"Do you think it will work?" Cristiano asked quietly, his gaze resting on Portia's hands as she gently held the potted rose plant.
She knelt beside the old temple steps, cradling the delicate roots like something sacred. The rose plant had been plucked from the late emperor's tomb as its flowers once known to glow a silvery hue.
"This soil is divine," Portia murmured, her fingers pressing into the earth. "The whole foundation of this temple… it breathes divinity. There is no soil like this in the outside world."
Her voice carried a kind of reverence that made Cristiano pause.
"I can only pray to the Goddess with all my heart that they begin to glow again." Her eyes lifted to him briefly. "We can only hope, right?"
She pressed the roots gently into the ground while covering them with soft soil. Then she closed her eyes, both hands resting atop the earth, and began to whisper a prayer.
