Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
ARWEN
The herbs aren’t working anymore.
Zrynok sits shirtless on the narrow cot, the infection’s map spreading visibly across his chest — the familiar red web has climbed past his collarbone, reaching toward his heart with terrible purpose. The Bloom is advancing. What the herbs held yesterday, they cannot hold today.
“The concentrated exposure changed something.” I hear my voice. Flat. Professional. The voice I used when the Keepers demanded reports on other initiates’ progress. “The Bloom in your blood isn’t responding to standard suppression anymore.”
His jaw tightens. I feel the muscle bunch under my palm where it rests against his chest.
“Then we move up the timeline.”
He starts to rise. I press down—not hard enough to stop him if he truly wants to move, but enough to make my objection clear.
“Don’t.”
“Hit the Garden tonight.” He pushes past my resistance, sitting upright despite the way his body protests. The wounds from the barracks fight haven’t fully healed. The cracked rib makes him wince with every deep breath. “Kill the Abbot. Destroy everything before the infection finishes me.”
“That’s suicide.”
“That’s strategy.” His damaged eye catches the candlelight, amber flickering in the milky depths. “I’m not getting better, Arwen. Every hour I wait, the Bloom claims more ground. Better to spend what strength I have on something useful than to waste it fighting a battle I’m going to lose.”
“You’re not strong enough—”
“I’m strong enough to kill one old man.” His hand catches mine where it still presses against his chest. The contact sends heat flooding through my veins—the Bloom in my own blood responding to his proximity. “After that...”
He meets my gaze. The wanting is there. Has been there since the chapel. But beneath it, grief surfaces. Raw and unexpected.
“After that doesn’t matter.”
The words hit me with physical force.
After that doesn’t matter. A man who has survived things that would have broken anyone else, and he’s ready to throw it all away because the infection is winning.
Because he doesn’t think there’s anything worth surviving for.
“It matters to me.”
The confession escapes before I can stop it. Before I can weigh the words, calculate their impact, protect myself from the vulnerability they expose. Every survival instinct I’ve honed screams at me to take it back. To deflect. To retreat into the guarded distance that’s kept me alive this long.
I don’t.
Zrynok goes still. His hand tightens on mine, fingers interlacing with an intimacy that feels more dangerous than any weapon he’s ever wielded.
“Arwen...”
“I spent years learning not to want anything.” The words flow now, unstoppable.
Rushing out before I can cage them again.
“Not to need anyone. The cult took everything I had—my family, my freedom, my sense of who I was. And I survived by becoming empty. By making myself into someone who didn’t need. ”
I move closer. Sit beside him on the cot. Don’t touch beyond where our hands connect, but close enough that I feel the heat radiating from his infected skin.
“Then you came. And for the first time in nine years, I wanted someone close enough to hurt me and didn’t flinch from the wanting. You protected me even when protecting me made your mission harder. You wanted me—the Bloom made that obvious—but you never tried to take what I didn’t offer.”
“I would never—”
“I know.” I reach for his other hand. Complete the circuit.
His scarred fingers dwarf mine, calluses rough against my palm, and the contact sends warmth rushing through us both—the Bloom’s influence magnifying every point of touch.
But beneath the infection’s artificial hunger, truth pulses.
A current that started before the spores and will outlast them.
“That’s why I’m saying this.” I hold his gaze. Let him see what I’ve been hiding. “I want you, Zrynok. Because you’ve shown me that wanting doesn’t have to mean losing control.”
Silence stretches between us.
Not uncomfortable. Not expectant. The kind of silence that holds space for decisions being made, for defenses being reconsidered.
I watch the conflict play across his face. The executioner’s discipline warring with the man underneath. The Bloom’s hunger pressing against whatever resistance he’s maintained. The grief I saw moments ago transforming into hope, maybe, or the first fragile shoots of a want he’s been denying.
“You should run.” His voice comes out rough. Strained. “From me. From this place. Take Circe and escape while there’s still time. I can hold the Keepers off long enough—”
“No.”
“Arwen—”
“I said no.” I release one of his hands. Reach up to cup his jaw, feeling the stubble against my palm, the tension locked in his muscles. “I’ve been running since they took me. From the cult. From what they did to me. From the parts of myself I was afraid to claim.”
My thumb traces the line of his cheekbone. His breath catches. The Bloom pulses in my blood, demanding more, and for once I don’t fight it.
“I’m done running. Whatever happens tonight, tomorrow, a week from now—I’m choosing to face it. With you.”
His hand comes up. Covers mine where it rests against his face. The gesture is careful. Deliberate. The touch of someone who doesn’t know how to be gentle but is trying anyway.
“I’ve spent my life killing.” The confession carries the same gravity as mine. “Killed people who deserved it and people who didn’t. I stopped believing in anything beyond the next execution. Made myself into a weapon because weapons don’t need purpose—they just need targets.”
He turns his head. Presses his lips to my palm. The contact burns through my skin, and I feel my pulse spike in response.
“Then I found you in the forest. And you looked at me with fear, and calculation, and something that might have been hope. And I thought—I thought if I could just keep you alive, maybe that would be enough. Maybe that would be the purpose I’d stopped looking for.”
“And now?”
“Now I want more.” His gaze meets mine, the milky eye as unflinching as the clear one. No hiding. No deflection. “I want to survive this. Want to watch you destroy the man who hurt you. Want to find out what happens when we’re not surrounded by enemies and fighting for our lives.”
The hope in his voice reaches past my defenses. Finds a hollow I’d carried since my capture. A wound I thought the cult had made permanent.
“Then survive.” I lean closer. Rest my forehead against his. “Fight the Bloom. Fight the Keepers. Fight whatever the Abbot throws at us. And when it’s over—”
“When it’s over.” He breathes the words against my lips. “We figure out the rest.”