WHERE DEATH BLOOMS

A cozy fantasy romance about dangerous magic, found family, and the kind of love that takes root in all the wrong places.

Remington smacked his head on the lintel. Hard. Stars bloomed behind his eyes. Bright, immediate, vaguely accusatory. He let out a low hiss that might’ve been a curse or a prayer, depending on how much blood he was losing. At least no one was around to see it.

He ducked—properly this time—beneath the mossy arch of the cottage door and stepped inside, doing his very best impression of a man who hadn’t just tried to seduce the ceiling with his skull. 

Inside, the cottage was more greenhouse than home. Plants spilled from every surface. Twisting ivy cradled the bookshelves like lazy lovers, and glass jars sprouted clumps of glowing moss. The air was thick with the warm, green scent of living things and smoke from the hearth. A neat row of bleached skulls lined the mantel, their hollow gazes fixed on the room with unnerving commitment.

“Shut the door, sweeting. You’re letting in the damp.” Her voice was nettles steeped in honey. Lovely, if you didn’t notice the sting.

Remington let the door fall shut with a soft click. Shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the hook by the door. “Magra?”

“Mind the serpent’s bane, boy. If you bump it, we’ll both regret it.”

He ducked beneath the hanging foliage, the sharp tang of the herb stinging his nose. “It doesn’t scare me half as much as you do. Which is a compliment, obviously. All healthy relationships should be built on a foundation of mild terror.”

A dry chuckle rattled through the cottage.

Magra sat in her root-spun chair, feet wrapped in thick wool, a chipped teacup balanced on her knee. She was every grandmother at first glance. Small, stooped, with a silver braid coiled over one shoulder. But as Remington drew closer, the details shifted. Her skin was tinged an ashen green-gray, stretched parchment-thin over bones that jutted. And her smile came with far too many teeth.

Charming, really, if you’d grown up with her tucking you in at night. Most children feared the monster in the dark. His had made tea and cookies and told him bedtime stories about old magic.

She shifted stiffly in her chair, as though her bones were arguing with her. “Thought you might’ve wandered too far this time. Or better yet, fallen for someone interesting enough to make the getting lost worth it.”

Remington knelt at her side, folding his tall frame into the too-small room with the practiced grace of someone long resigned to cramped spaces and impossible women. “Wouldn’t wish me on anyone. Except you, obviously. Too late for you, of course. You’re already cursed with fondness.”

He clasped her hand in his. Her skin was papery and clammy beneath his touch, like parchment left out in the rain, trying its best to remember what it used to be. She’d been warmer last week. Steadier.

He turned her hand over, checking her palm, her wrist, farther up her arm where the rot had begun to bloom, as silent and deadly as cellar mold. Two weeks. Maybe three. The last one should’ve held her longer than this. Unless… No, the mage had been strong enough. A young thing, barely twenty. So young, Magra had scolded him for it—twice.

But what was he meant to do? The rot didn’t wait politely. And Magra… Well, she needed what she needed, politeness and age be damned.

“You’re fussing,” her graveled drawl broke into his thoughts.

“I’m not fussing, I’m inspecting. There’s a difference. Very scientific, actually. Empirical, even.” He turned her wrist gently, tracing the mottled green-gray with his thumb. “See? Observation. Documentation. Hypothesis: everything’s going pear colored. Conclusion: should’ve paid more attention before it did.”

“Empirical rubbish.” But as her fingers tightened around his, a tremor writhed and rippled beneath her skin.

He’d felt it before. Last month. The one before that. It was rather like watching a candle gutter, knowing full well the wind’s coming through the window. But you can’t close the window, because it’s not really the wind but time. And time, well, he’s a stubborn bastard that never listens.

“It’s still spreading.” The words came out quieter than he meant them to.

“I’m old. Things spread.” She sighed, a rattling thing that settled too heavy in the space between them.

“One more won’t hurt.” He said it lightly, tried to make it sound reasonable. Perfectly ordinary. Like popping down to the market for bread and coming back with a mage instead. Happened all the time. Best not to think too hard about it. Thinking made it harder to do, and doing it was the only thing keeping her here. So really, thinking was probably optional. Strongly discouraged, even.

He set her hand gently back on her lap. Gave it a little pat. There. All settled. He’d go, she’d scold, he’d ignore the scolding, everything would be—

Her fingers snapped around his wrist, cloudy eyes sharpened as a tremor rippled through her bones. The tea in her cup quivered. 

“A shadow seeks its mirror,” she hummed, voice distant. “When it finds you, neither shall be shadow again.”

The fire popped, the cottage sighed, and Magra blinked as though waking from a dream. She drew her hand back, lifted her teacup, and sipped. Perfectly unfazed after delivering the sort of cryptic doom one really ought to print on a card and hand over with ceremony.

Remington let the moment pass without comment. Sometimes her words landed in divine prophecy. Other times? Well, most times lately, they wandered straight into nonsense and stayed for tea.

She was getting on in years, even for one of her kind, and he feared her mind was unraveling as quickly as her body. Which was terrifying, really. She was supposed to be immovable. Like doorframes you were destined to smack your head on forever.

“You’ve grown lean.” Her voice cut through his thoughts. “I should fatten you up before you waste away.”

“If I waste away, it will only be because no one in all the realms cooks half as well as you. Which is, admittedly, a bit of shameless flattery, but entirely accurate, so hardly my fault.”

Magra gave a rasping pish-posh. “Handsome and charming as ever, and still no woman to warm your bed. Tragic, that. Waste of a good jaw and ridiculous hair, if you ask me.”

“One woman fussing over me is plenty, Magra. I’ve no need of another… unless, of course, she comes with better tea.”

“And when I’m gone, sweeting? Who’ll fatten you with stew and drown you in dreadful tea?”

“You’ll defy the gods themselves just to keep nagging me into eternity, I’m sure.” The words spilled light, honest, and a little off-handed. He rose, careful not to jostle her teacup, and straightened as much as the low beams allowed. The cottage pressed in around him, too small by half, yet familiar as his own breath. Every beam, every shadow, every crack in the wood stitched into memory from a childhood spent nipping at an old hag’s heels. There was a time before her, so brief and so long ago, it was nothing but a blur on the distant horizon. Magra was the only family he’d ever known, and he’d be damned if he’d let her stubbornness take that away from him. 

He ducked beneath a line of hanging roots and crossed to the cabinet. Set to work searching the shelves, crowded with mislabeled jars and scattered bundles. It was a small mercy Magra couldn’t fuss over his concoctions anymore. One look at the ramshackle mess he’d made of her potions and poisons and he’d never have heard the end of it.

“Which one you after?”

“Ghostthorn.” His fingers skimmed the labels that no longer reflected their contents. “Because nothing says ‘safe crossing’ like a vial that might eat through your boots if you drop it.”

The teacup paused halfway to her lips. “You’ll wear yourself thin, boy, slipping between worlds so often.”

Remington plucked a glass jar from the shelf and turned it over in his hand. Pale stalks, sharp with thorns, tangled and twisted inside. Poetic, really. He, too, was tangled and twisted, the knot in his stomach tightening with each crossing. But for the woman who’d kept him, he’d drag himself to the Hells and back until the devil decided to keep him. Or the strain of ripping holes in reality finally shattered his bones. Whichever came first. 

He uncorked the ghostthorn. “You know I must.”

Magra set her teacup down with a sharp little click, the sound too loud in the small cottage. “Aye. Suppose you must. Fool thing to do, but when has that ever stopped you?”

Remington tipped a fine white powder into the ghostthorn, working the mix just right for the crossing. “Oh, never once. Utterly consistent that way. If there’s a poor decision waiting round the bend, I’ll be sure to trip over it.”

“Mind your measurements, boy. That’s a fearsome thing in the wrong hands.”

Remington glanced back, but her gaze was fixed on the fire. Her foggy eyes had gone distant, her breath dragged ragged. For a moment, he thought she might slip away again, chase some far-off portent that lost its meaning along the way. But when she spoke again, it was a wistful kind of longing. “I was fearsome once. Now I’m but an old woman with too many years in her bones.”

He corked the vial, then leaned down to brush a kiss against her temple as he passed. “You’re still the most terrifying creature in all the realms. Gods tremble, kings quake.” His mouth tugged into a crooked smile. “And me? I just count myself blessed that you keep me as yours. Nagging included.”

“Pah.” She swatted at him, nails rasping against his sleeve, though the gesture was more affection than scold. “Silver tongue like yours oughtn’t be wasted on an old hag. Save it for the girl who’ll cost you your heart.”

“Best not to tempt fate with talk like that. You never know who might be listening.” He tucked the jar into his coat pocket before lifting it from the hook. “Last thing I need is another hex, curse, or wild raccoon deciding I’m fair game.”

A low sound rumbled beneath her voice, like stones shifting deep underground. Approval or general discontent at the state of him, he could never be sure. 

“I’ll put a stew on, sweeting. If the Veil sees fit, you might just be home in time to taste it.”

Remington dragged his coat on and reached for the door, flashing her a boyish grin. “You know nothing in this world or the next could keep me from your table. Stew like yours? Worth the trouble.”

Lyra leaned her forehead against the glass, watching her breath bloom in silvery clouds on the pane. Outside, frost clung stubbornly to the hedgerows, winter unwilling to loosen its grip despite spring’s polite request. Inside, the fire crackled with quiet effort, doing its best to warm the bones of a house built more for austerity than comfort.

A leather-bound journal rested on her lap, worn soft with use, its corners foxed and curling. It lay open beneath her fingers, the page faintly stained with lavender oil and a smear of ink where she’d forgotten the weight of her pen.

Her notations gathered neatly around her latest sketch: Veil Orchid. Possible night-bloomer (see Ref. H: “Liminal Flora”). Family unknown. Genus unrecorded. Then, in the margins, where thoughts unraveled, print gave way to looping script: A flower that blooms only in silence, while the world lies sleeping. I wonder if it feels the weight of that silence pressing against its petals. Perhaps it does not know the difference. Perhaps it does, and blooms anyway.

The journal vanished from beneath her palms. She hadn’t heard him enter, his steps always soundless, the house itself conspiring to keep him hidden. The sharp thwack of pages turning punctuated the stillness, echoing in time with the tight pull of his breath. “A waste of time, dressing weeds in poetry.”

She turned from his shadow-cloaked face and fixed her gaze once more on the window. Her uncle had once been a mage of influence, at least that was the story she’d always been told. She’d come to his house too young to remember what had come before. 

Behind her, the book snapped shut with a sharp crack, then landed beside her with a dull, deliberate thunk.

“We’re out of fenwort.” His mouth curled around the words like they had turned sour. “I need it for spellwork. Unless, of course, you’ve taken to hoarding it for your little drawings.”

Lyra reached for the journal. If he’d ever bothered to take an interest, he might’ve noticed that her little drawings also contained a meticulous compendium of magical references, notes on fenwort included. But noticing would have required attention, and attention would have required care. And the space between them had been carved long ago, out of mutual neglect and silence. “If I have, it’s in the third drawer. Alphabetized. Next to the other weeds you don’t know how to use.”

He tossed a small coin purse onto her lap. “Fetch some more,” he said. “Before your cleverness outpaces your usefulness.”

“Of course, Uncle. Wouldn’t want to leave your spellwork undefended against insufficient fenwort.”

“Be quick about it.” His hand flicked the air. “The world has little use for a cursed woman with weeds in her pockets.” He turned, cloak whispering against stone as he swept out of the room.

“And even less,” she mumbled, “for a man who’s never learned what those weeds are worth.”

The room settled into silence once more, though silence in this house was never gentle. It pressed in from the walls, from the stone floor, from the soot-smudged beams overhead. An emptiness so complete it didn’t simply echo, it listened. 

She had hoped to leave it all behind when she came of age, to work for the herbalist maybe. Perhaps someday have a home of her own. Nothing so grand and sprawling as her uncle’s cold manor. She was more suited for smaller things. A fire to cook and read by. Herbs drying on the mantel. And a garden, of course. Home to all manner of flora because weeds were only unuseful to those who didn’t know any better.

But then the maid had died. And the steward a few years after. By the third death, there was no left who would take her. The herbalist had no use for her, despite the fact that she could name every plant that grew in Eiraden. There was no one more skilled at medicinals, none more adept at poisons, but it was hard to find work when you were more dangerous than the plants you tended. 

The first time it happened, she had still been half a child, her magic only just beginning to settle into her bones. By sixteen it had teeth. By twenty it had become a sentence she carried in her skin. Such was life when magic matured alongside you, for the last eight years her hands offered only death.

Lyra crossed to the narrow shelf beside the hearth, where her satchel hung waiting. The leather was cracked, patched twice over, but it served her all the same. She cinched it around her waist, then slipped her journal inside. Then a pouch of dried sage, a sprig of nettle, and the last of her elderflower stock, just in case. Humble things, but more reliable than spellbooks, more loyal than hounds, and considerably less condescending than relations.

Finally, the gloves.

They lay folded atop the shelf like a sentence half-spoken. Dark, heavy leather, too warm in summer, too stiff in winter, but necessary in every season. Enchanted, of course. Stitched through with silver thread and old wardings meant to keep her magic from seeping out. Gift or curse, prison or armor, depending on the day.

Lyra tugged them on, finger by finger, then turned to the door.

The house exhaled around her, its chill gathering in the high rafters. Her steps rang too loudly in the quiet stitched deep into every stone. An old, echoing hush that made her an intruder in her own home.

It was just an errand. Just an herb. Just an hour. Two if she dawdled, which she fully intended to, assuming the world didn’t end. Or worse, continue exactly as it was.

Her pulse quickened as she neared the door. The iron greeted her hand with the cold grip of an old lover. She drew it open, the heavy hinges groaning, far too loud in the deathly silent house.

Beyond, the evening air rushed in to meet her. Crisp and thick with the scent of damp earth and chimney smoke from the village below. She breathed it in until her chest ached with it. Then she stepped out, her satchel knocking lightly against her hip. The door closed behind her with a final, hollow click, the sound of the house sealing itself back into silence.

Eiraden sprawled below, a scatter of warm light against the coming dusk. Smoke curled from chimneys as she started down the slope, boots crunching against frost-hardened earth. The herbalist’s shop sat at the far end of the village. She knew the route by heart, for it was the only one she’d ever taken. The winding path led from her uncle’s manor on the hillside, past the slumbering orchard, down to the main road crisscrossing the small village. At the crossroads sat the tavern, golden light spilling from its windows in invitation.

She meant to take the fork in the road, toward the marketplace with its butcher and baker, but laughter drifted out on the evening air, warm and unguarded. She could hear the clink of tankards, the low hum of conversation spilling out into the late-winter air like a spell mid-cast. She’d pop in, just for a moment, just to warm her toes. She glanced at the horizon; the sun was just beginning to descend over the frost-bitten hills. She had an hour at least, plenty of time to linger in the warmth for a moment.

Lyra pushed open the door and let the tavern swallow her whole.

The heat hit first, thick with the scent of woodsmoke, bodies pressed close, and ale that had likely seen better barrels. The noise folded around her. Laughter, the scrape of chairs, someone attempting a drinking song and losing the melody halfway through.

Lyra kept her head down and moved through the crowd. Past the hearth where three men argued over cards. Past the bar and tables crowded with neighbors who’d never bothered with an introduction. Found a table in the back corner, tucked between a support beam and a window gone gray with grime. Far enough from the fire that the warmth barely reached her. Far enough from the crowd that no one might mistake her.

She took off her satchel and pulled out her journal, laying it on the scarred wood with the reverence some people reserved for prayer books. The Veil Orchid stared up at her, half-finished, still waiting.

Her gloves came off next. Just for a few minutes. Just long enough to add the shading she’d been thinking about as she walked to the village. Maybe a mug of ale, perhaps a little stew to warm her insides. Then she’d put the gloves back on, fetch the fenwort, and go home. No harm done in a little detour.

“Novel concept, taverns. The whole grand tradition of it. Ale, laughter, someone inevitably singing off-key, someone else starting a fight. But you—”

Lyra’s head snapped up, heart jarring once against her ribs. She closed the journal with a snap, her bare skin brushing against the leather.

“You’ve gone and hidden yourself away like a secret no one’s meant to find.” He met her with a disarming smile, dark hair shot through in unruly tufts. “Which, frankly, only makes me want to find it. Terrible habit, curiosity. Always gets the better of me.” He was too tall for the chair he swung himself into, all lean lines and restless energy.

Lyra’s fingers drifted to the edge of her journal. “You do realize curiosity kills more than cats.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, grin tilting sideways. “Ah, that explains a lot. I’ve always had a dreadful record with beautiful women and fatal curiosities. And you—” his gaze caught hers, “—you’re both. Fascinatingly perilous.”

“If you’re hoping I’ll blush, you’re at least three deaths too late.”

“Three deaths?” His grin deepened. “That’s very specific. Ominous, possibly romantic, depending on the details. Should I be alarmed? Or flattered?” He turned, calling toward the bar without missing a beat. “Bea! Two of your finest! And if you say you haven’t any, I’ll just take the second-finest twice.”

Lyra’s mouth threatened treason, tugging upward before she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. He had the kind of charm usually found carved into old gravestones, weather-worn and not quite trustworthy.

He turned his smile and his attention to the book beneath her hands. “Is it cursed? Or are you just having a spirited disagreement? Books can be terribly opinionated.”

“I don’t think we’ve decided.” Her fingers brushed the edge of the journal again, petting it as one might a particularly temperamental cat.

“Ah, one of those slow-burn romances then. A tragic love story in the making.”

Lyra raised a brow. Just the one. It moved like a guillotine being winched into place. “If it’s a love story,” she said, “it’s the kind where someone ends up buried in the garden. And no one bothers to mark the grave.”

He leaned in a fraction, voice dropping low. “Absolutely terrifying. Suits you. But those eyes… Really, with eyes like that you could threaten me with a headstone, and I’d still call it a love story.”

Lyra should have looked away, or better yet, walked away and left him there with his ridiculous charm and devastating smile. But instead, her gaze traced the line of his mouth, the crooked smile that spelled a certain kind of trouble. The kind that made you think twice. And then stay for the third. “You’re very confident for someone who just sat down uninvited at a stranger’s table.”

“A stranger? That doesn’t feel right, does it? I mean, we’ve already established I’ve got dreadful manners, you’ve got those absolutely devastating eyes, and— What was it? Yes, between the grave threats and three deaths, that’s practically foreplay.”

“That’s practically nothing.”

“It’s a promising nothing.” He tilted his head, that grin of his catching the firelight. Terribly charming and terribly distracting. “Remington, by the way. Should have led with that. Dreadful oversight on my part, but then you do have a smile that could make a man forget his own name. So you see, it’s actually entirely your fault. “

“How terribly complicated you’ve made an introduction.” 

Bea returned and set two tankards on the table. His fingertips brushed the back of her hand in a touch so fleeting it might have been accidental. “When are you going to leave this place and run away with me? I’m rubbish at waiting. Utter disaster at it, really. Hopeless.”

“I’ve no mind to stand in line behind the ten other lasses you’ve asked today, Remington.” She gave him a wink and swatted at him with her rag.

Ten other lasses. Lyra didn’t doubt it for a moment. He had the look of someone who collected hearts the way she collected flowers—carefully, reverently, and with absolutely no intention of keeping them.

As Bea turned to leave, Lyra reached out, her thoughts still tangled somewhere between his misfit smile and the absurd notion of collecting hearts. “Could I trouble you for a bowl of the stew, please?”

“’Course, de—” She blinked. Her smile faltered mid-word, her pupils dilating.

Lyra felt it the moment her bare hand touched Bea’s arm. The pull, the slip, like a thread caught on a nail and unraveling too fast to stop. It started beneath her palm. A coldness that felt like a hollow opening where warmth should have been. Bea’s pulse stuttered beneath her fingertips.

“Oh,” Lyra breathed, her gaze snapping from her bare hand to the woman’s slackened face. “Oh no.”

She yanked her hand back, but the rot was already threading through Bea’s veins. Death didn’t announce itself. It simply arrived, familiar as an old lover, and made itself at home.

“Oh dear,” Lyra whispered, frozen, watching the life she’d just stolen bloom into death.

Bea crumpled where she stood, the dishrag slipping from her hand, a banner of surrender.

Remington had gone perfectly still. His gaze flicked from Bea’s body to Lyra, then back again. 

Her hand hovered, bare fingers poised in that useless shape of regret, reaching for a moment already gone. “Oh no,” she whispered, sliding the leather back over her fingers. “That’s terribly unfortunate.”

“Right. Well. No need to panic. People keel over for all sorts of reasons. Bad stew, strong ale, dreadful poetry. Entirely ordinary. Perfectly explainable.” He knelt beside Bea, fingers brushing lightly against the old woman’s neck. “Though admittedly, this one’s got a certain finality to it.”

He turned toward her as Lyra’s glove snapped into place, his nearness a warmth that cut through the cold spreading in her chest. “If you were trying to eliminate the competition, love, that might’ve been, oh, just a wee bit dramatic.”

“It was an accident,” her voice tangled, frayed at the edges.

Remington slipped a hand into his coat with the casual ease of a man reaching for a coin at a card table. But what emerged was a small glass vial. He uncorked it with his teeth, then gently coaxed the liquid between Bea’s parted lips.

For a breath, the whole tavern stilled around her.

Then the old woman’s chest rose in a slow, rattling inhale. 

“Easy now,” he said as she blinked at the world returning. “Quite a tumble, that.” He helped Bea to her feet, keeping a hand at her elbow until she steadied. “There we are. Right as rain.”

Someone’s laugh cut off too quickly. The patrons at the next table had turned. A hush was starting to ripple outward. Lyra could feel it pressing against her skin, the weight of too many eyes all turning toward her.

Remington moved before it could crest. “Best we make our way before this place remembers how to breathe and uses it to start asking questions.” He dropped a handful of coins beside the untouched tankards without ceremony, then turned for the door, casting a sidelong glance her way.

Lyra gathered her journal and slipped it into her satchel. Around her, the hush shifted, bent by uncertainty, stirred by half-formed questions. Faces turned too slowly, unsure what they’d seen.

By the time the room remembered how to breathe, she was already at the door.

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