CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
My hand stays in the crook of his elbow as we stroll the garden paths.
The sun is warm but not oppressive, filtering through the tall hedges and drifting through the leaves overhead.
Birds chirp quietly in the distance, and the faint trickle of a fountain echoes like a lullaby across the stone pathways.
He walks at a pace that feels...patient. Not rushed. Not demanding. Just present.
“This one here,” he says, nodding toward a delicate stretch of deep blue delphiniums, “was planted for my sister. She used to say blue was the most forgiving color. I never understood what she meant by that, but I think about it more often than I care to admit.”
I glance at him—at the mask that still guards his expression—and wonder what it means for a man like him to have someone to grieve.
He motions toward another patch, where white roses bloom like ghostly hands reaching for the sun. “Those were for my mother. She hated roses but loved the idea of them. She always said beauty should hurt, or it wasn’t worth anything.”
I swallow hard, unsure if I am supposed to respond.
But he doesn’t wait for one. Instead, he guides me toward a wrought-iron bench nestled near a stone fountain that sings with the sound of falling water.
“The fountain took six men and eight weeks,” he says, his voice almost light.
“It’s crooked if you look at it from the south path, but no one ever notices unless I point it out. ”
“I wouldn’t have noticed,” I say quietly. “It’s...peaceful here.”
Something about that makes him pause.
I feel his arm stiffen ever so slightly beneath my hand.
Then comes the sharp buzz of his phone in his pocket.
He stops walking. “Excuse me,” he says, his voice tightening into its usual controlled tone. “I need to take this.”
I let go of his arm as he steps away, the distance between us widening like a crack in freshly set stone. He answers the call with a clipped, “Speak,” and turns slightly so I can’t make out his expression or hear the other side.
His tone remains level, but something about the air changes.
His hand lifts to his mask, pausing at the temple like he is trying to ground himself. It only lasts a second, but it is enough. I know something is wrong.
“What do you mean Lennox left town?”
His voice is low and controlled, but something unfamiliar threads through it—nothing as clean as anger, nothing as clear as panic. It’s restrained and tight, every word clipped short, like pressure building behind a mask of procedure.
“I told you to put a tail on him.”
I freezemid-step.
Not visibly—my body still angled toward the garden, pretending to admire the marigolds blooming along the path. Their petals are vivid in the sun, burnt orange and flickering gold, defiant against the tension thickening in the air behind me.
But inside, my thoughts stutter.
A tail?
My mind catches on the words, circling them like an animal sniffing a snare.
That isn’t how men here talk. Not like the others. Not like Hirsh or Tomas or Lennox. They dealt in flesh, in ownership, in threats hidden behind wealth and masks.
But this?
This sounds like…like law enforcement.
I don’t move. Don’t breathe too loud.
But I listen.
Watch him from the corner of my eye—how he stood, how his jaw clenches as someone responds on the other end of his phone.
Who is he, really?
The way his shoulders tense beneath his coat. The way his jaw flexes once, hard. Whoever is on the other end of the line is giving him news he hasn’t expected—news he clearly doesn’t like.
He turns slightly away from me, lowering his voice. Still, I catch fragments.
“…not like him…no, he wouldn’t just leave without—”
A pause. His hand clenches briefly at his side.
“…I need to know who else knew. And when.”
Whatever he is hearing, it is enough to stiffen his spine and darken his shadow.
And I know, without him saying a word, that our walk would end soon.
And whatever peace I have felt would not last much longer.
I wander to the fountain, tilting my head to examine it from every angle, trying to detect the flaw he’d mentioned. Crooked? Maybe. But from this vantage point, it still looks perfect to me. Or maybe that is the trick of it—how some things are only broken from the right perspective.
Behind me, his voice drops to a more serious register on the phone, and I decide to give him more space.
That is when I notice the opening.
Just past a row of climbing ivy and tucked between a pair of tall hedges, there is another path—narrower, half-hidden, like it doesn’t want to be discovered. A different part of the garden. One he hasn’t pointed out.
Curious, and more than a little bored, I step into it.
The pathway curves gently, sunlight slipping in through the greenery above. I follow the trail as it bends to the left, then to the right, deeper into the foliage. Flowers line the walls—white camellias, purple irises, and thorny vines with small crimson blooms I don’t recognize.
It feels…quieter here. The sounds of the fountain and birds fade. So does the Warden’s voice.
I keep walking.
Another turn. Another fork. The hedges grow taller.
And then I realize—I don’t know which way I’d come from.
The air seems different now. Thicker. Too still.
I turn back.
Or at least, I think I do.
But the path that should have led me to the fountain…doesn’t.
A dead end. Just another wall of hedges.
I frown and choose the other fork, heart beginning to flutter with uncertainty.
Still no Warden. Still no sound.
I keep moving.
The more turns I make , the more the garden becomes a maze. The gravel under my feet shifts subtly in color, and I wonder how far I’ve strayed.
“Sir?” I call out, uncertainly.
Silence.
Then—finally—his voice rings out behind me, distant but unmistakable. “Starling!”
Relief surges through me. “Here! I’m here!” I shout, spinning to try and follow the sound.
The deeper I go , the harder it becomes to tell where his voice had come from—or if I’d even heard it at all.
“Sir?” I call out again, but this time my voice feels too small. The thick hedges swallow the sound, leaving only the flutter of distant leaves and my own ragged breathing to answer me.
No reply.
The path narrows.
More forks. More walls.
The air grows dense with something I can’t name—like time has slowed, like the garden itself is breathing around me, guiding me further inward.
A trap disguised as beauty. Every corner I turn leads to another illusion of progress.
A patch of roses. A rusted birdcage. A low stone bench cloaked in moss.
All of it looks familiar—but never the same.
I spin in a slow circle, heart pounding now.
Am I even retracing anything?
Or is the garden…shifting?
“Starling.” The word cuts through the air again—his voice lower now. Barely audible. Threaded with something darker.
I freeze.
It hasn’t come from ahead. Not from behind, either. It is ...everywhere.
Or maybe—close.
I start walking faster. The hem of my skirt snags on the thorny edge of a bush and I tug it free, irritated with myself for getting lost like a child. My pulse thunders in my throat.
The longer I stay in the maze, the more aware I become of the feeling crawling up the back of my neck.
I ‘m not alone.
He is here. Somewhere.
Not calling anymore. Not correcting.
Watching.
Every time I pause to listen, the garden falls silent in unnatural ways. No birdsong. No breeze. Just the whisper of my shoes on the gravel and the breath I try to keep even.
I turn again—one more left, one more right.
And that’s when I see it.
A flicker. A movement.
Not far behind me. Just a glimpse. The back of his coat, vanishing around a corner. But when I run to catch up, the path splits again and he is gone. As if he’d never been there at all.
“Sir, please,” I whisper, but now my voice trembles.
Is this still a lesson? Or is this something else?
Had I wandered so far into the maze that even he couldn’t reach me?
Or is that exactly what he wants me to believe?
The sky above is bright, but in the garden’s heart, it feels like dusk. The light barely reaches me now.
I stumble forward, half-running, half-sobbing—but my foot catches on a root and I go down hard, palms scraping the gravel.
The sting grounds me.
I stay there for a moment, face close to the earth, the scent of wet greenery thick in my nose.
And then—so soft I think I imagine it—I hear him, “You have to keep going.”
A whisper.
A promise.
Or maybe a warning.
I lift my head.
And for the first time in what feels like hours—I don’t know if I am meant to find my way out.
Or if he is drawing me further in on purpose.
The hedges press in around me as I sit trembling on the path, my hands scraped and my breath shallow, chest rising and falling in sharp, frantic bursts. I curl forward slightly, arms clutching my stomach as the trembling takes over.
I am spiraling.
The panic I thought I had buried years ago—back in that concrete room, in the vans, in the auction rooms—rises up like a wave inside me now.
And it terrifies me more than the darkness ever has.
A single sob slips out.
I don’t cry anymore. I don’t feel like this anymore. But something about being alone in this twisted maze, in a garden he built just to lose me in, has undone whatever control I have left.
And then…
His shadow falls over me.
Before I can look up, his arms are around me.
Strong. Certain. Familiar.
He doesn’t say a word at first. Just pulls me into his lap where he kneels on the gravel, wrapping himself around me like a shield as I shake and gasp against him.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “I’m here. You’re safe now. You can tell me what you’re feeling… you don’t have to say anything yet.”
I gasp at the phrase. Shoomaker…he said something very similar to that when he pulled me out of the compound.
My hands grip the fabric of his shirt, clutching it like a lifeline.
“What is this place?” I ask, voice raw, scraped from the inside of my throat.
He doesn’t answer right away. Just rests his chin atop my head like he has done it a hundred times before—like this isn’t the first time he’d found me on the edge of breaking.
“It was supposed to be quiet,” he finally says. “Peaceful.”
I let out a bitter laugh that cracks in the middle. “It feels like a trap.”
His arms tighten, just slightly. “It wasn’t meant to hurt you.”
“But it did,” I whisper. “You left me here. Alone.”
He flinchs—I feel it, even if he tries to hide it.
“You were the one who wandered off,” he says, quieter now.
“And you left me in it,” I shoot back, my voice cracking. “This place—this garden—it’s a cage dressed up in ivy.”
His arms loosen, not letting go, but not holding me as tightly. “I found you though, didn’t I?”
“Is this a new form of punishment?”
He shakes his head slowly, the gesture oddly…grief-stricken. “You keep asking the wrong questions.”
I stand, backing away from him, heart pounding against my ribs. “Fine. Then let me ask the right one.”
He watches me.
“Take off the mask,” I say. “If you want me to believe anything you’ve said—take it off.”
Silence as he stands to meet me.
A breeze sweeps through the hedge walls, rattling branches and chilling the sweat cooling on my skin.
His hand lifts…for a second I think he would do it.
But then he takes my arm—firm, steady.
“No,” he says gently.
I try to pull away from him again, but he holds me fast. Not restraining. Just keeping.
For a moment, nothing moves.
And then his voice, low and certain: “Starling.”
I dare to look up.
He lifts a hand to touch my face, his gloved thumb sweeping across my cheek.
“No matter how lost you get,” he says, “whether in your head or in this world, I will always find you.”
The words land heavy and soft in my chest, like a vow wrapped in silk and shadow.
“Even if I don’t want to be found?” I ask, voice barely above a whisper.
My throat feels tight, shame burning behind my eyes.
I had offered myself up on that stage like something cheap, something disposable, hoping Shoemaker would come for me.
He never did. And now I feel filthy for it. Undeserving.
“Especially then,” he murmurs, low and warm. His thumb brushes slowly across my lower lip. “Even when you don’t deserve to be found…even when you don’t feel very deserving.”
I swallow hard, a shaky breath leaving me.
He leans in closer, the forehead of his mask resting against mine, voice deep and steady. “I have found you. And I plan to keep you.”
I close my eyes, letting myself sink into the weight of him, the promise of him.
And for the first time, I believe that maybe being found by him isn’t the worst thing that could happen.
Maybe it is exactly what I’d been waiting for.
But belief is a dangerous thing.
It creeps in quietly, disguised as comfort. It wraps itself around my ribs like his arms do now—tight, warm, deceptively safe.
His breath ghosts across my skin, the mask separating us, but only barely.
“I’m not who I used to be,” I whisper. “You keep calling me Starling like I’m still her, but I’m not. That name doesn’t belong to me anymore. It hasn’t in over five years.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch.
“It does,” he says simply. “Even if you buried it. Even if they tried to beat it out of you. That name is your bones, Starling. You can run from it. But it will always be yours.”
“Then what about you?” I pull back just enough to search the empty black eyes of his mask. “Who are you behind this?”
The words are soft. Measured. And they crack something open in me I don’t want touched.
Because that’s not who the Warden is .
The Warden doesn’t soothe. He doesn’t promise.
He uses. He displays me like property. He punishes me like I am a rule to be broken. He makes me ache, makes me beg—and now here he is , whispering vows like a man who means them.
Why now?
Why this?
And why does it sound so much like him…
The way he said it—it sounds like Shoomaker.
The broken rasp in his voice. The ache he couldn’t hide when he found me, shaking and half-starved, curled in the dark.
I hate that I remember that.
I hate that the echo makes me feel.
Because it can’t be him.
Can it?
My lips part, the question burning behind my teeth.
Are you Shoomaker?
But I can’t ask it. Not when the answer might undo me.
So instead, I do the most dangerous thing of all: I lean in.
Let myself press my forehead to his mask again. Let his arms stay around me. Let his voice linger in my mind like an echo of a dream I’d forced myself to forget.
I don’t believe in fate.
I don’t believe in second chances.
But in this moment—in the hush of a garden made to trap me—I believe in him.
And I’m not sure if that is my greatest mistake…
Or my only hope.