Chapter Thirty-Three #2
Because of the simple workings of the young mind, I also didn’t notice just how much time she’d spend in the greenhouse. Hours each day, if she could manage it.
Nowadays, I understood it better.
It made her feel closer to her origins.
And while she would never step foot into the land of the South again, I could at least provide her with a crumb of comfort.
I was still clinging to the hope that if I behaved, those I held dear wouldn’t abandon me.
Like Father had.
Like my twin had.
Like I’d thought Mother had.
No, the word bounced around in my mind, cutting off my spiraling thoughts. Not again.
Taking a stabilizing breath, I realized we’d already arrived before the greenhouse doors. And with the concern etched onto Mother’s face, I assumed she’d been trying to get my attention for a moment or two.
“Pardon?” I asked, slowly sinking back into my reality.
“I asked if you were alright, dear,” she responded, tilting her head. “We can turn back and find Hugo if you need.”
“No,” I said, though it came off sharper than I’d intended. Before she could try to intervene again, I cleared my throat and motioned to the tall, foggy glass doors in front of us. “We’ve already come all this way. Let’s go inside.”
Mother shot me a skeptical look, but when I held the door open for her, she proceeded through without another word.
Upon stepping into the greenhouse, the substantially warmer air immediately engulfed us—so unlike the frigid temperatures almost year-round inside the rest of the castle and outside.
The entirety of the greenhouse was constructed of giant panes of glass in the shape of a dome overhead.
The main doors connected directly to the castle, and another door on the opposite side of the dome lead straight into the forest behind Gatlyn Castle.
The top of the dome had a perpetual layer of ice and snow on it, though with the slightly warmer weather this summer, one could see out from all the other windows.
At the very center of the greenhouse floor lay a giant mosaic of the Heartshire family crest—an extended wing overlapping a crescent moon.
The same one that I could see inked onto the inside of Mother’s left arm as she lifted her arms into the air, taking in the warmth the greenhouse offered.
That crest marked her as the North’s. She’d had it since she and Father married—though I couldn’t recall Father ever having a crest marked on his arm.
“Come this way,” I said to Mother, motioning for her to follow me.
Making our way around the largest of the overgrown flowerbeds—something my twin and Aurora used to tend to by hand just often enough to keep the plants alive—I stopped in front of one of the smaller, raised plots.
This one had its dirt freshly turned, and the soil was dark with recently applied water.
On the surface, it simply looked like an empty flowerbed.
But not to me.
No, I knew what lay beneath.
Waiting.
“If I take your cuff off,” I said, turning to Mother, “would you use your zirilium to make whatever is under this dirt grow?”
“It’d be an easy task,” she answered, peering at the dirt with a newfound interest.
Crouching, I slipped the key I kept on me at all times out of my pocket and unlocked her alychite cuff, then placed it on the edge of the flowerbed.
“If you would,” I requested of her, waving an arm toward the bed of dirt before us.
Mother eyed me curiously, but obliged as she moved closer to the dirt and sunk her hand into the wet earth.
She closed her eyes momentarily, and I could tell she was simply reaching out with her zirilium—like she’d taught me to do over the past couple of weeks.
And with her reach, I was certain she’d feel the dozens of seeds I’d planted there just a few hours before.
Within another moment, her eyes flew open as green stalks began to sprout rapidly, shoving the dirt out of the way so they could make their appearance for the first time. The stalks quickly started to resemble a real plant as they grew bright green leaves up their stems and gray bulbs on top.
And in mere seconds, they bloomed nearly all at once, causing Mother’s mouth to fall agape at what was then before her.
Moon lilies.
Her—and my twin’s—favorite.
The white and gray petals of each flower appeared nearly silver as the moon shone onto them through the glass overhead.
The centers, though, were a bright purple color—unlike any other plant I’d seen before.
It was native to the North and only grew there, as they weren’t a flower that was easily accessible to ordinary fae.
It was rare to find in the wild, and it was said that if they were, that whoever found them had the Stars on their side.
Yet, most of all, the flowers served as a symbol of wealth and prosperity for my people.
Father used to keep them growing in the royal gardens and greenhouse, simply because he could.
That was… he kept them before Mother had supposedly died.
I had always assumed he couldn’t bear to look at them after her passing.
Now, I wasn’t sure what to think. Maybe he simply didn’t want any reminders of her in the castle.
The seeds planted in the bed before me were ones I had slipped out of Hugo’s stash earlier that night.
He kept some of them in his workspace—always.
I was certain they had some sort of healing property, though I couldn’t list exactly what it did.
And with how poorly he’d hidden them—next to the orange vial I’d distracted him with—I couldn’t imagine they were all that important.
“Where did you find these?” Mother asked, slickness wetting her eyes.
“I have my ways,” I said as I watched her lean down and cup one blossom in her hands. Delicately, she took in the soft scent of its purple center.
The flowers seemed like they almost bent toward her as she gingerly wove a hand through them.
Maybe they did—it wasn’t like I knew much about plant zirilium outside of what they could do in battle.
I wasn’t sure what to expect in a softer, kinder setting.
But I did know that the scene before me forced a small fissure in the rock I’d formed around my heart.
If I had to name it, I’d say it very nearly made me feel… joy.
“And… you’re welcome to visit them anytime. Or we can find a small pot around here, so you can take a few to your chambers.” I rubbed the back of my neck, a shade embarrassed. “Whatever you’d like, Mother.”
She took a seat on the ledge of the flowerbed, then grinned up at me.
“Thank you,” she offered sincerely, then waved for me to come closer, which I obliged to.
“Try now, Dimitri,” she encouraged as she reached a hand under one of the nearest blossoms. I watched with a partial view as the shadow of that flower wrapped around her fingers in an instant, reminding me of the way an ivy plant would wrap around tree limbs in the forest.
When I hesitated, she patiently waited until I, too, reached out a hand toward the multitude of shadows coming from the moon lilies.
I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing.
The tingling came quicker this time, though it spread slowly up my arm.
I focused on the energy of the shadows that I felt through my zirilium, as well as conjuring the image of the specific flower and its shadow I knew was closest to my hand.
I went over in my mind the different swells and divots in the flower’s shadow, searing it into my mind’s eye until the image was so clear I could nearly feel it.
And then, I did feel it.
The connection snapped into place, and I felt myself melt into the shadow. Or maybe the shadow melted into me—I couldn’t tell anymore. I was bound to it, and it to me, and we were one as I began to move about.
Looking around, everything looked the same except for me.
When I tried to look down at myself, I simply glimpsed a form constructed of black, wispy shadow.
I grounded myself in that feeling—it was like being even lighter than when I was flying.
As though all the weight of the continent had been lifted from me, even temporarily.
After memorizing that feeling the best I could, I released the binding connection I had with the shadow, appearing once again as myself next to Mother. The shadow sprung back into place without the outside influence of any zirilium.
“I knew you could do it!” Mother clasped her hands together. “You did it—you tethered yourself to a shadow!”
Tethered. I took note of the word, realizing that it fit much better than the binding way I’d been thinking about it.
“I did it,” I said, looking down at my usual pale hands, then up at my mother excitedly. “I did it!”
Bubbling with pride and feeling positively overwhelmed, I went in to hug Mother for the first time.
But I quickly stopped in my tracks, freezing, when in a split second her demeanor changed as she flinched back from the almost-contact.
“I’m-I’m sorry,” I said, retreating a few steps.
“Not your fault,” she reassured me as she looked back toward the flowers, wrapping her arms around herself in what I assumed was an act of self-soothing.
Something I imagined she was far too accustomed to.
What had happened to her in her time away that caused her to react like that?
“Keep practicing,” she advised as she ran a finger down a flower petal. “The more you practice, the easier it’ll become.”
I nodded, doing my best to take in her counsel, though my mind was elsewhere by that point.
I’d begun the evening with training and ended the session by letting my emotions get out of hand.
I’d gone to visit Hugo, and ended the conversation by, once again, letting my emotions get the best of me.
And now, even when I was trying to behave and to be good—to be who I thought everybody wanted me to be—my emotions still got the best of me, and I still did damage.
Maybe Father had been right all along.
Emotions did make one weak.
And I would die before I let the world see me become that.