Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
ZRYNOK
The Abbot hasn’t changed since the chapel.
Ageless features. Skin smooth as porcelain. Those eyes that shift from brown to red in the Garden’s filtered light, seeing everything, missing nothing. He watches us approach with the patience of someone who has never encountered a threat he couldn’t neutralize.
The Crimson Seed glows in his hands—a crystal vial the size of my thumb, filled with essence so concentrated it seems to pulse with its own heartbeat. One drop of that substance could transform a human completely. The whole vial...
“Sister Arwen.” His voice is warm. Welcoming. The voice of a father greeting a prodigal daughter, not a monster confronting the people who’ve come to kill him. “And her executioner. I’m so glad you could join us.”
My sword is drawn. Has been since we entered the pavilion’s shadow. But the blade feels impossibly heavy in my hands, and my arms shake with tremors I can’t control. The spores are working on me. The infection is spreading faster here, in the Bloom’s heart, than anywhere else in the monastery.
“Put it down.” I force the words through a throat that wants to close. “The vial. Put it down and face judgment.”
“Judgment?” The Abbot laughs—gentle, almost affectionate. “From an executioner who can barely stand? The Bloom has you, friend. It’s had you since the chapel. Every moment of resistance has only delayed the inevitable.”
He’s right. I can feel it—the infection surging with every breath, reaching toward my heart with tendrils that burn like fire.
My vision blurs at the edges. My muscles scream for relief.
The wanting is so overwhelming that I can barely distinguish between the need to kill him and the need to fall to my knees and beg for the sensation to stop.
“The inevitable—” I take a step forward. Stagger. Catch myself. “—is you dead.”
“Perhaps.” His gaze shifts to Arwen, and something in his expression changes. Sharpens. The affection becoming something colder. More possessive. “Eventually, all things end. But you’ll be here with me when it happens, won’t you, daughter? You’ve belonged to me since the day you arrived.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.” Arwen’s voice carries steel I haven’t heard before. “Least of all you.”
“The escape. The resistance. The executioner you’ve convinced yourself you love.
” The Abbot gestures at me with the hand not holding the vial.
“All of it was rebellion against your true nature. You were made for this Garden, Arwen. Made to bloom. I simply gave you the freedom to discover that for yourself.”
He’s trying to break her.
I can see it happening—the way she stiffens at his words, the way her breathing quickens, the way her hand trembles on the knife she’s holding.
All the conditioning fighting against everything she’s learned since escaping.
Everything we’ve built in the days since she found me in that forest clearing.
I force myself forward. Another step. Then another. The pavilion’s floor is smooth stone, easier to cross than the Garden’s slick paths. If I can just get close enough—
“You made nothing.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. Strained through the infection’s demands. “She made herself. Survived despite you. Escaped despite your Bloom. And she’ll kill you despite every horror you created to stop her.”
The Abbot’s attention shifts to me. His smile widens.
“Such devotion. The Bloom has made you quite eloquent in your hunger.” He raises the vial, turning it in his fingers so the concentrated essence catches the light.
“Do you know what this is, executioner? The culmination of eighty years of research. A gift designed not for destruction but for transformation.”
“I know what it is. The Crimson Seed.”
“I prefer to think of it as a wedding present.” His gaze moves between Arwen and me, measuring, calculating. “For both of you. An eternity of wanting, forever fulfilled by each other, forever blooming in my Garden.”
The image he’s painting crystallizes in my mind—Arwen and I transformed beyond recognition, trapped in bodies that need each other with intensity that destroys any capacity for independent thought. His most beautiful specimens. His greatest achievement.
I won’t let that happen.