Eden in the Garden
888 Words
The castle library smelled of dust and lavender ink. Scrolls lined the walls in perfect symmetry, each one a record of etiquette, lineage, and the rise of Polis within the Gemini region. Eden was meant to be studying. Her tutor, a thin man with a voice like dry parchment, droned on about the proper way to curtsy before a Polarian general.
She was not listening.
Eden had already memorized the history of her kingdom. She could recite the names of every ruler since the Gemini Split. She knew which fork to use, how to bow, how to speak without offending. And she hated it.
So she left.
Barefoot and silent, Eden slipped through the eastern corridor, past the marble busts of her ancestors, and into the garden maze. The hedges rose high, but she knew the path by heart. At the far edge of the maze, where the mountain tilted and the stone softened into moss, she found her spot.
From here, she could see the soldiers.
They trained like hunters—bowstrings taut, swords flashing, axes swinging in rhythm. They practiced against imagined enemies, mimicking the hostile creatures of Aer’s wilderness. Some used vampiric techniques to paralyze and extract poisons, careful not to pierce the meat where the venom activated.
Eden watched, legs tucked beneath her, eyes wide. The Shadorians had begun attacking the outer bands of the Split. Where the Sun stopped and the Moon sat—a perfect divide. Ravannah’s reach had made it permanent. Polis lived in perpetual daylight now, the moon a shadow on the horizon.
She was only eight.
But she knew too much.
She knew of the prophecy. She knew she could not escape it. And still, she sat—watching, dreaming, aching to hold a sword instead of a scroll. Her mother stood in the heart of the garden, a statue of stone and grace. Theadoma. Watching. Guiding. Waiting.
Eden would honor her.
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Kassiopiea had already searched the library, the east wing, the stables, and the observatory. Her braid was coming undone. Her boots were caked in dust. Her voice was raw from calling Eden’s name for what felt like the thousandth time.
“Eden! Eden, where in the stars are you?”
She knew where she’d be.
Kass turned toward the garden maze, heart pounding. The hedges loomed like walls, but she didn’t hesitate. She knew the path. She’d walked it with Eden since they were children—sisters not by blood, but by bond. Raised together in the halls of Polis, Kass had been servant, shadow, and shield.
She reached the tilted mountainside, the overlook where Eden often slipped away to watch the soldiers train. But Eden wasn’t watching.
She was fighting.
Two men—Shadorians by the cut of their cloaks and the way they moved—had her cornered near the barrier woods. Kass froze. That forest, if hiked for four days, led straight into the heart of the Split. No one crossed it without consequence.
One man had Eden pinned. The other was already fleeing into the trees. Kass let him go.
She ran.
The man looked up as she approached. His eyes—bright blue. Not the coal-black of Shadorian kind. Blue like Eden’s. Blue like the goddesses’ touch.
Kass whispered it aloud: “The goddess’s touch…”
Eden turned, hearing it too. She saw the recognition in Kass’s face. She saw the hesitation in the man’s grip.
Lucian.
She knew his name now. Knew why he’d come. His father had sent him to kill her—to stop the prophecy before she ascended into her full powers on her twenty-first birthday.
This moment would be remembered.
The beginning of the fall.
Lucian released her. He stepped back. Then he ran—back toward the woods, back toward the Split, away from the girl he was supposed to kill.
This was going to be a problem.
A very big problem.
Lucian closed his eyes as he fled, letting the corrupted side of him rise. The part twisted by exile, by expectation, by the Shadorian
blood that warred with the goddess’s spark inside him.
She saw it.
She saw he was a balancer.
How would she take it? What would she do?
Would they come for vengeance—or justice?
Either way, a war larger than any they had ever seen was coming.
The wind had stilled.
Eden sat in the dirt, her breath shallow, her hands trembling. The grass beneath her was torn, stained with dust and blood. Kass knelt beside her, brushing a strand of hair from Eden’s face, her fingers shaking.
“You’re bleeding,” Kass whispered.
“It’s not mine,” Eden replied, though her voice cracked.
They sat in silence for a moment, the sun casting long shadows across the garden’s edge. Below them, the soldiers still trained, unaware that prophecy had just shifted on the mountainside.
“You saw his eyes,” Kass said.
Eden nodded. “He’s not just Shadorian.”
“No,” Kass murmured. “He’s something else. Something… bound.”
Eden looked toward the woods where Lucian had vanished. “He let me go.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t come back.”
“I hope he does.”
Kass turned sharply. “Eden—”
“I need to know why.”
- Writer
