“But we used a poison made in the mortal realm,” Ivy said desperately. “Surely there’s something here to counteract it!”
Vale stared glumly into the ruined pool, considering. It was harder to think with this exhaustion in his bones. “So, your solution is to pour every poison cure into the void until we fix it?”
“I don’t know,” Ivy sighed. “I just know we can’t sit around here and let ourselves die! There’s so much of this void I haven’t seen. Maybe if we…”
She trailed off. She was silent for so long that Vale looked over at her, expectant.
She was not looking at him. She was staring at a flower on a nearby tree. It was white and wilting, succumbing to the poison. But it was still reaching for her.
Ivy walked over and touched its dying petal. It curled gingerly around her finger, then spasmed and went limp.
Ivy’s breath hitched.
“What?” Vale demanded.
Ivy turned to him. Her eyes were glowing green.Hisgreen. The green of the wilderness void.
But only for a moment. Then the glow was gone, and her eyes were the beloved green that he had grown irritatingly attached to.
Ivy growled in frustration. “I lost it! It was trying to show me something, but it left before it could deliver the message. If I could find a way to connect with it,reallyconnect with it, not just get thoughts and fleeting emotions, then maybe I could find a way to cure it.”
“Maybe,” Vale repeated, dubious. “What are you suggesting?”
Ivy tugged at her hair. It was up in a braid again—she had started braiding it out of stress as they sat by the useless pool.
“You know how you said I could spray myself with a heatbloom again?”
It took Vale a moment to remember. Their time in his nest felt like long ago, though it was possibly only minutes.
“You want to sicken yourself with pollen-lust,” Vale said slowly. “Now?”
“Not for the lust! To talk to the void. The first time it sprayed me, that was when I heard it the loudest.”
Vale was tired. Bone-deep, the kind of exhaustion that went beyond the physical. Part of him still felt betrayed thathe, the one who had cared for the void all his long life, had not been communing with the void in place of this new mortal. But theanger was quieter now. It was harder to blame the void for reaching out to Ivy, who was filled with a passion he had been lacking for centuries.
“You think the pollen will let you connect with it more thoroughly,” Vale finished.
Ivy smiled at him excitedly. “I think it can connectus.”
“Us,” Vale repeated. An idea formed in his head, golden and risky. “What do you mean?”
It did not take long to find a heatbloom. Just beyond the rotting whiteness sat a strange plant that Vale had not seen in his void until Ivy appeared.
“You are sure about this?” Vale asked as he appraised the red flower the heatbloom had turned into upon Ivy’s approach. “We will be insatiable.”
“Iwill be insatiable,” Ivy corrected. “For a while. You said the magic would be weaker with the poison. And you said it might not work on you.”
“I have never caught it in its full force,” Vale said warily. “I thought I felttwingesof its effects when I was wiping it off of you. But… that might have simply been from touching you.”
He had not shared his emotions with any being for so long. It still felt wrong to do so. But less so with Ivy, who flushed with pleasure. The satisfaction it brought him to watch her smile was worth his reluctance to say it.
“Unless you have a better idea,” Ivy said, toying with her braid. “I say we try it.”
Vale inclined his head.
They stepped up together. Ivy reached out, and the plain red bloom twitched in response.
“The flower,” Vale said. “What did you call it?”
