Page 180 of Discordant Cultivation

The lyrics arranged themselves in the darkness.

Voice A’s desperate attempts to maintain independence. Voice B’s seductive dismantling of every defense. The inevitable surrender that was both defeat and triumph. The words flowed through Kieran’s consciousness, perfecting themselves, becoming exactly what he’d wanted to give Vale.

This is it. This is perfect. He’ll understand everything when he hears this.

Somewhere beyond the hood, Alex was still screaming. Still bleeding. Still trapped in the basement with a dead woman and a shattered leg and no way to escape.

Kieran composed his proposal.

Time lost meaning. Minutes or hours, he couldn’t tell and didn’t care. There was just the song playing on repeat in his head, each iteration slightly better than the last, until it sounded perfect in his mind.

I love you. I love you. Every word of this song is me saying I love you in the only language I know how to speak anymore.

But beneath the satisfaction, dread was building—familiar, inevitable. The déjà vu of recognizing warning signs his body knew. The copper taste grew stronger than before. The sense of time sliding sideways, reality becoming slippery.

No. Please. Not now. I’m not done—

In the darkness behind the darkness, where he has spent so many hours learning to surrender, he fell down a pit.

57

Truth is in the cutting, pain that leads to bloom; Sacrifice the dead wood, make some fucking room…

Vale

Vale rushed down the stairs, his heart slamming against his ribs, every worst-case scenario playing simultaneously in his head. Kieran hurt. Kieran taken. Kieran dead. The word echoed with each step—dead, dead, dead—until he reached the bottom and the nightmare became real.

Two bodies on the concrete floor. One moving, one not.

He didn’t stop. He was across the basement before conscious thought could catch up, dropping to his knees beside the crumpled form near the equipment storage. The sensory deprivation hood—why is the hood on him, who put the hood on him?—was askew, and Kieran’s limbs were twitching with the unmistakable rhythm of post-seizure myoclonus.

“No, sweetheart, no—”

Vale’s hands shook as he pulled the hood off, his fingers fumbling with fabric that suddenly felt impossible to manage. Kieran’s face emerged slack and pale, eyes closed, lips slightly blue at the edges. Vale pressed two fingers against his throat, searching for a pulse, and for three endless seconds foundnothing but his own heartbeat pounding so loud it drowned out everything else.

Then—there. Rapid but steady.Alive.

Something buckled in his chest that he hadn’t known could still break. He gathered Kieran against him, one hand cradling his head, the other pressing flat against his back just to feel him breathe.

I would have burned this house down with everyone in it. I would have torn the city apart brick by brick. If you had been gone—if they had taken you from me—

The thoughts came jagged and desperate, nothing like his usual careful thoughts. This was rawer than that. More honest. The truth beneath all his pretty metaphors about roses and cultivation: he would kill for this man. He would die for this man. He would do things that couldn’t be dressed up in artistic justification, and he would do them gladly. Gleefully, even.

“Sweetheart,” Vale whispered, his voice wrecked in ways he’d never allowed anyone to hear. His fingers traced Kieran’s face—the curve of his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, the softest parts of his lips as consciousness slowly returned. “I’m here. I’m here. Can you hear me? Please—please come back to me.”

You’re everything. You’re the only thing. You’re all I’ll ever need. All I’ll ever want, please—

Kieran’s eyelids fluttered. His hand found Vale’s shirt and gripped it weakly.

There you are.

“Thank god you’re here.”

The voice came from across the basement, and Vale’s head snapped up. Alex Thayer sat against the far wall, his leg bent at an angle that meant a compound fracture, his face pale and sweaty with shock. “We need an ambulance,” Alex gasped. “Jericho’s dead and my leg—Christ, look at my leg. He broke myfucking leg. He’s completely insane, Vale. Whatever you’ve done to him, you’ve made him into a—”

Vale’s gaze shifted to the base of the stairs. Jericho’s body lay twisted there, blood pooling beneath her skull as her eyes stared off into nothingness.

Two intruders. One dead. One incapacitated.