. We need to tell someone. The Council, or..."
The crunch of boots on gravel made them both look up.
Corin stood at the corner of the building, a crate of honey jars balanced against his hip. His eyes swept the scene, taking in Chloe on the ground, Freya crouched beside her, the scattered herbs and fallen shears.
The crate hit the ground with a thud.
"What happened?" He was already moving toward them, his long strides eating up the distance. "Chloe. Are you hurt?"
"I'm okay." She tried to stand and immediately regretted it. The dizziness surged back, and she would have fallen if Corin hadn't been there suddenly, his hand closing around her arm, steadying her.
"She collapsed while harvesting," Freya said. "Just dropped. I barely caught her in time."
Corin's jaw tightened. He guided Chloe to sit on the low stone wall that bordered the garden, his hand warm and solid against her back. He didn't let go.
"What happened?" His voice was controlled but something simmered beneath the surface.
Chloe took a breath, trying to order her thoughts. "I was cutting herbs. The soil felt wrong, but it's felt wrong for weeks, so I didn't think much of it. And then..." She shook her head. "It was like something grabbed me. Something in the ground. It wanted to pull me down."
"Pull you down how?"
"I don't know how to explain it." She looked at her hands, still trembling slightly. "It felt like it was trying to drain me. Like it recognized something and wanted to take it."
Freya and Corin exchanged a look.
"This is connected to the well," Freya said. "It has to be.”
“How do you know about that?” Corin asked, causing Chloe to wince.
“I… I told her. I knew it couldn’t be Freya and I just needed other insight.”
Corin gave her a look, but it changed to soft once he seemed to realize the weight of it all.
Freya continued. “Whatever's leaking from that seal isn't just poisoning plants anymore. It's reaching for her."
"Because of my druid blood," Chloe finished. "Because I can sense it."
"Or because whoever did this wants to use you somehow." Freya's voice was grim. "Land magic is old magic. If someone broke that seal deliberately, they might need a conduit. Someone connected to the earth in ways most people aren't."
The words settled over Chloe like a shroud. A conduit. Someone was trying to use her as a conduit for whatever they'd released from that well.
"I need to stop touching the soil," she said.
"For now, yes." Freya stood, brushing dirt from her legs. "And we need to figure out who's doing this before they try again."
Corin hadn't spoken. Chloe looked up at him, and what she saw in his face made her skin prickle.
He was furious.
Not the loud, explosive kind of anger. This was something colder. Quieter. His hazelnut eyes had gone hard, his jaw set like stone. The hand that had been resting on her back was curled into a fist at his side.
"Corin?"
"I need to go." His voice was flat. Controlled in a way that suggested the control was costing him. "There's something I have to take care of."
"What kind of something?"
He didn't answer. Just looked at her for a long moment, something fierce burning behind his eyes, before turning and walking away.
Chloe watched him go, her heart pounding. "Freya. What is he going to do?"
Freya's expression was unreadable. "I don't know. But I don't think I'd want to be whoever did this when he finds them."
"He can't just... he'll get himself hurt. Or make things worse."
"Maybe." Freya helped her to her feet, keeping a steadying hand on her elbow. "But Corin Vane has been quiet and patient his whole life. When a bear like that finally loses his temper, there's not much anyone can do to stop him."
"He's not losing his temper. He's..."
"Protecting you." Freya's voice softened. "The way he looked at you just now, Chloe. That wasn't just concern. That was something else entirely."
Chloe didn't have a response. Her head was still swimming, her body weak from whatever the soil had tried to do to her. But beneath the exhaustion and the fear, something else was stirring.
Corin had stared at her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered. And then he'd walked away to do something about whoever had hurt her.
"Come inside," Freya said gently. "I'll make tea. You need to rest."
Chloe let herself be led into the apothecary, but her mind stayed outside with the dying plants and the poisoned soil and the man who'd left without explaining where he was going.
She thought about Paul Whitmore and his reasonable concerns. About the whispers that followed her everywhere. About the intent she'd felt in the earth, the deliberate malice woven into the ground like thread through fabric.
Someone had done this on purpose. Someone had broken the well seal and let old magic bleed into the land and now they were using her. Trying to drain her and make her into something she didn't want to be.
And Corin was going to find them.
Part of her wanted to call him back. To tell him to be careful, to not do anything reckless, to let the Council handle it. But a darker part, a part she didn't want to examine too closely, was glad.
Glad that someone cared enough to be angry on her behalf. Glad that she wasn't facing this alone.
She sank onto the stool in Freya's workroom and wrapped her hands around the warm mug that appeared in front of her. The tea smelled like chamomile and honey. Corin's honey, probably. Everything in this town seemed to connect back to him somehow.
"Drink," Freya said. "I'll check on you in a few minutes."
Chloe drank. The warmth spread through her chest, pushing back the cold that had settled there since her collapse.
Somewhere out there, Corin was hunting, hunting for her sake. And that, along with the tea, made her insides begin to warm.