Chapter Fourteen
The pouch of money accompanying the request form was a sum unlike any other.
It was double what they’d given for each of the previous two flowers, then doubled again.
Forty gold. More than a whole season’s worth of salary.
And they paid in advance this time, so I take it as an unmistakable hint that ASAP means as soon as humanly possible.
Which is fine by me. This time, I don’t ask Creon at the apothecary or check the library for information.
I don’t need to. I’ve heard of the flower they’re asking for and know it needs the cover of nightfall to bloom. What remains is the exact location.
I wait until the citadel is dozing under a blanket of darkness, until Mum has blown out the candles and the guards have patrolled past my house.
Until I can’t wait any longer. I give in to the frenzy in my veins and gear myself up with a fleece-lined coat, lantern, and basket of gardening tools.
I creep down the stairs and sprint through empty streets like there’s a tether pulling me on.
The gates are locked and guarded at night, but there’s a guardhouse to the right that’s empty until the shifts change—something I only know because I occasionally snuck out to meet Lark when he got off duty during his sentry days.
I tiptoe through the candlelit space, haunts of my past self in every corner.
Every table and chair, every wall he had me pressed against. Every kiss that we tried to keep silent. Every lie he whispered into my ear.
I hug my arms around my waist like a shield, but the hurt doesn’t hit as hard. These memories don’t matter much anymore. There are other people whose betrayals cause more pain. I just never thought Card would be one of them.
Out in the cold air once more, I stride into the forest. The discordant shadows that move out of sight don’t scare me. The pounding, drumming beat behind my ribs drives me forward and doesn’t let up until the cottage comes into sight, the ivy silver in the moonlight.
There’s a dim light in the window to the workshop, and when I peek through the glass, Ruth is dozing on a chair by the fireplace.
There’s only one other light on in a room on the upper floor, so I pick up a small pebble and chuck it.
It hits the window with a pathetic tap, less than the peck of a bird’s beak, and I cringe. So much for a bold move.
While I’m scanning the wildflowers at my feet for something else to throw, the window opens and Will leans on the frame, the sleeves of his loose white shirt rolled up to his elbows.
“Farrow, what on earth are you doing?”
I startle and almost drop my lantern, which would be a very bad idea with all this dry grass around.
“Trying to get your attention. Come down here.”
Will angles his head. It’s too dim to read his expression.
“Right…” he drags out.
“Are you coming or not?”
“Give me a minute, Princess,” he says, then disappears from view.
It’s only then that the panic creeps in.
I smooth down my skirt, my stomach squirming with every passing second, but thankfully, I don’t have to wait long.
Without warning, Will leaps out of his window and softens the landing with magic.
He shrugs his hands in the pockets of a black jacket, that white shirt now buttoned up and tucked in some leather trousers.
A flicker of a breeze, and the window closes.
Will ambles toward me, the warmth of my lantern lighting fires in his eyes.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asks.
“I’m paying my debt.” It comes out harsher than I want it to. I don’t mean to be so bitter, but tonight thoughts of both Card and Lark have me battered and bruised.
“What debt is that?”
“I owe you a promise,” I say, and tug the anonymous request sheet out of my pocket.
Will holds it close to the light to read. “Lunarie, huh…”
“Do you know where they are?”
He scans my face.
“I do,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate. “Are you okay?”
“I’m—” I start to say that I’m fine but I can’t. Because I’m not. I swerve around the sentence. “I don’t think that’s important.”
“Fliss.”
“Let’s go.”
Will holds my determined stare for a few seconds, then nods. He gestures for me to follow him into the forest.
“Did you avoid questions about the princeling?” he asks as I set the pace, striding like there’s something at our heels.
“I managed.”
I can tell he’s watching me carefully. I’ve never been this snappy before. I don’t want to be. I don’t want to sour what time we spend together. I want to go back to flowers in our hands and teasing smiles.
“Okay,” Will says. That’s it. No sarcastic quip.
I don’t realize I’m almost running until he jogs to catch up and grabs my elbow.
“All right,” he says decidedly, then bends down and throws me over his shoulder. I kick a leg out but he holds me tight.
“Hey!”
“Nope. You’re going to trip over something at that speed.
This’ll be quicker,” he says, and summons the wind around us.
Once again, the trees blur and Will sprints through the forest with magical assistance.
I close my eyes and grit my teeth against the rushing in my ears.
In almost no time at all, he lets me down in a different part of the forest, an area with thin, dark trees snaking in unusual bends toward the sky.
The leaves are like large green dinner plates, and there’s an overwhelming smell of musty humid citrus. I’ve definitely never been here before.
“See? Easy,” he says with a grin, and I narrow my eyes.
“Maybe some warning next time?”
“You’d hate it if I was boring and predictable.”
I say nothing. It’s true, I would.
“This way, Princess.”
Will pushes back one of the leaves and treads farther into the thicket.
Just like when we found the Feiyan, I follow him through the trees until we reach an interesting cluster of branches, tangled together in a knotted wall blocking our way forward.
He spreads his fingers toward it and, with the whisper of magic, the branches relax and extricate themselves, shifting and unraveling until they make a small doorway.
“What would you do without me?” Will jests before ducking his head through.
When we enter the hidden grove, we leave the night behind.
The air shines with sparkles of gold dust, and although the high ceiling is pitch-black, the ground glows a vivid green—a radiant reflection of the flowers that bloom across the stretch of grass before us.
My breath catches. There must be more than thirty Lunaries here!
Each one comes up to my shin, standing strong with a purple stem and lime-green almond-shaped petals that crackle.
There’s an energy within that’s unlike any flame.
It’s intense and glimmering and beyond anything I could imagine. I don’t need to use my lantern here.
“Oh, Will, thank you,” I say, and bend to brush my fingertip over a stem.
The magic inside burns with vitality and zest right down to the roots.
It radiates through my skin and warms my bones, alive and very, very powerful.
Just like the other two rare flowers. Hmm…
A prickle of wariness tickles my mind once more.
“How many people do you think know about this place?”
“Probably only the people at the Library who studied botanical magic, but most would have a tough time getting through the thicket.”
“I think this must be the most powerful flower I’ve ever come across.”
I take a few steps toward the center of the grove. The trees that enclose it are impenetrable. If I hadn’t asked Will for help, could I have gotten here by myself? What would the requester have done if I had failed to find it?
“You don’t know what they want it for?” Will asks.
“No…I’d never even heard of the Feiyan or Odyssa, let alone know what they’re used for, and Lunaries are the stuff of legend.
I remember reading about them in a fairy-tale book when I was a kid.
It said that they bloom at night, as bright and potent as the magic of the moon. I didn’t know they were real.”
Will shrugs. “I’ve never learned about the three flowers being used together. What do you want to do?”
“The magic reaches into the roots, so I suppose I need to dig one up.”
I kneel by the closest one and tug a trowel out of my satchel. Will settles down opposite me on the other side of the flower, one arm lazily resting over his knee. He watches me plunge the trowel into the ground.
“You can take your anger out on the soil there,” he says pointedly.
“I’m not—” I choke, and my words can’t come. Damn it. “Fine. Yes. I’m angry. Happy now?” I say, and shovel away some of the grass.
“Why would you being angry make me happy?”
“I’m—I just—Argh.”
I dig in silence and Will says nothing. A few roots unearth before I crack.
“I’m tired of people taking advantage of me,” I say, but don’t look at him.
I sink the trowel into the dirt and burrow deeper to find the words.
“I feel like…like my curse is the only thing people think is worth something, and it’s getting harder and harder to let go of the resentment.
When I find someone I think I trust, who I think trusts me, they still end up letting me down. ”
I release the handle of the half-buried trowel and rest back on my heels.
Like the soil disturbed at the flower’s base, my face crumples.
For so long, I’ve shoved everything down—my mum and her guilt, her secrets, the queen beckoning me at any moment, the heartbreak of Lark, Card and his inability to notice that I’ve been drowning.
Everyone expects me to be fine. They expect me to open my shop and complete my orders and be a good friend and good daughter and—I can’t keep this up anymore.
“I argued with my best friend last week and we haven’t spoken since. I…I don’t have any other friends. I’ve never had any other friends and—and I’m so scared that I’ve ruined it by saying the wrong thing and no one else will put up with me and—”