The Starborn Codex: Entry VII

The borders of Bloom were never unguarded, but at night they seemed to press inward, as if the grove itself were listening harder. White jasmine climbed thick through the hedges, and the air was heavy with damp earth, crushed mint, and the sweetness of lilies turning rich in the dark. Thorn-vines shifted along the threshold in small, uneasy movements that no wind could quite account for, as if the Gardens themselves continued to change their minds about something.

At the edge of the living boundary stood a man in white and gold, one hand fixed on a young Vine-Keeper’s shoulder, the other holding a golden knife to his throat.

He had chosen well – the man he threatened now was no soldier. He wore Bloom green, unarmoured; and the fine winding marks at his wrists confirmed what he was: one of the Keepers sent to the lower crossings to listen to Bloom’s networks for signs of trouble or trespass. If wards stirred, strange magic touched the vines, or uninvited guests arrived, it was the Vine-Keepers who felt it first and carried warning back to the Court.

The knife was too delicate for the work it had been brought to do. Moonlight ran along its edge, and a bead of blood had gathered where it rested against the Keeper’s skin. The man in gold looked almost at ease – a stark contrast to the trembling body before him.

The branches behind them rustled.

“How predictable,” came a voice from the dark. “Gold, a knife, and someone smaller than you.”

The man smiled before he turned.

“Still playing in the dirt, Zavian?”

The High Regent of Shadow stepped out from the trees without any visible haste, black-clad, empty-handed, moonlight catching the hard line of his cheek and little else. His gaze went first to the knife, then to the hand that held it, and only after that to the man himself.

“Still polishing rot until it shines, Amadeus.” He made the name sound unclean.

A short laugh answered him. “Sentimental as ever, little prince. I’d have thought your father burnt that out of you before he threw you away.”

Zavian’s face did not change.

Amadeus’ smile sharpened, his knife still steady at the Keeper’s neck. He went on.

“Careful, Zavian. Last time you chose the wrong throat to pity, it cost you everything.”

“Everything?” Zavian repeated. He let his gaze travel once over the commander’s goldwork, the bright knife, the polished vanity of him.

“Yes,” he said, with a glance at the commander’s richly worked armour. “I wake each day bereft of gold drapery, ornamental nonsense, and the desperate need to impress furniture. It has marked me deeply.”

Above them, the darkness over the grove stirred. One raven swept across the narrow break in the canopy. Then another. Then three more, rising from different branches and circling higher, black wings cutting soundless turns through the moonlit dark.

Zavian’s gaze followed them upward.

“They say ravens only circle when there is prey nearby.”
His eyes lowered to Amadeus once more.
“Ravens are far smarter than they’re given credit for. Rarely mistaken.”
A step closer.

“Let him go, Amadeus.”

The Radiance Commander tilted his head, the knife still resting at the Vine-Keeper’s throat. “Or?”

“Or,” Zavian lifted one hand, “I let you find out how poorly that question has ended before.”

It was a small movement. No flourish. No visible strain. Only his fingers rising slightly, as though he were reaching for something that had already begun to loosen into his grip.

Amadeus’ expression changed at once. His jaw tightened.

“Parlour tricks,” he said too quickly, trying to muster something like a smile between ragged breaths.

“Mm.” Zavian’s hand did not move now. He tilted his head, eyes locked on the Commander, as though studying the map of the mind before him. “You always did enjoy the suffering of others. Tell me, Amadeus — does your taste survive becoming the entertainment?”

A slight twist of the hand.

Whatever answer Amadeus meant to give died before it found his mouth.

The smile left him first. Then the colour. His eyes widened, not with pain yet, but with the bare, immediate terror of a man who has seen something bearing down on him and understood, too late, that it would not stop. The knife slipped from his hand and vanished into Bloom’s roots.

He remained upright for the length of a breath, staring at Zavian until his knees gave way and he collapsed to the ground, the moonlight glinting on his gold armour.

The Vine-Keeper stumbled back with a ragged sound and clapped a hand to his throat.

“You should go,” Zavian said quietly, still looking at the Commander.
“Are you well enough to make it back?”

“I can’t. My station – I’ll–”

Zavian crossed the distance between them in two swift strides, the Vine-Keeper lunging backward almost instinctively. He caught the Keeper’s jaw and turned it to study the wound in the moonlight. A simple blade wound. No searing scar or burning skin. Nothing he wouldn’t survive.

The Keeper looked at him strangely then, as though the stories he’d heard of the cruel, remorseless High Regent of Shadow had left this part out.

“Mila will accompany you,” Zavian said, already turning away.
“The Shadow Court will take the watch from here.”

Just as he’d finished the sentence, one of the ravens circling above swooped down to Zavian’s shoulder, feathers settling with a quiet rustle.
“See him back to the gates,” Zavian said.
And with that, the raven took flight for the Bloom Court’s entrance, a weary Vine-Keeper in tow.

At Zavian’s feet, Amadeus still knelt in the wet earth, breath broken, fingers digging uselessly into the roots as though Bloom’s borders might return what had just been taken from him. He looked down at him with a calm that was almost worse than hatred.

“All that gold,” he said softly, “and nothing worth preserving.”

Above them, the ravens kept circling until, at some signal no one else in the grove would have known how to read, they broke apart.
One turned east, toward Ember. Another cut inward, toward the heart of Bloom.

It had begun.

The Court of Radiance had turned a corner, and the Courts were about to enter into a war that would tear across the Starborn and mortal realms alike, only to end in pact, erasure, and the uneasy return of peace.