The Vow

Part I— Esme

The petals trembled in the silver bowl.

It wasn't the wind—there was none inside the greenhouse. No air stirring between the rows of nightshade and silence. The trembling came from Esme's hands.

She exhaled slowly, shoulders stiff, trying to still herself. Focus.

The petals were delicate, newly plucked from the mouth of a hellebore—a rare black variety that bloomed only once a season. She combined it with aconite, a trace of dried foxglove, and something else. Something that didn't belong to any recipe she'd written down.

This dose was different.

Not a weapon.

A test.

Her gloved fingers moved carefully over the mortar, crushing the ingredients into a velvet paste, dark and glistening like old blood. Steam rose from a small beaker as she poured in the heated carrier liquid—distilled wine extract.

The smell was oddly sweet.

Esme stared at the mixture.

She should've finished it. Strained it. Bottled it. Marked it in her logbook and hidden it behind the false panel in the greenhouse shelf.

But she didn't.

Instead, she just… stopped.

The pestle hung in midair. Her breath hitched.

It was too much like that day. The smell. The stillness.

The first time she ever truly understood what a flower could do.

———————————————————

She was eleven. Small for her age. Hair too wild for a funeral.

The house was full of polite strangers and impolite silence.

She remembered the voices first. Adults speaking around her, over her. One woman with lavender perfume and a narrow smile had leaned down and whispered: "At least she didn't suffer, darling."

But Esme knew she had.

Because she'd watched it happen.

Her mother had collapsed in the greenhouse two days before. One moment, laughing at a joke about larkspur, and the next—coughing, then shaking, then choking.

Esme had screamed for help, but no one heard. No one ever came back there. It was her mother's sanctuary. Their place.

And that day, it became her tomb.

Esme had tried to make sense of it. What could've gone wrong? Her mother never made mistakes with plants. Never miscalculated.

The coroner had said it was a "rare allergic reaction."

But Esme had gone back. Quietly. Alone. And she had looked.

She'd found the vial. The wrong label. The residue on the inside. Not an accident.

Poison.

A deliberate replacement.

Someone had killed Helena Levine.

And no one even noticed.

That night, Esme took her mother's gardening knife and carved a message into the underside of the greenhouse table. She still remembered what it said.

They will not be allowed to forget what the flowers remember.

———————————————————

Back in the present, the steam from the dose began to fade, curling into nothing.

Esme's jaw tightened.

She picked up the flask, poised to pour it into the vial.

Then stopped.

Her hand hovered.

Because the dosage wasn't meant for a target. It wasn't lethal.

It was meant to test the line between numbness and memory.

She was building something new. Not to kill. To protect.

But from what?

From Liam?

From herself?

A soft chime echoed from the front of the shop.

Her entire body stilled.

Not the main bell. Not the front door.

The private door on the side wall. The one no customer should ever reach.

Esme turned, slow and silent, and reached beneath the table for the knife. The old one. Her mother's.

The last dose still steamed on the table behind her.

Unfinished.

Waiting.

———————————————————

Part II — Liam

The folder was thicker than he expected.

Liam sat on the floor of his apartment, surrounded by a crime scene of his own making—photographs, plant guides, marked maps, three-quarters of a sandwich he no longer had the stomach to eat.

At the center: Helena Levine's personal files.

He hadn't had the opportunity to look at them since they entered an evidence box long closed and misfiled, buried after the "official" cause of death.

An accident.

But it wasn't an accident. Liam had always suspected that much. The timing. The cause. The silence afterward. It didn't line up with someone simply mislabeling a vial or making a fatal misstep in a greenhouse.

Not someone like Helena Levine.

He remembered the name from old files—once a respected botanist, then abruptly branded the infamous "Thorn" after her death, with three high-profile deaths loosely linked to her. The case was sealed. No formal trial. No thorough autopsy on public record.

It felt like someone had locked a door—and thrown away the entire hallway behind it.

And now… someone was killing with flowers again.

He opened a smaller envelope tucked into the folder. Inside: old photos and pages from Helena's journals. Most were faded—blurred shots of garden plots and drying herbs, annotated margins with symbols he didn't recognize.

But one page caught his attention.

A pressed flower was taped to the center—Delphinium. The petals faded to ghost blue. Beside it, Helena's precise handwriting labeled it: "C-Variant: Inhibitor."

He turned the page.

A list.

Not names.

Plants.

Monkshood — cardiac disruption

Foxglove — arrhythmia induction

Gloriosa — paralytic, late stage

C-Variant — memory suppression?

Liam frowned.

This wasn't a recipe for murder. It read more like a study in control. Containment. Understanding.

She had been tracking the threshold between medicinal and lethal. Between intention and outcome.

He flipped to the last page.

A name was scrawled at the bottom, tucked neatly into the corner.

E.L.

His stomach dropped.

Esme Levine.

It wasn't confirmation—not legally. But emotionally? It was enough.

The florist with the steady hands. The too-knowing eyes. The gentle smile that never quite softened her posture.

He should've reported her.

But instead, he turned back one page—and found a letter, penned in the same slanted hand.

If anything happens to me, tell her the flowers do not lie. She will understand. Protect her from the ones who buried the truth—especially Roan. He was never what he seemed.

Liam went cold.

Mathias Roan.

The man was listed as deceased. But too many people had slipped into convenient deaths lately.

Roan didn't feel gone.

Liam stood up, gripping the folder.

He needed to get this verified. Poppy would know the C-Variant—if it even existed outside Helena's notes. And Esme—

He wasn't sure what he would say to her.

Maybe nothing.

He grabbed his coat just as a sound pulled him to stillness.

Not a knock.

A soft tap at the window.

He turned.

Outside, caught against the edge of the sill, was a folded envelope.

He opened the window, hands steady.

Inside: a single pressed petal.

Delphinium.

And a note, typed in clean, mechanical font:

"Be careful, young man. Don't dig too deep, or you might end up getting buried alive."