Dahlia and the Garden of Light - Chapter 27: Chapter 27

The dining hall at the Anderson estate pulsed with warmth — golden lights, polished wood, laughter bouncing off the high ceiling beams. Dahlia sat between Amy and Eliot, the smells of rosemary chicken and baked squash mingling with candlewax and old wine.
Jack leaned close to Amy, brushing his fingers lightly over her hand. “Your family is…” he glanced around as Eliot flicked a grape at Theo, who caught it with a flourish. “…a little terrifying.”
“Thank you,” Christian replied without hesitation, raising his water glass like a knight with a goblet.
“Terrifyingly charming,” Jack amended quickly.
Antonio cracked a rare grin. “He’s got some instincts, this one.”
Amy beamed, half-laughing, half-glowing, and rested her head briefly against Jack’s shoulder. Dahlia saw the shimmer in her eyes — peace, at last, after so many months in the storm.
Theo leaned forward. “So, Jack. You said you surf. You good?”
“I’m still alive,” Jack said dryly. “Does that count?”
“Barely,” Eliot muttered. “Amy says she had to pull you out of a riptide once.”
Amy raised a finger. “Twice.”
“Oh, he’s a keeper,” William said, sipping tea with a smirk.
Then William rose, glass lifted, voice clear and deep. The room settled like a hush over water.
“To new faces,” he said, looking at Jack, then Markus. “To returning daughters. And to the kind of strength that doesn’t always roar — but grows.”
Dahlia met Markus’s gaze across the table. He didn’t smile. Just nodded, slow, certain — the same quiet certainty she’d seen in the rubble, in the firelight, in the silence between aftershocks.
Later, as plates were cleared and conversation drifted toward memory — missions, training mishaps, old holidays and garden lore — Dahlia stepped onto the porch alone.
The air was cooler here. Jasmine climbed the railings in blooming spirals. Wind rustled through the nearby trees like gentle whispers.
The swing creaked under her weight as she sat.
Moments later, boots on old wood. Markus.
He leaned against the railing, arms folded.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he said simply.
Dahlia looked up at him, expression unreadable.
“I know,” she answered.
“I don’t even know what to call it,” he went on, watching the garden below. “What you do. What I saw. But it’s not just beautiful, Dahlia. It’s... sacred.”
She looked down at her hands. “It’s dangerous, too. If it got out... if the wrong people—”
“They’d want to control it,” he finished. “Exploit it.”
A pause.
“But I don’t,” he said. “I just want to help.”
Dahlia studied him. Not just the words. The set of his shoulders. The steadiness in his voice.
“You already do,” she said softly.
He stepped closer, not touching, but near enough to feel the shared warmth of the porch light and something quieter, unspoken.
The Bloom Room
The house quieted after midnight.
Somewhere, a kettle hissed in the kitchen as Eliot and Theo whispered over midnight chess. Amy and Jack’s laughter drifted faintly through the hallway, wrapped in the sound of old vinyl playing something smooth and slow. Christian had fallen asleep in the library, a journal still open on his chest.
Markus couldn’t sleep.
He followed the hum — soft voices, the flicker of movement — down the north hallway. Past old portraits, past the indoor greenhouse. A breeze, warm and perfumed, pulled him to a half-hidden wooden door veiled in moss.
The Bloom Room.
He stepped in quietly.
Soft candlelight glowed across the stone walls, reflecting off hanging jars of glowing pollen and water-filled orbs with dancing petals inside. The air shimmered faintly — thick with floral warmth and something deeper, something breathing.
A girl lay sleeping in a cot, her cheeks flushed, dark curls damp with fevered sweat. She couldn’t have been more than seven.
Beside her knelt Dahlia.
Her hair was unbound, falling in a dark wave over her shoulder. Her hands hovered above the girl’s chest, faint violet light pulsing between her fingers and the petals of a golden hibiscus. She whispered—not in English, but something older, more fluid, like wind in tall grass or rain on old stone.
The flower glowed. The fever broke. The girl stirred and smiled softly in her sleep.
Markus stood silently in the doorway.
When Dahlia turned, she didn’t hide it.
“She’ll recover,” she said.
Markus walked slowly inside. His eyes drifted over the ceiling vines, the pots of luminous foxglove and night-blooming jasmine, and a terrarium of orchids glowing faintly pink.
He knelt beside her, voice quiet. “How long have you had this room?”
“Since I was eight,” she said. “My father helped build it. Christian stocked it. William made me promise to use it wisely.”
Markus looked at the child, now resting peacefully, color returning to her cheeks.
“Is this how you fight?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” Dahlia said. “Healing is a rebellion, too.”
Markus sat beside her, his back to the warm stone wall.
“Then I’m staying,” he said again.
She looked at him sideways.
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes,” he answered. “For every girl like her. For every seed you plant.”
Dahlia blinked — not tears, just surprise. A moment of weight settling in her chest.
“You don’t even know what that means.”
He tilted his head. “Not yet. But you’ll teach me.”
Dahlia leaned back against the wall, folding her legs beneath her, watching the golden petals flutter as if from a breeze that wasn’t there.
“I’ve spent most of my life protecting this secret,” she murmured. “Now I wonder if it’s time to let it grow.”
From the doorway, William watched in silence, one hand on the frame. He didn’t interrupt. Just nodded once — to himself, to the room, to time finally blooming on its own.