Mirena found the garden by accident.
She'd been wandering—not lost, just exploring, letting her feet carry her where they would. The keep's corridors all looked the same after a while. Stone walls, torches, doors that led to more stone walls, more torches, more doors.
She needed air. She needed green. She needed something that wasn't books or theories or the endless search for answers she didn't have.
A door she'd never noticed before. Old wood, warped with age, its iron handle worn smooth by generations of hands. She pushed it open.
And stepped into another world.
---
The garden was small.
Tucked between the keep's outer wall and the base of a tower, hidden from everything. A patch of green that had no business existing in a place of stone and soldiers and war.
Mirena stood at the entrance, staring.
Vegetables grew in neat rows—cabbages, carrots, onions, things she couldn't name. Herbs spilled from raised beds, their scent rising in the morning air. A small apple tree, gnarled with age, leaned against the wall.
And in the center, an old man knelt in the dirt, his hands buried in soil.
He looked up.
"You're the mage," he said. "The one who's been talking to Velda and the others."
Mirena nodded. "Mirena."
He grunted. Went back to his work.
---
She stood there for a long moment, not sure what to do.
The garden was quiet. No soldiers, no servants, no one asking questions. Just the old man, the soil, the slow rhythm of things growing.
She stepped forward.
"What are you planting?"
He glanced up. "Turnips."
"Is it the right season?"
He almost smiled. "Turnips don't care about seasons. They grow when you put them in the ground. They wait. They're patient." He patted the earth. "I like that about them."
Mirena sat on a stone bench near the wall. Watched him work.
---
The old man's name was Orin.
He'd been tending this garden for forty years. Before that, his father had tended it. Before that, his grandfather. The soil was older than the keep, he said. Older than Renshaw's family. Older than anything that called itself noble.
"The garden doesn't care about names," he told her, settling onto a stool beside the apple tree. "Doesn't care about titles. Doesn't care about who's lord or who's king. It just grows. Or it doesn't. Depends on how you treat it."
Mirena looked at the neat rows, the healthy plants, the signs of care in every corner.
"You treat it well."
"I treat it with respect." He pulled a cloth from his pocket, wiped his hands. "That's what a garden needs. Respect. Patience. The willingness to wait for things to happen in their own time."
She thought about the door. About the thin places, the old sites, the maps spread across her table. About the mages who wanted answers now, who wanted to find the door and close it before anything else came through.
"What if you don't have time?" she asked. "What if waiting isn't an option?"
Orin looked at her.
"Everything has time," he said. "The seeds know when to sprout. The roots know when to reach. The fruit knows when to fall." He gestured at the garden. "I can't make it faster by wanting it. I can't make it slower by fearing it. I just... tend. And trust."
---
She came back the next day.
And the next.
Each morning, she brought her books to the garden. Spread them on the stone bench. Read. Made notes. Watched Orin work.
He didn't ask about the door. Didn't ask about the hunters or the battle or the things that had followed her here. He talked about soil and water, about the best time to plant carrots, about the apple tree that had been here before his grandfather was born.
She found herself listening.
"I've been looking for something," she said one morning. She'd brought a map with her, spread it across the bench. "A place. The mages think it's somewhere in this region. They think it's been here for a long time."
Orin looked at the map. Didn't touch it.
"And you want to find it."
"I need to find it. Before it finds us."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Things that hide," he said slowly, "hide for a reason. Maybe they're waiting for something. Maybe they're waiting for someone." He met her eyes. "Maybe they're waiting to be found at the right time, by the right person."
She frowned. "You think we should leave it alone?"
"I think patience isn't the same as doing nothing." He went back to his turnips. "The garden needs water, needs tending, needs watching. But it doesn't need me digging up the seeds every day to see if they've grown."
She sat with that.
---
The days passed.
Mirena found a rhythm. Mornings with Orin in the garden, afternoons with the mages in the tower, evenings with Grog and Lira and Aldric in the quiet of their rooms.
The map stayed on her bench. She looked at it every day. Traced the lines, the markers, the places where the veil was thin.
But she didn't push. Didn't demand answers. Just watched. Waited. Let the knowledge come in its own time.
Orin brought her tea one morning. Herb tea, from the garden, leaves he'd dried himself.
"You're different," he said.
She looked up. "Different?"
"When you came, you were wound tight. Like a spring waiting to snap." He sat beside her. "Now you're looser. You breathe deeper."
She considered this.
"I've been looking for something my whole life," she said slowly. "Answers. Truth. A way to understand the things that happen." She looked at the garden. "I thought if I found them fast enough, I could stop what was coming."
Orin waited.
"I don't think fast enough exists anymore."
He nodded slowly.
"That's wisdom," he said. "Took me sixty years to learn it. You're ahead of schedule."
She almost smiled. Almost.
---
One morning, she found something.
A marker on the map she hadn't noticed before. Small, almost invisible, hidden in the folds of the parchment. A symbol she recognized from Kevin's journals. From the fragments she'd spent years collecting.
A thin place.
Near here.
She stared at it for a long time.
Orin was across the garden, tending the apple tree. He didn't look up. Didn't ask. Just worked, his hands in the soil, patient as always.
She folded the map.
She'd tell the others. Later. When she understood more. When she was sure.
But for now, she sat in the garden, watching Orin work, watching things grow, watching the slow rhythm of a world that didn't rush.
---
That evening, she joined the others in the courtyard.
Aldric had bread, fresh from Marta's oven. Lira was practicing with her bow, her arrows punching clean holes in targets across the yard. Grog was walking the walls, slow but steady, his wounds finally healing.
She sat on a bench, the map in her lap.
"You found something," Lira said, appearing beside her.
Mirena looked up. "How did you—"
"You get a look. When you find something in your books." Lira sat beside her. "So? Good or bad?"
Mirena considered the question.
"I don't know yet."
"Then we wait."
She thought about Orin. About the garden. About patience.
"Yes," she said. "We wait."