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I turned into him, and his arms came around me. For the next few minutes, science could go to hell.

I cried for Grandma. For the years she’d been sick. For every person who had smiled indulgently when she talked about plants they couldn’t find in a database. For every professor who had looked at my proposal and seen a sentimental granddaughter instead of a researcher with evidence.

Barrett simply held me.

When I finally pulled away, I’d left a damp patch on his shirt. “Sorry.”

He glanced down. “Don’t care.”

I kissed his jaw. Then I turned toward the flowers. “All right.”

Barrett caught the back of my jacket. “Look first.”

“I am looking.”

“No.” His attention had moved beyond the flowers. “Really look.”

So I did. The flowers weren’t growing randomly around the pool. They followed the waterline.

No. That wasn’t right either.

They were connected to it.

I crouched beside the nearest cluster without touching it. Thin pale roots extended from beneath the flowers into the limestone while others disappeared beneath the water.

My excitement sharpened into concentration as I pulled out my light meter, thermometer, and water-testing kit. Barrett remained nearby while I worked, occasionally moving the beam of his headlamp when I needed more light without being asked.

Ten minutes became twenty, and slowly, my triumph dimmed.

The flowers weren’t merely living in this cavern. They were doing something to it.

The water closest to the roots had a different mineral profile from the water feeding into the pool. The faint blue luminescence wasn’t confined to the petals either. It traveled through the root network and into hairline fractures in the limestone.

I followed one glowing vein with my light and found another. Then another.

I crossed to the opposite side of the pool and checked again. It was the same pattern everywhere.

The plant wasn’t a colony.

It was a network.

Moisture gathered where the roots penetrated the limestone. Tiny insects moved along them. Pale cave moss grew only within inches of the glowing veins, and when I crouched beside the water, a small translucent creature darted through it and vanished beneath a mat of roots.

My stomach dropped.

Grandma had believed the plant was medicinal. She’d been right about its existence, but perhaps that wasn’t why she’d left it here.

I opened her journal again. There were no collection instructions, no pressed specimen. That had always bothered me. Grandma pressed everything; leaves, flowers, bark, ferns.

But not this. She’d drawn it, recorded it, and left it exactly where it grew.

“Oh, Grandma.”

Barrett moved closer. “What?”

“She knew.”

“Tell me.”