Chapter 20
TWENTY
ARWEN
Iwatch Zrynok process the information. His face reveals nothing—the executioner’s mask firmly in place—but I’ve learned to read the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers flex on his weapon’s grip, the slight narrowing of his damaged eye when he’s calculating odds.
“Why?” The question comes out rough. “Why help us? You’ve served the Abbot for five years. Enforced his will. Hunted people like her.” A gesture toward me. “What changed?”
Cael is quiet for a moment. When he speaks, his voice has lost some of its Keeper roughness—something more human bleeding through the transformation.
“I remember what I was. Before the Bloom. Before the Garden. Before I convinced myself that surrender was strength and obedience was freedom.” The light behind his eyes flickers—dimming slightly, then brightening again.
“Every day I feel myself forgetting more. Losing pieces of who I used to be. Soon there won’t be enough left to question anything. ”
He turns to me. The flowers on his shoulders shiver.
“You showed me the passages. Years ago. After Sister Maret’s session left you bleeding, and I found you hiding in the kitchen corridor. You showed me because I offered you water and asked if you were hurt.” A pause. “I’ve never forgotten that. Even when I forgot almost everything else.”
The memory surfaces with painful clarity. Cael’s face, still human then, still soft with the concern that would later be burned away. The cool water against my cracked lips. The first genuine kindness anyone had shown me since my parents died trying to protect me from the cult’s recruiters.
I’d hated him for choosing transformation. For becoming one of the monsters. But he hadn’t forgotten. Hadn’t lost that kernel of humanity entirely, even buried under bark and flowers and years of conditioning.
“The Abbot’s ceremony,” I say. “When is it planned?”
“Tomorrow night. Midnight, when the Bloom’s power peaks.” Cael’s expression hardens—or what passes for hardening on his changed face. “He’s been gathering initiates all week. Twenty-three of them. Enough for a mass transformation that would double his Keeper force.”
“And the Crimson Seed?”
“Will be ready by then. He’s been refining it for months, waiting for the right moment.” Another glance toward Zrynok. “Waiting for the right subjects.”
Twenty-three initiates. People trapped here, broken down by the cult’s methods, about to be transformed into weapons for the Abbot’s army. And at the ceremony’s heart, Zrynok and I—bound by a horror worse than death, our desire turned into chains.
“The barracks,” I say, strategy crystallizing as I speak. “We hit them first. Eliminate the Keeper force before they can defend the Garden. Then we burn everything.”
“The midnight patrol is weakest. Half the guards will be at the ceremony preparations, the other half sleeping in shifts.” Cael’s tactical knowledge flows easily—the skills of an enforcer turned against his former masters.
“I can disable the outer sentries. Create a window for you to reach the sleeping quarters.”
“You’d kill your own brothers?” Zrynok’s question holds no judgment. Just assessment.
“They stopped being my brothers when they chose to forget what they were.” Grief flickers in Cael’s gaze. Or resolution. Maybe both. “I’d rather die helping you destroy this place than spend another year becoming what they’ve become.”
We spend an hour planning.
Cael provides details I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else—patrol schedules, guard rotations, the location of every Keeper currently stationed in the barracks. His knowledge is comprehensive, recent, invaluable. The kind of intelligence that transforms a desperate assault into a surgical strike.
Zrynok asks questions with the precision of someone who’s planned a hundred attacks.
Entry points. Exits. Contingencies for a dozen different failure scenarios.
His tactical mind works through problems I didn’t know existed, adjusting our approach based on Cael’s answers until the plan is as tight as we can make it with the time we have.
I watch him work. Can’t help watching him.
His movements are efficient. Controlled. Every gesture serves a purpose—pointing to locations on the crude map Cael draws in the dust, demonstrating attack angles, illustrating patrol patterns with the tips of his scarred fingers. The executioner in his element, doing what he was built to do.
But something is wrong.
I noticed it in the passage earlier. Dismissed it as tension, as the heightened awareness that comes before danger. Now, watching him in the cellar’s dim light, I see what I missed.
His movements are too precise. Too clean.
The tremor that plagued him during the first days of his infection—the shake in his hands, the occasional stutter in his motions—has disappeared entirely.
His focus borders on unnatural, tracking Cael’s every gesture with an intensity that goes beyond mere attention.
The Bloom.
The infection isn’t just stable anymore. It’s advancing.
Cael notices me noticing.
His glowing gaze meets mine across the space where Zrynok continues refining the plan. Recognition passes between us—one person who carries the Bloom reading the signs in another.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to. The slight tilt of his head toward Zrynok, the way his transformed features tighten almost imperceptibly—he’s seen it too. Whatever the Abbot’s concentrated spores did in the chapel, the effects are growing rather than fading.
I file the observation away. Deal with it later, when we’re not surrounded by enemies and pressed for time. For now, the plan matters more than the creeping dread in my stomach.
“The armory connects to the barracks through a single corridor.” I redirect my attention to the tactical discussion, shoving concern into the compartment where I keep everything else I can’t afford to feel. “If we take the corridor first—”
“They can’t reach weapons.” Zrynok finishes the thought without looking up from Cael’s map. “Standard isolation strategy. Cut supply lines before engaging the main force.”
“The armory is locked at night. Two guards on rotation.” Cael marks the position in the dust. “I can deal with them quietly before you arrive. Clear the path.”
“And after the barracks?” Zrynok straightens. Meets Cael’s inhuman gaze directly. “The Garden. Can you get us inside?”
“There’s a maintenance entrance on the eastern side. The cultivators use it to transport soil and supplies. It won’t be guarded during the ceremony—everyone will be in the central pavilion watching the Abbot work.”
“Too convenient.” Suspicion sharpens Zrynok’s voice. “An unguarded entrance to the cult’s heart on the night of their most important ritual?”
“Convenient because the Abbot doesn’t expect attack. He believes he’s untouchable. That the Bloom makes him invincible.” Cael’s lips twist—the ghost of bitter amusement on his inhuman face. “He’s wrong. He’s been wrong for eighty years. Eventually, someone was going to prove it.”
The words hang in the cellar’s heavy air. Promise and threat intertwined.
“Tomorrow night,” I say. “Midnight. We hit the barracks, take the armory, and burn the Garden before the ceremony completes.”
“And if the Abbot deploys the Crimson Seed before you reach him?” Cael asks.
I look at Zrynok. He looks back at me. An understanding passes between us that doesn’t require words—acknowledgment of risk, acceptance of stakes, the shared knowledge that this might kill us both.
“Then we burn anyway,” I say. “Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs.”