Oleander

“Oleander.”

Eli shows her the scrap of charred paper and Rowan forgets how to breathe. Of everything to survive a fire, of course it would be the one word that binds Rowan to this legacy.
 
She’d thought her mother was dead. Lorena was a cold woman, awful enough that Rowan and Lydia had celebrated after the funeral. Now the anchor had returned to drag Rowan down the same path, through the sewers to a laboratory thick with despair.
 
Like mother, like daughter.
 
Had the stationmaster recognized Lorena’s features when Rowan stood over him? Rowan had waited to heal until after the group had decided his fate, her ribcage squeezing in sympathy. There was very little she could do to heal this man.
 
Grief climbs up her throat and blooms like a flower, Rowan’s eyes fixed on that damning word.
 
Oleander.
 
Memory raps at Rowan’s skull and demands to recall the dead.
 
Lorena sent Rowan to become a cleric, the one who offered up Alexandria on a silver platter to a failed adventuring guild. Lorena had perfect calligraphy that Rowan would recognize anywhere—even if it was smudged with soot.
 
Rowan has faced worse monsters than her mother, but she’s still stricken with fear at what she might discover. Her friends had taken down Alexandria quickly—and Gerath had killed her with gleeful nonchalance. Even rational, stoic Eli expressed her urge to strike Lydia down. Rowan’s mother will be no different.
 
Lorena will just be another person that isn’t human enough for Rowan to be allowed to save, someone she’ll mourn over after her friends have washed their hands of the blood.
 
Rowan stares at the stationmaster before her, wondering if he’d be happier with a dagger in his gut. The worst part is that she doesn’t think she could bring herself to hurt him—he’s suffered enough at the hands of an Oleander.
 
Rowan’s known her family was odd, but now her bloodline was birthing monsters. The women around Rowan are turning. It’s a pattern that doesn’t escape her notice.
 
Lorena, Lydia, Alexandria. One dead, two left.
 
It’s a vicious cycle that Rowan’s trying to break, flailing against the tides of time. She’s low on oxygen, lungs filled only with regret when she comes up for air.
 
The stationmaster’s still beyond healing. Takoda and Severin are asking Mateus what’s wrong, Floret’s peering into the sewer like it’s going to bite her, and Eli’s still staring at Rowan.
 
Rowan Oleander. Her name’s meaning was chosen carefully—there is protection in poisoning everyone around oneself.
 
Some people are an elixir, others a venom. But Rowan Oleander, she slips under the skin, invading the bloodstream to seize hearts with cautious hands.
 
Rowan Oleander was exactly what Lorena wanted her to be.
 
Not a person. A threat.