“You have your mother’s magic.”
“But that’s not true,” Valenna cried. “I don’t.”
“Are you not listening to me?” Sybil stamped her antler staff against the wooden floor. It echoed, like a gavel in a courtroom. “Your mother was Tahlia, and she was the Botania of Talwaith, the bringer of spring. I was there when you were born; you had violets sprouting in your hair. Then, when you were small, that wicked Ashkendoric woman gutted your mother like a partridge, and now you are her heir.”
Valenna placed her hand on Sybil’s. It was cold, the skin thin and loose as an oversized garment. “I don’t have my mother’s magic. I’m sorry.”
Samara’s mother rolled her eyes. “I’ll give you a dress if you promise not to tell anyone it came from me.”
But Valenna didn’t hear her. She sat dumbstruck, her weary thoughts circling like a little toy ship caught in an eddy.
“Thank you, Mama,” Samara said, smiling. “And I need you to send something for her betrothed, too. He’s at the chapel, or perhaps still at the apothecary.”
“Heavens, child, are you meaning to put the whole family out of business?”
“I have just the thing.” With a rustle of skirts, Sybil limped into the room behind the counter, her cane clicking on the floor.
Samara’s mother took a lavender dress embroidered with white flowers from the window display and held it out to Valenna.
“Go slip this on,” she said. “Quickly.”
“But it’s too large,” Valenna objected.
“Never you mind that. Go slip it on.”
Skeptical, Valenna took it and followed Samara to the curtained changing closet at the rear of the shop. Removing her filthy clothes, Valenna slipped the dress over her head. The instant it touched her skin, the bodice shrank, the skirt shortened, and the arms lengthened until the dress fit like a glove. At first, the neckline plunged too low, revealing a few inches of cleavage.
“Ha, no,” Valenna said, and the neckline crept upward reluctantly.
Emerging from the closet, Valenna felt human for the first time since she’d left Silvanlight.
“Ravishing,” Samara said dryly. “Now the hair. Mama!”
Samara’s mother attacked Valenna with a pair of scissors and a comb, trimming, fluffing, picking leaves from tangles. When she was finished, Valenna’s waves fell glossy and thick, the edges tidy again. As she braided a few locks into a crown, Sybil returned holding a simple green shirt.
“Not that shirt, Nonna!” Samara cried.
“All the best for our Botania,” the old woman replied with a toothless smile.
“But it was Pappa’s when he went to the old wars.”
“And it brought him home again. Here”—she draped it over the counter—“it is blessed. Your husband may wear it when you return to Talwaith.”
Valenna was growing irritated. “I don’t have spring magic,” she said emphatically.
“You do! You were blessed by the sunbird. I was there. It sang over you as your mother held you in her arms.”
“Well, the sunbird was wrong!” Valenna said.
Sybil chuckled and walked away, shaking her gray head.
Samara’s mother put Valenna’s old clothes and the green shirt into a bag and shoved them into her arms. “You can keep the dress, just don’t come back here. Best of luck!”
Before Valenna could wrap her head around what was happening, she was standing in the street, clutching the bag to her chest and feeling like she’d walked into a stage play in the middle of the second act.
Chapter thirty-two
Valenna
