Chapter 33: The Garden of Thorns
The secret garden had grown wilder than Evan remembered. The roses now reached the size of small trees, their twisted stems like ancient vertebrae. Thorns gleamed in the moonlight, each as long as his index finger and sharp as daggers. The air smelled of withered petals and damp earth, with an underlying metallic tang that reminded him of dried blood.
Selene walked beside him, her presence as familiar as the pain in his arm. The corruption around her eye had receded slightly since they shared the memory, but the black veins still coiled like diseased roots beneath her skin. She carried Evan's dagger at her belt, the metal glinting faintly in the dark.
"Are you sure it's here?" Evan asked, pushing aside a vine that tried to curl around his wrist.
Selene didn't answer immediately. Her steps were deliberate, as if each movement required concentration. Finally, she pointed toward the garden's heart, where the foliage grew densest.
"There. Where my mother hid it."
The "it" remained a mystery. In the memory they'd shared, young Selene had buried something beneath the largest rose's roots just before the shadows came. Something her mother had pressed into her hands with urgent whispers Evan couldn't hear.
Aria and Rowan waited at the garden's entrance, watching their backs. Isolde had stayed behind, studying the spellbook with near-obsessive intensity. But here, in this forgotten place, it was just the two of them.
The rose was impossible to miss. It rose like a throne of thorns and black petals, its center so dark it seemed to swallow the moonlight. Evan reached out, but Selene caught his wrist.
"You can't touch it," she warned, her voice rougher than usual. "The thorns carry the same essence that feeds the Vessel."
Evan withdrew his hand but didn't step back. "Then how do we get what's underneath?"
Selene drew the dagger. Without hesitation, she sliced her palm and let blood drip onto the roots.
The earth trembled.
The thorns recoiled like startled snakes, untangling to reveal a hollow beneath the rose. Inside rested a small, oblong object wrapped in black cloth.
Evan crouched to retrieve it, but the moment his fingers brushed the bundle, a voice spoke clearly in his mind.
"At last."
The entire garden seemed to hold its breath. Even the wind stilled, leaving a silence heavy with something Evan couldn't name. With hands that barely shook, he unwrapped the object.
A mirror. No larger than his palm, its silver frame worn with age. But when Evan turned it to see his reflection, he didn't find his own face.
He saw Lucian.
Not the Lucian he knew—not the man with sharp smiles and colder eyes. This was something more, something worse. His image in the mirror was distorted, his features elongated and twisted as if seen through rippling water. And he was smiling.
"How amusing," the voice purred, "that you should be the one to find it."
Selene shouted something, but Evan couldn't hear her. The world narrowed to the mirror and the figure within it. Lucian raised a hand, his fingers as thin as dead twigs, and pressed against the glass from the other side.
"Come find me, stormcaller. Before it's too late."
The mirror grew suddenly hot, burning Evan's hands. He dropped it instinctively, but instead of falling, it hung suspended in midair, rotating slowly. Lucian's image faded, replaced by a scene that stopped Evan's heart.
The academy—but not as it stood now. Destroyed. Its towers crumbled, its halls flooded with purposeful shadows. And at the center of the chaos, a tall, slender figure with silver hair and eyes that shone like moons.
Selene.
But not the Selene he knew. This version wore a gown of living darkness, her hands stained with what could only be blood. And at her feet, prostrate as subjects, were the others. Aria. Rowan. Isolde.
And Evan himself, kneeling with the rest.
The mirror went dark abruptly, clattering to the ground. Evan staggered back, his breathing ragged. Selene grabbed his shoulders, her silver eyes blazing with new urgency.
"What did you see?" she demanded, her fingers digging into his flesh.
Evan couldn't answer. Because in that moment, the roses around them began to move.
Not as plants.
But as waking creatures.
The first thorn struck before he could react, embedding itself in his injured arm with cruel precision. Pain exploded instantly—fire spreading from the wound to his shoulder, paralyzing the limb.
Selene cursed and shoved him behind her, her dagger cutting a silver arc through the air. The roses recoiled, but not for long.
"We have to go!" she shouted, grabbing his good arm and pulling.
Evan tried to move, but his legs wouldn't obey properly. The thorn's venom worked quickly, clouding his thoughts and numbing his limbs.
From somewhere distant, he heard Aria shout his name. Rowan bellowed something unintelligible, and the ground shook beneath them.
But the last thing Evan saw before darkness took him was Selene's eyes, burning with fierce determination.
And the mirror, vanishing among the thorns as if it had never been there at all.