Chapter 16
1101 Words
Chloe’s pov
Two days after the ballroom fell apart, I found the one thing in this compound that couldn't turn on me: dirt.
I'd chosen the strip of land just past the kitchen garden, sun-warmed and soft enough that the spade sank in without much resistance. Lisa's seed packets sat lined up along the low stone wall, tomatoes and beans and a third variety she'd labeled only in her own shorthand, and I worked the soil in silence, grateful for a task that asked nothing of me but my hands and my attention.
After everything the ballroom had turned into two nights ago, the quiet felt like the first honest breath I'd taken since I'd arrived at Red Moon.
I didn't hear Alma approach until her shadow fell across the row in front of me.
"You've got good hands for this." She stood there a moment, watching me work before she crouched down beside me, a basket of cuttings balanced on her hip. She studied the soil, then reached into the basket and drew out a handful of pale green sprigs. "This is mint. Plant some near the edge, where it'll get plenty of sun. It won't cure anything, but the scent helps settle him when things get difficult. It always has, since he was a boy."
"I didn't know that." I took a sprig from her, turning it over in my fingers before setting it into the soil. "Does it work every time?"
"Nothing works every time." Alma brushed dirt from her knees and sat back on her heels, studying the row I'd already planted with an expression I couldn't quite place. "But it helps more than you'd expect. Small things usually do. His father used to keep a pot of it on the windowsill of every room he slept in, long before Nash was ever born."
We worked in a comfortable silence after that, Alma naming plants I didn't recognize and correcting my spacing twice before she was satisfied enough to leave me to it. I kept at it long after she'd gone back inside, working my way down the row until my knees ached and my palms had gone raw against the spade's handle, the sun climbing higher and warmer overhead than it had any business being this late in the season.
That was when I noticed the first row.
The seeds I'd planted only that morning had already broken the surface, pale green shoots pushing up through the dirt faster than any seed had a right to grow. I sat back on my heels and stared at them in surprise. Three days, Lisa had told me once, maybe four for the stubborn ones. They hadn't had three hours.
I told myself it was the soil. Rich, well-turned earth, plenty of sun, maybe Alma's cuttings had enriched the ground. It was so fast but not impossible.
I pressed my palm flat against the dirt, and the warmth that rose up to meet it didn't feel like ordinary soil warmed by an ordinary sun. It felt like a reply but it was gone the second I second-guessed it enough to pull my hand away.
I didn't have a name for whatever that was. I wasn't sure I wanted one yet.
High above the garden, a shadow moved across the balcony rail, and I glanced up to find Nash standing there, still pale from whatever the sedatives hadn't fully worked out of his system, watching me with an intensity that made my skin prickle even from that distance. He didn't wave. He didn't call down. He just watched, his forearms braced against the rail, like the sight of a woman kneeling in the dirt with soil under her nails had caught hold of him and wouldn't let go. I wondered how long he'd been standing there before I noticed, and how much of the strange growth in front of me he might have seen from that height.
I ducked my head back to my work before he could catch me staring back, heat crawling up my neck that had nothing to do with the sun.
"Chloe."
Jessica's hesitant voice came from behind me, and I turned to find her standing at the edge of the garden with her hands twisted together in front of her apron, her eyes red-rimmed like she'd been crying recently and hadn't quite finished.
"I wanted to apologize properly for what happened that night." She stepped closer, from this distance, I could see her hands shaking. "For the dress. For putting you in danger, even if I didn't have much choice in it. I should have found a way to warn you, or told someone before it went that far. I keep thinking about what could have happened, and I can't sleep thinking about it. I keep seeing his face in that ballroom every time I close my eyes."
"You did what you had to do to protect yourself." I set the spade down and rose to meet her properly, brushing dirt from my skirt. "Megan made sure of that. None of it was your fault, and I don't want you thinking like it was."
"It doesn't feel that way." Her voice cracked, and the tears she'd clearly been fighting spilled over. "You stood up for me in front of the Alpha. Nobody in this house has ever done that for me, not once, and I don't know how to thank you for it except to tell you I'll never forget it. Whatever you need, for as long as I work in this house, you have my loyalty. All of it."
"You don't owe me anything." I squeezed her hand, the dirt still caked under my nails smearing against her clean skin. "But thank you. That means more than you know."
Jessica wiped her face with the back of her wrist and managed a watery smile. "The other staff have been talking about what you did. Word's gotten around the kitchens and the stables both. People are saying the new Luna isn't what Megan tried to make everyone believe."
Behind her, two of the kitchen girls lingered near the garden gate, pretending to be occupied with a basket of vegetables while clearly listening to every word, and when I caught their eyes, they both offered small, genuine smiles instead of looking away. One of them even gave a small wave before ducking back toward the kitchen door, like she'd been caught at a kindness she wasn't quite brave enough to admit to yet.
"I'm glad," I said, and I meant it more than I expected to.
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