“Then that’s where we need to go.” She tapped her temple, as if she could almost grab hold of the pulling sensation. “Can you feel it, too?”
Ollas nodded slowly. “The bloom window. It’s fading.”
Dae dashed back into the room, a piece of paper clutched in her fingers. “Calya says your mother is coming in early.”
With Ollas in tow, Eunny headed for the door. “Dae, can you find Zhen? Forget about helping with the seeds, we’ll figure something out.” She jerked her thumb to indicate Ollas. “Zhen will know about getting the right dirt to get us to Rhell.”
“Soil,” Ollas whispered.
“Got it. Ez can help.” Dae ran off.
Eunny was nearly out of the tearoom when she saw her aunt replacing stock at the front counter. Leaving Ollas to wait, she approached Yerina.
“Auntie,” Eunny said quietly. “I need to ask you something.”
Slowly, Yerina turned around, her normally cheery face now solemn.
“I know we don’t agree on… on anything to do with my mother,” Eunny said. “I never should’ve said she hates you. I didn’t mean it. I just… I don’t know why you try so hard for her, either. She’ll never?—”
“She’s my sister. That still means something to me,” Yerina said, her voice soft. She reached out to hold Eunny’s hand. “But that’s my decision. It shouldn’t influence how you feel about her, or how you want your relationship with her to be.”
“I hate her.” Eunny’s lip trembled. “I’m sorry, but I do. I’m sorry, Auntie.”
Yerina’s face softened, grief and love in equal measure in her smile. “Don’t be. You get to decide what that relationship is worth.”
“You won’t be mad at me?” Eunny said. “Or think I?—”
“Never, Eunji.” Yerina hugged her, so tightly that her back cracked. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear.”
“No, I think you got it back how it’s supposed to be,” she wheezed. “Listen, Auntie, if my mother comes here looking for me…”
“I can’t lie to her.”
“I know, I just… If you could?—”
“But I can ask her to listen,” Yerina continued. “I haven’t asked anything of her in a long time. That won’t be worth much”—her smile turned sad again—“but it could be a little.”
“Good enough for me.”
Kissing her aunt on the cheek, Eunny raced back to Ollas and pulled him out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Six
At such an ungodly hour, the university’s grounds were deserted. Across the courtyard, Eunny picked out movement; a few people could be seen inside the elementalists’ Towers through the atrium’s massive glass windows. The Heartwood was softly aglow, too, though no sound drifted outward as Eunny and Ollas hurried past. Everything was lit in the bluish cast of pre-dawn, dark but not so dark that they couldn’t see the path as they ran to the furthest of the six greenhouses. Eunny had made the journey so many times by now she figured she could do it in her sleep. Nervous energy made her hand shake as she pulled open the greenhouse door. What if they couldn’t get the cutting to flower? Or worse, got it to flower but not set seed, and then her mother showed up with enough Coalition muscle to take the plant by force? Tinkering with her magic when she was tired, stressed… Her control was already questionable. If the imprinting spell kicked up, if she panicked again, if?—
Ollas gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “It’ll be fine. I know you can do this.”
Eunny cracked a weak smile. “Or I’m about to fry?—”
He took her chin between his fingers, muffling her words with his lips. “Don’t even think it.” He released her and went to turn the interior lamps to their lowest setting. “I’ll get fresh soil.”
“I’ll grab the plant.”
Eunny ducked into the rear antechamber. The cutting was tucked behind several larger plants, safe in its small jar. When she grabbed it, an electric tingle zipped over her fingers as the leaves stretched against their glass walls. The tugging in her head intensified for a moment, causing her eye to twitch.
“Stop it,” she whisper-admonished, heading back into the greenhouse’s main room. “I’m going, all right?”
She watched Ollas portion out some amendment and give it a proper mix with blighted dirt. Eunny hoped it would be enough, that it would matter at all. Help, in some small way, so feeding the plant didn’t rest solely on her. On them. If she’d learned anything from her time at the Grove, it was a greater respect for the amount of energy a plant put into flowering. Accelerating the process would demand more magic than she’d used in a long time. Six years. She hadn’t lost her magic in a literal sense, but the practiced ability to maintain steady energy and control, that would have lapsed. The raw source was still within her, but she remembered all too well how magic could escape when one’s control was low. How magic could take. True, she’d been exhausted when the imprinting spell was first activated, her inner well drained practically dry, her mind too sapped to put up much of a fight when those seeds had called. But she’d been more practiced then. Confident. Willing to call herself a mage, a mender, rather than a fake mundane trying to be handy and crafty.
