“What do you think?” Peeble’s legs tickled my neck. “Your mother died young, torn between two natures she couldn’t reconcile. Jo spent sixty years in exile, trying to suppress the inheritance, hoping if your mother never crossed over—if you never knew, never crossed over—the curse would fade.”
“But?”
“But blood calls to blood. Power calls to power. And the garden… the garden has been waiting for you since before you were born.”
The crack in reality was spreading, spider-webbing across the kitchen like broken glass. Through it, I could see figures moving. Tall, impossible figures dressed in armor that might have been grown rather than forged. They carried weapons that looked shaped from radiant silver, and their faces…
Their faces were beautiful and terrible and utterly inhuman.
“The Rootguard,” Peeble whispered. “The King’s hunters. They’ve found you.”
One of the figures turned toward the crack, and our eyes met across dimensions. His were silver, like mercury, like moonlight on water. His expression shifted from determination to something else—shock? Recognition? Hope?
He pressed his hand against the crack from his side, and I felt an insane urge to match the gesture. The locket burned against my skin, and suddenly I could hear Jo’s voice, clear as if she stood beside me:
“Trust the Root, not the Bloom. The garden chooses its own.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, but Jo’s voice was gone.
The figure—the guard—was saying something, but I couldn’t hear through the boundary. He looked frustrated, then afraid, then determined. He pulled out what looked like a blade made of condensed shadow and began cutting at the crack, widening it.
“He’s trying to break through,” I said, stumbling backward.
“No,” Peeble said, sounding puzzled. “He’s trying to… warn you? That’s not right. The Rootguard don’t warn. They hunt.”
The guard’s mouth moved urgently, and this time I could almost read his lips: Run. Hide. Now.
Then something hit him from behind—a blast of brilliant light that sent him flying out of view. Another figure stepped into frame, this one wearing a crown of thorns that writhed like living things. His smile was cold, perfect, and absolutely terrifying.
“Found you,” he mouthed, and even through dimensions, I could feel the weight of his attention like hands around my throat.
The crack exploded outward, reality shattering like a mirror made of air. The overlay crashed into the real world, or maybe the real world crashed into the overlay. Either way, my grandmother’s kitchen ceased to exist as a separate space.
I stood in a room that was both and neither, tiles shifting between linoleum and living wood, walls flickering between drywall and woven vines. The refrigerator grew roots that burrowed into the floor while simultaneously remaining a perfectly normal appliance.
And through what had been the kitchen’s back door—not the tree, but a second breach in reality—stepped the crowned figure, his portal rimmed with thorns and starlight.
He was tall—impossibly tall, like perspective was just a suggestion he chose to ignore. His clothing seemed to be cut from the night sky, complete with slowly moving constellations. The crown of thorns on his head writhed and reached toward me with disturbing intent.
“Lady Elle,” he said, and his voice was like honey poured over brokenglass. “How delightful to finally make your acquaintance. I am Prince Auradelle, Regent of the Thornwood Realm, and I’m afraid you’ve inherited something that doesn’t belong to you.”
“The house is legally mine,” I said, because apparently my panic response was sass. “I have the paperwork.”
He laughed, and somewhere in the garden, flowers withered. “Not the house, dear child. The birthright. The blood. The binding.” He stepped closer, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. “Your grandmother stole more than just herself when she fled. She stole the future of our realm.”
“People keep saying that, but I don’t know what it means.” I stepped back as he moved closer. “Peeble said Jo stole a ‘possibility.’ You’re saying she stole a birthright. Which is it? What did she actually take?”
“No? Then why does the Root-mark bloom on your skin?”
I looked down. There, spreading across my collarbone like spilled ink, was a mark I hadn’t had five minutes ago. It looked like vines, or veins, or maybe both—golden lines that pulsed with their own light, forming patterns that hurt to follow with my eyes.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered.
“Many things are possible when the blood runs true.” Auradelle took another step closer. “You are the granddaughter of Josephine Thornweaver, daughter of Marielle the Lost, heir to magics you can’t begin to comprehend. And I’m here to bring you home.”
“This is my home.”
“This?” He gestured dismissively, and the walls flickered more violently between realities. “This is a shadow. A refuge. A lie your grandmother told to keep you safe. But safety is an illusion, and lies have a way of coming undone.”
