Chapter 20: The Gardener’s Daughter

The estate breathed again.

Overnight, the blackened spires softened to ivory, cracks in the mortar sealing like healed wounds. Roses bloomed in hues Jack had never seen—petals of bruised violet, stems shimmering like mercury—and the air hummed with a low, melodic thrum. The child danced through the gardens, her bare feet leaving trails of withered thorns and newborn buds. Where she stepped, death and life collided.

Evangeline watched from the solarium, her dagger hand twitching. "She's reshaping it. The estate. The thorns. Herself."

Jack leaned against the doorframe, his scar numb where the girl had touched him. "She's a child. She doesn't know what she's doing."

"That's what terrifies me."

The girl's name was Lyra.

She'd whispered it to Jack at dawn, her voice a rustle of autumn leaves, while tracing the scar on his chest. The roots beneath his skin had stirred, not in hunger, but recognition.

"Did Seraphine name you?" he asked.

Lyra shook her head, her moonlight hair catching the sun. She pointed to the diary on his lap, open to a sketch of a rose cradling an infant.

"The gardener's daughter," he read. "Born of thorn and flesh, heir to the covenant."

Lyra pressed her palm to the page. Ink bled upward, forming new words: "To nurture or to reap. The choice is yours."

Evangeline found them in the library, Lyra asleep atop a mound of rotting grimoires. "We need to talk."

Jack followed her to the terrace. The once-dead gardens sprawled below, a surreal tapestry of decay and rebirth. Roses coiled around skeletal trees, their thorns budding into delicate white flowers.

"She's a paradox," Evangeline said. "She kills the thorns but feeds them. If we keep her here, the garden will consume her—or she'll consume us."

Jack gripped the balustrade. "And if we send her away? The cult will find her. Seraphine's followers."

"Then we end the bloodline." Evangeline's voice frayed. "Now. Before she becomes something we can't control."

A scream shattered the silence.

Lyra stood in the library's center, roots pinning her to the floor. A figure loomed over her—a thrall with Seraphine's face stitched from rose petals, its voice a chorus of dying gasps.

"The covenant demands a heart," it hissed. "Yours or hers."

Evangeline lunged, daggers slicing through petal-flesh. The thrall dissolved, but another rose in its place, then another, a dozen Seraphine-masks chanting: "Choose. Choose. Choose."

Lyra wailed. The library's shelves collapsed, books erupting into clouds of thorns. Jack's scar split open, roots surging to shield her.

"Jack, stop!" Evangeline grabbed his arm. "You'll bury us alive!"

He didn't. Couldn't.

The thorns obeyed Lyra now.

When the dust settled, the library was a tomb of splintered wood and ink-stained roots. Lyra crouched in the wreckage, cradling a wounded sparrow. Her tears fell on its wings, and the bird shuddered, its feathers melting into rose petals.

Evangeline recoiled. "What have you done?"

Lyra looked up, her eyes pools of liquid night. "Fixed it."

They argued in the crypt.

Evangeline paced between the tombs of Vossaires long dead, her boots echoing. "She's not a child. She's a seed. Plant her, and the garden grows anew."

Jack blocked the exit, roots coiled at his feet. "She's scared. She needs us."

"She needs a leash." Evangeline drew a vial of Maeve's algae. "This suppresses the thorns. We dose her. Control her power until we find a cure."

"You sound like your father."

She struck him.

The crack of her palm against his cheek echoed louder than the storm outside. He didn't flinch.

"I'm trying to save us," she whispered.

"Then save her."

Lyra's fever began at midnight.

Her skin burned, veins glowing gold beneath the surface. The estate convulsed, walls cracking, roses screaming as they burst into flame. Jack held her in the solarium, his scar pulsing in sync with her ragged breaths.

"It's the covenant," Evangeline said, pressing a algae-soaked cloth to Lyra's brow. "Her body's rejecting the thorns. Or they're rejecting her."

Lyra's eyes flew open. "Mother."

Seraphine's ghost flickered above her, a smile on her withered lips. "You see, Eva? You cannot outrun legacy."

Evangeline plunged her dagger into the specter's heart. It laughed, dissolving into pollen.

Lyra's fever broke. The estate stilled.

In the garden of colliding seasons, Lyra wove crowns of dead and living roses. Jack watched her, the diary heavy in his hands.

"The covenant's choice is a lie," he read aloud. "To nurture is to reap. The gardener's daughter is both sower and scythe."

Lyra placed a crown on his head. The scar on his chest bloomed, roots intertwining with the roses.

"Pretty," she signed, her hands clumsy but deliberate.

Evangeline appeared, her shadow cutting through the dawn light. "We need to leave. The cult is close."

Lyra's crown slipped from Jack's head, petals browning mid-fall.

They fled at dusk, the horizon choked with torchlight.

Lyra rode with Jack, her small arms around his waist. Evangeline led them through the forest, her daggers slicing through thorned barriers. Behind, the cult chanted, their voices weaving into the wind:

"Blood of the covenant, flesh of the rose. Surrender the daughter, and the garden grows."

Lyra buried her face in Jack's back. "Scared."

"I know," he said. "Me too."

The safehouse was a hunter's lodge, abandoned and rotting. Evangeline barred the doors while Jack lit a fire. Lyra curled on a moth-eaten cot, her breath hitching.

"They'll find us," Evangeline said.

"Not yet." Jack stirred the flames. "We rest. Then we run."

She knelt beside Lyra, brushing hair from the girl's face. "What if running isn't enough?"

Lyra's hand found hers. The frostbite on Evangeline's fingers thawed, skin knitting pink and new.

"Thank you," Lyra signed.

Evangeline pulled away. "Don't."

The dream was a memory not his own.

Jack stood in Seraphine's greenhouse, centuries past. A younger, gentler Seraphine cradled Lyra—infant-sized, her skin bark, her veins roots. "You will save us," Seraphine murmured. "You will make them love you."

Lyra's first word bubbled from the soil: "Mama."

Jack woke to screams.

The cult had come.

They poured through the windows, thorned and faceless, their chants shaking the walls. Evangeline fought, daggers gleaming, but there were too many. Lyra hid under the cot, her hands clamped over her ears.

Jack's scar erupted.

Roots tore through the lodge, impaling cultists, crushing bones to dust. Lyra crawled to him, her tears sprouting roses that devoured the dead.

"Stop!" Evangeline grabbed his arm. "You'll kill her!"

He couldn't. The garden's voice was Lyra's now.

"Protect. Protect. Protect."

When silence fell, the lodge was a grave.

Lyra knelt amid the carnage, her hands stained green-gold. The cultists' bodies dissolved, nourishing roses that curled toward her like adoring pets.

Evangeline's dagger pressed to Lyra's throat. "This ends. Now."

Jack stepped between them. "You'll have to kill me first."

Lyra's roses wilted.

"Family," she signed, trembling. "Don't."

Chapter 20 End.