The Substitute Luna’s Revenge
That was the strange part, everything inside me had shifted overnight and the roses didn’t know it, didn’t care, just sat there being ordinary in the autumn light like nothing had ever happened here.
I knelt by the flower bed anyway, pressed my fingers into the cold soil, and waited.
No trembling ground. No voice. No silver light climbing my wrist. Just dirt under my nails and the faint ache in my knees from kneeling too long.
“Stress,” I said out loud, mostly to convince myself.
“Grief and exhaustion and too little sleep. That’s all it ever was.”
I almost believed it. I was already reaching for my skirts to stand when I saw it, one rose, pure white, blooming three months out of season at th