Chapter Text
The valley was the kind of place that didn’t belong to time. In spring, the mountain winds poured cold mist through the pines, veiling the world in silvery sheets. In winter, the snow fell thick and silent, blanketing the ground until even the wolves forgot to howl. No maps showed this valley anymore. The villagers in the next town whispered that the land had been cursed long ago, back when the world was still full of gods and monsters.
At the center of the fog, half-swallowed by thorns and ivy, stood a manor of stone. Its roof sagged in places where time and rain had won. The windows—once tall and arched—were fractured and blinded by dust. Gargoyles watched over the garden from crooked ledges, their faces worn into grotesque smiles.
The woman who lived there was rarely seen. When she was, it was only by accident: a glint of blond hair in the trees, a figure too tall to be anything but unnatural. Some called her a ghost; others, a cursed war maiden turned to wood. The children of the village told stories of a giant who had carved her own arm from the forest to replace the one the gods had taken. The adults said less—but feared more.
Her name, unknown to most, was Iselin Solem.
Iselin was six feet tall, broad of shoulder and strong of arm, though one of those arms was not flesh. Her left arm had been lost in the war that had long since ended, and in its place was a finely carved wooden limb, sanded smooth and reinforced with metal joints—both a marvel and a mark of otherness. Her hair fell golden down her shoulders, but it was often cut with a blade. Wild, like a lion's mane. Four moles on her right cheek—arranged in a perfect diamond—gave her a look of accidental elegance, but most never noticed. Her features were too severe, too unusual. Eyes like glaciers. A nose that had once been broken and never quite healed straight.
But none of that mattered in the garden.
In the garden, she was not a beast. Not a rumor. She was simply a gardener.
Behind the crumbling manor stretched rows of impossibly rare flowers: moon-colored orchids that bloomed only at night, bluebells that shimmered with frost, and vines that pulsed with a heartbeat not their own. Iselin’s garden had no symmetry, no plan—but it was alive. It overflowed with beauty so strange it was almost frightening.
And it was hers.
She spent her days tending to it, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, hands in the earth. Her wooden arm was no hindrance—it moved deftly, with practiced grace, though sometimes the joints creaked with cold. She whispered to the soil in Norwegian, sang lullabies to the seeds. Flowers were the only living things that never flinched from her touch.
She didn’t miss people. Or so she told herself.
Her only visitors were the occasional owl, a fox that sometimes trotted boldly through her roses, and the wind—her most faithful companion. Iselin had learned, long ago, that solitude was better than hatred. In the town, her presence sparked stares and silence. Once, a man had thrown a rock. Once, a child had screamed.
Now, the fog was her cloak. The castle, her sanctuary.
But even the deepest solitude is never truly still.
It began with something small.
A tulip was missing.
It was one of the blue-velvet ones, bred from bulbs she had nursed for three seasons. It had bloomed just two days ago. Now it was gone—vanished cleanly, stem cut at an angle, petals disturbed only by a ghost’s breath.
She thought, at first, it might have been an animal. A deer, perhaps. But deer didn’t cut flowers so cleanly. And when a second bloom vanished the next morning—an early Svalbard rose, rare and pale as bone—she knew it wasn’t chance.
Someone was coming into her garden.
She set a trap of sorts. Not with snares or fences—she would never harm someone over a flower—but with her own vigilance. She began sleeping lightly, with her windows open to the sound of crushed leaves. She rearranged the gravel paths to record footprints.
And every morning, another flower was missing.
This thief, whoever they were, had a careful hand. They took only one at a time. Never the same type twice. They never trampled the beds or broke stems. There was a strange, reluctant reverence in the way the flowers disappeared—as if the thief wanted not to steal, but to borrow.
Still, Iselin was angry.
Not because of the flowers. No, she could always grow more.
She was angry because the garden was sacred. It was hers. The only place in the world where she did not feel monstrous. And someone—someone with light fingers and a silent step—was violating that space.
On the seventh day, she decided she would wait.
That night, she did not sleep.
She dressed in her heaviest coat, patched and fur-lined, and stood just inside the overgrown archway of the garden, hidden behind a tall trellis of honeyvine. The moon was low, a pearl behind gauze. The wind whispered warnings through the yew trees.
And then—there they were.
A slender figure, crouched at the garden’s edge.
Short. Slightly hunched from the cold. Hair black as pitch with soft pink tips that gleamed oddly in the moonlight. They wore a patchwork cloak and carried a small satchel, faded from use. Their movements were swift, careful. Their hands—bare despite the chill—reached into the flowerbed with the tenderness of a lover.
Iselin did not speak. She did not breathe.
She simply watched as the figure plucked a bloom from the bed of star-anemones and slipped it into the satchel with practiced ease.
The thief turned, for a moment, their face half-caught in the light. They were young. Sharp-boned. Beautiful in a way that looked accidental—fragile, but not weak.
Then they were gone, vanishing into the fog like smoke.
Iselin stood frozen long after they had disappeared.
Not with rage.
But with something colder. Older.
Recognition.
She would not sleep again that night. Not for hours. She sat by her window, staring into the mist-choked dark, her hand curled around the base of a flowerpot.
For the first time in years, the castle felt like it was holding its breath.
And so was she.