I grabbed the ancient shears propped against the workbench. The blades were dull and grimed with rust. They shrieked as theysliced through the vines. Ichor spurted from the tendrils, thicker and darker than blood.
I hacked at the vine until my hands were covered with clinging ooze and my arms were lacerated with tiny scratches. I plucked sharp thorns from the pads of my fingers with my teeth and spat them into Dún Darragh’s dead gardens. I stepped back, breathing hard.
The vine lay utterly destroyed at my feet. And where it once sprawled—creeping and digesting and ruining—something grew.
A tiny flower with pointed petals. But instead of being bright as a star, this flower was black as the space between them. I knelt, reaching for it.
Brilliance flashed at the corner of my vision. I whirled, but there was only a chime of distant music and the aching sensation of forgetting something I was meant to remember. When I turned back, the small black flower was gone.
A crash echoed through the greenhouse, followed by an audible yelp and a round of inventive cursing. I whipped my head around to see Rogan wrestling with a plank of wood that might once have been a potting table.
I stalked to the front of the greenhouse. Rogan tensed, lowering the massive board. When he looked at me, his blue-green eyes crackled with a desperate hope that made my heart feel too big for my chest. I willed it as vicious and sharp as the vine I’d just butchered.
“What are you doing here?” I snarled.
“Helping.”
I crossed my arms. “Looks more like an exercise in futility.”
He huffed. “My specialty, apparently.”
He hefted the slab of wood he’d been lugging. I inhaled—even for a man of his musculature, the board was enormous. He grunted, taking the weight onto his back, then heaved it to the side, out of the center of the room. It hung in midair before crashing directly into the risers, taking a row of clay pots, a handful of seedling jars, and half a wall’s worth of clouded glass with it.
“Rogan!” Green fury blazed up around my heart. If I decided to take Corra’s deal, those jars could have held dormant bulbs for the spring—bulbs that would one day be tulips, allium, maybe even magenta lady’s slippers. The seedling jars might have held herbs—rosemary, thyme, sage—for Corra’s stews. And Rogan had crushed those possibilities with his carelessness. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I was just—” Confusion and remorse muddied his gaze. He scraped tangled golden hair off his face. He looked exhausted. Violet hollows ringed his eyes and carved out his cheekbones. Had he slept at all this morning before spending half the day drinking? “I just wanted to help—”
“Get out.” I shoved him in the chest, hard. My control over my magic was starting to slip. “Get out of my greenhouse!”
“Yourgreenhouse?” Rogan caught my fingers in his large, rough hands. “What are you going to do, changeling? Greenmark me?”
“Maybe I will,” I snarled. “I’d like to see you try and rescue the princess with ferns growing out of your big ugly ears!”
For a long moment, we stared at each other. Then Rogan bent over, put his hands on his knees, and started wheezing. Concern jolted through me, followed by indignation when I realized he waslaughing. He straightened, still chuckling, and pulled me against him, wrapping his arms over my shoulders and tucking my head under his chin. I tensed and almost pushed him away. But he was warm and solid, and the laughter rumbling through his chest vibrated through me, and everything suddenly seemed…all right.
Morrigan, but I’dmissedhim.
For a long moment we stood like that, me tucked close against his chest, his arms enveloping me. Eventually, I pushed back enough to look up at him.
“Was that our stupidest fight?” I asked.
“Not even close.” He lifted one burnished eyebrow. “Remember when you punched me in the throat so hard I couldn’t eat solids for a week?”
“It wasthree days,” I countered. “And you didn’t have any problem using said throat to complain about how horrible your life had become without regular access to bread and cheese.”
“It was genuinely horrible,” he said ruefully. “Remind me what I did to deserve it?”
“I don’t actually remember,” I admitted. “I wasn’t even trying to punch you in the throat. I was aiming for your jaw.”
He grinned down, his crooked smile disarming me. “What went wrong?”
“I missed. You were so—” The words came out softer than I meant them to. I cleared my throat. “You’ve always been… so tall.”
Something in my voice chased the smile off Rogan’s face. He looked down at me with sudden intensity, his gaze darkening. Awareness spilled over me like rain, touching my skin with a thousand sharp thorns as I registered how tightly I was molded against him. How close my face was to his. How warm his palms rested at the curve of my waist. I tensed and made to move away, but one of his hands lifted to the nape of my neck and sank into my loose hair. Gently, he tilted my head back until I had no choice but to lift my eyes to his.
“Changeling.” His voice was heavy with all the memories we’d shared, the years we’d been apart, the words we’d never dared say to each other. “I’ve missed you.”
Briefly, as I met eyes warm as a summer sky, I allowed myself to remember. Remember what it had been likebefore. When he was only mine, and I was only his. When we’d been so close no one had a name for what we were. Best friends. Lovers.Family.
