1
LYRIA
Sunlight filters through the visual banquet of exotic blooms in the garden, dappling my skin and the ground beneath my feet with swaying shadows. The verdant beauty, however, hides a dark secret. Here, a stray breeze stirs the fronds enough to reveal a sharp-featured bust of one of the Dark Elves’ darker gods. And I do mean sharp. I’ve cut myself more times than I’d care to admit on the unforgiving architecture here.
To the Dark Elves, those that lord over us, the sharpness is desirable. If someone is too unwary to notice, they deserve to bleed. Contrast that with my home village, where the parents swaddle the corners of tables with leather to keep children and the infirm from injury.
I turn my gaze downward, where it belongs. Downward to the garden ground. I squat down, adjusting my headscarf so it doesn’t slide into my field of vision. A grimace spreads over my face.
The dirt is too dry.
I know it the second I press my fingers into the soil. It crumbles instead of clinging, slipping through my skin like ash.Someone watered the outer rows and skipped the inner beds again. Not an accident.
“Of course,” I mutter under my breath, already reaching for the bucket. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Talking to the plants now, Cutter?”
Fenrix’s voice cuts across the rows, lazy and sharp. I don’t look up. Looking invites trouble. Or worse, interest.
“Plants listen better than people,” My tone is flat, careful. Not biting. Never biting. Biting begets biting, and that’s not figurative or a metaphor.
A few of the other garden workers snicker in spite of my effort to be humble. I hear the scrape of boots against stone, the dull thud of a tool dropped where it shouldn’t be. They’re close enough that I can smell them—sweat, old leather, something sour that clings to the back of my throat.
Fenrix steps into my row, ignoring the others to focus his ire on me.
So what else is new?
“You missed a section,” he says, nudging one of the seedlings with the toe of his boot. Too hard. The stem bends at a wrong angle. Not broken—just enough to make it struggle. “Sloppy.”
My grip tightens around the bucket handle. The metal bites into my palm. I struggle to dismiss images of my cracking him over the dome with it.
“I didn’t miss it,” I say. “It was already?—”
“Already what?” he cuts in, smiling like he’s waiting for me to finish a sentence that will get me whipped. “Go on.”
I swallow my words along with a side of pride. Bitter as bile and somehow worse.
Already sabotaged. Already dry. Already handled….
None of those are things I’m allowed to say. The Dark Elves don’t stand for backtalk, even when they’re wrong….especially when they’re wrong.
So I dip the bucket instead, pouring carefully at the base of the plant, letting the water soak deep instead of pooling on top. The soil drinks greedily, darkening inch by inch.
Fenrix watches me like it’s entertainment.
“You’re slow today,” he says. “Better pick it up. Inspection’s coming.”
My shoulders go still for half a breath.
Inspection.
Of course it is.
I nod once, like he’s done me a kindness by telling me, and shift to the next plant. The rhythm settles in—pour, press, adjust, move. My hands know the work better than my thoughts do. They keep me steady when everything else wants to tilt.
Behind me, Fenrix lingers just long enough to kick loose dirt over another row before wandering off.
I don’t turn around.
