“The sorcerer deserved pâté in his hair.”
Ambrel grinned. “He really didn’t like that. He’d spent a lot of time and magic on his hair. As I recall, it changed color every few minutes.”
Rowan snickered. “After the pâté, it alternated between green and gray. Anyway, dream flowers aren’t like that. You are the one who guides the dream.” She lifted the blossom to her nose and said,“Dancing on the beach.”
Closing her eyes, she inhaled, then smiled.
A few seconds later, Rowan opened her eyes and exhaled. “Easy,” she said languidly. “My beach had warm sand, gentle waves, and a breeze.”
“You just… ask for whatever you want to dream about?” Terlu asked. She hadn’t seen a spell for this in Laiken’s notebooks, but there were still many she hadn’t translated, much less studied. She wondered what other wonders she hadn’t discovered yet.
Ambrel took the blossom from Rowan. “I want to dream about kissing you.”
“You can do that any day, any time,” Rowan said.
“On the moon,” Ambrel clarified. She inhaled the dream flower’s scent, closed her eyes, and then opened them again a few seconds later and leaned forward and kissed her wife.
She passed the blossom to Terlu.
Terlu cupped it in her hands and looked down at the sparkles that floated in it. She could ask it to show her any dream she wanted to see. But as she looked at the depths of the flower, she realized she didn’t want to be here, at least not right now.
She had wanted friends, people, conversation. She’d wanted it so badly in the library that she’d risked her life for this kind of companionship. And now, these two had welcomed her along, opened up to her, talked to her, included her in their jokes and stories, but instead Terlu just wanted to find Yarrow and share this with him.I don’t want just someone. I wanthim.Even though he refused to deal with his feelings about his family. Even though he hadn’t shared anything about his anger and his disappointment in them before they’d arrived. Even though she still didn’t know how he felt about her.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go,” Terlu told Rowan and Ambrel.
Neither of them noticed—they’d plucked another blossom and were holding it together, their fingers laced around the petals.
I want what they have,Terlu thought.
Laying her blossom gently on the ground, she left the lovers and the dream flowers in search of her silent gardener.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It took Terlu nearly an hour to locate Yarrow, and she only found him by narrowing in on where he wasn’t. He wasn’t with his family members who were working on restoring the cottages. He wasn’t with the talking plants fixing the cracks in the dead greenhouses. He wasn’t visiting the mini-dragons in the sunflower maze. He wasn’t helping his father with the roses, his uncle with the orchids, or his cousin with the tomatoes. And he wasn’t in Laiken’s workroom with additional relatives, family friends, and the late sorcerer’s supposed ghost.
She found him in the silence of a greenhouse full of miniature trees. He was bent over a tiny juniper. Focusing on the branches, he didn’t so much as twitch as she crossed to him. She watched him snip with tiny silver scissors.
Snip.
Snip.
Snip.
“Are you going to tell me how I should be with my family?” Yarrow asked.
“Do you want to be with your family?”
He snipped again. “No.”
Terlu sat cross-legged next to him and watched him continue to prune the juniper. She couldn’t tell why he was making each cut, buthe was doing it with precision so he must have had a reason. “Your sister showed me and her wife the dream flower greenhouse.”
“Ah. Did you like your dreams?”
“I didn’t try any,” Terlu said.
He paused, looking at her. “Why not? They’re harmless.”
You weren’t there,she wanted to say, but she didn’t. She wasn’t sure how he’d react to that. So she just shrugged.
