Page 24

THORN

T hey call her the Plant Whisperer now.

I hear it echo through the Grove like laughter stitched with reverence—young voices wrapped in awe, in blooming belief.

She wears the name well.

But with every bloom she nurtures, every seedling she maps, I feel something shift in me I can’t name.

I sit alone tonight at the old stone circle.

The Grove pulses quietly around me—steady, thriving, changed.

Clara changed it.

And she’s changing me .

But change doesn’t come easy to stone.

Or to magic born of duty.

For centuries, I was shadow and soil. A sentinel. My pulse tethered to one tree, my voice hidden in bark. I guarded. I endured. I was meant to be unseen.

Now I walk among them.

They look at me.

Not with fear anymore, but fascination. Sometimes even respect.

But not understanding.

Not really.

Because I still feel the shadow clinging to me. Still hear the hum of the old rites in my bones. Still wake with the reflex to vanish, to defend, to disappear.

I am not meant to exist with people.

I was meant to protect them from what lives in magic’s corners.

I drag a hand through the moss, grounding myself.

The earth here no longer recoils from my touch. It reaches for me—welcomes me. That used to be enough.

But now… Clara’s presence has softened the Grove’s edges. It feels different. Less guarded. More alive.

And I don’t know if I’m a relic in that world or part of it.

A soft shuffle breaks the quiet.

Hazel.

Thirteen, barefoot, brilliant, and nosy.

She plops down beside me without asking.

“Clara’s drawing up root charts by moonlight again,” she says. “You know she does that when she’s stressed?”

“She told me.”

Hazel eyes me sideways. “You’ve been broody.”

“I’m always broody.”

She snorts. “Yeah, but this is next-level bark beast existential crisis broody.”

I glance at her. “Is there a reason you’re here?”

She pulls a toad from her hoodie pocket and sets it in her lap. “I don’t trust people who sulk in sacred circles. You scare off the pixies.”

I exhale a rough laugh. “The pixies are fine.”

She shrugs. “You gonna tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

“That you’re thinking about leaving.”

My jaw tenses.

Hazel nods to herself like she’s already read the answer in my silence.

“She’d let you go, you know. If you asked.”

I stare out into the trees. “That’s the problem.”

Hazel’s voice softens—too wise for her age. “You don’t think you belong outside the Grove.”

“I know I don’t.”

“But maybe,” she says, standing slowly, “you don’t have to leave to be free.”

She walks away, toad in hand.

And I sit there, caught between root and sky, wondering if a creature made of shadow can ever live in someone else’s light without fading.

She finds me where Hazel left me—still seated in the ring, still trying to breathe like I belong.

Clara doesn’t say anything at first.

She just steps into the circle like she’s been walking this path her whole life, the hem of her cardigan brushing the moss, curls haloed by moonlight.

“I heard,” she says softly, sitting beside me.

I glance over, heart tight. “From Hazel?”

She nods. “And from the Grove.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know how to be this. Out here. In sunlight.”

“You don’t have to be anything,” she says, fingers brushing lightly against my knuckles. “You already are.”

I swallow hard. “I was made for one purpose.”

“You were made,” she says, “and then you lived. That’s not the same thing.”

I go still.

Her fingers slip fully into mine.

“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 of roots . 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 weeks after 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.

I don’t move.

But the council feels me.

Even through silence and stillness.

Eliorin shifts in his seat. “And you’re confident this site can integrate with existing magical education systems?”

Clara turns her head, gaze steady. “Not just confident. We’ve already begun. The curriculum’s live.”

Juna leans forward. “And the Grove’s consent?”

This time, every head turns to me.

I don’t speak.

I don’t nod.

But vines slip through the cracks in the chamber walls—slow, deliberate. One wraps around the leg of my chair, its leaves warm and humming.

That’s my answer.

The Grove speaks without words.

Juna nods, smile creasing the corners of her eyes. “Noted.”

They move on.

Budget considerations. Trail expansion requests. One proposal about a Leyfield walking tour gets swatted down with a collective groan.

And I just sit there.

Quiet.

Watching.

Listening.

Rooted.

When the meeting ends, Clara doesn’t say anything right away. She just slips her hand into mine as we exit through the back corridor.

“You didn’t have to come,” she says.

I squeeze her fingers gently. “I wanted to.”

She looks up at me, eyes soft, and whispers, “You changed the whole room just by being there.”

I lower my head until my forehead touches hers.

“No,” I murmur. “ You did.”