Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 59 of 59

They rode hard from the palace and did not stop until they reached the healing house draped in blossoms. Delia climbed the porch steps and shut the door behind them. She set the heart-seed on the table. It glowed pink and gold in the dim room, veined like a leaf. The choice had not left her. It had ridden home in her apron the whole way. "You don't have to touch it again," Nick said. He stood between her and the table, tall, his blue eyes hard. "We hide it. We bury it in the locked room. No one chooses anything." "It will keep asking," Delia said. "Elara told me. The seed woke because my blood came back. Hiding it won't quiet it." Nick set his hands on her shoulders. "Elira freed it and died. You said so yourself." His voice dropped, plain and low. "I won't bury my wife to free a seed. Whatever it wants, you do it scared, and I lose you. So don't do it scared." Delia looked at the seed. She thought of the choice as two words: command or free. To command was to bend the magic to her will, to rule it like the nobles ruled land. To free it was to let it heal by need alone, the way her blooms already did by the river. That was the danger. That was also the only choice that was hers. "I'm not scared," she said. It was almost true. "Elira died because she freed it as a slave, hunted, with the seed stolen from her hands. I'm free. I'm queen. No one can take it from me now." Nick's jaw tightened. "You don't know that killed her or the freeing did." "No," Delia said. "But I know what I am." She picked up the seed. Warmth flooded her arm. The voice returned, old and many at once. Choose. "I free you," she said aloud. "Heal by need. Answer no crown, not even mine." Light poured from the seed and up her arm. Her knees buckled. Nick caught her before she hit the floor, shouting her name. The glow spread from her hand into the wood, into the walls, out through the window. Delia felt it leave her, a great warmth draining away, and for one moment she could not breathe. Then the light was gone. The seed lay dark and small in her open palm, an empty husk. She was alive. Her heart still beat. "Delia." Nick held her tight. "You're breathing. You're breathing." She pushed up and looked past him. Through the window, across her field, glowing flowers opened one after another, faster than any planting. They spread toward the river, toward the villages, farther than her eyes could follow. "It's loose," she whispered. "Not mine. Everyone's now." She had lived. But the old magic was free across the whole land, and no one, not even the crown, could call it back.