Page 178 of What Blooms from Death

I’ve failed.

I’ve failed.

I’ve failed.

Hours passed.

I kept expecting Nova to leave me alone.

They had always left me alone when I failed them.

We’ll come back when you’ve learned to be stronger than the dark.

The light will come back when you find a way to bring it back, and not before. Endure. Outlast. Prove yourself to us…

I still had not summoned even the faintest spark of anything resembling light.

But for some reason, Nova was still there, sitting in the darkness with me.

My head rested in her lap. Her hands combed through my hair, gentle and soothing. Her scent was clean; soft powder and the delicate sweetness of wild rose. A stark contrast to the stench of this damp, dirty prison and my own filthy self.

And I had a thought, like I so often had these past weeks, of a flower blooming in Hell, its roots somehow taking hold in a dead land. Taking hold inme.

What a foolish,reckless flower,I thought,to plant herself here in the dark.

But another thought struck me almost as quickly—a memory. That fateful night, seven years ago, when I’d found her on the grounds of Rose Point, clutching a glowing flower between her dirt-stained fingers. Her words whispered through my mind, as soft and certain as the scent enveloping me now.

Some things bloom brighter in the dark...

She was shivering. A particularly violent tremble went through her, and I found myself moving automatically, reaching to take her hand in mine. Light flowed from my fingertips, leaving warmth in its wake as it traveled along her arms. The effort left me breathless, even more tired and sick feeling than before, but I didn’t care; I would have given my last breath to keep her warm.

Her shaking eased. I started to curl toward her, to drift away again, until I felt a tear drop onto my cheek.

“Chaos,” I mumbled. “Why are you crying?”

She took a long time answering. Or maybe it was only seconds. Time had lost all meaning in this place.

Quietly, she said, “Everything is all wrong.”

“Everything?”

“Your cousin is gone.”

“I heard.”

“And he’s not who he seemed to be.”

“Yes; I gathered as much.”

“It’s worse than anything you could imagine.”

The fear in her voice woke up some primal instinct in me, giving me the strength to drag myself upright. I leaned against the wall beside her. Fighting the urge to close my eyes, I tilted my face toward hers, swallowed away the lump in my throat, and said, “Tell me everything.”

Her hands were trembling again, but not from the cold this time, I suspected. She tried to hide their twitching by keeping them busy, clumsily gathering up the cup of water and the plate of bread in front of us.

“Drink,” she insisted, lifting them before me, “and eat. And then I’ll talk.”

There was no negotiating with that tone. And my need to listen to her fears proved greater than my need to ration and control the meager nourishment I’d been given, so the bargainwas struck—I placed the cup aside but lifted a scrap of bread to my mouth. It felt like swallowing glass, forcing it down my throat. But I pushed through it, as she inhaled deeply before launching into a breathless recap of the things that had befallen this palace over the past several days.

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