16
They reached Wicklow, a dying mill town two hours south of Fallon land, just after midnight. The Garden had never operated this far south—their chapters were rural, insular, and rooted in the northern valley where Sassy grew up. Wicklow, with its shuttered factories and transient population, was the perfect place to disappear for a night and read old archives no one had digitized.
And it was the only place that had a motel Jimmy knew would take cash, no questions asked.
They parked the truck behind the Rusty Willow Inn, a neon-lit, half-forgotten roadside motel Jimmy had driven past a thousand times growing up but never stepped foot in. The kind of place people used for affairs, hiding, or the kind of trouble too small for police but too big for home.
Jimmy checked the rearview mirror twice to make sure no one had followed them before grabbing the duffel and leading Sassy inside.
After a muffled exchange at the front desk with a clerk who didn’t look up from her crossword, they were handed a bent keychain with the embossed number 12.
Inside, Room 12 buzzed faintly with a light fixture that couldn’t decide if it was alive or dead. The wallpaper peeled in corners. A single bed sat in the middle, lumpy but clean enough, with thin blankets that couldn’t possibly keep out the Wicklow night chill.
Sassy sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders trembling. Not from cold, but from everything pressing down on her.
Jimmy locked the door behind them, slid the chain across, checked the window latch twice, then exhaled. “We made it.”
She nodded without looking at him. “Why here?”
“Wicklow County Library,” he said, setting the duffel down. “Place hasn’t been updated since the nineties. It has town records, old newspapers, land deeds. Anything related to the Garden’s early years? If it exists in public archives, it’ll be there.”
“And no one from the Garden would think to look for us in Wicklow,” she said.
Jimmy nodded. “Exactly. It’s off their radar. And there are no girls here they want.”
Sassy flinched at that, the implication carving into her ribs.
Jimmy caught it instantly. “Hey,” he said softly, crouching in front of her, “you’re not something they get to want. You’re a person. My person.”
She whispered in a soft voice. “Jimmy…”
He touched her knee gently, grounding her. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
She tried to inhale, but it came out shaky. “The Fallon house. The shower. Running from the Garden. It’s like… every part of me is vibrating. I keep thinking someone’s going to reach out of the dark and grab me. Or worse—reach out of my own head.”
Jimmy brushed a thumb across her cheek, drying the tear she didn’t know had fallen. “You’re safe. Right now, we’re as safe as we can get.”
“I want to believe that,” she whispered. “But I feel like I’m coming apart.”
Jimmy’s heart clenched. He lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Then lean on me. Let me help you hold it together.”
Something inside her cracked, softened. She reached up, fingers slipping into his hair, pulling his forehead to hers.
Their lips hovered breaths mixing, warm and uneven.
Jimmy whispered, “Tell me to stop, Sass.”
“Don’t stop,” she pleaded.
He kissed her.
Soft at first - Gentle, careful.
She leaned into him, kissing back with a need that felt like survival, fingers gripping the collar of his shirt as though anchoring herself to him kept her from dissolving entirely.
He lifted her onto his lap, arms around her waist, pulling her close. Sassy pressed her hands to his chest, feeling the heartbeat that had followed her through every hour of terror.
She deepened the kiss, then broke away with a gasp, not from fear, but from something else. Something truer.
Jimmy rested his forehead against hers. “I love you.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks. “I love you too.”
His thumbs caught the tears, brushing them away—
But then her expression shifted.
The memory hit hard.
Searing.
Unwanted.
A ritual room.
Cold stone.
Her mother’s voice saying:
“Your body belongs to purpose, not desire.”
Sassy froze.
Jimmy pulled back instantly. “Sass? What is it? Talk to me.”
She slid off his lap, shaking. “I’m sorry—I can’t—something about that memory—it felt like a command. Like something old was trying to control me.”
Jimmy rose to kneel in front of her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. We’re going at your pace.”
She nodded, wiping her eyes. “I hate that they still live inside my head. That their rules still twist everything I try to do.”
Jimmy took her hands gently. “Then we’ll untangle them. One by one. We’ll make your head your space again—not theirs.”
She let out a trembling exhale. “Jimmy… thank you for not pushing.”
“I’d never push you,” he said softly. “We’ll get there when you’re ready. Or not at all. I’m here no matter what.”
She leaned into him, resting her head against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, shielding her from the world outside—and the world inside her.
After a long moment, she whispered, “Tomorrow we go to the Wicklow Library. The old records. Maybe the Garden didn’t come from mysticism. Maybe it came from something human. Something ugly we can understand.”
Jimmy nodded. “We’ll trace them to their origin. Find out who started this. And why.”
“And finish it,” she added.
The word hung in the air, audacious, terrifying, necessary.
As they settled into the thin motel bed—fully clothed, exhausted, but wrapped around each other—Sassy finally felt something she hadn’t in years.
Not safety.
Not ease.
But direction.
A road away from the Garden, and maybe, at last, toward herself.
17
The sun over Wicklow was weak, the kind of gray morning light that made the whole town feel colorless. Sassy tightened the drawstrings on her hoodie as she and Jimmy walked the two blocks from the Rusty Willow Inn to the Wicklow County Library, a squat brick building that looked more like a fallout shelter than a public institution.
Jimmy held her hand the whole way—not protectively, but purposefully, like he was afraid she might drift off into her thoughts and never come back.
Sassy didn’t mind.
Today she needed the anchor.
Inside, the library smelled like dust, yellowed pages, and decades of forgotten heat. An elderly librarian sat behind the front desk, flipping through a newspaper with a magnifying glass. She barely glanced at them.
Jimmy led Sassy toward the basement stairs. “The archives should be down here. Old town records, land deeds, historical societies. Benji once said no one’s updated them since the Clinton era.”
Sassy’s stomach fluttered at the name, but she pushed it down.
They descended into a low-ceilinged room full of metal filing cabinets, shelves of bound newspapers, and cardboard boxes labeled with fading marker.
Sassy exhaled softly. “This is… perfect.”
“Or terrifying,” Jimmy muttered. “Depends on what we find.”
He wasn’t wrong.
They split up. Jimmy digging into the land records while Sassy opened the first box of Wicklow Gazette newspapers.
For nearly an hour, she found nothing relevant. Birth announcements. Factory layoffs. A string of obituaries. A few arrests for petty theft. Small-town life captured on fading print.
Then, halfway through a 1983 issue, her heart stopped.
A headline: Local Historian Warns of “Lost Valley Sect” in Northern Counties
Her fingertips brushed the words as if they might shock her.
She skimmed the article, heart pounding:
A traveling folklorist, Dr. Rhea Danton, claims an obscure sect known as “The Garden of Returning Light” operated in the northern valley communities as early as the late 1800s. Though evidence is scarce, rumors persist that the group targeted young girls believed to possess “purity of vision.” Local officials insist the sect dissolved decades ago.
Purity of vision.
Her stomach turned.
Jimmy approached, holding a stack of land maps. “Anything?”
Sassy slid the paper toward him.
He took one look and hissed. “Jesus…”
She kept scanning the article.
Dr. Danton suggests the sect’s practices may have originated as a distorted offshoot of early spiritualist movements that swept rural areas after the Civil War.
Distorted spiritualism.
Not mysticism.
Not magic.
Human delusion.
Human manipulation.
Human cruelty.
Her throat tightened. “Jimmy, look at this date. 1983. That’s long before I was born.”
“Decades before,” he said with a tinge of shock and worry in his tone. “The Garden isn’t some new cult. They’ve been around for over a century.”
Before she could respond, the librarian’s slow footsteps tapped down the basement stairs.
Sassy stiffened.
But the woman only approached with a mug in hand. “You two looking for historical societies?”
Jimmy nodded quickly. “Yes, ma’am.”
The librarian set the mug down and leaned on her cane. “Well, if you’re digging into old sects… you might want to try the second room.” She pointed toward a door in the back. “Local families donated boxes from old estates. Diaries, ledgers, letters. Good for genealogies.”
Sassy swallowed. “Thank you.”
The librarian gave her a long, unreadable look before shuffling back up the stairs.
Jimmy waited until her footsteps faded before whispering, “Sass… she recognized something.”
“I know,” Sassy said. “It’s in her face.”
They headed to the back room—smaller, colder, with shelves stuffed with shoebox-sized containers. Jimmy opened one labeled FREELAND ESTATE while Sassy grabbed another labeled COTTER FAMILY PAPERS.
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
Nothing.
Until Jimmy pulled out a thin ledger filled with neat handwriting. “Hey—Sass. Come look at this.”
She moved beside him.
The first page read:
LEDBURY WOMEN’S INITIATIVE, 1912
Membership rules.
Meeting notes.
Young female recruits.
Jimmy flipped a page.
And there it was.
A hand-drawn symbol—an early version of the same hourglass-like mark burned into Sassy’s memory.
She froze. Transfixed by her discovery.
Below it, written in swirling cursive:
Chosen girls represent the Bloom. They bring clarity to the Promise.
Jimmy read it aloud and went still. “This is it. This is the earliest documentation so far.”
Sassy’s fingers trembled as she lifted the ledger. “Jimmy… this wasn’t originally a cult.”
“What do you mean?”
“It started as a women’s empowerment group.” She traced the lines of the symbol. “Like early suffragists or spiritual healers. It wasn’t about rituals or sacrifice at first.”
“So, what happened?” Jimmy asked.
She flipped pages, skimming the brittle paper.
Meeting notes.
Names of young girls.
Plans for gatherings.
Increasingly strange language.
Then she stopped cold at an entry dated 1914:
Light cannot thrive without devotion. The Bloom must remain pure of influence. Young girls show the clearest connection to guidance. Men cloud the light. Mothers must surrender their daughters for the Promise to manifest.
Her skin crawled.
“Jimmy…” she whispered. “This is where it turned.”
Jimmy took the ledger gently from her hands and read the next entry aloud.
Power demands sacrifice. Anyone who interferes will be pruned.
Sassy felt herself sway.
Jimmy steadied her. “Hey. Talk to me.”
“It wasn’t magic,” she whispered. “It was belief. Psychosis. A whole group of women slowly losing themselves to their own doctrine.”
Jimmy exhaled slowly. “And they’ve been recruiting ever since.”
She nodded, tears burning behind her eyes. “This… this is what I was born into. Not prophecy. Not supernatural destiny. Just a hundred years of delusion passed down until someone decided I was the perfect vessel.”
Jimmy grabbed her hands, his voice cracking. “You are not a vessel. You are not their purpose. You’re a person, Sassy. You’re my person.”
Her chest ached at the certainty in his voice.
But before she could speak, her gaze caught something else in the box—an envelope tucked inside the ledger’s back flap.
She lifted it.
A name was written across the front in faded ink:
Elara Wist
Sassy whispered, “Jimmy… this is the woman Harris mentioned. The ex-Midwife.”
Jimmy’s eyes widened. “Open it.”
Inside was a single folded letter.
She unfolded the brittle page and read aloud:
If you found this, then the Garden is not finished. Find me before they find her.
Below it, a scribbled address:
Ridgewick Hollow, Route 9B
Old caretaker’s residence
Sassy’s pulse raced.
Jimmy held her close.
“We have our next step,” he said softly.
Sassy nodded.
But as they turned to leave, she felt something—
not supernatural, not magical—
but psychological.
The weight of history crushing forward.
The echo of the Garden creeping in.
Not because the world was mystical—
but because belief was powerful enough to warp reality.
Jimmy squeezed her hand. “We go now.”
And together, they left the library. The ledger, the letter, and the next breadcrumb leading them deeper into the nightmare that had shaped Sassy’s childhood long before she understood it.
18
The drive to Ridgewick Hollow took them along a stretch of Route 9B that felt increasingly disconnected from the rest of the state. Trees thickened on both sides of the road, leaning inward as if trying to swallow the old asphalt. The farther they got from Wicklow, the fewer houses they passed. No gas stations. No traffic lights. Just long-abandoned barns and skeletal farmhouses collapsing inward.
Jimmy kept checking the rearview mirror. Sassy pretended not to notice.
“You think we’re being followed?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he said.
But he didn’t sound convinced.
Sassy pulled her knees to her chest, staring out at the blur of pines and telephone poles. The letter in her pocket felt like a hot coal. Dangerous to hold, dangerous to drop.
Find me before they find her. Her throat tightened. Her.
Did Elara know her name? Her face?
Or did she mean any Bloom?
Any girl molded by the Garden’s doctrine?
Jimmy slowed as the GPS, spotty and glitching, told them they were nearing the turnoff. “Route 9B splits soon. Harris said Ridgewick Hollow was a ghost town.”
Sassy nodded. “It was. The mills shut down in the seventies. Most people left.”
“And those who stayed?” Jimmy asked.
“Either couldn’t leave… or didn’t want to.”
The truck turned onto a cracked, narrow road. Trees thickened, branches scraping the sides of the vehicle like fingernails. Sassy shivered—but not from fear. From recognition.
“Jimmy…”
“What?”
“I’ve been here.”
He glanced over sharply. “What do you mean? Recently?”
“No,” she whispered. “When I was little. My mother drove through here once. I remember the trees being so close the sky disappeared.”
Jimmy swallowed, gripping the wheel tighter. “Why would she take you here?”
Sassy didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
The road spilled them into a clearing. A cluster of four rotted houses, a boarded-up church leaning dangerously to one side, and an old caretaker’s cabin slumped near the tree line.
Ridgewick Hollow. A place forgotten by time. And maybe remembered by the Garden.
Jimmy parked behind the church, out of sight from the road. “Stay close,” he said, grabbing the flashlight.
Sassy stepped out into the cold air. The silence was overwhelming. No birds, no wind, no animals. Just a stillness that pressed against her like a hand on her chest.
They approached the caretaker’s residence. The wood was soft with age; paint peeled to nothing. Sassy pushed the door lightly. It groaned open, a long exhale of dust and stale air.
Inside was a single room: a broken cot, a toppled dresser, papers scattered across the floor.
Jimmy stepped in first, shining the flashlight around. “Looks abandoned.”
“No,” Sassy whispered. “Look.”
On the far wall was a symbol.
Faint.
Carved, not painted.
An early version of the hourglass-like mark.
Jimmy’s blood ran cold. “Sass…”
She touched the carving—her fingers trembling not with fear, but with recognition, memory, and dread.
A voice echoed in her mind:
“A Bloom must return to her Keeper.”
Sassy stumbled back, breath leaving her in a sharp gasp.
Jimmy caught her. “Hey, look at me. Stay with me.”
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “It’s just memory. Not magic.”
But the line between the two felt thinner than ever.
Jimmy’s flashlight swept the floor and froze on something small and rectangular under the cot.
A notebook.
He crouched, pulling it free. The cover was cracked leather, the pages warped with moisture. Sassy knelt beside him as he opened it.
The first page read:
Elara Wist – Field Notes
Jimmy exhaled. “We found her journal.”
Sassy leaned closer. “Keep reading.”
Jimmy flipped through the entries—most were short, fragmented.
They’re accelerating the rituals.
The girls are getting younger.
The Midwives have lost the line between devotion and delusion.
I fear what they’ll do when they choose the final child.
Sassy swallowed hard. “Jimmy… she knew. She knew things were escalating decades ago.”
He turned the page. A longer entry. A name circled three times.
Sassy’s name.
Her real name.
The one she avoided hearing.
The one her mother whispered before she fled.
Her stomach dropped. She grabbed the notebook from Jimmy’s hands, refusing to read the circled word.
Jimmy touched her arm gently. “You don’t have to see it.”
She nodded, but her hands shook violently.
Another page.
More writing.
The child is not chosen by fate, but by opportunity. The Garden believes trauma fractures the mind enough to create clarity. They aren’t looking for power. They’re looking for obedience.
Sassy closed her eyes. Her breath tight, her chest aching.
“So, I wasn’t special,” she whispered. “I wasn’t born into anything. They just… decided I fit their criteria.”
Jimmy pulled her into his arms. “You were a kid. They exploited you. That’s the truth.”
She pressed her face into his chest, tears burning her eyes. “Jimmy, that means any girl could’ve been chosen. Anyone at all.”
“Not anyone,” he said, letting her sink into him. “Not someone with a mother desperate enough to escape with her. That matters.”
Sassy pulled away slowly, wiping her cheeks.
“But why did she wait so long to run? Why did she let them hurt me? Why did she participate for years?”
Jimmy hesitated. “We don’t know what they threatened her with.”
Sassy shook her head. “No. She believed in it at first. I know she did.”
Before Jimmy could answer, they heard a sound outside.
A soft crunch.
Footsteps.
Not many.
Just one.
Jimmy tensed. “Get behind me.”
Sassy grabbed his arm. “No. Listen.”
The footsteps weren’t approaching.
They lingered outside the cabin, pacing slowly, deliberately.
Trying to decide whether to enter.
Jimmy whispered, “We should go out the back.”
“There is no back,” Sassy reminded him.
Another step.
Closer.
Jimmy turned off the flashlight. The doorknob jiggled—soft, testing. Jimmy’s jaw clenched. Then, a voice from the other side of the door. Soft. Female. Frail.
“Is she here?”
Sassy’s heart stopped.
Jimmy whispered, “Don’t move.”
The voice called again—this time, weaker, trembling.
“I’m not here to take you. I’m here to warn you. They know you’re looking for me.”
Jimmy’s eyes widened. “Elara?”
The doorknob turned slowly.
“Let me in. You’re not safe here.”
Jimmy stepped forward.
Sassy grabbed his hand.
“No,” she whispered. “We don’t know if it’s really her.”
The door creaked open.
And standing in the doorway, frail, disheveled, her hair white and tangled, her eyes sunken but alert, was a woman who looked half-starved, half-mad, and wholly terrified.
“You don’t have much time,” she said.
“The Garden wants you alive, Sassy. Not for what you think—”
She stepped into the cabin.
“—but for what they think you’ll become.”
19
Elara stood just inside the cabin door, laboring to breath, as if every step had cost her years. Her fingernails were cracked, lips split, cheekbones sharp enough to cut. She looked like someone who’d been living in fear so long it had carved itself into her bones.
Jimmy’s flashlight beam shook once, then dipped toward the floor. He wasn’t even holding it up anymore; he’d lowered his guard.
Just a little.
Sassy didn’t lower anything.
“Elara,” she said quietly, taking a cautious step forward. “We found your letter. Your notes. We came to find you.”
Elara’s gaze snapped to her, sharp in a way that didn’t match the frail body it lived in.
“You came,” Elara whispered, “because you still believe there are answers.” Her mouth twisted. “There aren’t. Not the ones you want.”
Sassy swallowed. “Then give me the ones I don’t want.”
Elara’s breathing steadied. She lifted a trembling hand and brushed Sassy’s cheek—not gently, not lovingly, but like she was testing whether Sassy was solid, not some echo of another girl from another time.
“You’ve grown,” Elara said while scanning her from top to bottom. “I didn’t think I’d see you like this. Alive.”
Jimmy stepped closer. “What do you mean ‘alive’?”
Elara’s eyes flicked to him and away again so fast it was like she’d been burned.
“You must be careful,” she rasped to Sassy. “They don’t want your power. They want your obedience. You are not a vessel, you are a symbol. And symbols can be replaced.”
Jimmy’s shoulders tensed. “What do you mean replaced?”
Elara ignored him.
She turned her attention back to Sassy, eyes glistening with something that might’ve been pity. Or grief.
“Your mother wasn’t the first,” she said. “Many Midwives lost themselves thinking they were protecting their daughters. They believed they were guiding you into destiny. But destiny is a cage.”
Sassy’s legs wobbled. She grabbed the edge of the dresser. “I don’t want destiny,” she said hoarsely. “I want the truth.”
Elara nodded once. “The truth is this: The Garden manufactures prophecy. Chooses its Bloom based on compliance, trauma, circumstance. They read innocence as clarity. Vulnerability as purity.” Her gaze softened. “You weren’t chosen. You were shaped.”
The room tilted. Sassy’s grip slipped.
Jimmy caught her elbow instantly, steadying her.
Elara’s eyes narrowed at the contact.
“That boy,” she whispered.
Jimmy stiffened. “That boy is standing right here,” he said, voice rough.
Sassy squeezed his forearm. “It’s okay. She’s been isolated. She doesn’t know us.”
Elara inhaled sharply, staring at Jimmy with growing alarm. “Your face,” she said. “I know that face.”
Jimmy frowned. “I’ve never met you. I’d remember.”
“Elara,” Sassy said urgently, “what does he remind you of?”
Elara didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on Jimmy like he’d just started glowing.
“Your last name,” she said instead. “Tell me your last name.”
Jimmy’s jaw clenched. “What does my name have to do with anything?”
“Say it.” No wobble now. The command landed like a slap.
He looked at Sassy, then back at Elara, anger starting to rise just to have somewhere to put the fear.
“…Hartwell,” he muttered.
The cabin seemed to contract.
Elara stumbled back until her spine hit the wall. “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no… this is wrong.”
Sassy caught her shoulders. “Elara, what is it? Does his name mean something to the Garden?”
Elara shook her head violently. “Not the Garden,” she said. “Worse.”
Sassy’s stomach dropped. “Worse than the Garden?”
Elara lifted a shaking hand and pointed at Jimmy like he was a knife someone had left lying around. “Hartwell blood has been bound to the Garden since the beginning,” she said. “The men weren’t just bystanders. They were partners. Their money turned a harmless spiritual circle into an institution. Their protection kept the Midwives safe from the law. Without the Hartwells, the Garden would’ve died a century ago.”
Jimmy stared at her like he hadn’t understood a single word, and then understood all of them.
“My family?” he whispered. “No. No, that’s—my dad is a mechanic. My grandpa sold tractors. We go to stupid barbecues and argue about football. We’re not—” His voice cracked. “We’re not that.”
“Ignorance doesn’t wash away history,” Elara said. “And history doesn’t die just because a generation forgets.”
Jimmy’s hands curled into fists. His face flushed, then went chalk-pale. “You don’t know my family,” he snapped. “You don’t know me.”
Sassy reached for his hand, threading her fingers through his, squeezing hard enough to hurt. “Jimmy’s not his family,” she said. “He’s not.”
Elara’s gaze softened, but not for him.
“You love him,” she said as if diagnosing her. “That… complicates things.”
Jimmy bristled. “Complicates what exactly? I dragged her out of hell. I’m here. I’m on her side.”
“Are you?” Elara asked quietly. “When the vow runs in your blood?”
Jimmy surged forward before Sassy yanked him back by his arm. His eyes flashed with a fury Sassy hadn’t seen in years, raw and unfiltered.
“Don’t talk to me about vows,” he snarled. “I never swore anything to those people. I didn’t even know they existed until a few days ago. If my great-great-somebody made a deal, that’s on them, not me.”
Sassy planted herself between them, shaking. “Stop. Whatever the Garden was, whatever the Hartwells did—it ends now. Jimmy isn’t one of them.”
Elara let out a brittle laugh that sounded like thin ice breaking. “Child… it doesn’t matter what he believes. It matters what they believe.”
Jimmy slammed his fist into the doorframe. The wood rattled, dust drifting down. “I don’t give a damn what they believe,” he snapped. “I’m not their anything.”
He turned to Sassy, desperate. “You know me. You grew up with me. Do I act like some secret cult guard dog to you?”
“No,” she said instantly. “You act like the only person who’s ever tried to keep me alive.”
He swallowed hard, throat working.
Elara watched them with something close to dread. “And that,” she said softly, “is exactly the problem.”
Sassy’s chest constricted. “What do you mean?”
Elara closed her eyes for a moment, gathering herself. When she opened them again, her voice was thinner.
“In the earliest doctrine,” she said, “the Bloom is never alone. She is paired with a Protector. Someone whose task is to keep her pure, safe, devoted—until the ritual. Someone she trusts. Someone she would follow anywhere.”
Jimmy shook his head before she even finished. “No.”
Elara kept going. “The scrolls named the Protector lineage. The Hartwell line.”
Silence hit the room like a physical thing.
Sassy felt the floor tilt under her feet. The words didn’t want to land. They floated in front of her, refusing to belong to the boy whose hand was still locked in hers.
Jimmy let go of her so abruptly it felt like a slap.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “No. I don’t care what some dead people wrote on some scroll. That’s not me.”
Elara’s face tightened. “The Garden believes it is.”
“I am not their weapon,” Jimmy snapped. “I am not their ‘Protector’ or their—” He broke off, pacing tight, angry circles in the cramped cabin. “You think if I was built for this I’d be standing here losing my mind? I’m a guy who fixes cars and writes speeding tickets and got a C in sophomore biology. That’s it.”
Sassy watched him with a hollow ache in her chest. “Jimmy…”
He spun toward her, eyes desperate. “Sass, I didn’t know. I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
“I know,” she said, though her voice felt distant to her own ears.
Elara’s gaze moved between them, a muscle twitching in her jaw. “They believe you are the Bloom,” she said to Sassy. “And they believe he is the one destined to deliver you.”
Jimmy lunged toward her. “I would rather cut my own throat,” he snarled.
“And they would call it a beautiful sacrifice,” Elara shot back. “Don’t you see? They don’t need your consent. They need your connection. They need her love for you. That is the leash they plan to use.”
Sassy flinched as if struck.
Jimmy’s chest heaved. “You don’t get to stand here and tell me my feelings make me dangerous,” he said. “They’re the only thing that got her out of that place alive.”
“And the only thing that might send her back,” Elara replied, painfully calm.
Sassy pressed her palms to her temples, trying to block out the words, the labels, the ancient roles being draped over them like chains.
“Stop,” she whispered. “Just… stop.”
Both of them fell silent. For a moment the only sound was the creak of the old cabin.
Finally, Jimmy spoke again, quieter but no less fierce. “I don’t care what’s in my blood. I don’t care what my name used to mean to them. They don’t get to decide who I am.”
He turned to Sassy, stepping closer, hands open like he was afraid she’d see them as weapons.
“You decide who I am,” he said. “And I decide. That’s it.”
Her eyes burned.
Elara watched them with sorrow etched deep into the lines of her face.
“Belief is powerful,” she said softly. “Yours. Theirs. Theirs may be older. But it isn’t stronger. Not yet.”
Sassy lowered her hands, meeting Jimmy’s gaze.
“If they come for us,” she said, voice shaking but steady, “they’re not getting a prophecy. They’re getting a fight.”
Jimmy nodded once, jaw clenched. “Good,” he said. “Because prophecy can go to hell.”
Elara closed her eyes briefly.
“They will come,” she murmured. “Not to steal you apart… but to bring you together. To make him the instrument they think he was born to be.”
Jimmy exhaled, sharp and furious. “Then their doctrine is about to be very disappointed.”
Elara’s lips trembled. “I hope you’re right,” she said. “For both your sakes.”
20
For a long, unbearable moment, no one in the abandoned caretaker’s cabin moved.
The walls seemed to press inward.
The air thickened.
Jimmy’s heartbeat was the only sound breaking the silence—too loud, too fast.
Sassy stared at the floor, her hands trembling at her sides. The words Elara had spoken tangled in her mind like a net she couldn’t break free from.
Protector.
Hartwell lineage.
Destined to deliver her.
Jimmy stepped toward her, panic rising in his voice. “Sass—please—look at me.”
She lifted her eyes.
And the pain in them nearly brought him to his knees.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered. “I swear to you, I had no idea my family had anything to do with this. My dad, my grandpa, they never said a word.”
“That’s what scares me,” Sassy said softly.
Jimmy flinched. “Sass…”
“It’s not your fault,” she said quickly, voice trembling. “It’s just… it feels like everything in my life has been arranged without me knowing. My childhood. My mother. Now your family. The Garden keeps showing up in places I thought were safe.”
Jimmy’s voice cracked. “I’m not them. I will never be them.”
Elara, watching from beside the wall, spoke again in that trembling, weary voice. “He doesn’t have to want it for them to use him.”
Jimmy turned on her. “Shut up.”
Sassy grabbed his arm. “Jimmy—don’t.”
Elara didn’t react to his anger. She looked at Sassy instead.
“Child,” she said quietly, “the Midwives raised us on stories of the Bloom and her Protector. They believed love was the easiest leash. That devotion was more powerful than any chain.”
Jimmy looked sick.
Sassy whispered, “Did they plan… us? When we were kids? Was I just supposed to grow up near someone they thought would finish the ritual?”
Elara shook her head. “No. The Garden didn’t place him in your life. But when they learned a Hartwell boy had grown close to the girl they’d once marked… they saw it as confirmation.”
“Confirmation of what?” Jimmy demanded.
“That fate was unfolding exactly as they imagined.”
Elara swallowed.
“That you would lead her back to them.”
Sassy stepped away from Jimmy before she even realized she was moving.
Jimmy’s face broke. “Sass, please don’t step away from me. Don’t treat me like I’m a threat.”
“You’re not,” she cried. “You’re not. I just… Everything feels twisted right now. Everything feels like they’re inside my memories, stitching things together.”
Jimmy shook his head violently. “No. You’re here because of me. Benji’s place, finding Elara, tracking the Garden’s origins—you’re surviving because of me.”
Elara’s voice sliced through the moment.
“Or because you’re leading her exactly where they want.”
Sassy gasped. “Stop.”
Jimmy’s hands curled into fists. “I don’t care what these lunatics wrote a hundred years ago. My choices are mine. My heart is mine. You are mine.”
He froze the second the words left his mouth.
Sassy’s expression shattered.
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t say that. That sounds like them.”
Jimmy backed up immediately, horrified. “Sass, I didn’t mean—God, that came out wrong—I meant you’re my partner, my person, my choice—”
But Sassy wrapped her arms around herself, the cabin suddenly too close, her skin too tight, her lungs refusing to fill fully.
Elara stepped forward slowly. “He’s not the danger. Not yet.”
Jimmy shot her a warning look. “Not helping.”
“But he could be,” Elara finished softly.
Sassy’s knees buckled.
Jimmy caught her before she hit the floor, and she collapsed into him, sobbing against his chest.
He held her with desperate gentleness. “I’m here. Please, just breathe. I’m here.”
Her fingers grasped his shirt, clutching him as though he were the last stable thing in a shifting world.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she choked.
“You won’t,” he whispered fiercely. “I won’t let them turn me into anything. I won’t let them use me.”
Elara watched them, haunted, hollow, and full of knowledge she wished she’d never learned.
After a long moment, she spoke again, quiet, urgent.
“You must leave Ridgewick Hollow. Now. The Garden is coming.”
Jimmy jolted. “How do you know?”
Elara nodded toward the window. “Because they always follow the Bloom. And now that you’ve begun digging into their beginnings, now that you’ve found me, they know exactly where you’ll go next.”
Sassy pulled back from Jimmy, wiping her eyes. “Where?”
“Their birthplace,” Elara said. “Where the first mothers gathered. Where they wrote the doctrines. Where the earliest rituals took shape.”
Jimmy’s voice hardened. “Where is it?”
Elara hesitated.
Then she whispered one word, and Sassy felt the floor drop out from under her.
“Ash Grove.”
Sassy’s lungs froze. “Ash Grove? That’s—Jimmy—that’s ten minutes from where we grew up.”
“So, it was always right there,” Jimmy said in disbelief.
Elara nodded. “The Garden doesn’t hide far from home. They hide inside it.”
Sassy felt dizzy.
Of course.
Of course it would be Ash Grove.
The place her mother never drove through.
The place the town warned children to stay out of.
The place that looked abandoned but never truly was.
Jimmy swallowed hard, steadying her shoulders. “Then we go there. We end this.”
Sassy nodded, but her voice shook. “Jimmy… what if Elara is right? What if they try to use you against me?”
Jimmy lifted her chin, forcing her eyes to his.
“Then I’ll die fighting that before I ever let it happen.”
Elara’s gaze softened for the first time.
“That’s what terrifies them,” she whispered. “Love stronger than doctrine. It’s why they need you apart.”
Sassy leaned into Jimmy’s forehead, inhaling shakily.
“We go together,” she said. “No matter what they believe.”
Jimmy cupped her face. “Together.”
Elara took a step back into the shadows of the cabin.
“Be careful,” she said. “Once you enter Ash Grove… the Garden won’t hide anymore.”
Outside, the wind picked up. Cold, sharp, carrying the faintest sound of distant footsteps.
For several long seconds, the caretaker’s cabin held nothing, but the sound of Sassy’s ragged breathing and Jimmy’s whispered attempts to steady her. Elara’s revelations hung in the freezing air like smoke that refused to dissipate.
Protector lineage.
Hartwell blood.
A vow older than any of them.
Sassy pulled away from Jimmy, hugging her arms around herself as if trying to hold her shaking body together.
Jimmy took a step toward her, but stopped when she flinched. His face crumpled. “Sass… please. I’m still me.”
“I know,” she whispered. “It’s just… it feels like everything I trust gets twisted into something they planned.”
Jimmy exhaled shakily. “I don’t give a damn what my ancestors did. I don’t care what the Garden believes. I’m not their Protector. I’m not delivering you anywhere.”
Elara leaned heavily against the wall, sweat beading along her brow despite the cold. “Belief is more dangerous than blood. They don’t need you to accept it, they just need you near her.”
Jimmy snapped, “Stop talking about me like I’m a weapon.”
Elara’s haunted eyes drifted closed. “That’s exactly what they believe you are.”
Sassy stepped between them. “Enough. All of this—prophecy, lineage, vows—it’s not real. It’s psychosis. A hundred years of women convincing each other their fantasies were holy. That doesn’t make Jimmy part of anything.”
Elara opened her eyes again; grief etched into her features. “Your strength is admirable, child. But denial won’t protect you. Only distance will.”
Sassy shook her head. “No. I’m not leaving him.”
Jimmy let out a breath that almost broke. He reached for her hand but didn’t touch her until she extended hers.
“Then we stay together,” he said softly.
Elara’s voice cracked. “If you must go, then go now. Before they get here. They will come. And they will not stop.”
Jimmy grabbed the duffel. “We’re leaving. But we need to know where.”
Elara hesitated, then whispered:
“Ash Grove.”
Sassy felt her stomach drop. “That’s… Jimmy, that’s near our hometown.”
Jimmy nodded slowly. “The abandoned farmland just west of it.”
Elara steadied herself against the dresser. “That is where the Garden began. Their first meeting hall is buried beneath the grove. Their earliest journals, their doctrine—it all roots back to that land.”
Sassy’s breathing quickened, memory tugging at something deep and old.
“I’ve been there,” she whispered. “My mom drove past it once and told me never to look out the window.”
Elara closed her eyes. “Then she knew it held power over her. And over you.”
Jimmy straightened, resolve hardening his features. “Then that’s where we go. We end this where it started.”
Sassy touched Elara’s arm gently. “Come with us.”
But Elara recoiled as if burned. “No. They’d sense me. I’ve been marked too deeply. My presence would draw them faster.”
Jimmy clenched his jaw. “What do you expect us to do alone?”
Elara’s expression softened with something like sorrow. “Not alone. You have each other. That’s more dangerous to the Garden than any weapon.”
Sassy swallowed. “We’ll come back for you.”
Elara didn’t respond. She just stepped backward into the darkest corner of the room until the shadows swallowed most of her fragile frame.
Jimmy took Sassy’s hand, and they slipped out the back door into the crisp night air.
The truck waited where they left it behind the leaning church. Jimmy checked the mirrors twice, scanning the silent clearing.
“No movement,” he relayed. “We’re clear.”
Sassy slid into the passenger seat; the notebook still clutched in her hands. She couldn’t bring herself to open it again—not yet.
As they pulled back onto Route 9B, Sassy rolled down her window halfway, needing the cold air to anchor her. Everything felt too close. Too loud. Too loaded with meaning.
Jimmy drove fast but carefully, headlights carving a thin path through the dark.
After twenty minutes, the woods thinned and familiar farmland came into view—rolling hills, rusted fences, barns with sagging roofs. Sassy recognized every bend in the road. Every tree.
She whispered, “It’s strange coming back this way. Feels like the world’s folding in on itself.”
Jimmy nodded, keeping one hand on the wheel and one hand resting palm-up on the seat between them. A silent offer. A place to land.
Sassy placed her trembling hand in his.
The navigation app blinked, glitching in and out, but Jimmy didn’t need it—he knew the road. They both did. Ash Grove was part of their shared childhood. A place kids told rumors about. A place parents never talked about.
A place the Garden had quietly shaped into a myth.
As they approached the turnoff, the old wooden sign came into view:
ASH GROVE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY
EST. 1884
The faded letters barely held together.
Jimmy slowed. “This is it.”
Sassy’s pulse quickened. “Drive in.”
He turned onto the dirt path. The truck rumbled over potholes and fallen branches. Moonlight filtered through bare trees, illuminating a clearing ahead—a wide field surrounded by forest.
Sassy’s breath fogged the glass. “I remember this place.”
Jimmy glanced at her. “From when you were little?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But not all at once. Just flashes. I didn’t understand them then.”
Jimmy parked at the edge of the clearing and cut the engine.
Silence pushed in around them.
Not supernatural.
Not mystical.
Just the silence of a place abandoned by time and eaten by memory.
Jimmy reached for her hand.
“You ready?”
“No,” she whispered. “But let’s go anyway.”
They stepped out of the truck and into the birthplace of the Garden—a place that held the answers to Sassy’s past, Jimmy’s lineage, and the belief system that had shaped both their lives long before either of them understood it.
The night felt colder.
The ground felt softer.
And as they walked toward the grove, Sassy had the terrible, gut-deep feeling that coming here would change everything they thought they knew about who they were to each other.
And to the Garden.
