Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
ARWEN
We’re sprawled on the narrow cot, my body draped across his chest, his arm wrapped around me with careful pressure that holds without constraining. The candles have burned low. The air in the storage chamber still carries the sweetness of the Bloom, but it seems fainter now. Less oppressive.
I trace the red tendrils visible beneath his skin. They haven’t stopped spreading. But as my fingers follow their paths—up his arm, across his chest, toward his heart—I notice something.
They’ve slowed.
Not stopped. The infection still pulses with every beat of his heart, still reaches for the core of him with patient, terrible purpose. But the speed of its advance has diminished. What was racing before now crawls.
I look up at him. He’s already watching me, reading the same thing I’m reading in the map of his infection.
“You’re suggesting,” he says slowly, “that we have sex to treat my parasitic fungus infection.”
The absurdity of it hits me. Here we are—an escaped cult prisoner and an infected executioner, lying in a storage chamber beneath a monastery full of enemies, discussing medical treatments after the most intense sex of my life.
I feel my lips curve. Almost a smile.
“I’m suggesting we explore all available treatment options.”
His chest rumbles under me. A sound I’ve never heard from him before—low, rough, genuine.
He’s laughing.
The sound startles me. Delights me. This man who has killed for centuries, who has built walls around himself so thick that even the Bloom couldn’t tear them down immediately, who speaks in short sentences and avoids emotional entanglement—he’s laughing because I made a joke about medicinal sex.
The air between us changes. Not the hunger of moments ago, not the desperate intensity of bodies chasing release. This is quieter. Warmer. A feeling that might grow into more if we live long enough to let it.
“The treatment,” he says when the laughter fades. His voice has lost its rough edges. Sounds almost... peaceful. “Will require repeat application.”
“Obviously. Can’t let the infection progress.”
“Purely medical.”
“Purely strategic.” I press closer. Feel his heartbeat steady under my ear. “Nothing personal at all.”
His arm tightens around me. Just slightly. Just enough to communicate what he can’t say in words—that it’s entirely personal, that nothing has ever been more personal, that I have become the reason he wants to survive a battle he was ready to throw away an hour ago.
I don’t know how long we rest. Time moves strangely in the storage chamber—no windows to track the sun, no sounds from outside to mark the hours. The candles burn lower. His breathing evens out, slowing toward sleep, though I know from experience he never truly rests.
I stay awake. Watch the candlelight play across his face, softening the sharp angles and hard lines that define him.
In sleep—or whatever approximation of sleep the Bloom allows—he looks almost vulnerable.
The permanent squint relaxes. The tension in his jaw eases.
He becomes someone other than the executioner.
Someone who might have existed before all that killing carved away everything soft.
The red tendrils still crawl beneath his skin. Slower now, but not stopped. The infection is a timer counting down to transformation, and all the intimacy in the world won’t change the fundamental equation.
We have to destroy the Bloom’s source. Have to burn the Garden and kill the Abbot and end this before the infection claims him completely.
Or I have to be ready for what comes if we fail.
There’s a knock at the door.
Zrynok is awake instantly. His hand closes on a blade I didn’t see him position within reach, his body shifting to put himself between me and the potential threat. The movement is automatic. Protective. The instincts of someone who has spent centuries being the most dangerous thing in any room.
I grab my tunic from where it fell on the floor. Pull it over my head as Zrynok does the same with his discarded clothing, both of us reassembling the armor we’d shed—fabric and leather and the careful distance of people who can’t afford vulnerability in enemy territory.
Another knock. More urgent this time.
“It’s me.” Cael’s voice, rough with the transformation that’s slowly claiming him. “I need to talk to you. Now.”
Zrynok glances at me. Asking permission. Even now, even with danger at the door, he defers to my judgment in matters concerning this place.
I nod.
He opens the door.
Cael stands in the corridor, his partially transformed features splattered with dark residue. Not blood—the Bloom’s essence, I realize, the concentrated substance that feeds the Garden’s growth. He’s been close to the heart of the cult’s power. Close enough to carry evidence on his skin.
His glowing eyes take in our disheveled appearance, the tangled cot, the intimacy still hanging in the air. Recognition flickers across his bark-textured face. Something that might be understanding. Something that might be regret for what he’s about to say.
“The Abbot knows.” The words come out flat. Final. “He knows everything. Sister Maret saw you both.”
My blood goes cold.
Maret. My former friend. My former torturer. The woman who knows every trick I ever used to survive because she watched me learn them. Of course she’s been watching. Of course she found a way to witness what happened in this chamber.
“She reported to the Abbot an hour ago.” Cael continues. “Described what she saw in detail. The Abbot is... pleased.”
“Pleased?” Zrynok’s voice carries danger.
“He believes it proves his theories about the Bloom’s inevitability.
That desire wins in the end. That even people who resist eventually surrender to their wants.
” Cael’s features twist with what looks like disgust. “He’s been waiting for this.
Hoping for it. The perfect subjects for his greatest experiment. ”
“The Crimson Seed.” I force the words through a throat that doesn’t want to cooperate.
“He’s moving on the Garden now. Starting the final cultivation.” Cael’s eyes hold mine. “If we don’t stop him tonight, there won’t be anything left to burn.”
The chamber goes silent.
Zrynok’s fingers lace through mine. Squeeze once. Brief. Steadying.
“How long?” His voice has gone flat. The executioner emerging from wherever he’d retreated during our hours of intimacy.
“The ceremony requires preparation. Three hours minimum before he can deploy the Seed. Maybe four if we’re lucky.” Cael glances down the corridor, checking for threats. “The remaining Keepers are rallying. Not many left after the barracks, but enough to guard the Garden during the ritual.”
“And the initiates? The twenty-three he was going to transform?”
“Already in position. Waiting in the Initiation Pools for the final stage.” Cael’s expression tightens. “If we don’t stop this, they’ll be Keepers by dawn. And the two of you will be worse than Keepers.”
I think of the horror Cael described days ago. Zrynok and I seeded with the Crimson Bloom. Transformed beyond recognition. Bound by a hunger that makes our current wanting seem tame. Trapped in bodies that need each other with an intensity that destroys any capacity for independent thought.
The most beautiful specimens in the Abbot’s Garden.
“No.” The word comes out hard. Final. “We end this tonight.”
Zrynok rises. Gathers his weapons with the efficient movements of someone preparing for a battle he expects to survive. No more talk of suicide missions. No more accepting the infection’s victory as inevitable.
The man who was ready to throw his life away an hour ago has found a reason to fight.
I reach for my own blade. Find the knife that’s never far from my hand. Steel myself for what’s coming.
“The Garden entrance. Can you get us inside?”
Cael nods. “The maintenance passage. Same route we discussed. But we’ll have to move fast—once the Abbot starts the ritual, the entire Garden will be flooded with concentrated spores. Even brief exposure will accelerate your infection past any point of return.”
“Then we don’t give him time to start.” Zrynok’s scarred face hardens in the candlelight.
Determined. The executioner who has killed countless targets over countless years, now focused on the one death that actually matters.
“We go in fast. We go in hard. We burn everything that won’t burn, we kill everything that doesn’t die, and we don’t stop until the Abbot’s blood is on the floor and this nightmare is over. ”
He turns to me. Reaches out. Cups my jaw with one scarred hand, the gesture tender in ways that contradict everything about this moment.
“Stay close. Watch my back. And if the infection takes me—if I become a threat to you—”
“It won’t.”
“If it does.” His thumb traces my cheekbone. “Don’t hesitate. The man who matters to you won’t be there anymore. Just the Bloom, wearing my face.”
I lean into his touch. Hold his gaze.
“Then I’ll burn the Bloom out of you before it comes to that. I’ll find a way.”
His lips curve. Almost a smile. He kisses me once. Hard. Brief. A promise and a farewell wrapped in a single point of contact.
Then we turn toward the door. Toward the Garden. Toward the man who destroyed my life and wants to destroy whatever remains.
The Abbot wants us to bloom?
We’ll show him what happens when the flowers fight back.