Laurel was frowning down at the plant on the pot’s other side, hands blackened. Amma looked down at herself, dirtied to her elbows in soil, the front of her dress covered. “How?”
“They took them back to Brineberth,” Laurel said, tipping her head as she watched a leaf on the liathau twitch. “They think they can grow them there, as if anyone has ever been able to grow one outside of Faebarrow in a thousand years.”
“Did any of our people go with them? So they at least have a chance?”
Laurel shook her head.
Amma looked around again at the vast, empty building in the quickly growing darkness. “Where is everyone? Juliana? Nicholas? All of them?”
“Well, Nicholas got in some trouble,” Laurel began quickly, “but don’t worry, we’ve been working on it, and Tia says he’ll be out by the end of the week after everyone kinda forgets what happened.”
“Out of where? Are you saying he’s in prison?”
“Well, when the Brineberth guards take over the prison and then you punch a Brineberth guard in the nuts, yes, you go to prison.” A nervous, wary laugh slipped out of her. “And most everyone else went to the orchards for a while, but some of them are out searching for wild liathau, as pointless as I assume that is, but it’s sort of all they’ve got.”
Amma stood. “We need to go to the orchards too, and then out to find the others, and maybe—”
Laurel was shaking her head, carefully coming to her feet as her eyes darted over Amma’s shoulder. “Now isn’t the best time, I don’t think.”
Amma turned, and at the door to the greenhouse stood Baroness Avington, somehow finding the only light in the place and standing beneath it. Clad in a different gown than she’d been wearing when she’d first seen her that morning, one appropriate for evening and thus more ornate and with a slightly lower neckline, her mother had her hands delicately clasped before her and kept her chin high. As she slipped through the greenhouse door, she managed to not get a speck of dirt on any of the layers of her dress.
“Laurel, please attend to your duties,” her voice called, sweet but firm as she crossed the greenhouse toward the two of them.
Laurel came to her full height, grinning widely, hiding her dirty hands behind her back. “But I am. Lady Ammalie is right here.”
“Do you not have duties elsewhere?”
“No, Your Ladyship, they are all complete.”
Amma had a very strong feeling she was lying.
“Then go embroider something.”
Laurel’s shoulders fell. “I hate embroidery,” she grumbled.
“I know. Go.” Amma’s mother’s eyes flashed.
“Yes, My Lady.” Laurel straightened, gave a perfect curtsy, and hurried off with her hands clasped politely and head down. When she got behind the baroness, though, she turned with fists balled at her sides and silently stuck out her tongue.
“I can see you in the glass’s reflection, Laurel.”
The half-elf gasped and ran off. Amma would have laughed if everything else didn’t seem so bleak in the emptiness of the greenhouse that had once been her favorite place in the realm.
“That girl is lucky you adore her so much.” The baroness gave a small smile, and then her eyes fell to Amma’s front and the mess down it, brow pinching. “Oh, darling, what have you done?”
Amma held her hands before her, soil in the cracks of her skin and under her nails as if she hadn’t spent half the day being picked at and scrubbed by other hands and hating every second of it. “Mother, what has been donehere?”
The baroness did not even look around at the shelves, voice still, shoulders only shrugging a little. “It was an order by the crown, but it will be full again by next season, and you can have your fun in the dirt as normal then, I’m sure. Now, come on, back to the bath—”
“You can’t really believe that,” Amma spat, dagger still in her hand as she pointed out the empty shelves, hair loose and splaying around her. “This will take years to replenish if we even get the chance.”
Hand raising slightly but delicately, the baroness eyed the dagger. “Please put that away, dear, you’ll hurt yourself.”
“I’m not going to hurt myself, Mother, I’m twenty-five!”
“Yes, you are aren’t you?” she cut in, voice suddenly biting. “Twenty-five and still unwed, still free to pursue your hobbies here as we’ve let you like a wild animal for your entire life, free to run about the keep as if you haven’t a care in the world, confident enough to lie in respect to your whereabouts and go sneaking off as if there are no consequences.”
Amma’s mouth clamped shut, unsure if her mother were referring to earlier that day when Amma had pretended to be ill, refusing to see anyone, including Cedric, so that she could come here with Laurel, or if she somehow knew that she had much more deviously pretended to be abducted a moon ago. Gods, did everyone know?
