Your plant affinity. You’ve been treating it like a minor talent, something barely worth acknowledging. But you sensed these leaves were wrong when no one else did. Maybe that magic has cleared its throat and is eager to speak.
“I don’t really know how to listen to it. It’s not like my strategy magic, where I consciously direct the power. The plant thing just sort of happens.”
Learning is an ongoing process,Savory said.The garden grows whether the gardener understands how or not, but understanding makes for better blooms.
She flew over to the rail and hopped along it.Perhaps the bigger issue here is that you’ve been working alone. My magic could complement your own. You’ve never fully taken advantage of what I can offer you as your companion.
“Because that felt like taking advantage of you.”
I chose you, Sasha. That means I want to be a part of your magical life, not because I want to be a glorified pet who can speak to you in your mind.
She was right. I’d just never quite seen it in this way. “I’m sorry.”
Let me feed some magic into you and see what happens.
“Alright.” I girded myself, though I wasn’t quite sure why. “Do it.”
It’s not torture. It’s true companionship.
She stared into my eyes and a light, comforting feeling swept through me, the kind of feeling you got when you lay in deep grass and stared up at the brilliant blue sky. Or when you snuggled under your warm blankets on a chilly winter’s night.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
Thank you. Now try again.
I looked down at the tea tin, then back at my notes scattered across the small balcony table. Taking a breath, I reached out to a plant sitting on the low table beside me. I didn’t just touch the leaves. I tried to feel them. Really feel them, not with my fingers but with whatever part of me connected to growing things, the part of me my companion could enhance.
At first, nothing came through, just the normal sensation of dried plant matter against my skin.
Then, gradually, something else emerged. A whisper of what these leaves had been when they were fresh and growing. The memory of sunlight on the leaves, of the roots drinking water from rich soil, of the plant generating new growth.
And underneath that, something unexpected. Not poison exactly, but interference of some sort. The leaves remembered growing strong, but something had come between them and their natural magic, creating distance where there should be connection.
Dominic said the wilted plants couldn’t access the court’s magic properly. Maybe something was blocking the connection.
I opened my eyes and found Savory watching me.
“It’s like a barrier,” I said slowly, trying to put the sensation into words. “Between the plants and the powerthey should be able to draw on. I can feel the magic there, waiting, but the plants can’t quite reach it.”
And the giggling?
“Maybe it’s also a barrier between people and their ability to control their emotional responses?”
Could the two be related? I’d be foolish not to think they could but foolish to decide they were. I had theories but nothing solid. Yet.
You should test the samples,Savory said.See if they all carry the same wrongness or if some are clean.
Good idea. I spent the next hour using my rusty plant magic to analyze the leaves in each tin Alaina had provided. The results were frustrating. All the samples showed the same barrier between plant and magic. Even the tins from different harvests and different times of year showed the same taint.
Whatever was causing this had permeated the entire tea supply.
After taking some notes, I walked to the potted plants scattered around our suite. My analysis suggested magical interference was blocking their connection to the life force they needed. I made notes about the pattern, sketching rough diagrams of which plants were most affected.
“The emotion-responsive varieties are suffering worst,” I told Savory. “But even the regular decorative plants show signs of magical dampening. It feels…different than the tea.”
Two mysteries, then?she said.
“Perhaps.”
