The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 044: The Pressed Flower

The Blessing of the Lake began, according to tradition, in the Glass Garden.

Ethan stood in the entrants' line at nine in the morning, in a clean white tunic with the thorn crest stitched on the breast, and tried not to look at the ceiling. It was a dome of clear glass, forty feet high, bolted over a great round courtyard in the heart of the citadel. Steam rose from vents in the floor. Under it, the air was warm and wet and green, so strange after the cold stone halls that it felt like stepping into a different country.

Ferns hung from the beams. White orchids climbed the pillars. A narrow stream ran through the middle on a bed of black pebbles, and the whole place smelled of damp earth and sweet rot and flowers he had no names for.

"The springs under the lake," Edric murmured, leaning on his cane. "They keep the garden warm all winter. A Ward marvel. They say it's why the family never fails."

"Fails at what?"

"Anything."

The entrants stood in a row down the length of the central path, twenty-two of them, shifting and muttering. At the far end, on a low stone dais, a bed of dark soil had been cut into the shape of a snowflake. In it grew a hundred small flowers, bell-shaped and pale blue, nodding on thin green stems.

Ethan's breath stopped.

He knew them. He knew them before his mind had caught up. The shape of the petals, five of them, curved like cupped hands. The delicate, faded blue, almost grey at the edges. The way each stem bent a little to the left.

No.

His hand had gone to his bag. He didn't remember moving. His fingers closed on the cover of the recipe book through the canvas, and the flower inside it seemed to press back against his palm.

"Is something wrong?" Edric asked.

"No," Ethan said. "No. I'm fine."

A herald struck a silver gong. A hush fell over the garden.

Seraphine Ward walked out onto the dais.

She was dressed in a plain white robe with long sleeves, her dark hair braided down her back. She carried a flat wicker basket lined with moss. There was nothing on her head but a single thread of frost-silver. In the green light she looked very young, and very still, like something carved from a candle.

[Seraphine Ward. Level 26. True attitude: Controlled. Afraid.]

"The Frostbell," she said. Her voice carried without effort to the end of the garden. "It blooms once a year, at midwinter, in this place and nowhere else in the world. For four hundred years my House has given one to each who walks the lake." She bent, and her slim hands moved over the dark soil, plucking the pale blooms with a gentle, practiced twist. "It is a promise. Whatever happens on the ice, the lake will remember you."

She came down the path.

One by one she stopped before each entrant. She spoke a short formula, may the lake remember you, and pinned a blossom to the left side of the tunic with a silver pin. Some bowed. Some grinned. Dorian, four places ahead, took his with a flourish and a wink at the crowd.

Then she was in front of the girl with the white braids, then the big young man, then the next. Ethan's heart beat harder with each step.

She has to speak to me.

He was sure of it. There was no way around it. He stood there, rigid, in the warm green air, and watched her work down the line.

She stopped before him.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Up close, she was smaller than he remembered. Her lashes cast fine shadows on her cheeks. There was a thin, faint scar on her left hand he'd never noticed, a pale line across the knuckle. She smelled of cold air and something sweet and sharp, like crushed mint. She held the flower between two fingers, and they were trembling.

"Noel Thornwick," she read, from a small card in her palm. Her eyes didn't lift. "Of House Thornwick. May the lake remember you."

"Thank you, my lady."

"Hold still."

She stepped close. He felt the cold of her before he felt her hand, a faint chill, like standing in the shade of a tall wall. Her fingers lifted the left side of his tunic, and the pin slid through the cloth, and the Frostbell settled over his heart.

Heat flared in his chest.

It rose without warning, the Kindling, sudden and hard. His skin prickled. A thin thread of smoke rose from the cloth beside the pin. Seraphine's eyes flicked down, and widened, and her hand stopped.

"Don't," she whispered. Her lips barely moved. "Don't say anything. Please."

He couldn't breathe.

"Not here," she said. "Not with him watching."

Her hand dropped. For one second she looked up, and her eyes met his, large and dark and bright, full of something he had no name for. It was the same tug as before, the quiet, aching pull behind his ribs, the feeling of reaching for a word he'd forgotten. But now it was so strong he almost gasped.

I know you.

I don't know you.

"Good luck," she said, in a perfectly ordinary voice. "Noel."

And she moved on to the next entrant, and the next, her white robe flowing, until the last blossom was gone and the basket was empty.

Rhea found him in the cold corridor outside the garden, a long hall of blue stone lit by narrow windows. She had come up the service stair with a tray of cups, dressed as a maid, her hair covered by a kerchief and her scar hidden under powder. She set the tray on a ledge and gave him one look.

"You're white as a plate."

"I need to show you something."

He pulled the recipe book from his bag. His hands were shaking so badly that he had to try twice before the cover opened. Between the pages, tied with a faded ribbon, lay a small flat thing that had once been a flower.

Rhea looked at it. She looked at the bloom pinned over his heart. She looked at it again.

"They're the same," she said slowly.

"Yes."

"The one you couldn't remember."

"I found it in my pocket after the tower. I never knew who gave it to me." He held the dried flower against the fresh one. The colors matched, down to the faded grey at the edge of the petal. Even the left-leaning curve of the stem. "It's a Frostbell. It only grows in the Ward gardens."

[Frostbell. Grown in the Glass Garden of Frostmere. Blooms once a year, at midwinter.]

Ward gardens.

He stood there with the two blossoms side by side, and the hole in his memory opened and breathed.

It was a small thing. A shape in the dark. A smell of damp earth and rain, and a cold, small hand in his, and a laugh. A girl's laugh, bright and sharp and very near, so familiar that his eyes stung.

Then it was gone, and there was only the corridor, and the cold, and Rhea's hand on his arm.

"Ethan."

"I'm all right."

"You're not."

"It's just, I think I know what the system took." His voice came out thin. "I think I had it once. I think it was good."

Rhea said nothing. She took the dried flower gently from his hand, closed the book over it, and tucked it back in his bag.

"Then we'll find out," she said. "But not today. Today you win a round."

He nodded.

At the far end of the corridor, behind a pillar, something moved. A flicker of white robe. A pulse, quick and shallow and very familiar. It lingered for a moment, so close that he could have called out.

Then it was gone.