Chapter Twenty-One — The Graveyard Garden
Chapter Fifteen — The Graveyard Garden
Avery woke to flowers.
For one terrible second, half-asleep beneath a borrowed blanket in the embalming chapel
office, she thought Vinny had found her again.
Belladonna.
Oleander.
Black ivy.
The same poisonous bouquets he used to leave outside her apartment door.
Her chest physically hurt before she fully opened her eyes.
Then reality returned all at once.
Cold industrial lighting.
Rain tapping softly overhead.
The distant hum of surveillance monitors.
Not Vinny.
Never Vinny again.
Avery sat upright too quickly and immediately noticed the flowers resting beside the cot.
Freshly cut.
Bound carefully with black thread.
And beside them a note.
You looked like you were drowning.
The handwriting wasn’t Vinny’s.
Too sharp.
Too precise.
Blaine.
Avery stared at the flowers for a long moment in disbelief.
The assassin bought her poison flowers.
Of course he did.
Because apparently the universe enjoyed emotionally destabilizing her now.
She touched one dark petal carefully through gloved fingertips.
Fresh.
Recently cut.
Which meant Blaine left the safehouse sometime during the night.
Her pulse sharpened slightly.
The chapel office door stood partially open.
Avery pushed herself up quietly and followed muted voices toward the main chamber.
Blaine stood near the toxin cabinet speaking softly into a comm device while reloading
ammunition with calm mechanical precision.
“…no confirmed movement yet.”
Silence crackled faintly from the speaker.
Then a familiar amused voice answered:
“You sound tense.”
Silas.
Avery stopped near the doorway instinctively.
Blaine noticed her immediately.
Of course he did.
His silver eyes flicked toward her once before he muted the comm entirely.
“You’re awake.”
“I gathered.”
Blaine set the ammunition case aside.
“You needed sleep.”
“You left flowers.”
The statement came out more accusing than intended.
Something almost unreadable crossed his expression.
Then:
“Yes.”
Avery stared at him.
Blaine Morana looked entirely too dangerous to be buying flowers for anyone.
Especially poison flowers.
“You didn’t have to.”
“I know.”
That somehow made it worse.
The assassin crossed toward the chapel table and slid a folded city map toward her.
“House raids increased overnight.”
Avery forced herself to focus.
The map showed several lower districts marked in red.
Flood line.
South Vein.
Lower Cathedral routes.
Containment sweeps.
“They’re searching for me.”
“For us.”
The correction landed heavily.
Avery looked away quickly.
Blaine noticed.
Again.
Always.
“What did Silas want?” she asked quietly.
“He enjoys surveillance.”
“That sounds unhealthy.”
“It is.”
A faint almost-smile touched Blaine’s mouth briefly.
Tiny.
Gone immediately.
But Avery saw it.
Interesting.
Blaine looked younger when he almost smiled.
Less like a weapon.
More like a person.
Dangerous observation.
Avery crossed slowly toward the toxin cabinet lining the wall.
Dozens of glass vials gleamed beneath dim industrial lights — poisons, stabilizers, neural
agents.
One shelf contained dried flowers pressed carefully between medical files.
Belladonna again.
Nightshade.
Oleander.
Avery blinked slightly.
“You keep flowers too?”
Blaine stiffened almost imperceptibly.
Then:
“They help identify toxins.”
Lie.
Not a full lie.
But not truth either.
Interesting.
Avery glanced back toward the bouquet beside her cot.
“You arranged them.”
Blaine looked vaguely uncomfortable now.
Which shocked her.
“You memorized which ones Vincent used to bring you.”
The words landed softly between them.
Not jealousy.
Not accusation.
Observation.
Avery’s throat tightened painfully.
Vinny.
Even here, even now, grief threaded through everything.
She looked down at the flowers quietly.
“He used to say poison flowers survived better than normal ones.”
Blaine stayed silent.
Then after a moment:
“He wasn’t wrong.”
Rain drummed softly overhead while stale chapel air hummed through old filtration vents.
Avery slowly turned one dark blossom between gloved fingers.
Beautiful things surviving in poisoned places.
Vinny would’ve liked that Blaine remembered.
That thought hurt unexpectedly.
“You know,” she whispered, “you’re the second person who’s ever given me flowers.”
The sentence changed something in the room instantly.
Blaine went very still.
Avery realized too late what she’d admitted aloud.
Heat rose sharply into her face.
Wonderful.
The assassin watched her silently beneath flickering lights.
The word had come out before she thought about it and now it sat in the room and she
couldn’t take it back. She’d meant it the way she meant most things she couldn’t take back
— honestly, which was its own kind of terrifying. Vinny had been the first. She hadn’t let
herself think about what it meant that she’d noticed Blaine’s flowers specifically, that she’d
catalogued the exact arrangement, that some part of her had been paying that kind of
attention without her permission.
She looked at the dark petals instead of him.
The problem with Blaine Morana was that he never made her feel watched. He made her
feel seen. Those were different things. Watched meant someone waiting for her to be
dangerous. Seen meant someone who already knew and stayed anyway.
She was starting to understand why that was so much harder to survive.
Then quietly:
“I can stop.”
The gentleness of the offer nearly undid her.
Not defensive.
Not offended.
Careful.
Always careful once it came to her.
Avery hated how much that affected her already.
“No,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
Blaine’s silver eyes held hers for one long quiet second.
Then:
“Okay.”
And somehow that single word felt more intimate than touching ever had.
The graveyard sat beneath Poison City.
Not metaphorically.
Literally beneath it.
Blaine led Avery there through abandoned filtration tunnels three hours after sunrise while
the city above drowned in riot sirens and emergency broadcasts.
“The Houses don’t monitor lower burial sectors,” he explained quietly as they descended
rusted metal stairs deeper underground.
“Why?”
“Dead people stop generating profit.”
The answer felt horribly believable.
The air changed the farther down they traveled.
Cooler.
Damp.
Still.
Not clean exactly.
But untouched by the city’s constant industrial choking.
Avery followed several careful steps behind Blaine through narrow tunnels lined with old
religious carvings blackened by decades of chemical damage.
“You’ve been here before.”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
Silence.
Then:
“When I need quiet.”
The honesty surprised her slightly.
The tunnel finally opened into something enormous.
Avery physically stopped walking.
The underground graveyard stretched endlessly beneath the city like a hidden cathedral
swallowed by roots and ruin. Massive stone crypts disappeared into darkness overhead
while poisonous ivy crawled across broken statues and collapsed mausoleums.
And everywhere—
flowers.
Poison flowers.
Belladonna.
Oleander.
Foxglove.
Nightshade.
Entire gardens thriving wild among the dead.
Avery stared in disbelief.
“How?”
Blaine looked strangely calm here.
“The contamination runoff reaches underground water systems.”
“So the poison made them grow.”
“Yes.”
Something about that felt painfully beautiful.
Avery stepped slowly farther into the graveyard while dim green filtration light filtered
weakly through fractured ceiling vents high above.
The flowers glowed faintly in the dark.
Like Poison City had grown its own stars underground.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
Blaine watched her instead of the graveyard.
“Yes.”
The way he said it made heat rise unexpectedly beneath her skin.
Avery quickly looked away.
She wandered carefully between old graves while her leather bag rested warm against her
hip.
Most gravestones looked ancient.
Names worn smooth.
Entire families forgotten beneath ivy and time.
But the poison flowers survived.
Always surviving.
Blaine stopped beside a collapsed angel statue half-swallowed by black vines.
“This used to be one of the first Black Vein containment sites.”
Avery froze.
“What?”
“The original subjects were buried here.”
Cold slid beneath her ribs instantly.
She looked around differently now.
Not just graves.
Experiments.
Weapons.
People.
The flowers suddenly felt sadder somehow.
“They buried them beneath the city?” she whispered.
“They erased them beneath the city.”
The distinction hurt worse.
Avery turned slowly toward Blaine.
“You remember all of this like it happened yesterday.”
His silver eyes drifted toward the graves.
“For some of us, it did.”
The answer lingered heavily between them.
Without thinking, she stepped closer toward him.
Blaine noticed immediately.
Always.
“You should stay back.”
The words came automatically from him.
Conditioned.
Instinct.
Avery’s chest tightened.
“You do that a lot.”
“What?”
“Warn people away from you.”
Blaine looked genuinely confused by the observation.
“I’m dangerous.”
“So am I.”
“That’s different.”
“No,” she whispered softly. “It isn’t.”
Silence stretched beneath the underground cathedral of poison flowers.
Avery looked down at a cluster of black belladonna blooming beside a cracked gravestone.
Then quietly:
“Vinny would’ve loved this place.”
The grief still hurt.
But differently now.
Less like drowning.
More like surviving a wound that refused to fully close.
Blaine’s gaze softened slightly.
“He would’ve brought you flowers from here.”
A small broken laugh escaped her.
“Yes.”
She crouched slowly beside the flowers, careful not to touch bare petals through her gloves.
Then she noticed it.
A fresh grave.
New stone.
Recent dirt.
No name.
Fear sharpened quietly.
“Blaine.”
He followed her gaze instantly.
Then went still.
Very still.
Avery’s pulse slowed dangerously.
“What is it?”
Blaine crossed toward the grave slowly.
Controlled.
Careful.
But Avery already saw the shift in him.
Recognition.
There.
Pressed carefully into the wet dirt atop the grave—
rested a single black ivy token.
The Theater symbol.
Silas.
Avery looked around the graveyard instinctively.
Too quiet now.
Far too quiet.
Then a voice drifted softly through the underground ruins behind them:
“You know,” Silas Bracken murmured lazily from the shadows, “most people bring wine to
graveyards.”