I pulled my shawl tighter over my shoulders, glancing down at the crooked table before the dying hearth, and nodded.
Breaking bread with Rogan didn’t have to be a battle. As long as we were discussing matters of strategy instead of matters of the heart.
A morning of audacious sunshine melted enough of the snow for afternoon’s cold snap to turn the world to ice and peril. I skated down the hill in my boots, falling three times and eventually resorting to scooting down the icy path to the greenhouse on my arse.
In the past week, I’d stayed in bed until lunchtime every day, my limbs heavy and my mind racing. But this decaying heap of a fort was wheedling its way into my bones—drafty hallways whispering my name and cracked earth begging for borrowed life from my fingertips.
I slid down the last few feet into the copse surrounding the grotto. Ice sheathed the trunks and weighed down the branches. Dense clouds loomed close, making me feel like I, too, was encased in a cold, lonely world.
I pushed open the rusted, creaking greenhouse door to see a mountain of supplies heaped on the long, pitted worktable. Trowels and spades and rakes and hoes. Loppers and trimmers and dibblers and dowels. A new-painted barrow with sturdy wooden wheels. Sacks upon sacks of good earth and better manure.
And seeds.
I held my breath as I ran my fingers over the brown packets tied in string. Vines. Roots. Shrubs. Vegetables. And flowers—oh, the flowers! Fieldspur and bell leaf and rabbit tail and silverknot. Their names were like fingerprints on my heart. I suddenly knew, in a way that had already started to hurt, this garden was going to be exquisite. And it would bemine.
A gust of cold wind tinged with woodsmoke made me think of Mother. Years ago, she’d caught me nursing seedlings in my roomsone winter evening, long after I should have been in bed. Her steps were heavy with ale, and she reeked of Cathair’s musky incense. But her eyes sharpened on the tiny leaflets sprouting green gossamer between my fingertips. It was too early in the season for dovewort to bloom, and Mother knew it as well as I did.
“You prefer flowers to your own mother, a stór?” she’d accused, injury painting her tone. “For I cannot fathom why else you would hide them from me. In my own home. In the room I have provided for your safety. Beside the hearth I keep roaring for your warmth.”
She’d reached down and plucked the flowers, one by one, tossing their ruined faces into the guttering flames of the fire. Then she’d lifted my chin, which was wet with traitorous tears.
“Flowers die so swiftly. Would you spend your time and energy on something so finite? They bloom to entice you, only to wilt and die quicker than it took them to grow. Do not waste yourself on something so fickle.” Gently, she’d smoothed the hair back from my face. “Flowers cannot love you. Only I know how to love you. And nothing and no one will ever love you more than I.”
Each moment I spent in this greenhouse pulsed with that same raw ache, like the earth was hungry for my care and attention, and I was the only one who could feed it. And perhaps it would never love me. But for the first time, I wondered whether Mother had been wrong.
Was it truly weakness to love something that could not love you back? Or might it actually be strength—to love something so selflessly that you did not care whether that love would ever be returned?
I pressed my thumb against the bracelet of nettles and hemlock to clear my head. None of that mattered. I’d simply made a bargain with Corra. One I was determined to get something out of.
A frenzied tapping at the clouded glass startled me. I cracked the door to let in a sharp-winged starling. It was one of Cathair’s witch-birds—its shiny, well-preened plumage and intelligent eyes were unmistakable and reminded me too much of its master. Iunlooped a length of parchment from its impatient leg. The message scrawled on it wasn’t long.
The high queen wishes for news.
The message chilled me—as though by disagreeing with Mother, even in my thoughts, I’d summoned her disapproval. It had been two months—but what did I have to tell Mother about our progress? We had located Eala. But Rogan’s revelations about the Gates and the bardaí and the Treasures had led us no closer to breaking her geas. And the only things I had to show for my forays into Tír na nÓg were a still-healing wound on my palm and the memory of that Gentry guard’s expression when he saw me—the hope and fascination and violence wringing his striking features into a map I could not read, only dream about.
It’s you.
There was no earthly way I was going to tell Mother about that.
“Corra!” I shouted, startling the starling. “Does our bargain allow for parchment and ink?”
I searched for the formless sprite in wood knots and smudged glass. When I completed my circle, I found a sheaf of fine paper stacked beside a stoppered jar of black ink. I scrawled out a quick note.
We’ve located the princess. As for the rest, tell the high queen these things take time.
I folded the note and grabbed for the starling’s leg. But the witch-bird was having none of it—its razored beak attacked my fingers until I dropped the note with a hiss. I reacted before thinking—green light mottled my skin, smoothing away the hurt. I looked up, but the starling was gone, and the note with it. I touched the spot of blood where the wound had been, but the skin was already knitted back together.
Wonder dappled through my mind. I had neverhealedanything before. My Greenmark had only ever brought me death. And though I’d cursed the things I’d lost because of it, I’d always believed that to simply be the way of things. I was a weapon, and so, too, was the magic lurking in my Folk blood.
But a weapon could do only one thing. A weapon could only hurt, could only bleed, could only kill.
A weapon could not heal.
Again, I touched the place where the bird had pecked me. After all the things I’d destroyed, perhaps it was right that my power could heal as well as hurt. Nature demanded balance in all things—for every poison there was an antidote; for every wound, a salve. It made a strange kind of sense that my own magic obeyed the same innate rules.
I shook off the thought. I began to sort Corra’s seeds into piles—spring blossoms and summer fruits and autumn vegetables. But as I stacked and sorted and planned, the idea ofbalancegrew like its own subtle, stubborn weed inside me.
Chapter Thirteen
