Kael had a secret.
A forbidden garden buried beneath the east wing sealed, starved, and forgotten.
It wasn't in the palace maps, nor whispered about in the corridors. But Rheya had learned that this kingdom had more locked doors than open ones. And every locked door was hiding something.
Now, as Kael pushed open a rusted gate heavy with ivy and frost, the breath caught in her throat.
The garden was dying.
And yet...alive.
Frozen vines coiled around crumbling marble. Roses like ghosts clung to their stems, their petals translucent, humming faintly in the cold. When Rheya stepped inside, the air shifted frost gave way to warmth that pulsed from her.
Her curse recognized the place before she did.
"This was yours?" she whispered.
Kael's voice came from behind her steady, unreadable. "No. It was always meant for you."
The way he said it made her skin tighten, thorns humming beneath her flesh like strings plucked by unseen hands.
Then he removed his glove.
Not one...both.
Frost drifted into the air, curling like smoke. The moment her thorns brushed against his skin, something impossible happened.
They didn't cut.
The frost wound around them instead, wrapping each thorn in ribbons of light. His curse meets hers. Ice kissing blood.
Her breath trembled. "You said I could choose."
He nodded once. "You still can."
She lifted her chin. "Then I choose now."
And she kissed him.
It was not gentle. It was ruined.
A clash of frost and flame, of hunger and restraint. His mouth was cold and slow, her lips tasting of iron and defiance. When they broke apart, the garden breathed.
Roses bloomed where none had dared for decades one curling upward like a sigh, another bursting briefly into flame before extinguishing itself. And in the center, a single glass rose began to glow its light pulsing like a heartbeat.
Kael's eyes darkened. "That shouldn't be possible…"
Before Rheya could ask what he meant, a sound scraped across the air a metallic shriek from the far gate.
Slow. Deliberate.
Something or someone was trying to enter.
Kael's hand shot out, frost coiling like smoke. "Stay behind me."
But when the gate creaked open, there was nothing there. Only a trail of frost-laced footprints leading out.
The next morning…
Rheya woke before dawn.
The air was cool, but not cold. The sheets beside her were untouched. Kael had not returned.
"Good," she told herself.
But her body disagreed.
Something pulsed beneath her wrist soft, warm, alive. She lifted her arm and gasped.
Where once only thorns had grown, a single bud now bloomed.
Not a rose.
Not anything in this world.
Silver-white, its petals shimmered like breath. Veins of glass caught the light, glowing from within.
No flower like it had ever been seen in Florenthel.
And certainly not in her.
When her finger brushed it, it flinched folding inward as though afraid.
Or hiding.
The corridors of Virelion's palace greeted her with their usual silence but now the silence felt aware.
Eyes followed her. Servants bowed too low. Guards stiffened as if her shadow burned.
The Thorned Bride.
The cursed one who made flowers bloom where they should not.
Let them look.
Let them bleed.
But even her defiance faltered when she entered the dining hall.
Kael was already there dressed in black and silver, the embodiment of winter made flesh. A single scroll lay unopened beside his plate. He didn't rise as she approached.
"You've barely eaten," he murmured without looking up.
"And you never sleep."
"Is that a complaint?"
"No. An observation." She slid into the seat beside him. "I've made a few."
One brow lifted. "Have you now?"
"You smell like frost and secrets. You never blink when people insult you. And your sister…" Rheya glanced at the empty chair across from them. "She clearly adores you. Though I imagine you'd never admit it."
A ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth.
"And you," he said quietly, "carry yourself like a weapon but speak like a poet. You could destroy this court with a single word. But you haven't. Why?"
Rheya leaned close enough for her thorns to brush the lace at her collar. "Because I'm trying very hard not to make you regret marrying me."
His gaze held hers a moment longer than it should have. Then he rose. "We're expected in the High Hall."
"For what?"
"To be seen," he said. "To remind them that monsters can wear crowns."
The High Hall was colder than the grave.
The nobles rose when they entered, draped in pale silks and painted calm. Flowers marked their emotions with a violet here, a lilac there but all faint, safe, ornamental.
And at the center stood Lady Mirca, High Priestess of the Order of Purity.
Her beauty was precise, sharp enough to bleed on.
"Your Grace," she said to Kael, bowing with false reverence before turning to Rheya. "And the… Consort."
Rheya smiled like a blade. "The Thorned Bride. We don't whisper it in Florenthel. We pronounce it."
Kael's hand brushed hers beneath the table a silent warning. Not here.
But then Mirca's page unrolled a scroll.
"A new decree," Mirca announced, "to be ratified by both kingdoms. Effective immediately: all unregistered garden-bearers with aggressive manifestations thorns, rot, decay, or frost are to be classified and contained."
Rheya froze.
Contained.
Kael's jaw went rigid. "This was not agreed upon."
Mirca's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Peace demands control, Your Grace. Emotions unchecked have already ended worlds once before."
"And yet here we are," Rheya said, stepping forward, voice velvet and venom. "Alive. Feeling. Perhaps it wasn't emotion that ended us but the fear of it."
The room went still.
Mirca's face curdled into something ugly. "Do you propose we abandon caution, Your Grace?"
"I propose," Rheya said softly, "that maybe your gods are just afraid of what blooms without their permission."
Gasps rippled through the hall.
Kael's hand brushed hers again beneath the table.
A silent message.
You are not alone.
She didn't pull away.
That night, he led her through a hidden corridor beneath the eastern wing a labyrinth of stone and whispers.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"To find something they forgot," he said.
When the final door opened, moonlight spilled across cracked marble.
The garden again.
Only this time, it wasn't quiet.
The air thrummed with power. Roses that had bloomed the night before now bent toward her, whispering faintly in voices she almost recognized.
Kael knelt beside a half-frozen bush, his bare hand pressed to the earth. Frost spread in veins of silver—but instead of killing, it soothed.
"I used to come here," he murmured. "Before the cold set in."
"Before what?"
He met her gaze. "Before I learned what love could destroy."
She understood.
Because she'd lived it.
But as she turned, something glimmered at the edge of the garden wall a faint silver trail leading to the old gate.
And carved into the frost at its base was a single word.
"Bloom."
When she touched it, the mark burned.
And somewhere deep beneath the palace, something ancient began to stir.