Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
ZRYNOK
Idon’t sleep.
The Bloom won’t let me. Even stabilized, even quieted by the treatment, the infection keeps me hovering at the edge of awareness. Every sensation registers—the stone beneath me, the air moving through the ventilation shaft, the sound of two women breathing in the darkness.
The sound of her breathing.
I let myself experience it. The craving. The pull toward her that the Bloom magnifies but didn’t create. I hold it in my chest rather than shoving it down.
She said the feeling is mine, and what I do with it is what matters.
I choose to stay. To be near her without touching. To want her without taking. To experience without surrendering.
Tomorrow we plan. The monastery’s destruction. The Abbot’s death. The rescue of everyone who can be rescued and the mercy-killing of everyone who can’t.
But tonight, in this small chamber beneath the monastery’s stone, I make a different kind of choice.
I choose to believe that wanting doesn’t have to destroy. That desire can be held rather than suppressed. That this woman—this survivor who taught me something about myself I didn’t know I needed to learn—might be worth protecting as much as the mission itself.
Somewhere above us, the Abbot observes through whatever dark means the Bloom provides. Seeing the executioner and the escapee drawing near. Cataloguing the want that he plans to weaponize.
Let him observe.
Let him think he understands what he’s seeing.
He’s used to people who break under desire. Used to victims who let the craving consume them. He doesn’t understand that the wanting between Arwen and me isn’t a weakness to exploit.
It’s fuel.
And when we come for him—when we burn his monastery and destroy his Garden and end his centuries of horror—he’s going to learn what happens when desire is channeled instead of controlled.
The candle gutters out. Darkness fills the chamber.
In the dark, I sense Arwen’s breathing grow steady. Sense the warmth of her presence at my side. Sense the Bloom pulse in my blood, hungry and patient and finally, finally manageable.