Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
ARWEN
The staircase descends three levels before opening into a corridor I’ve never seen.
The Abbot’s private prison. I knew it existed—heard whispers about special captives kept separate from the general population—but I never found it during my years of careful exploration. The entrance was too well hidden. Too close to the sanctum where discovery would mean death.
The cells here are different from the Confessional Cells above. These have actual doors instead of iron grates. Glass windows for observation. Furniture beyond a thin mat.
The Abbot kept his valuable prisoners comfortable.
The voice calls again: “Arwen? Is that you?”
I recognize it now. Cultured. Careful. The voice of someone who has spent decades in diplomatic circles, trained to project calm regardless of circumstance.
“Lady Marceline.” I stop before the cell at the corridor’s end. The woman inside rises from a cushioned chair, setting aside the book she was reading. “You’re alive.”
“Obviously.” Marceline moves to the door’s window.
Studies me with sharp eyes that haven’t lost their intelligence despite five years of captivity.
“The Abbot spoke of you often. His prize, he called you. I wondered if you’d ever come back.
When you escaped, I assumed you’d run as far as possible and never look back. ”
“I tried.” I examine the lock on her door. Standard mechanism—the Abbot didn’t bother with elaborate security for a prisoner who had nowhere to go. “The running didn’t take.”
“No. It rarely does, for people like us.” Her gaze shifts to Zrynok, who has positioned himself behind me with his hand on his sword. “An orc. An executioner, from the look of him. Interesting choice of companion.”
“He’s more than a companion.” I work the lock. Feel it give. “He’s the reason the Abbot is dead.”
“The Abbot is dead?” Something shifts in Marceline’s expression. Not quite hope—she’s too controlled for that—but the careful assessment of someone whose circumstances have just changed dramatically. “You killed him?”
“Zrynok did. In the Garden, after the Crimson Seed destabilized. The whole place tore itself apart.” The door swings open. “Can you walk?”
Marceline steps into the corridor with the dignity of someone attending a formal function rather than escaping captivity.
Her clothing is worn but clean—the Abbot provided for his valuable prisoners.
Her hair is gray, carefully maintained. Her posture is straight despite the fragility that five years of confinement has carved into her frame.
“I’ve been walking around this cell for five years. I can probably manage a hallway.” She turns to survey the corridor, the staircase, the darkness beyond. “The monastery—is it falling?”
“Soon. We’re burning it tonight.”
“Good.” Something fierce kindles in her eyes. “Make sure you save the records first. I assume you found them? The documents in the Abbot’s hidden chamber?”
“You knew about those?”
“I knew about everything, child. The Abbot liked to talk during his visits. Enjoyed having an audience that could appreciate the scope of his operations.” Marceline’s lips curve in something too sharp to be called a smile.
“The things he documented—his patrons, his supporters, the nobles who paid for initiates they could train privately. This cult didn’t exist in isolation.
The Abbot had protection at the highest levels.
Destroying the monastery is only the beginning. ”
“We know.” I exchange a look with Zrynok. “We found the names.”
“Then you understand what comes next.” Marceline begins climbing the staircase without waiting for assistance. “Those records are worth more than this entire monastery. More than the survivors we’ve freed. More than our lives, if it comes to that.”
“Our lives aren’t negotiable.”
“Everything is negotiable, Arwen. That’s the first lesson of diplomacy.” She pauses at the first landing. “But I appreciate the sentiment. Now—shall we see what’s left of my prison?”
We emerge into chaos.
The sanctum’s door hangs open. Smoke drifts through the tower’s windows—not from our work, but from somewhere else in the monastery. Something is burning that we didn’t set alight.
Shouting echoes from below. The clash of metal. Screaming that I recognize from too many years of exposure.
Zrynok draws his sword. I reach for a weapon—any weapon. My fingers close on a ritual blade from the Abbot’s collection, sharp enough to cut through bone.
“I’ll manage.” Marceline’s voice is dry before either of us can say anything else. “What’s happening down there?”
Cael’s voice answers from the staircase below: “Maret. She’s alive. She rallied the last of the loyalists—they’ve taken the Chapel. Then she split off. She’s somewhere in the tower, hunting for you.”
He appears on the landing, his partially transformed features twisted with urgency. Blood streaks his bark-like skin. His luminous eyes are wild.
“The survivors are trapped. Maret drove them toward the east courtyard, then set fire to the buildings behind them. They can’t go back, and the Chapel blocks the way forward.”
“How many loyalists?”
“A dozen. Maybe more.” Cael grips the doorframe for support. He’s wounded, I realize—deep cuts along his arms where someone’s blade found gaps in his transformed defenses. “She’s been planning this. Hiding survivors from the purges, waiting for the right moment.”
“We should have checked the bodies.” Zrynok’s voice carries the cold fury of a mistake that will cost lives. “After the Chapel fell—”
“We were tired. We thought we’d won.” I start toward the stairs. “It doesn’t matter now. We need to get to those survivors before—”
“Before what?” The voice comes from below. Gentle. Patient. The voice of someone who has all the time in the world because she knows exactly how this ends.
Maret climbs into view.
She’s wounded—one arm hangs useless at her side, blood soaking the white robes she still wears—but she moves with purpose. Behind her, two Keepers in similar condition flank the staircase.
“Hello, Arwen.” Maret’s smile is warm. Genuine. The expression of a friend who has missed me deeply. “I was hoping you’d come back to the sanctum. There are so many things we never got to discuss.”
“Maret.” I raise my stolen blade. “You should have run.”
“Run where? The monastery is my home. The Bloom is my family. You took everything that mattered to me when you killed the Abbot.” Her uninjured hand reaches for something at her belt—a small vial filled with crimson liquid. “Now I’m going to take something from you.”
Zrynok moves before she can throw it.
His sword takes the first Keeper in the throat. The second dies with a blade through the chest before the first body hits the floor. But Maret is already moving—already lunging past the falling Keepers, already raising the vial toward my face.
I don’t think. Just react. The ritual blade in my hand swings upward, catching Maret’s wrist before the vial can complete its arc. The impact jars through my arm. The vial flies from her grip, spinning into the darkness of the staircase below.
I hear it shatter somewhere in the depths. Hear the hiss of concentrated essence evaporating into air.
“That was supposed to be for you.” Maret’s voice has lost its warmth.
Her eyes—still human, never transformed, her faith too pure for the Bloom’s physical gifts—hold something that might be grief.
“I was going to give you what the Abbot couldn’t.
Transformation so complete that you’d finally understand. Finally be at peace.”
“Peace isn’t surrender.” I keep my blade raised. “I learned that from someone you never bothered to meet.”
“The orc?” Maret laughs. The sound is broken. Wrong. “You think he’s saved you? He’s just another form of captivity, Arwen. You’ve traded one master for another. The only difference is that this one has convinced you the chains are love.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” She moves closer. I let her—not because I trust her, but because the doorway is too narrow for Zrynok to strike without risking me.
“I’ve seen the way you look at him. The way you flinch when he touches you, then lean in anyway.
That’s not freedom. That’s desperation wearing a different mask. ”
“You don’t know anything about what I feel.”
“I know everything about what you feel. I felt it too, once. Before I learned to surrender.” Her voice drops.
Softens. The tone she used during the worst moments of my conditioning, when she held my hand and promised that the pain would teach me something valuable.
“You can still come back, Arwen. Even now. The Abbot is dead, but the Bloom lives. I can help you find the peace you’re looking for. ”
I think about all the things I could say. All the arguments I could make. All the ways I could try to reach whatever remains of the girl who was once my friend.
Then I remember Tessa, pregnant and sobbing in the courtyard. Oben, standing at the forest edge, staring at trees he’d given up hope of seeing again. The transformation cases in the basement, mouthing “kill me” through glass windows.
Maret helped create that. All of it. The friend I knew is gone—buried beneath years of willing surrender.
There’s nothing left to save.
“Zrynok.”
He moves past me. But Maret is already moving—already retreating, backing down the narrow staircase with the sure-footed calm of someone who has walked these stairs in the dark for years.
The passage is too tight for Zrynok to pursue at speed without risking the same footing.
By the time he reaches the turn, there is nothing but her voice drifting up from the darkness below.
“The Bloom is patient, Arwen.” Her voice drifts up from the darkness below, unhurried. “It will wait for you.”
Then silence.
Zrynok returns to the landing. His jaw is tight. “She’s gone. Back into the monastery somewhere.”
“The Chapel.” The certainty settles cold in my chest. “She’ll go to the Chapel. It’s where the faithful make their last stand. She’ll take anyone still loyal and wait for us there.”