Chapter 5
five
. . .
Tansy
She’s not real.
She can’t be.
I’m still on my knees when she steps out of the trees, barefoot and impossibly calm.
Her skin catches the light with a soft, iridescent sheen, like it’s been touched by moonlight too many times and forgotten how to be dull.
Her hair is a sunlit blonde, falling in loose waves to her waist, threaded with tiny blossoms.
I forget how to breathe.
She doesn’t speak. Just looks at me with eyes the color of fresh spring dew and something deeper underneath. Old bark, maybe. Something that remembers.
“Are you—” My voice breaks. I cough, try again. “Are you a dryad?”
The term feels ridiculous the second I say it. Like calling a star a spark.
She tilts her head, the faintest motion, as if testing the weight of my words. Her eyes never leave mine.
My hand is still halfway through a charm bind, the failed spell trailing down my wrist like forgotten thread. The frog behind me offers another line of poetry, something about unplucked violets and the yearning of rain, and I want to sink into the moss and vanish.
“I didn’t mean to—” I gesture wildly to the spring, the flowers, the whole mess of magic bubbling under my skin. “This isn’t … it’s not usually like this.”
Her gaze flicks to the forget-me-nots blooming in a ring around my knees.
I think she knows I’m lying.
She finally speaks.
“You’re disturbing the balance.”
Her voice is quiet. Not harsh. Not cruel. Just … warm. Low and melodic, like she’s reciting something older than either of us. The forest stills around her. Even the wind leans in to listen.
“I know,” I whisper.
I don’t know why I say it. Maybe because it’s true. Maybe because I’ve always been a disruption. Even in my own home.
I glance down, ashamed, and that’s when the surge hits.
A wave of magic bursts out of me like a gasp, hot and bright. Vines lash out in a wide arc. Petals burst. My braid unravels as thorned tendrils spill from my shoulder blades, wrapping the clearing in sudden bloom.
I lurch backward, but I’m not fast enough.
Her hand closes around my wrist.
A jolt passes through me … not pain, not fear. Just … stillness.
The vines freeze. The petals stop mid bloom. The spring sighs.
Between our palms, something stirs.
A single white flower blossoms in the space between our hands. Small. Fragile. Star shaped. Neither of us speaks. I don’t think either of us breathes.
She looks down at it, then at me.
Something ancient moves behind her eyes.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says.
But her hand doesn’t let go.
And her eyes say, stay.
We sit across from each other on opposite sides of the spring.
Well. She sits. I fidget. My legs twitch, my fingers tug at the hem of my skirt, and every few seconds I check to see if the vines are going to start singing or something equally mortifying. The frog is napping now, tiny belly rising and falling with each soft snore.
She hasn’t moved since the flower bloomed.
“Do you have a name?” I ask finally, because the silence is starting to itch.
She nods. “Solenne.”
The way she says it curls in the air like incense. Ancient and lovely.
“I’m Tansy,” I offer. “Like the herb. Obviously. My whole family is named after plants. I have a cousin named Chamomile. She’s a nightmare.”
Her lips twitch. Almost a smile.
I press on. “Do you live out here? In the woods?”
Her expression turns unreadable. “This is my grove.”
I nod like that makes sense. Because it sort of does. She feels like a grove. Grounded and strange and quietly blooming.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” I say, softer now. “I just … didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
The flower is still in her hand. She hasn’t let it fall.
She studies me for a long moment, then glances up at the canopy overhead. “The forest let you in.”
“What does that mean?”
“It usually doesn’t.”
My heart skips.
The sunlight through the leaves dapples her skin, and I swear she glows. There’s something about her that hums in my chest. Not like danger, like discovery.
“I really didn’t mean for all that to happen,” I say, gesturing vaguely at the tangle of wildflowers still curling toward the spring.
“I know,” she says.
Her voice is steady, but her eyes are still on me. Like she’s memorizing me. Like I’m something rare.
I should be embarrassed. I should probably run.
But for the first time in a long while, I don’t want to.
I sit back, palms pressed to the moss. It’s softer here. Everything is. Even my thoughts.
Solenne leans forward just slightly. The flower between us bends toward her.
“I don’t know what you are,” she murmurs. “But the forest … it’s listening.”
“To me?”
“To something in you.”
I swallow hard. “That’s not terrifying at all.”
She tilts her head. “It’s not meant to be.”
I look down at my hands, still stained with pollen and spell residue. “I’ve been trying to shut it off for so long. I thought if I could just be … less, maybe I could stay.”
“Stay where?”
“With my family. In the estate. They said I had to be balanced.”
She frowns, just barely. “You’re not unbalanced. You’re wild.”
“That’s not a compliment where I’m from.”
“Then they come from poor soil.”
I blink. Then laugh. It bursts out of me, sudden and loud. Solenne watches me with something like wonder.
And for the first time, I think maybe I don’t want to disappear.
Maybe I want to bloom.
It takes hours before the tension bleeds fully out of my shoulders. We speak in slow, quiet stretches, mostly me, filling the air with rambling stories and questions she never quite answers. But she listens. Really listens.
She moves like a breeze … silent, graceful, and grounded. She touches the petals with reverence, tastes the edge of my words like she’s cataloging them. Every time I catch her looking at me, I feel like I’m being studied by something older than time.
And yet … she never looks away in judgment.
Only curiosity. Only quiet awe.
I tell her about the binding circle. The burned sigils. The greenhouse.
“They thought they could seal it out of me,” I say. “Scrape the magic away like it was mold on the wall.”
“They couldn’t,” she says.
I shake my head. “I’m not sure if I was too strong or just too … broken.”
She stands then, slow and fluid, and walks to the spring. Her fingers skim the surface, stirring the water until it glows.
“You’re neither,” she says. “You’re just awake.”
My throat goes tight.
I wonder how long it’s been since someone said something like that and meant it.
She turns back, and for a moment, we just look at each other.
Two girls from opposite edges of the wild.
And for once, I feel like the ground beneath me isn’t waiting to reject me.
Maybe, it’s reaching back.
The storm begins again in the distance … low thunder rolling between the trees like a warning. The vines shift slightly, sensing the change in the air.
Solenne rises, the white flower still cupped between her hands. She takes a long breath, like she’s listening to something I can’t hear.
Then she speaks.
“Come deeper into the grove.”
I blink. “What?”
“Just one night,” she says. “Until the storm passes. Until the vines settle.”
I hesitate. The word yes sparks in my throat like a match.
The forest hums around us, like it’s holding its breath.
She extends a hand. “The pact is cracked. The garden is watching.”
And behind her, past the curve of the mossy path, I see it … tucked in a grove of blooming trees, small and dappled with ivy.
A cottage.
Its door creaks open on its own.
Waiting.