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Lysara had once planted wild hemlock by mistake.
The other inquisitors laughed—except for the girl with sea-colored eyes who knelt beside her and whispered, "It's still beautiful. Even poison flowers can bloom."
Lysara had never forgotten the girl. Or the hemlock. Or the blood they later spilled in that garden, when everything went to rot.
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The garden had once belonged to the royal botanists of Ashengar. Now it belonged to weeds and ghosts.
Lysara Vale stepped carefully over shattered planters and cracked marble benches. Vines curled through broken statues. Red moss clung to everything like dried blood. The moon above blinked behind stormclouds, its light half-mourning.
She reached the heart of the garden: a circle of black earth, untouched by time.
There was no stone. No name.
Just a grave. One that hadn't been there last week.
Selene had led her here before disappearing again. Her last words rang in Lysara's head like a curse: "The dead you buried might be the only ones who still remember the truth."
Lysara stood still. The air tasted like copper and memory.
"Who did you bury here, Dren?" she whispered.
She knelt and pressed a hand to the soil. It throbbed—once—beneath her palm. A heartbeat in the earth.
And then it answered.
Not with sound.
But with a presence.
Behind her, a soft voice: "You shouldn't have come."
Lysara turned.
A girl stood just beyond the hedgerow. Pale, barefoot, wrapped in faded robes. Her hair hung wet, as if she'd just climbed out of the sea.
Lysara rose slowly, muscles coiled tight. "You're not real."
The girl tilted her head. "I was. Once. You killed me."
Lysara froze.
The girl stepped forward. Her eyes were green, streaked with silver. Familiar.
"The garden remembers," she said. "Do you?"
And suddenly, the world changed.
She was seventeen again. The garden was whole.
And she was holding a sword.
The girl in front of her bled from a cut across her ribs, hands raised in surrender. They were surrounded by other inquisitors, cloaked and masked.
"You swore loyalty to the crown," the high inquisitor had said.
"I swore loyalty to the truth," the girl replied.
The others had shouted. One struck her across the face.
And Lysara, caught in that terrible moment between obedience and mercy, had hesitated.
Just one second.
And then the sword was in her hand. She had done what was expected.
And afterward, she had planted hemlock where the girl bled.
Now.
Lysara collapsed to her knees, breath ragged.
The girl's ghost knelt beside her.
"You killed me to survive," she said gently. "But you kept my memory to suffer."
Lysara couldn't speak. Tears burned.
"You don't have to keep punishing yourself," the ghost whispered. "But if you do… then stop pretending you're righteous."
Lysara looked up, blood on her teeth. "I never was."
The girl leaned close. "Then prove it."
And just like that—she vanished.
The garden went still.
The grave had opened.
Inside it… wasn't a body.
It was a mirror. Cracked. Its reflection showed Lysara, but not as she was.
As she could become.
Crowned in thorns. Eyes like blades. The queen of ruin.
Lysara reached for it—
And lightning split the sky.
Far away, in the Sea of Vesper Reeds…
Valcian Myrrh whispered to Dren as they watched the storms rise.
"She's remembered the grave," he said.
Dren closed his eyes. "Then it's begun."
Valcian smiled, lips like velvet knives. "Not yet, darling. But it's coming."