CHAPTER 163

CHAPTER 163
JOEL MEMORY GARDEN 

The tent had lain silent for hours. Lynk slept, breathing slowly, one arm draped across a rumpled pelt like a guard in slumber. not a resting guard. Outside, beyond the wall of canvas, the mountains groaned beneath the weight of snow, wind curled itself slowly through ice peaks. Joel did not sleep.

He stood alone at the mapdesk, where fire had burned down to a few smoking embers. The air inside was tense and parched, charged with unexpressed ideas. A draft report was abandoned, half penned. Ink had dried in a pen several hours earlier.

His gaze drifted once more to the edge of the map. The cabin. A crude drawing. A humble symbol for something that had by now become far from.

He closed his eyes.

Her voice lingered, not in memory, in trace. The manner in which she'd said, "Be careful," not literally. The manner in which her eyes had glanced, far too hastily, toward the window. because she'd known. Because she was pretending innocence for his sake.

They were both performing.

Their last meeting had been brief, punctuated by silences, bound together by tensions.

He was getting dressed while she came into the room with her arms folded across her chest. "You pack for war when you leave the house."

He had smiled tightly. "It's a routine. Lines in the territory. They have had some sightings from the ridge that need investigating."

"You entrust everything over here to your butler?"

I can trust he'll obey orders. Joel stopped, then resumed, "I’ve stationed two more guards to keep within eyesight. They’re discreet ones. You’ll not notice them."

She had not fought. That's what had unsettled him.

Her expression remained impassive. Pale, her lips pressed into a line, her hands folding slightly at the far edge of the table as if holding herself in place. "I'll be fine."

He said, "I know."

Nor did either of them think so.

His eyes opened now, a pain in his chest at the sight of her face in his mind. Not her smile. she had not been smiling much these days. No, it was the look in her eyes he remembered. That tightly controlled brightness. She had figured out he was lying. And she had not called him on it.

She was afraid.

Not of him. but rather of what she may become.

His eyes never saw it, yet he had been told by the butler at twilight, a whisper upon the evening call: “She discovered something behind the cabin, sir. Somewhere new. She went in alone. I didn’t manage to catch up.”

Joel had nearly lost hold of the communication crystal. "I didn’t catch you,” he said.

I was paralyzed. Standing in the doorway. My body would not move. I had to watch.

His fist was against his mouth at this moment, teeth bared against a tide of fear.

"She came back changed," said the butler. "Would not utter a single word. Said something about petals. About. becoming."

Joel gazed now into the darkened light. The last word struck him more forcefully than any of them had. Becoming.

Lena did utter that word.

She had scrawled symbols in a mad dash across the wall before she died, whispering it under her breath. "When blood rite awakens, we don't die. we become."

He had thought she would be talking about herself. Her wretched blood. Her inherited madness. Now Emerald stood within the same doorway. The ritual had not lain buried. It had lingered.

He leaned back from the table and began to pace, the tent itself becoming claustrophobic with the anxiety growing in his chest. He did not want to think about how much the symptoms were beginning to mirror. The far-off gaze. The abnormal visions. The passive indifference to his orders.

Emerald was disintegrating. and he had no idea how to stop it.

His hand drifted to the chain at his throat. Not Lena's locket. he'd buried it. A new one, made from mountain silver, engraved with ancient runes. Symbols of warding. Glyphs he dared hope would keep at bay whatever was closing in.

He had not yet presented it to Emerald. He did not know whether it would prove useful. or confirm her suspicions.

If she feels she's cursed, she'll turn into one.

That was what Lena's father had told him, years before the war. Power succumbed to belief. This bloodline they were tracing now. it was fed by memory. Regret. Fear.

He stopped at the flap of the tent, leaving it ajar so a gust of cold air struck full in his face. The stars above were far away and unfeeling. Old gods.

He recalled one more thing now. One he had not told Lynk.

The evening prior to his departure, after Emerald had retired to bed, he walked out onto the porch for some air. The snow was unblemished then. Untouched.

But by morning, there were bare, human-sized footprints in the back woods leading toward where the garden had erupted out of frost and neglect.

He hadn’t pursued them.

Cowardice, maybe. Instinct. Something had warned him away from this path unless he was willing to confront the truth.

Now he leaned back and took a deep breath. Snow had a scent, he figured, associated with silence. Waiting to fall.

He thought time would heal Lena's death.

Instead, it had carried her curse further. into a woman's blood he was growing to love.

He spoke now, speaking in the dark where others wouldn't be able to listen.

I also cannot lose her.

There was no response from the wind. The chill cut acutely.

He returned to the tent and unrolled a new scroll. Not a map for the war. Older. A family genealogy, charred at the edges, once removed from the east's archives. On it was Lena's name. in bold letters. Below her, in smaller letters, the faded imprint of a second name.

Emerald

Not even your sister.

Not a relative by blood.

But another link in a broken chain nonetheless.

He did not know at first. The bond was not familial. It was holy. Chosen by ritual.

The blood chose successors. Hosts.

He put his hand on the parchment.

"Why her?" he whispered. "Why a woman who didn't ask for any of this?"

He imagined having her step inside this garden.

He recalled the deer backing up. The butler frozen. The red petal melting away in smoke.

Emerald had by now passed over.

Now the issue was not whether this blood ritual would wake up.

Whether he would be able to stop it before it overpowered her.

He rolled the scroll closed slowly. Began to back up toward the fire. His boots were frosted. His hands shaking with ideas swirling through his mind too fast.

So, not meaning to, he spoke, "Emerald. if you change."

He never completed saying the sentence.

Didn't specify what he would do.

Did not indicate if he would tolerate it.

Deep inside, beneath the armor, beneath the instincts, beneath cold Alpha logic, a fear lurked – a fear even greater than war:

So when the day came, he would not be able to bear to see her die. Not again. 

Not  like Lena.