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The first petal came on a Tuesday.
Reyna felt it first as a tickle—a phantom feather at the back of her throat during a debrief. Brimstone was droning on about enemy rotations on Ascent, his holographic map flickering over the conference table like a ghost. She coughed once, a small, dismissive thing, into the crook of her elbow. No one looked up. They never did.
But when she lowered her arm, a single, crescent-shaped sliver of violet lay on her dark sleeve. Soft. Veined. Impossible.
She stared at it for three heartbeats. Then she crushed it between her thumb and forefinger, smearing it into a damp, fragrant bruise on her skin. She knew what it was. Every soldier of the Protocol had heard the whispers of the old world's sickness. Hanahaki. The disease of longing. The curse of love that dared not speak its name.
Reyna, Empress of the Battlefield, Devourer of Souls, felt her stomach turn to ice.
Because she knew exactly whose face had bloomed in her mind the moment the tickle began.
Sage.
The healer with the jade eyes and the voice like cool water on a burn. The woman who rebuilt bridges while Reyna tore down walls. The only person in the facility who could look at Reyna's soul-shattered rage and not flinch—who looked at her, instead, like she was something worth understanding.
Reyna had spent years telling herself it was respect. Gratitude, even—for the times Sage had stitched her back together after a mission gone sideways, knitting shredded muscle and shattered bone with that gentle, humming radiance. But gratitude didn't feel like this. Gratitude didn't make your chest ache when Sage laughed at one of Neon's bad jokes. Gratitude didn't make you leave a room just because she entered it, because the warmth in your gut was too much like betrayal.
Betrayal of the memory of her sister. Of the vow she'd made to never love again, because love was a wound that never closed.
Now her lungs were making her a liar.
That night, Reyna stood in front of her bathroom mirror for a long time. The petal was gone—she'd washed it down the sink—but she could still feel its shape against her palm. She touched her throat. Swallowed. Nothing. Just the usual weight of exhaustion and fury.
"You're fine," she told her reflection. The woman who stared back had dark circles under her eyes and a mouth that hadn't smiled genuinely in years. "It's nothing. A fluke. You don't even love her."
The lie tasted like copper.
She went to bed and dreamed of gardens.
She adapted. Reyna was nothing if not a survivor.
She coughed into her palm during training, excused herself from meals early, and learned to swallow the metallic-sweet taste of petals before they reached her lips. At first, it was just petals. Delicate, single things. Purple as dusk. She'd pluck them from her pillow in the dark and flush them down the toilet, watching them spiral away like tiny drowned ships.
But the disease was hungry.
Within two weeks, the petals became clusters. Within a month, they came with stems—thin, cruel tendrils that coiled in her bronchi and made every breath a negotiation. She started wearing higher collars. Applied more concealer under her eyes. When Killjoy asked if she was feeling ill, Reyna snarled something about "allergies to incompetent engineers" and stalked off, ignoring the hurt that flickered across the German's face.
The only person she couldn't lie to was Sage. Because Sage saw.
It happened in the medbay. Reyna had taken a rifle round to the shoulder on Fracture—a stupid, avoidable mistake because she'd been distracted, thinking about the way Sage had brushed past her in the armory that morning. The wound was minor, but protocol demanded a checkup.
Sage's hands hovered over the injury, green radiance pooling like liquid jade. Her brow was furrowed in that way it always was when she concentrated—a small vertical line between her eyebrows that Reyna wanted to smooth away with her thumb.
"You're tense," Sage murmured. "More than usual."
Reyna forced a smirk. "Perhaps I simply enjoy your company, querida."
Sage's eyes flicked up—clear, patient, infuriatingly kind. "Your vitals are erratic. And your lymph nodes are swollen. Have you been coughing?"
"Everyone coughs."
"Not like this." Sage's fingers drifted higher, toward Reyna's throat. Reyna caught her wrist. Hard.
The touch sent a lance of fire through her chest. Behind her sternum, something sprouted. She felt roots twitch—wet and hungry and alive.
"Don't," Reyna breathed.
Sage didn't pull away. She just looked at Reyna's hand wrapped around her wrist, then back at her face. "You're scared," she said. Not a question.
Reyna released her like the skin had burned her. "I'm leaving."
"Reyna—"
But she was already gone, boots echoing down the corridor, one hand pressed to her ribs where a full flower had just unfurled. She made it to her quarters before the coughing seized her. She doubled over the sink, retching petals and stems and one perfect, cruel blossom—a violet aster, its heart gold as the sun.
She knew what the flower meant.
Love. Patience. Longing.
She laughed until she cried, then cried until she slept, curled on the bathroom floor with her cheek against cold tile. When she woke, there were petals in her hair.
The team noticed her fading. Of course they did.
"You look like shit," Phoenix said cheerfully one morning, dropping into the chair across from her at breakfast. He was eating something that looked like it had been on fire recently. "No offense."
"None taken," Reyna said flatly. She wasn't eating. She couldn't. The flowers had started to make food taste like dirt.
"Seriously, though." Phoenix's grin faded. "You've lost weight. And you're not yelling at anyone. It's weird."
"I'm saving my energy."
"For what?"
For dying, she thought. For coughing up my heart in handfuls of petals. But she just shrugged and stood up, leaving her untouched tray behind.
She felt Phoenix's eyes on her back all the way to the door.
The second month was worse.
She started waking up choking. Every morning, without fail, her body would try to expel the night's growth—a tangle of stems and buds that had blossomed while she slept. She'd crawl to the bathroom, heave into the sink, and watch purple and gold spiral down the drain. Then she'd brush her teeth three times to get the taste out, dress in her highest-collared shirt, and go to training like nothing was wrong.
But something was wrong. Everything was wrong.
Her aim was off. Her reflexes were slower. During a sparring match with Jett, she misjudged a dodge and took a kick to the ribs that sent her to the mat, gasping—not from the pain, but from the way the impact dislodged a petal that lodged itself in her windpipe. She lay there for a terrible three seconds, unable to breathe, until a cough dislodged it and she rolled over, spitting violet onto the mats.
Jett was kneeling beside her instantly. "Holy shit, Reyna. Are you okay? What is that?"
"Nothing," Reyna wheezed. She crushed the petal into the mat. "Tongue ring. Bit it."
"You don't have a tongue ring."
"Get off me."
She shoved Jett away and limped to the locker room, ignoring the stares. In the shower, with the water running hot and loud, she pressed her forehead to the tile and let herself cry. Just for a minute. Just long enough to feel sorry for herself.
Then she shut it off, dried her face, and went back to pretending.
The only person she couldn't avoid was Sage. Because Sage was everywhere.
In the garden she tended, coaxing life from soil that had no business growing anything. Reyna had stopped walking past it—too many flowers, too many memories of watching Sage kneel in the dirt with her hands buried in the earth, looking more at peace than Reyna had ever seen her.
In the medbay, where Reyna started treating her own wounds—clumsily, with field sutures and spite—because she couldn't bear the thought of Sage's hands on her skin again. She knew if Sage touched her, she'd break. She'd tell everything. And then Sage would either reject her (and the flowers would bloom faster) or pity her (which was worse).
In the common room at 2100 hours, drinking tea from a chipped ceramic cup, her hair loose around her shoulders.
That was the worst. The hair.
Reyna had once, in a fever dream of exhaustion, imagined running her fingers through it. Just once. To know if it felt as soft as it looked. She'd imagined Sage leaning into the touch, closing her eyes, sighing. She'd imagined—
No. She couldn't imagine. Imagining was what had started this whole nightmare.
Now that dream would kill her.
One night, Reyna couldn't sleep. The flowers were restless—she could feel them shifting in her chest, roots stretching, petals unfurling. She walked the empty corridors of the facility, barefoot, wearing only a thin shirt and sweatpants. The floor was cold. It felt good. Grounding.
She didn't mean to end up at the garden.
But there she was, standing at the edge of the glass-walled greenhouse, watching the moonlight turn Sage's flowers silver and blue. And there, in the center of it all, was Sage herself—sitting on a wooden bench, her hands folded in her lap, staring at nothing.
She wasn't sleeping. She was waiting.
Reyna should have walked away. Every instinct screamed at her to retreat, to hide, to survive. But her feet wouldn't move. And then Sage turned her head, and their eyes met through the glass, and the roots in Reyna's chest screamed.
"Reyna." Sage's voice was soft through the glass. "Come in."
She shook her head.
Sage stood. Walked to the door. Opened it. "Please."
One word. One small, gentle word. And Reyna—Empress of the Battlefield, who had never begged for anything in her life—stepped forward like a woman walking to her execution.
The garden smelled like Sage. Like earth and jasmine and something green. Reyna stopped a few feet away, arms crossed tight over her chest, as if she could physically hold the flowers inside.
"You should be sleeping," Reyna said.
"So should you."
"I don't sleep much anymore."
Sage's expression flickered. "Neither do I." She sat back down on the bench and patted the space beside her. "Sit with me?"
No, Reyna thought. If I sit next to you, I will never leave. If I sit next to you, I will tell you everything. If I sit next to you, I will die.
She sat.
The bench was small. Their shoulders were almost touching. Reyna could feel the warmth radiating from Sage's arm, could smell the tea on her breath—chamomile, honey. She stared straight ahead at a bush of white roses and counted her heartbeats.
"Talk to me," Sage said.
"About what?"
"Anything. Everything." A pause. "Why you're disappearing."
Reyna's jaw tightened. "I'm not disappearing."
"You are. You skip meals. You avoid everyone. You flinch when I come near you." Sage's voice was calm, but there was something underneath it—something raw. "Did I do something wrong?"
Yes, Reyna thought. You existed. You were kind. You made me believe that someone like me could be loved, and now my lungs are full of flowers because of it.
"No," she said instead. "You didn't do anything."
"Then what is it?"
Reyna turned to look at her. Mistake. Sage's face was inches away, her jade eyes reflecting the moonlight, her lips slightly parted. She was beautiful in the way that storms were beautiful—terrible and awe-inspiring and impossible to look away from.
"I can't," Reyna whispered.
"Can't what?"
"Tell you."
Sage reached out. Her fingers brushed Reyna's wrist—the lightest touch, a question more than a statement. Reyna's breath hitched. Behind her sternum, a dozen flowers bloomed at once.
"You're shaking," Sage said.
"I'm cold."
"You're lying."
Reyna stood up so fast the bench creaked. "I have to go."
"Reyna, wait—"
But she was already running, bare feet slapping against the stone floor, one hand pressed to her mouth to hold back the petals that were climbing her throat. She made it to her quarters, slammed the door, and collapsed against it, coughing up a cascade of violet and gold.
When it was over, she lay in a pool of flowers and wept.
She started writing letters to everyone.
Not long ones. Just... insurance. In case.
To Brimstone: You were a better commander than I ever deserved. Don't let them get soft.
To Viper: I hated you first. Then I respected you. Don't tell anyone.
To Jett: You're faster than me now. Use it.
To Phoenix: Stop showing off. You're good enough without the flair.
To Killjoy: Your turret is annoying. So are you. Stay that way.
To Neon: Laugh more. The world needs it.
To Cypher: I know you're reading this over my shoulder. Stop.
To Chamber: You owe me forty credits. Pay my ghost.
To Sage:
She stared at the blank page for an hour.
Then she wrote:
Sage,
By the time you read this, I'll be gone. Don't blame yourself. The disease chose me because I chose silence. And I chose silence because some loves are not meant to be spoken. They are meant to be carried—like a wound, like a weapon, like a flower that blooms only in the dark.
You were kind to me when I deserved cruelty. You healed me when I deserved to bleed. I never thanked you properly. So here it is: thank you. For being the one good thing in a world that has only ever taken from me.
Do not try to save me. Some gardens cannot be weeded.
—R
She folded it into a small square and tucked it under her pillow. Then she lay back, stared at the ceiling, and let herself imagine—just for a moment—what it would feel like to say the words aloud.
I love you, Sage.
Her chest convulsed. A flower climbed her throat. She swallowed it down, thorns and all, and tasted blood.
The end came on a mission. Because of course it did.
A routine extraction on Split turned into an ambush. Kingdom forces had set a trap, and the Protocol team—Reyna, Jett, Phoenix, and Sage—walked right into it. They were pinned in a narrow corridor, enemy fire shredding the walls around them. Jett was down with a gut wound. Phoenix was holding a choke point with a wall of flame, but his radiance was flickering like a candle in the wind.
Reyna should have been fine. The flowers had weakened her, yes, but she still had her leeching. She could still drain. She could still fight.
But then she saw Sage take a bullet.
It wasn't fatal—a graze across the ribs, a line of red blooming through her white robes. But Sage cried out, a small, sharp sound that Reyna felt in her own chest like a hammer blow. And in that moment of distraction, she forgot to breathe. Forgot to guard. Forgot everything except the need to get to Sage.
A bullet caught her in the thigh. Another in the shoulder. She staggered, but kept moving, dragging herself through the hail of fire until she reached Sage's side.
"Stay down," Reyna growled, blood running down her arm, soaking into her sleeve. "I've got you."
Sage looked up at her, and even with blood on her face and fear in her eyes, she was beautiful. Her hand pressed to her side, fingers already glowing with healing light. "Reyna, you're hurt—"
"I'm always hurt." Reyna raised her hand, summoned a soul orb from a fallen enemy, and pressed the leeched energy into Sage's wound. The gash knitted closed. Sage gasped.
But the effort cost Reyna everything.
The roots in her chest, which had been held at bay by adrenaline and fury, surged. A cough ripped out of her—violent, uncontrollable, bending her double. And this time, it wasn't petals or stems.
It was a flower.
A full, perfect, violet aster, blooming on her tongue.
Sage stared.
The world went very quiet.
"Reyna," Sage whispered. "No."
Reyna tried to speak, but her throat was closing. The roots were climbing. She could feel them winding around her trachea, squeezing like a fist. Her vision blurred at the edges. The sounds of the battle—the gunfire, the shouting—seemed to come from very far away.
Her voice cracked. "How long?"
Reyna shook her head. She couldn't answer. Couldn't breathe.
"How long, Reyna?"
A tear slipped down Sage's cheek. Reyna wanted to wipe it away. She wanted to say don't cry for me, I'm not worth it, I'm just the monster who eats souls, I was never meant to have a heart anyway.
Instead, she coughed again. More flowers. A cascade of purple and gold, spilling down her chin, staining the front of her combat suit, mixing with the blood from her shoulder wound.
"I can fix this," Sage said, her hands already glowing with that familiar green light. "I can heal you. Just hold on."
Reyna grabbed her wrist. Squeezed. No.
"Don't you dare tell me no," Sage hissed, tears falling freely now, cutting tracks through the grime on her face. "You don't get to die. You don't get to leave me. Not like this."
Leave me. The words echoed in Reyna's chest like a bell. Her heart—what was left of it—shattered.
Because in that moment, she saw it. The truth Sage had been hiding too. The way her hands trembled when she touched Reyna. The way she always found excuses to be near her. The way she'd looked at Reyna that night in the garden—not with pity, but with something deeper. Something that mirrored the garden in Reyna's own chest.
Sage loved her back.
And Reyna was going to die knowing it.
---
The battle ended around them, but Reyna didn't notice.
Jett was evacuated by Phoenix, who'd burned through the enemy line with a scream of fury. But Reyna and Sage were cut off—a collapsed wall, a shower of debris, and suddenly they were alone in a small maintenance closet, the sounds of fighting muffled to distant thunder.
Sage had her hands on Reyna's chest, radiance pouring into her in waves so bright they lit the closet like noon. The healing was working—sort of. The wounds from the bullets closed. The bleeding stopped. But the roots didn't retreat. They thrashed, recoiling from the radiance like worms from salt, digging deeper into Reyna's flesh.
"It's not working," Reyna rasped. Her voice was barely a whisper now. Every word brought a fresh bloom, a new petal on her tongue. "Sage. Stop."
"It will," Sage said, but her voice shook. Her hands were trembling. "I just need more time."
"There is no more time."
"Don't."
"Sage." Reyna reached up with a bloodstained hand and touched Sage's face. The healer went still, her breath catching. "Listen to me."
"No. You're going to tell me yourself. After you're healed." Sage's jaw was set, stubborn, beautiful. "After we get out of here. You're going to tell me everything."
"I love you."
The words came out not with a cough, but with a breath. Soft. Certain. A final petal fell from Reyna's lips—a single violet, landing on Sage's wrist like a kiss.
Sage made a sound like a wounded animal. A sob. A gasp. Something broken. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I was afraid," Reyna whispered. Her vision was fading at the edges, darkening like a room with the lights being turned off one by one. "Afraid you wouldn't feel the same. Afraid you would. Afraid of what it would mean to want something more than revenge." She smiled, and blood stained her teeth. "Turns out I was right to be afraid."
"I can save you," Sage said fiercely. The radiance in her hands pulsed brighter, hotter. "I can save you. Just let me—"
"The disease feeds on unrequited love," Reyna said. "But you love me back. So why is it still killing me?"
Sage's hands faltered. The radiance flickered.
Reyna's smile turned sad. "Because I don't believe it. I can't. My heart has been broken for so long, Sage. I forgot how to trust that anything good could stay." Another cough. More petals. A stem, this time, curling out from between her lips like a serpent. "The flowers aren't growing because you don't love me. They're growing because I can't accept that you do."
"Then let me show you," Sage begged. Tears were streaming down her face now, falling onto Reyna's chest, onto the flowers. "Let me prove it. Just stay alive. Please. Please."
But Reyna's eyes were already going distant. The roots had reached her lungs now. She could feel them spreading like fingers, weaving through the delicate tissue, preparing for the final bloom. She could feel her heartbeat slowing, her breath coming in shallow, wet gasps.
"There's one way," Sage said suddenly. Her voice was strange. Calm. Like someone who had just made a decision they knew they couldn't take back.
Reyna's brow furrowed. "What?"
"My radiance can't heal the flowers. But it can… replace them. Seal the wounds. Turn the damaged tissue into something that can't be hurt." She placed both hands flat on Reyna's sternum, pressing down. The radiance shifted from green to white-gold, hotter now, almost painful. "I can crystallize your lungs. Turn them to jade. The flowers can't grow in stone."
"That would kill you."
"No." Sage's smile was gentle and terrible. "It would change me."
"Sage—"
"I've spent my whole life healing others," Sage said softly. "Let me do this. Let me save you."
Reyna tried to push her hands away, but she had no strength left. The flowers were taking everything. Her arms were lead. Her legs were numb. The only thing she could still feel was the warmth of Sage's hands on her chest and the cold certainty of death creeping up her spine.
"Don't," Reyna whispered. "Please. I'd rather die than lose you."
"You won't lose me."
"You'll be stone."
"I'll be alive. And so will you." Sage leaned forward, pressing her forehead to Reyna's. Their breath mingled—Reyna's wet and floral, Sage's steady and warm. "I love you," Sage said. "I've loved you for so long. And I'm sorry I never said it. I'm sorry we waited until now."
"Don't apologize," Reyna breathed. "Just—"
But she didn't get to finish.
Sage kissed her.
It was soft. Brief. A press of lips that tasted like tears and jasmine and goodbye. And then Sage pulled back, her jade eyes locked on Reyna's, and she pushed.
The radiance that erupted from Sage's hands was not the gentle green of healing. It was blinding—white-gold, searing, a supernova compressed into the space between two palms. It poured into Reyna's chest like liquid light, and Reyna felt it change her.
The roots screamed.
The flowers wilted, turned brown, turned to ash. Where soft tissue had been, crystalline structures grew—not painful, but cold. Immovable. Her lungs turned to jade, vein by vein, bronchiole by bronchiole. The light spread through her chest, her ribs, her sternum, turning everything to stone.
And Sage…
Sage began to crystallize too.
It started at her hands—the ones pressed to Reyna's chest. Green radiance bled into green stone, creeping up her wrists, her forearms. Sage didn't scream. She didn't even flinch. She just kept her eyes on Reyna's face, and she smiled.
"There," Sage breathed. Her voice was already echoing, like she was speaking from the bottom of a well. "Now you'll live."
"No." Reyna's voice came out stronger now—her lungs were stone, the flowers silenced, the roots ash. But her heart was still flesh, and it was breaking. "No, no, no—Sage, stop. Stop."
But the crystallization didn't stop. It climbed Sage's arms, her shoulders, her neck. Her skin turned translucent, then opaque, a statue being carved from the inside out. Her smile froze. Her eyes—those beautiful jade eyes—became gemstones, still wet with unshed tears.
"Sage!" Reyna scrambled forward, grabbing Sage's shoulders. The crystal was warm to the touch. Alive. Vibrating with a faint, humming radiance. But underneath it, Sage was fading. Her consciousness dimming. "You idiot. You beautiful, selfless idiot. I told you not to save me."
Sage's lips moved. A whisper, barely audible, like wind through stone.
"Worth it."
And then she was gone.
Not dead—not quite. The crystal held her consciousness somewhere deep, suspended like a fly in amber, dreaming an endless dream. But her body was no longer flesh. She was a statue, kneeling on the floor of the maintenance closet, her hands still raised in the gesture of healing, her face turned toward Reyna with an expression of infinite tenderness.
Reyna held her for a long time.
She didn't cry. Crying required breath, and her lungs were jade now—they didn't expand, didn't contract. She couldn't sob. Couldn't scream. All she could do was press her forehead to Sage's frozen cheek and feel the absence of warmth, the absence of breath, the absence of everything that had made life worth living.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry. I should have told you. I should have said it every day. I should have—"
But the words ran out. And the silence that followed was worse than any flower.
They were rescued three hours later.
Brimstone found them. He took one look at the crystal statue of Sage, at Reyna curled against it like a child, at the carpet of dead petals and ash around them, and his face went gray. He didn't ask questions. He just called for extraction and then stood guard outside the closet until help arrived.
Back at the facility, the medics tried to examine Reyna. They found her lungs completely replaced by jade—a medical impossibility, a miracle of radiance, a curse dressed in gemstone. She could breathe, but only shallowly. She would never run again. Never fight at full strength. Never drain a soul without feeling the cold stone in her chest grind against her ribs.
She didn't care.
She spent her days in the garden. Not the one Sage had tended—she couldn't bear that. That garden was full of Sage's flowers, Sage's earth, Sage's absence. Every time she looked at it, she saw Sage kneeling in the dirt, laughing at something Neon had said, brushing a strand of hair from her face.
So she found another garden. A wild one at the edge of the facility, where weeds grew tall and unnamed flowers bloomed without permission. She sat on a rusted bench and stared at nothing for hours.
The team tried to reach her.
Phoenix brought her food. Left it beside her without a word when she didn't eat. Came back an hour later to find it untouched, and left again.
Neon tried to make her laugh. Told terrible jokes, did impressions of Brimstone, fell over her own feet. Reyna watched with empty eyes and said nothing.
Jett sat beside her in silence, offering nothing but presence. Sometimes she'd lean her head on Reyna's shoulder. Sometimes she'd hold Reyna's hand. She never asked Reyna to speak, and Reyna never did.
Viper came once. Stood in front of Reyna with her arms crossed. "She made a choice," Viper said flatly. "Don't waste it."
Then she left.
Cypher came at night. Reyna didn't see him—she never did—but sometimes she'd find a cup of tea beside her bench, still warm, and she knew.
But none of it reached her. None of it mattered.
Because every time she closed her eyes, she saw Sage's face. Every time she breathed, she felt the cold stone where her lungs used to be. Every time her heart beat, it beat against jade, and the sound was a funeral bell.
She thought about the flowers sometimes. Wondered if they were still there, dormant, waiting. The radiance had burned them to ash, but ash could become soil. And soil could grow new things.
She pushed the thought away. It was too painful to consider.
Three weeks passed.
Reyna stopped leaving the garden. She had a cot brought out, a small table, a few changes of clothes. She ate when someone reminded her to. Slept when her body gave out. Spent the rest of the time staring at the sky and thinking about nothing.
The jade in her chest was heavy. Not painful—just present. A constant reminder of what Sage had given up. A constant weight pressing against her heart.
She started talking to Sage. Not aloud—her voice didn't work well anymore, not with stone lungs. But in her head. Long conversations that stretched through the night.
I should have told you sooner.
I should have kissed you that night in the garden.
I should have been braver.
I'm sorry I wasn't.
I'm sorry I'm still not.
I'm sorry I'm here and you're not.
And then, one night, she felt it.
A crack.
It was small—a hairline fracture in the jade of her left lung. Barely noticeable. But Reyna felt it like a scream. She sat up on her cot, hand pressed to her chest, eyes wide.
The jade was weakening.
Sage's radiance had crystallized her lungs, but radiance faded. Cells regenerated. The body rejected what didn't belong. The stone was cracking, sloughing away, revealing the soft tissue beneath.
And the moment it did, she felt them.
The roots.
They had never truly died. They had only been sleeping. Waiting. Patient as love, patient as grief, patient as the silence Reyna had maintained for so long. And now, with the jade crumbling, they woke.
Reyna doubled over as the first vine unfurled in her chest. It wasn't like before. Before, the flowers had grown slowly, gently, like a garden in spring. This was different. This was a siege. Roots tore through the remnants of the jade, through her ribs, through her flesh. She screamed—a raw, animal sound that echoed across the empty garden—as purple blossoms erupted from her mouth, her nose, the corners of her eyes.
The world turned violet and gold.
She fell off the cot, thrashing on the cold ground, her fingers clawing at her throat. But there was nothing to grab. The flowers weren't outside. They were her. Every cell, every breath, every heartbeat was feeding them.
In the split second before the end, Reyna understood.
Sage's sacrifice hadn't failed. It had worked perfectly. The jade had killed the flowers. But it hadn't killed the love. And Reyna—broken, mistrustful, unable to believe that anyone could truly love her—had spent three weeks drowning in that love anyway. Not in flowers. In grief.
The grief of losing Sage had been worse than the hanahaki.
And when the jade cracked, the grief became the soil. The love became the seed. And the flowers grew back twice as strong, twice as fast, twice as cruel.
I love you, Reyna thought, as the vines wrapped around her heart. I love you, I love you, I love you.
The words were a prayer. A confession. A eulogy.
The flowers answered.
They found her at dawn.
Killjoy had come to check on her—a routine visit, just to make sure Reyna had eaten something. She stepped into the garden and stopped dead.
The flowers were everywhere.
They had crawled across the ground in a purple tide, climbed the walls of the greenhouse, wrapped around the rusted bench. Vines hung from the ceiling like chandeliers, heavy with blossoms. The air was thick with the smell of violets—so thick it was almost suffocating.
And in the center, curled on her side, was Reyna.
Her eyes were closed. Her face was peaceful, almost. The faintest smile on her lips, as if she had finally found something she'd been looking for. One hand was stretched toward the door, toward the sky, toward nothing—or everything.
In her other hand, crushed against her chest, was a single violet aster.
Killjoy didn't scream. She didn't cry. She just stood there for a very long time, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. Then she turned and walked back to the facility, and when she reached Brimstone's office, she said only four words.
"She's gone. Both of them."
Brimstone read the letter Reyna had left under her pillow. Then he read it again. Then he walked out of the room without a word and didn't speak for three days.
They buried her in the garden—the one Sage had tended. It seemed right. Sage's flowers had always been the ones Reyna loved most, even if she'd never said it. The soil was soft, and the sun was warm, and the whole team stood in silence as they lowered her into the earth.
Jett cried. Neon cried. Phoenix cried, though he tried to hide it. Even Viper's eyes looked red, though she claimed it was allergies.
Cypher didn't come. But a single white rose appeared on Reyna's grave that evening, and no one knew where it came from.
And somewhere, in a different part of the facility, the crystal statue of Sage stood silent and still.
The team had moved her to a small alcove near the medbay—a place of honor, where the light from the windows could catch her facets and scatter rainbows across the walls. They had tried to keep her clean, to dust her, to treat her with the reverence she deserved.
But no one could look at her for long.
Because her face—frozen in that final smile, her eyes fixed on something in the distance—was too much like hope. And hope, in a place like this, was a dangerous thing.
Sometimes, late at night, when the facility was quiet and the only sound was the hum of the generators, someone would swear they heard something. A whisper. A breath. A voice, soft as jasmine, carried on the wind.
I love you.
But when they turned to look, the statue was still. The garden was still. The world was still.
And Reyna's grave, just outside the window, was covered in violets.
Months passed. Then years.
The Protocol moved on. New agents joined. Old agents retired. The war with Kingdom shifted and changed, as wars always do. But the garden remained. And the statue remained. And the grave remained.
New recruits would sometimes ask about the flowers.
"Why are there so many violets in that corner of the garden?"
And the veterans would exchange a look—a heavy, sad look—and change the subject.
But Jett, who had been there from the beginning, who had sat beside Reyna in silence and held her hand and watched her fade, would sometimes tell the story. Not all of it. Just pieces.
"There were two women," she would say, sitting on the bench in the wild garden, staring at the grave. "One who healed. One who hurt. And they loved each other in the worst possible way—silently, secretly, until it was too late."
"What happened to them?" the recruit would ask.
Jett would smile, and it wouldn't reach her eyes. "They became the flowers."
And then she would stand up, brush the petals from her lap, and walk away.
Behind her, the violets swayed in the breeze. And if you listened very closely—if you believed in such things—you could almost hear two voices, tangled together like roots, whispering words they'd never said aloud.
I love you.
I know.
I'm sorry.
I know that too.
And the garden bloomed on, indifferent and eternal, as gardens do.