TWENTY-THREE #2
“That’s up to you.” He wipes his glasses and sinks into his seat, already turning back to his notes and riddles like he’s done with me.
I want my family’s magic. Magic that helps things grow. Not whatever power my mark promises me. I want to know why the Stars chose me for this.
He’s been looking for answers for five hundred years. What hope do I have of finding any?
“The garden looks terrible,” he says, not glancing up from his papers. “Start there.”
I scowl at him, but I grab his stupid book.
When I reach the main hall, I don’t turn toward the stairs.
I keep walking, past the back hall to the kitchen.
I pass the great room, where a fire is crackling in the massive hearth.
I ignore the untouched piano in the parlor.
I don’t stop until I’m out the front door, not bothering to pause or consider where I’m going, my feet carrying me where my head and heart have not dared venture before now.
And this time when I reach the garden, I look at it. Really look at it.
Vines claw at one another in a frantic tangle, weaving and choking each other like enemies.
There are piles of leaves, all so uneven they must have been gathered by the strong ocean winds and left to rot for Stars know how long.
The fountain remains stagnant, filled with brackish water and slowly being reclaimed by moss.
Dead trees loom at the edges of the grounds, their limbs twisted skyward, still waiting for someone who never came back.
What a fucking mess.
The oscen swoops overhead and lands in the gnarled branches of a very dead tree.
I glance at it. “I don’t know if I can fix this.”
And I’m talking to the bird again.
It tilts its ebony head, dipping its beak as though it’s commiserating with me.
But I head to the small potting shed tucked in the farthest corner.
It’s in nearly as bad a shape as the rest of the garden.
I try to open it, but the door hinges have rusted shut, so I’m forced to ram it open with my shoulder.
There’s not much inside other than some old flower bulbs in a worn basket and a few hand tools as rusty as those hinges.
Screw this. Even an Icaros couldn’t work like this. I make it a few steps into the garden before the oscen squawks at me.
Like it knows I’m quitting.
“What do you expect me to do?” I squawk back, but I don’t keep walking to the house.
I need to do something before I turn that bedroom into my own cage.
Flipping open the book, I skim through explanations and diagrams, looking for something to help me clear old growth.
But when I find the pattern—the one that tills the soil and enriches it—I don’t have the faintest clue how to actually use it.
That was my dad’s work. Then Broderic’s.
The lines have to be formed in the right order, crossing and meeting in the correct sequence, or you risk disaster.
Just last year, my brother missed a step and scorched an entire field of corn.
The fire was contained, but the soil is still useless.
Not that anyone would even notice if I took the garden down to cinders. Except maybe the crown’s prodigal bird.
That means falling back on the one thing I know will work: my own damn hands.
The hardest part is picking where to begin. The dead trees and vines creeping over every surface or the skeletal remains of old rosebushes? It all has to go to make room for new life.
Dropping to my knees, I shove my fingers into the rain-soaked dirt.
Some tightness eases in my chest as the cool mud coats my hands.
Even without tools or gloves or a book with useless diagrams, my hands know this kind of work from years spent doing it with Kieren beside me.
They remember it, remember passing tools back and forth with him while we talked about nothing.
And everything.
The memory threatens to swallow me, so I focus on what’s in front of me, trying to forget what’s gone.
Some of the patches are easy, the soil in them yielding their weeds like they’re grateful for the attention. But then I reach the fucking vines. They might have borne fruit once, but now they’re little more than brambles.
Their roots are deep, left too long to dig strangleholds in the earth. I rip them out, thorns tearing into my skin. Mud streaks my arms and clothes as I wrestle them, the stinging in my hands building to a smarting throb. Their barbs are punishing me for evicting them.
But that’s the cycle of life. The way of things. Like the items sitting in that box in my room.
Someone whistles sharply behind me, but I don’t turn around to see who it is.
“Damn, what did those weeds do to you?” Taliesin asks, striding up to watch me work.
“Exist,” I grunt, wrenching one free. Dirt scatters across my lap. I brush it off and keep going.
Taliesin murmurs something else before he leaves me, but I don’t hear him.
Because the noise in my head is gone. I keep working until my hands cramp and my shoulders burn, until the sun slips past the horizon and the moon casts everything in shadow.
And when I trudge inside—dirt under my nails, mud mixing with blood in my torn-up palms, angry and alive again—I finally feel like I found a place I might call home someday.
I just have to fight for it.
By the end of the next day, nothing is fixed, but I’ve divided the tasks, turning the garden into zones I can work through one at a time. The first one is nearly clear.
Along with my head.
As if every weed ripped from the earth leaves room for new questions and plans and thoughts, but circles back to the same problem.
Bishop is avoiding me.
I hunt him down and find him hiding in his study.
“Yes?” he grunts, not deigning to look up from whatever new crisis he’s prioritizing over human interaction today.
“I want to train.” The words come out in a rush. I can’t let myself rethink this. Not after what happened in the woods. Not after …
His shoulders tense, and he hesitates before finally lifting his gaze. But he only looks at me.
Studying me like I’m a fucking mess, too, and he doesn’t know where to start.
“It was your idea.” Maybe he needs the reminder, needs to see that I’m finally willing to give in and do things his way.
His eyes slide to my arms and zero in on the skin visible below my rolled shirtsleeves.
“No,” he says and goes back to his paperwork.
My brain lurches around the single word, and I’m forced to shake my head to reset it. “What? Why not?”
“Your burns haven’t finished healing.” He reclines in his chair and crosses his arms, jaw setting in a rigid line, perfect mouth ready to deliver his next blow.
Bastard.
I plant my hands on his desk and glare back at him. “I’m fine.”
I’m using the balm. I don’t even need bandages anymore. Yes, the skin is still raw and pink, and there are a few lingering blisters, but there’s nothing to stop me from lifting a sword.
“They aren’t.” He nods toward my arms, then turns back to his work. “And I won’t put a blade in your hands until they are.”
Heat climbs to my cheeks. “You told me to earn answers,” I say. “How am I supposed to do that if you won’t even look at me for more than a minute at a time?”
Bishop lifts his head and makes a show of assessing me, his face a mask of that irritating composure. But his eyes narrow when they reach my hands. And he scowls.
I glance down at the bloody cuts and scrapes covering the backs of my hands, at the dirt caked in the webbing of my fingers. Some has spilled onto his very important desk. I draw back and tuck my hands under my biceps but don’t apologize.
He remains quiet for a moment, and when he finally speaks, a soft growl laces his words. “What have you done to yourself?”
“I’ve just been out digging my own grave,” I mutter, instantly regretting it when his forehead creases. “Seven hells, I’ve been in the garden. Is that not allowed? Was it finally becoming the shit pile you envisioned?”
“The garden?” he repeats like he heard me wrong. As if the activity is somehow foreign to him. Considering the state it’s in, maybe it is.
I roll my eyes and nod.
A faint wrinkle appears between his brows. “And why aren’t you using gloves?”
“I couldn’t find any.” Not that I really tried. But his attention stays on the hands still tucked under my biceps longer than necessary, and I sigh. “It’s just dirt. I’ll wash them, and I won’t touch anything until I do.”
He finally lifts his eyes to mine. “Ask me again when you’re in one piece.”
I choke back a scream and briefly consider throttling him but whirl around and leave instead. Because strangling him won’t do me any good. Bishop will always be around to make my life hell … even if I kill him.
But the next morning, there’s a clean set of tools waiting at the base of the fountain along with several pairs of gloves, all made from different materials and folded neatly.
I stand there longer than I mean to, something clogging my throat. Then, I swallow, pull on a pair, and get to work. But I listen for his footsteps, part of me afraid he’ll return to the garden.
Part of me hoping that he does.