The last thing I remembered clearly was another brutal session with Auradelle, his hands on my marks, tuning me like an instrument until I screamed. Then Malachar had appeared with a draught that smelled something wretched, forcing it down my throat while guards held me still.
“Her body needs rest for the Convergence,” Malachar had said, his voice clinical. “Burn her out now, and she’ll be useless.”
Then—nothing. Blackness. A sleep so deep I thought I might have been dead. No dreams. No awareness. Just absence.
Now I was awake, and everything hurt.
Mora was there when I woke, her hands ice-cold as she pressed a damp cloth to my face. The shock of it helped cut through the fog.
“They’re coming,” she said, her voice flat with resignation. “I tried to buy you more time, but—”
The door crashed open before she could finish.
Four Bloomguard entered, their faces hidden behind those flower-twisted masks that looked like beauty but were truly hiding a nightmare. The masks were different for each guard—one had roses that dripped blood, another had lilies with teeth, the third had vines that moved on their own, and the fourth… the fourth had snapdragons whose blooms opened and closed like hungry mouths.
“Time,” one said, the word dripping with disdain, even though I was theone supposed to save his stupid realm.
My mind felt sluggish, thoughts moving through fog. How long had I been under? A day? Two? The Convergence—it had been days away when they’d drugged me. Now, based on the tension vibrating through the Heartspire’s stones, it was close. Hours, maybe. The building itself hummed with anticipation.
Mora was there, helping me sit up, then stand. My legs didn’t want to cooperate, muscles weak from days of forced stillness. She caught me when I swayed, her grip surprisingly strong for someone so slight.
“Easy,” she murmured. “Your body needs a moment to remember how to work.”
I focused on breathing. On staying upright. On the feel of cold stone under my bare feet. Anything to anchor myself to the present instead of drowning in the drug’s lingering fog.
Mora’s hands were shaking as she steadied me, and when I finally looked at her face, I saw tears streaming down her cheeks. She knew what was coming. We both did.
“Be strong,” she whispered. “Remember who you are.”
“Get away from the vessel,” the guard with the whispering poppies snapped, shoving Mora aside with enough force to send her sprawling. Her head hit the stone floor with a crack that made my stomach lurch and my marks flare with heat.
“Her name is Mora,” I said, my voice raw from disuse. Because if I was going to die today, I was going to die as myself, not as Auradelle’s tool. “And if you touch her again, I’ll find a way to make you regret it.”
The guard backhanded me, the metal gauntlet splitting my lip. I tasted copper and rage. “Vessels don’t make threats.”
“This one does,” I spat blood at his feet, watching it splatter across his polished boots. “This vessel has opinions. Deal with it.”
They dragged me from the room, my bare feet sliding across the stone floors. The Heartspire felt different than it had before—warmer, more present. My marks burned hotter with each step, responding to something in the building itself.
The marks on my skin had completed their design while I slept. They covered my entire body now. The patterns were more defined, more deliberate. When I looked down at my forearms, I could almost read them—not words exactly, but intent. Purpose. Like my body was being written over with someone else’s plans.
Through the bond—still muffled but stronger than it had been before the forced sleep—I felt Kaelren. Closer. Much closer than he’d been two days ago. The bond thrummed with his presence, with rage and desperation and something that felt like hope. He was coming for me. Fighting his way through whatever lay between us.
“Please,”I thought, sending the plea through the bond, though I didn’t know if he could hear me.“Please have found the seed. Please let me be right about this, and we can finally end this nightmare.”
Because if I was wrong, if the seed wasn’t there or if Kaelren hadn’t reached it, then everything I was about to endure would be for nothing.
The stairs spiraled down, carved from stone so old the edges had worn smooth. Moss glowed faintly in the cracks, providing just enough light to see by. The temperature dropped with each step, and I could smell minerals and damp earth mixed with something sharper—magic, maybe, or just old power that had soaked into the rock over centuries.
The chanting started as we descended. Dozens of voices, echoing up from below in rhythmic patterns that made my teeth ache. I couldn’t understand the words, but I felt them—vibrations that traveled through the stone into my bones, making my marks pulse in response.
The chamber doors were massive, twice the height of a man and carved from a black wood I didn’t recognize. Veins of metal—gold and silver both—had been hammered into the surface in intricate patterns that caught the moss-light. When we approached, the doors swung open on silent hinges, revealing a vast chamber beyond.
Inside was worse than any nightmare.
The chamber was massive—easily a hundred feet across, with a domed ceiling carved from living rock. Except the ceiling wasn’t rock anymore. Through some impossible working of magic, the stone had beentransformed into pure sky. Not an illusion—actual sky, with clouds moving across it and sunlight streaming down despite us being deep underground. The walls were carved with channels that glowed sickly green, corruption flowing through them like luminescent blood. The patterns made my eyes burn to follow them.
At the center was the Bloom.
