“Change doesn’t uproot who you are, Thorn,” she whispers. “It just lets you grow.”
I turn to look at her and she meets my gaze without flinching.
“I don’t want to lose myself,” I murmur.
“You won’t,” she promises. “Because you’re not made of rules. You’re made ofroots. And roots don’t disappear when something new blooms—they hold it up.”
There’s nothing I can say.
So I kiss her.
Slow.
Full of everything I can’t put into words.
And when we pull apart, the Grove around us glows—soft, golden,sure.
Just like her.
Just like this.
Two weeksafter Clara kissed me under the silver bloomlight of the Grove, I walk into the town council chamber and everything stops.
The room’s not large—round, wood-paneled, with a skylight in the center and folding chairs arranged in a hesitant circle. Half the walls are charm-sealed scroll cabinets; the other half are notice boards covered in repurposed parchment flyers.
But all I see are faces turning toward me.
Callie’s the first to recover. She clears her throat and scoots her notes an inch to the right.
Clara doesn’t look surprised.
She just lifts her gaze when I step in, gives me the smallest of nods, and subtly shifts the chair next to hers—closer to the edge.
I take it.
Silently.
Eliorin Vask, now seated across the circle with less of his usual arrogance and more quiet discomfort, adjusts his glasses but says nothing.
Councilwoman Juna, a sprightly elder with bone charms woven into her braid, is mid-sentence.
“Well, then,” she says, glancing around the room. “Now that the… Grove representative has joined us, perhaps we can continue?”
No one objects.
Clara picks up where she left off. Her voice is calm. Clear. Confident.
“We’ve mapped the energy fluxes from the sacred rootline to the boundary grove. The pattern has stabilized. No evidence of hostile magical shift since the reclassification.”
A younger liaison across from her scribbles notes, blinking fast.
“And the hybrid propagation beds?” Juna asks.
“They’re holding,” Callie chimes in, flipping open a binder. “Sixty percent viability, thirty-five already showing sapient-responsive traits.”
I sit quietly.
Hands folded in my lap.
