“Your highness,” I say, doing my best semblance of a curtsy, sans the hand his highness has been holding a little too long.
“Katya. A lovely name for a lovely girl.”
I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes at his poor attempt to woo me, or whatever it is he’s doing, right in front of his wife. He’s the prince, though, so I guess the rules don’t quite apply to him. I’m just about to respond when he slides back the hand resting over my fingers, then raises it to his lips and proceeds to kiss each of my knuckles in turn—even my thumb.
I glance at Elsbeth to see what she’s thinking about this behavior, and she just rolls her eyes. Well, at least she’s not upset withmeabout it. That’s something, I guess.
“I’d invited Katya to tour the garden with me. I apologize, I forgot,” she says.
Is she covering for me? That’s interesting.
Finally, the prince releases my hand. “Of course,” he says, eyes still locked on mine. “You ladies have a nice time.” When he turns to speak to Elsbeth, there’s an edge to his tone that wasn’t there a second ago. “We’ll continue this discussion later.”
She simply nods, steps around him and loops her arm through mine. “Shall we?”
“Is everything alright,” I ask as soon as we’re out of earshot.
“I think I should be the one asking you that,” she says, one slim eyebrow cocked. “That’s quite the bruise you’ve got there.” She nods at my arm. I really should have worn long sleeves.
I shrug. “Leodin, my stepfather, was just a teeny bit” —I hold my thumb and index finger slightly apart— “upset about me making a scene at dinner yesterday. Said it made a bad impression.”
“What did he expect you to do?”
“Smile,” I say, giving her my toothiest grin.
She nods in understanding, but doesn’t look at me with pity, which I appreciate. We continue down a grand staircase and exit onto the ground floor “Just a little farther now,” she says
Glancing around, I realize we’re passing into a part of the palace I haven’t seen before. “Where are we going?”
“The Queen’s Garden. As the princess, I’m allowed to use it, and the queen couldn’t care less about flowers and plants, so I take care of it now. Over here.” She points to a heavy wood door, and I follow her through. Immediately, I’m struck by the change in atmosphere. The air is thicker here—warm and heavy with moisture—and perfumed by the scent of what must be hundreds of flowers. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful. The entire garden is enclosed in glass—like a giant greenhouse. Every bit of usable space is devoted to a myriad of plants and flowers of all sizes and colors, separated by narrow walkways and dottedwith tiny sitting nooks tucked between bushes and under small trees. There’s even a stream gurgling through the center of it all that deposits into a tiny pool, no bigger than my bed back home, teeming with graceful fish covered in blots of orange, yellow and white.
“This is amazing,” I say in genuine awe. We have gardens back home, but they’re mostly utilitarian—food, herbs and the like—but this is built for beauty, and it succeeds.
“Thanks. Nobody else really cares about any of this, so it’s become my little oasis. I’ve always had a fascination with medicinal plants, and it gives me something productive to do with my time. Being a princess isn’t as exciting as I thought it would be.”
“I know how you feel. If it weren’t for the library back home, I probably would have lost my mind by now.” I nudge her with my elbow. “So, are all of these medicinal, or…” I leave the sentence hanging there because I’m not exactly sure how to phrase the rest of my question, but Elsbeth is able to catch my meaning.
“No. The only thing medicinal that was already here before I arrived was that willow.” She points to a small weeping willow rising over the flowers in the far corner. It’s arched branches, falling just short of touching the ground.
“What do you use a willow for?”
“Its bark can be used to ease pain.”
“Really?” I’m getting kind of excited now. “Show me something else.”
Her eyes dance with mirth. “Well, since you asked...” She glances around and points to a cluster of bulbous yellow flowers. “See those? That is cotton lavender. It can help clear parasites from the body, and this,” she says, pointing to another plant, this one withtiny white flowers. “This is Jasmine. The flowers can be used to clean wounds.”
She takes a careful step over a batch of tiny purple flowers and starts down the narrow path.
“Where did you learn all of this?”
“Books, mostly. My mother taught me a little. I grew up in Yaresh.” She glances over her shoulder to make sure I’m behind her. “It’s in the southern tip of the Ajir Province. We didn’t often have the healing sythra at our disposal, so we had to adapt.”
I nod. It makes sense. At Duje, we always have healers around, so there was never any need to learn how to heal with plants. “Yaresh,” I muse, tapping my lip. “That’s where Dom Kai is.”
“Yes,” she says with a little hop. “I was actually an acolyte at Kai before I was chosen to marry the prince. I didn’t get to finish my schooling, but I do have an almost unlimited supply of sythra to tend this garden with. Watch.” She kneels beside a droopy little plant and lifts her sleeve—revealing a bracelet covered with sythra and a yellowing bruise circling her wrist, which I pretend not to notice. Elsbeth pinches a tiny clear sythra between her fingers, and I watch her gaze grow distant as she accesses the spectrum. Some witches struggle with this part of the process. Not me. Opening my mind to the spectrum has always been as easy as breathing. It’s when I attempt to touch the magic that I always fail.
Elsbeth isn’t failing, though. Green chroma fills her gem like smoke then disappears again as she touches a wilted leaf. The whole plant springs back to life and a cluster of golden flowers that resemble miniature suns sprout from the earth. The sythra cracks, then disintegrates, every ounce of magic going into growing those flowers.
