Maryna
I wasn't supposed to be here.
Not in the garden.
Not barefoot on slick black stone, the gate left ajar like it had been waiting for me.
And yet—I was here.
Drawn by a whisper on a card. By a pulse behind my ribs that hadn't stopped pounding since the dream.
"Follow the flame that never dies. The garden remembers."
The path wound in silence.
No birds. No breeze.
Just stone that hummed beneath my soles and roses that bloomed despite the absence of sun or care. Their petals were too dark. Too perfect. Like they weren't alive, just enchanted to appear so.
The scent wrapped around me—familiar, wrong, cloying.
And I kept walking.
Because I needed answers.
And because I was afraid of what would happen if I turned back.
The garden center was a ring of stone and thorn. At its heart, a cracked fountain choked with vines and dried moss. A wrought iron bench waited beside it—half-sunken, weathered by time.
And resting on that bench—
A photograph.
I stopped breathing.
It wasn't old. The edges were crisp. The image still vivid.
A woman sat among the vines, back straight, shoulders square.
Her face—
My face.
Not exactly. But close enough that I stumbled backward.
Same eyes. Same hair.
Same tilt of the chin I'd seen in the mirror my whole life.
She was smiling. Not joyfully—just enough to suggest she hadn't wanted the picture taken.
There was no date. No name.
But something about the photo screamed this was real.
This had happened.
Here.
In this place.
My hands shook as I picked it up.
Who had left it?
And why?
I turned slowly—and saw another photo tucked between the thorns of a nearby rose bush.
This one was older. Faded. Edges curled with time.
A man in ceremonial robes.
And beside him, the same woman.
Or someone else who looked like her.
She wore a choker I'd never seen, eyes downcast, body turned slightly away from the camera.
It felt staged.
Planted.
And as I stared at it, something inside me clenched.
Like my body knew something my mind didn't.
That was when the questions came, hard and fast.
Was that my mother?
How could she have been here?
She disappeared just a few years ago—where had she gone?
Why was I left with Rick?
Was I being hidden? Or… prepared?
Had Vasilios planned to win me at the card table?
Or was it always going to happen—no matter how?
Who was my father?
Why does no one ever speak of him?
The garden was silent, but it was watching.
The vines rustled as I sank onto the bench, the photos clutched in my hands.
They weren't just clues.
They were breadcrumbs.
Proof that I wasn't crazy.
That this had always been bigger than me.
That someone—maybe Vasilios, maybe someone else—had been planning something long before I was old enough to run.
Elira's words echoed suddenly in my mind.
"Your mother… she made a bargain. And you… you're the result."
She'd said the parchment came from her.
At the time, I hadn't known what to make of it.
Now?
I wasn't sure if Elira had met her directly, or if the parchment had passed through many hands. But her belief had been absolute.
She had spoken of my mother with reverence.
With fear.
And now these photographs, left like a trail of bones, pointed to something I wasn't ready to admit:
She had been here.
Not a lifetime ago.
Recently.
Which meant someone in this place had known her.
Someone might still.
I rose slowly.
The stone beneath me felt warmer now.
And in the hush, I heard it—faint, from somewhere deeper in the estate.
A woman's voice.
Laughter.
Low. Familiar.
Not memory.
Not hallucination.
Something in-between.
I turned toward the sound, but there was nothing.
Only thorns.
And a path I hadn't seen before, half-hidden behind weeping ivy.
I didn't follow it.
Not yet.
But I would.
Because something was unraveling.
And it was pulling me with it.
To be continued…