Chapter 19: The Child of Withering Light

The child stood at the edge of the graveyard, her bare feet buried in ash, her nightgown streaked with soot. She couldn't have been older than six, with storm-gray eyes that mirrored Jack's and hair like spun moonlight. When Evangeline raised her dagger, the girl lifted a hand—not in fear, but in curiosity. The nearest Rosa Noctis wilted, petals curling to dust.

"Don't." Jack stepped forward, his scar cold and silent. "She's not a thrall."

Evangeline didn't lower her blade. "Then what is she?"

The child tilted her head, and the ground sighed. Roots slithered from the soil, coiling around her ankles like affectionate serpents.

"A problem," Jack said.

They took her to the kitchens, the only room with intact walls. The girl sat on the scarred oak table, swinging her legs, her gaze fixed on Jack. Evangeline paced, her frostbitten hand tucked into her coat.

"Speak," she demanded.

The child blinked.

"Where are your parents?"

No answer. The girl traced a finger along the table's edge. Where she touched, wood rotted, splintering into blackened crumbs.

Jack crouched before her. "Can you understand us?"

She nodded.

"What's your name?"

Her lips parted, but the sound that emerged was the creak of bending boughs, the rustle of dead leaves. Evangeline stiffened.

"She's one of them," she muttered. "A mutation."

The girl flinched. A rose vase on the hearth shattered, thorns erupting from the shards.

"No." Jack caught Evangeline's wrist. "She's afraid."

Nightfall brought storms.

Rain lashed the broken solarium, pooling in the cracks where the bloom had grown. The child slept by the hearth, roots weaving a cradle around her. Jack watched her, the diary open in his lap.

"The union is not death," he read again. "It is symbiosis. The vessel and the garden, bound as one."

Evangeline emerged from the shadows, her hair loose, her dagger sheathed. "You're obsessing."

"Aren't you?" He closed the diary. "That child is the key. She withers the thorns just by existing."

"Or she's a trap. Seraphine's last trick."

Thunder rumbled. The girl whimpered in her sleep, roots tightening around her.

"She's a child," Jack said.

Evangeline's voice softened. "So was I when the thorns took Liran."

The dream was a memory.

Jack stood in a sunlit garden, the air thick with the scent of lemon and lavender. The child knelt by a rosebush, her hands buried in the soil. A woman approached—Seraphine, but younger, her face unlined, her hair streaked with gold.

"You must nourish them," she told the girl. "They are your siblings. Your legacy."

The child pulled her hands free, roots clinging to her fingers. "They're hungry," she whispered.

"All living things are." Seraphine cupped her face. "You will learn to feed them."

The scene dissolved. Jack woke to screaming.

The girl thrashed in her root-cradle, vines strangling her throat. Evangeline hacked at them, daggers flashing, but the thorns regrew faster.

"Jack—do something!"

He seized the girl's hand. The scar on his chest flared, gold light searing through the roots. They recoiled, shriveling to ash. The girl gasped, her eyes wide and wet.

Evangeline knelt, dagger still raised. "What did you do?"

"What the diary said." Jack released the girl's hand. "Symbiosis."

The child touched his scar. The estate shuddered.

Morning revealed the truth.

The girl led them to a village buried in the brambles—a cluster of cottages swallowed by thorns, their thatched roofs sagging under the weight of roses. Corpses hung from the eaves, their skeletons fused with the vines. At the center stood a well, its stones cracked, darkness pooling below.

The girl pointed.

"No," Evangeline said. "Whatever's down there stays down."

Jack peered into the well. The darkness peered back.

"Come home, vessel," Seraphine's voice echoed.

He climbed in.

The descent was endless.

Jack's boots slipped on slick stones, his scar pulsing like a lantern. The air thickened with the stench of wet earth and rotting petals. At the bottom, a chamber stretched—a tomb lined with roots, its walls carved with Vossaire faces. Seraphine's skeleton sat on a throne of thorns, a crown of Rosa Noctis atop her skull.

The girl appeared beside him, her small hand in his.

"She's waiting," the child's voice echoed in his mind.

The skeleton's jaw creaked open.

"Hello, Jack."

Evangeline found them at dusk.

Jack knelt before the throne, the child's hand clasped in his, his eyes glazed gold. Seraphine's skeleton leaned forward, roots knitting her bones into flesh, her scarred face reforming.

"Get away from him," Evangeline snarled.

Seraphine smiled. "He came willingly. The garden always wins, daughter of venom."

The girl stepped between them, her palms raised. The roots binding Seraphine's throne withered.

"No!" Seraphine lunged, but the child's touch reduced her to dust.

The tomb collapsed.

They surfaced in a storm.

The girl slept in Jack's arms, her hair streaked with ash. Evangeline gripped her dagger, her voice trembling. "What did she do to you?"

Jack stared at his hands. "She showed me the union. The garden doesn't want a vessel—it wants a family."

The child stirred, her eyes opening. Storm-gray, like his. Like Seraphine's.

Evangeline's blade hovered at the girl's throat. "What is she?"

The child spoke for the first time, her voice the sigh of dying roses.

"Yours."

Chapter 19 End.