Chapter 2
TWO
ARWEN
We find shelter in the hollow of a massive oak—one of the ancient trees that predates the monastery, its trunk split by lightning generations ago. The interior is dry, sheltered from the worst of the spores, wide enough that I can keep distance between us.
I talk. Hours of it. Every patrol pattern I memorized, every weakness in the Keepers’ rotations.
The Bloom Garden’s dangers—the concentration of spores, the transformed humans who serve as living traps, the way breathing too deeply there can break a person’s will in minutes.
The chapel’s ritual schedule. The Abbot’s private sanctum.
He listens without interrupting. Occasionally asks a clarifying question—terse, pointed, gathering exactly the information he needs. His focus is absolute. Unnerving. I’m not used to being listened to, not used to my words mattering to anyone.
The orc—I still don’t know his name, haven’t asked, don’t want to create that familiarity—builds a mental map I can almost see taking shape behind his assessing gaze. He adjusts plans I’m not privy to, discards approaches, selects new angles of attack.
Methodical. Detached. The way an executioner should be.
Dawn approaches. The darkness outside softens from black to gray, and exhaustion drags at my bones. My voice has gone hoarse, my throat raw from talking more in one night than I have in months.
A shiver runs through me. Then another. The cold is cutting through my torn clothing now that the adrenaline has faded, and my body—still thrumming with the Bloom’s residual influence—translates every sensation into something too intense.
I clench my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. Weakness. Any sign of weakness invites exploitation. I learned that lesson in the first week of captivity and never forgot it.
Movement in my peripheral vision. The orc shrugs off his outer layer—a heavy cloak, travel-worn but warm—and drapes it over my shoulders before I can react.
I freeze.
The fabric settles around me, carrying his heat, his scent—something earthy beneath the iron tang of old blood. My skin ignites where the material touches my wounds, the Bloom-enhanced sensitivity turning simple contact into something I have to breathe through.
Don’t flinch. Don’t pull away. Don’t show him that his touch—even this indirect—makes you want to crawl out of your skin.
“You didn’t have to do that.” The words catch in my throat.
“You’re shivering. Dead guides don’t provide intelligence.”
Automatic deflection. Practical reasoning. I’ve used the same tactic a thousand times to explain away any moment of softness.
I see through it anyway.
He’s not looking at me now. His attention has fixed on some point outside the hollow, watching for threats, maintaining vigilance. Giving me space to recover from the contact without an audience.
It’s a kindness. Small. Unspoken. The Abbot would have found ways to use it against me, to twist it into obligation and debt.
But the orc isn’t asking for anything in return. Isn’t even acknowledging that he’s done anything worth noting.
Something shifts inside me. Something that’s been frozen for years, fracturing just slightly around the edges.
I pull the cloak tighter around my shoulders and don’t say thank you. Neither of us needs words for things that are obvious.
The dawn light strengthens. His profile is sharper now—the hard line of his jaw, the careful set of his shoulders, the filed tusks that would mark him as practical rather than vain to anyone who knew orcs.
The scars on his exposed arms tell stories of a hundred fights survived, a hundred enemies who didn’t.
He’s not handsome. Not by any conventional measure. But there’s something compelling about him anyway—the absolute certainty of what he is, the lack of pretense or manipulation. He kills people for a living and doesn’t pretend otherwise.
After years of men who hid their violence behind gentle smiles and spiritual platitudes, his honesty is almost refreshing.
Almost.
I pull my attention back to what matters. “The Abbot will know I’ve escaped by now. He’ll mobilize hunting parties at first light. Standard protocol is to sweep the forest edge, push escapees deeper into the Thornwood where the spore concentration is—”
A scream cuts through the dawn.
Human. Female. Coming from the monastery’s direction, carrying on the still morning air with terrible clarity.
Every muscle in my body locks tight.
“That’s Circe.” The name rips out of me. “New initiate. Seventeen. They must be punishing someone for my escape.”
Another scream. Longer. More desperate. The sound of someone begging for mercy from people who don’t understand the word.
I’m on my feet before I finish thinking, the cloak falling from my shoulders as I move toward the hollow’s opening. The direction is clear—back toward the monastery, back toward everything I’ve spent years trying to escape.
Back toward a girl who’s suffering because I ran.
“We can’t help her.” The orc’s voice is flat. Practical. “We’re not ready—”
“Then get ready faster.”
I turn to face him. Hold his gaze with everything I have—the fury, the guilt, the desperate need to make this mean something.
“You’re an executioner. Execute.” My voice doesn’t shake. I won’t let it. “Or are you only useful against people who can’t fight back?”
The words land. I see them hit—the flash of something in his damaged eye, the slight tension in his jaw. Not anger, exactly. Something else. Something I don’t have time to analyze.
Circe screams again. The sound breaks off abruptly, which is worse.
The orc is on his feet. His hand finds his sword hilt in a motion so smooth it looks choreographed.
“Show me the fastest route.”
We move through the Thornwood faster than should be possible.
The orc navigates the undergrowth with a fluidity that defies his bulk—every movement economical, precise, like water finding its path downhill. I struggle to keep pace, my exhausted legs screaming protest while my lungs burn with spore-thick air.
The wanting surges with every breath. Worse now. The forest is thickest here, the Bloom’s influence concentrated in the shadows between ancient trees. My skin feels too tight, too sensitive, every brush of branch against arm sending signals my body interprets wrong.
Turn back. The whisper is louder now. Surrender. Let him take you. Let someone else make the choices—
No.
I focus on the map in my head. The route through the trees. The monastery walls growing closer with every step. Focus on the mission, on the girl who needs rescue, on anything but the heat building in my blood.
The orc glances back at me. Once. Brief.
“You’re slowing.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re breathing too deep. The spores—”
“I know what the spores do.” Sharper than I intend. “I’ve been managing them since I was fifteen. I can manage for another hour.”
He doesn’t argue. Just adjusts his pace slightly—not slowing, exactly, but making his movements more visible, easier to follow. A concession he won’t name as such.
The monastery’s outer wall comes into view through a gap in the trees. Ancient stone, covered in flowering vines, the red petals vivid even in the weak morning light.
Beautiful, from a distance. The thorns don’t show until you get close.
“There.” I point toward a section of wall where the vines grow thickest. “Kitchen entrance. Servants use it for deliveries. The Keepers don’t bother guarding it—the Bloom is deterrent enough for most people.”
The orc studies the approach. I can almost see him working through it—sight lines, patrol routes, the distance from cover to wall.
“The girl. Where would they take her?”
“The Burning Chapel. Public punishments happen there.” My throat tightens around the words. I know that chapel. Know what happens on that altar. “It’s central. Visible from most of the compound. The Abbot likes an audience for his lessons.”
“Can you get us there?”
“I can get us anywhere.” I meet his gaze. Hold it. “That’s what those years bought me. A map of every passage, every blind spot, every crack in their defenses. I didn’t escape because I was lucky. I escaped because I was patient.”
His expression changes. Not surprise—he doesn’t seem like someone who does surprise—but a recalibration. Looking at me differently. Seeing something he hadn’t before.
“Zrynok.”
I blink. “What?”
“My name.” He says it like an afterthought. Like names are things he doesn’t usually bother with. “If we’re doing this, you should know it.”
Zrynok. The name fits him—hard consonants, nothing soft or yielding. A name for someone who cuts things that need cutting and doesn’t apologize for the blood.
“Arwen.” I give him mine in return. Fair exchange.
His mouth twitches. Not quite a smile—I don’t think he does smiles—but an acknowledgment.
“Arwen.” He tests it, says it once, then nods. “Let’s go save your initiate.”
He moves toward the wall without waiting for acknowledgment. I follow, my heart hammering against my ribs, the Bloom’s whispers screaming in the back of my skull.
But beneath the fear, beneath the wanting, beneath years of conditioning that tells me this is suicide—
Something else. Something I haven’t felt since before the cult took me.
Hope.
Faint. Fragile. Probably stupid. But there—burning in my chest alongside the fury, feeding it, making it sharper.
The executioner doesn’t look back. Doesn’t check if I’m following.
He knows I am.
The horn sounds when we’re twenty feet from the wall.
Deep. Resonant. A warning call that echoes through the Thornwood and sends birds screaming from the canopy.
“That horn means they’re mobilizing everyone,” I murmur. “Keepers, initiates, the whole compound.”
Zrynok pauses. Listens. The horn fades, but I can hear what follows—shouts from inside the walls, the clatter of boots on stone, the organized chaos of a hunt beginning.
“Changes the approach.” His hand finds his sword hilt. Grip tightening, relaxing, tightening again. “Can’t slip in quiet now.”
“No. But there’s another way.” I press against the wall, feeling the Bloom-vine thorns dig into my back through what remains of my clothing. “They’ll be focused on the forest. Looking outward. If we’re already inside—”
“They won’t expect the attack to come from within.”
I nod. My heart pounds. The kitchen entrance is right there—hidden behind a curtain of flowering vines, the stone worn smooth by generations of servants’ feet. I’ve been through it a hundred times. Carried supplies. Cleaned dishes. Played obedient while I memorized every shadow.
Going back in feels like dying. Feels like everything I’ve fought for, wasted.
But Circe is inside. Suffering. Because of me.
“The entrance is here.” I push aside the vines, ignoring the thorns that catch my palms, and reveal the narrow doorway beneath. “Once we’re through, follow my lead. The servants’ passages run through most of the compound—we can get close to the chapel without being seen.”
Zrynok studies the entrance. Studies me. His damaged eye catches light strangely, making it impossible to tell what he’s thinking.
“You’re certain? Once we’re in—”
“I’ve never been certain of anything.” I hold his gaze. Force myself not to look away. “But I’m not leaving her there. If you won’t come, I’ll go alone.”
Another horn sounds. Closer this time. The hunt parties are forming, ready to sweep the forest.
Zrynok doesn’t argue. Doesn’t waste time with the hundred objections I can see forming behind his eyes.
He just draws his blade and nods.
“Lead the way.”
I slip through the doorway, back into the place that tried to break me, with an executioner at my back and murder in my heart.
The monastery smells the same. Incense and flowers and something sweeter underneath—the Bloom’s spores, saturating the air, coating my lungs with every breath.
For one terrible moment, I’m fifteen again. Dragged through these halls in chains, screaming for my brother, my parents’ blood still drying on my skin.
Then Zrynok’s presence fills the space behind me—solid, certain, radiating threat—and I remember who I am now.
Not a victim. Not anymore.
I came back to watch this place burn.
And nothing—not the Bloom, not the Abbot, not years of conditioning—is going to stop me.