All Chapters of Wounded Rose of Garden Metro: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

The fog did not lift with morning. It settled low over Garden Metro like an extra roof, trapping sounds and thoughts beneath it. Elara watched it thicken from the balcony, palms cold against the railing. Somewhere under that washed-out sky the city weighed itself: fear against curiosity, habit against change. Somewhere under it Cassidy Vale was coiling for a strike.Lena came out with a scarf and looped it around Elara’s neck without asking. “Eat,” she said. “Think after.”They ate in the small breakfast room off the kitchen because the big dining hall made simple food feel like surrender. The hearth there was stubborn—slow to catch, then suddenly generous—and the warmth it offered felt honest. Damien arrived late, as always, with a folded map tucked into his coat and a look that belonged to someone who had slept, at best, with one eye open.“She’s moving her weight to the docks,” he said, dropping the map between the mugs. “Night traffic doubled. Two warehouses lit at hours they’re u

The fog didn’t break; it thinned. It left a damp taste on the morning, a cling that turned the river into a sheet of dull pewter and the piers into long black ribs. Word had already moved faster than the tide: Elara Quinn had walked the docks and the sky had not fallen. That was how people said it in the baker’s line, at the tram stop, along the lanes where carts creaked and cats threaded legs—she walked there. The sentence carried a dare inside it.Elara felt that dare under her skin when she rose. The coat she had hung by the stove still smelled like river air and old rope. She made herself eat, because Lena put bread in her hands and because surviving the day sometimes began with small obedience. Damien arrived with his hair damp and his grin dry.“Your little stroll is already a market tale,” he said, tossing a gray flyer onto the table. Cassidy’s ink: Silence is not fear—it is strength. The paper was slick from fog, but the letters held like iron.“She’ll answer,” Lena said. “The

Dawn came slow and gray, as if the city itself were drawing breath before the plunge. Elara slept in fits—thin, sharp pockets of rest broken by the clack of her own thoughts. When she rose, the map of the river lay on her desk like an accusation, the routes she and her people had circled the night before still ringed in ink. The plan wasn’t elegant. It did not need to be. It needed to be simple, precise, and fast.Lena moved through the rooms with the quiet efficiency of someone who had learned long ago how to stay calm while chaos brewed. She packed cloth, bandages, a change of shoes. Damien checked the small cache of tools they had gathered: ropes, lanterns with extra fuel, a couple of crude grapnels he’d fashioned out of old nails and bent hooks. None of it was grand. None of it looked like war. That was the point. If they were to take Cassidy’s river from beneath her, they had to be smaller than an army and sharper than a rumor.They met with the dockworker who had pulled the tin

Garden Metro breathed heavy under a sky weighed down by smoke and rain. It was the kind of day where the streets shimmered with the residue of something that had already burned and something that hadn’t yet.Cassidy Vale’s silence was louder than words. For two days, no fire, no arrests, no new threats. The docks held their breath. The Council muttered in backrooms. And Elara… she waited, not with fear, but with purpose.Vincent returned late that afternoon.He hadn’t been seen in days—not since before the lock was taken. When he walked through the estate gates, soaked and covered in grime, Lena nearly dropped the bowl of potatoes she was slicing.Elara stood from her seat at the long dining table, heart thudding. “You’re alive.”Vincent arched a brow, dropping his coat with a heavy slap. “Don’t sound so surprised.”“You vanished.”“I was watching.”Lena folded her arms. “That’s one word for it.”Vincent looked around, noting the tension, the tired lines on Elara’s face, the papers st

The morning after the explosions, Garden Metro felt like a city trying to remember how to breathe. Smoke still curled from the north docks, but the fires were dying, leaving behind a new kind of heat — the kind that came from anger, not destruction.Every corner of the city buzzed with rumor. The Council had fallen into chaos. Cassidy Vale’s name, once spoken with reverence or fear, was now muttered in taverns with hatred. And through it all, the resistance’s stolen documents spread like wildfire.Elara sat in the study surrounded by chaos. Letters, notes, maps, and reports covered every inch of the long oak table. Her eyes burned from exhaustion, but she couldn’t stop. Not now. Not when the city was turning.Lena entered quietly, her face pale beneath the lamplight. “She’s here.”Elara looked up, confused. “Who?”“Cassidy,” Lena whispered. “She’s come down from the tower.”Elara froze. “Impossible. She never—”“She’s in the square,” Lena interrupted. “Surrounded by her men. She’s spe