Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
ZRYNOK
She crosses the last of the space between us.
Slowly. Deliberately. Giving me time to pull away, to retreat, to maintain whatever professional distance we’ve been pretending exists. Her footsteps are silent on the stone floor. Her breathing is controlled. Her hands are steady now, the trembling gone.
She stops close enough to touch. Doesn’t touch. Just stands there, looking up at me with those eyes that have seen too much and somehow still hold fire beneath the ash.
“The Bloom affects me less because I’ve been exposed for years.
” Her voice drops. Intimate. The kind of quiet meant only for one person to hear.
“But less isn’t nothing. Every time you look at me, I feel it.
Every time we’re in the same room. Every time you touch me—even accidentally, even briefly—my body responds in ways I can’t control. ”
My hands curl at my sides. Fighting the urge to reach for her. Fighting the Bloom and myself and decades of isolation that never prepared me for wanting someone this much.
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to be honest.” She raises her hand. Slowly. Telegraphing the movement. Giving me time to refuse.
I don’t refuse.
Her palm presses flat against my chest. Right over my heart, where the organ pounds with a rhythm I can’t steady. The touch lands in my blood with the force of a blow—the Bloom magnifying every point of contact, making her hand feel branded against my skin even through the fabric of my tunic.
“Feel that?” Her fingers spread against my chest. “That’s you. The Bloom just stopped you hiding it.”
I can feel the warmth of her hand. Feel each individual finger pressing into my chest. Feel the blood rushing through my veins in response, the Bloom dancing with it, making every sensation sharper than it should be.
“I—” The words don’t come. Not the right ones. The Bloom has stripped away every filter I built over two and a half centuries, and what’s left underneath is something I don’t have language for. “This. You.”
“I know.” Her other hand rises. Joins the first. Both palms flat against my chest now, her body close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from her skin.
“I don’t know either. Nine years of being touched by people who wanted to control me.
Nine years of learning that desire means losing power. And now—”
She stops. Swallows. I watch her throat work, watch the vulnerability she’s trying not to show.
“Now you’re here. And you look at me like I’m something worth protecting instead of something to be used. And the wanting—” Her voice catches. “The wanting is real, Zrynok. I just don’t know what to do with it yet.”
The Bloom roars in my blood. Every instinct it’s magnified screams at me to close the distance, to take what we both want, to drown the fear in sensation until neither of us can think anymore.
I hold myself still.
Because she needs me to. Because she asked me to be someone who doesn’t take. Because for the first time in a life measured in corpses, I care more about what someone else needs than what I want.
“Then we learn.” I press my forehead to hers. Feel her breath mingle with mine. “We figure it out as we go. And if you need to stop—if anything becomes too much—”
“I’ll tell you.” She pulls back slightly. Meets my gaze. “I’m not good at telling people what I need. But I’ll try. For this. For you.”
Something shifts between us. Not resolve exactly. Not surrender. Something newer, more fragile, like roots taking hold in scorched earth.
“The Abbot,” I say, because strategy is safer ground and we both need it. “The Keepers. The whole cult—when we take them down, it’ll be for more than the mission. You understand that? This isn’t just burning a monastery anymore.”
“I know.” Her hands release my tunic. Smooth the fabric she crumpled. “The question is whether that changes anything.”
“It changes everything.”
She almost smiles. “Then I suppose we’re both dangerous now.”
Circe bursts through the doorway, her face flushed, words spilling out before she’s fully inside.
“The patrols changed. Tonight. The Keepers are doubling up, covering routes they usually ignore.” She gulps air, steadies herself against the doorframe. “Something’s happening. The Abbot—people are saying he’s mobilizing for something big.”
Arwen sheathes her knife. “What kind of mobilizing?”
“I don’t know. But there’s more.” Circe pushes herself upright, finds enough composure to deliver the rest. “Brother Cael—one of the younger Keepers—he’s been asking questions. About the escaped initiates. About you.”
“Questions?” My blade stays half-drawn. “What kind of questions?”
“Not hunting questions. More like... curiosity. Concern.” Circe looks between us, uncertain. “He wanted to know if you were safe. If you’d gotten out. He seemed... upset when he thought you might have been recaptured.”
Arwen goes still. I recognize the expression—calculation happening behind her eyes, possibilities being weighed and discarded and reconsidered.
“Cael.” She says the name slowly. Carefully. “I remember him. From before his transformation. He was different from the others. More... genuine.”
“Different how?”
“He actually believed the cult’s doctrine. Not the control parts—the surrender and the purity. He thought the Bloom was sacred, not a weapon. When they transformed him...” She trails off. “I thought they’d broken him completely. Turned him into just another monster.”
“Maybe they didn’t.” Circe’s voice holds a desperate kind of hope. “Maybe there’s something left of who he was. Maybe—maybe he could help us.”
I sheathe my blade. Force myself to think tactically rather than react to the adrenaline still flooding my system. A Keeper with doubts. A potential ally inside the enemy’s ranks. Either a trap designed to draw us out, or an opportunity too valuable to ignore.
“It could be a setup.” The objection comes out harsher than I intend. “The Abbot is mobilizing. The patrols are changing. And suddenly a Keeper starts asking sympathetic questions? The timing is too convenient.”
“Or the timing is exactly right.” Arwen’s gaze sharpens. Her tactical mind engaging, pushing past whatever just happened between us. “Cael sees what the Abbot is planning. Realizes it’s gone too far. Starts questioning his loyalty.”
“Or Cael is bait. Designed to make us think exactly that.”
“Both could be true.” She turns to Circe. “The questions he asked—did they feel rehearsed? Like he was saying what someone told him to say?”
Circe considers. Her forehead creases with the effort of remembering accurately. “No. He seemed... frustrated. Like he wanted answers and wasn’t getting them. He grabbed my arm when I tried to walk away. Asked me directly if I knew where you were.”
“And you said?”
“I said I didn’t know anything. That I was just a new initiate who’d gotten lost during the chapel attack.” Circe’s chin lifts slightly. “I’m not stupid. I know better than to give information to Keepers, even sympathetic ones.”
Good instincts. The girl has survived this long for a reason.
“What exactly is the Abbot mobilizing for?” I redirect the conversation toward actionable intelligence. “Doubling patrols suggests he’s expecting attack or planning one. Which is it?”
“I couldn’t tell. The Keepers I overheard were just following orders, not explaining them.” Circe hesitates. “But they mentioned the Garden. Something about preparing it for a ceremony. A big one.”
Arwen’s expression darkens. “A mass transformation. He’s planning to seed multiple initiates at once.”
“Can he do that? The concentrated Bloom—”
“He’s been refining the process for eighty years. Making the infection faster, more efficient. Less time between exposure and full transformation.” She meets my gaze. “If he succeeds, he could double his Keeper force in a single night. Maybe triple it.”
The strategic implications crash through my assessment. More Keepers means more patrols, more defenses, less chance of a successful assault. If we wait too long, the monastery becomes impregnable.
“Then we don’t wait.” My voice comes out flat. Decisive. “We move before he finishes the ceremony. Hit the barracks first, neutralize the Keepers, then burn the Garden before he can create more.”
“And Cael?” Circe asks.
Arwen and I look at each other. The question hangs between us—trust or suspicion, opportunity or trap. Her gaze holds the same calculation I’m running.
“We find out what he wants.” She makes the decision before I can. “Approach him carefully. Test his sincerity. If he’s genuine, he could tell us exactly what the Abbot is planning. If he’s bait—” Her jaw tightens. “Then we deal with that too.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Then we’re no worse off than we are now.” She turns back to the map scratched into the floor. “Either way, we’re running out of time. The ceremony won’t wait for us to finish planning.”
I look at the crude diagram. The barracks. The Garden. The paths between them, marked with Keeper patrol routes that are already changing. We planned for a careful assault. Now we’re looking at a desperate race against the Abbot’s timeline.
“How long before the ceremony?”
“Based on the preparations Circe described?” Arwen’s expression hardens. “Tomorrow night. Maybe the night after.”
Two days. At most.
Not enough time to plan properly. Barely enough time to gather intelligence, test Cael’s loyalty, position ourselves for the assault. But too much time to do nothing while the Abbot builds an army.
“Then we start tonight.” I move toward the door, already planning routes through the monastery’s hidden passages. “Circe stays here. You and I find Cael. Learn what he knows.”
“And if it’s a trap?”
I meet her gaze. Feel the Bloom pulse in my blood, feel the need she admitted sharing, feel the rage that wants every person who hurt her dead at my feet.
“Then the Abbot learns what happens when he baits an executioner.”
Arwen crosses to gather supplies—the remaining herbs, a waterskin, the knife she keeps close. Her movements are efficient, practiced, the motions of someone who’s learned to be ready for anything.
But when she passes me at the door, her hand brushes mine. Deliberate. Brief. A touch that says more than words.
The Bloom screams at the contact. Amplifies it into something overwhelming. But beneath the infection’s demands, I feel something else. Something that might be understanding. Might be promise.
We haven’t finished what started before Circe came through the door. The conversation. The confession. The moment when she pressed her hands to my chest and told me she wanted me without knowing what to do with it.
That conversation isn’t over. It’s just waiting.
“Stay alive,” she murmurs as she moves past. “We have things to discuss when this is over.”
Things to discuss. A future beyond the monastery. Beyond the burning. Beyond the blood that’s about to be spilled.
Two days ago, I didn’t have a future. Just work. Just the next execution. Just the slow erosion of purpose that’s been hollowing me out for decades.
Now I have something worth surviving for. Something worth killing for. Something that terrifies me as much as it draws me in.
The monastery’s stone corridors stretch ahead, dark and dangerous. Somewhere in them, a Keeper with doubts waits to be tested. Somewhere beyond them, an Abbot plans ceremonies that will create monsters. And everywhere, the Bloom waits—patient, hungry, ready to exploit any weakness.
I step into the darkness.
Arwen moves beside me, silent and sharp.