“And so I came to Eliara for vengeance. A terrible reason, but it is the truth. And I would have carried it out, gone against the earliest teachings I’d learned when training to be keeper, had I not been stopped.”
Eris blinked, uncertain what to say. Lira spoke of teachings as if they were things Eris should know. But without Lira to teach them, how could she? The forest didn’t grant that sort of wisdom, only memories, tales of what had been. Woven in that were hints of lessons, but Eris hadn’t learned how to tease them out.
“Who stopped you?”
Lira looked up. Her eyes were wet, and she wiped the tears away. “A very wise woman.” She shook her head. “And so I stayed, creating a new garden here. It will never rival what once existed, but like what I see when I wander the emptiness of Elaysia, there are hints of what once had been. Echoes. That has to be enough.”
Eris studied Lira as she fell silent. Lines along the corners of her eyes spoke of the strain she was under. How much effort did she exert in trying to keep the queen alive? How much did she really help keep back the Conclave?
And how much longer could she go on?
Lira sighed. “I remember when you first worked with me. How much you rebelled even searching for a flower. Your sisters took to it quickly, willingly. But you, always so stubborn.”
Eris swallowed. Stubborn. Different.
And now Lira still wouldn’t work with her.
She almost asked about the message in the flowers, but old hurt came out instead. “I thought you didn’t want to teach me. You welcomed Jasi, Desia, and Ferisa so quickly, letting them choose their flowers so easily.”
Lira nodded, her hazel eyes going distant. “And I thought you didn’t want to learn. Had it not been for your mother pushing, I might have given up. Think of what we would have lost.”
“I didn’t know.”
Lira smiled sadly. “She did not want you to know. She suspected your potential even before I did, though she thought your sisters might have some potential as well. And they have some. Weaving messages in the flowers is not an easy skill, so in that, your mother was right.”
How had Eris not known that her mother suspected she would be a keeper? Why had she kept that from her? How had her mother known about the keepers?
What more did she not know about her mother?
They were questions she would never learn the answer. Her mother lay struggling against a sickness working through her, one that would eventually claim her life.
Eris would do anything to change that outcome. “How can I help?”
Lira inhaled deeply and ran her fingers along the side of her head. A strand of hair popped free and dangled in front of her face. The only other time Eris had seen her disheveled was after her capture by the magi.
“I…” She met Eris’s gaze, looking uncertain for the first time. “I’m not sure. Your abilities are so different than mine. Had I learned more before the gardens failed, I might be better equipped to teach. But now?” She shook her head. “I don’t know if there is anything I can even teach you.”
A knot formed in her stomach. This had been her fear. And if Lira couldn’t teach, then where would Eris go? How would she learn what she needed to help her mother? How would she be able to push back the Conclave?
“There is much I could learn from you,” Eris suggested. “I see the way you organize your arrangements, how that focuses the energy formed by them. That’s something I can’t learn from the forest.” All that knowledge, she needed to help her mother. But it was more than that. After what they’d done, she needed to know more about being a keeper to destroy the magi.
“Does it matter if you learn about flowers?” Lira asked. “As I’ve said, your abilities are different. You reach a depth I only imagine. But you work with age and time whereas the flowers grow and die in a season. As you’re a keeper of trees, I’m not sure anything I know can help.”
Eris swallowed. Could she have wasted her time coming here? Time that would have been better spent searching the forest for glimmers of lessons?
But no. Had she not returned to Eliara, she would never have learned of her mother. Eris would not have wanted to remain ignorant. And if there was anything she could do to help, she would.
“Is there anything you can teach?” she asked.
“I will see.” She shook her head. “I make no promises, Eris Taeresin, but I will see.”
Eris nodded. It would have to be enough.
Chapter 37
Eris stood next to Terran, fidgeting. Lira’s comments left her feeling uncomfortable.
She looked over the gardens. Sunlight slanted past the top of the palace, casting odd shadows. Some seemed to move, almost alive. The effect was unsettling.
The air was still, as if the wind itself waited on what would happen to her mother. It didn’t help that Eris could smell the sickness, could practically taste it.
“Do you know why Lira came to Eliara?”
Terran frowned, his hand pausing above the dirt bed he worked in. “I know she came here after the gardens were destroyed.”
Eris nodded. “She came to get vengeance on the magi.”
Terran stood and wiped his hands on his green jacket. He glanced toward the center of the garden, as if expecting Lira to come strolling toward them and overhear the conversation. “That’s not the way of the keeper.”
Eris laughed bitterly. “And if I were to go after the magi?”
He studied her. “I would help. You know I would.”
Eris wasn’t sure. Terran did not want her to go toward Saffra, as if he was afraid of what she’d do. After what the magi did to her—to Jacen and now all of Errasn—they needed to be destroyed. “You speak as if you know more about keepers than I do.”
Terran turned toward her. His eyes were troubled. “I’ve grown up around gardeners. My grandfather served the keepers. My father would have. I have known about keepers as long as I can remember. But knowing what you can do?” He shrugged. “After what happened to the Gardens of Elaysia, I never expected to serve. And then Lira summoned me. Now I learn alongside you.” He hesitated. “Something she said bothers you.”
“She won’t teach me.”
“She won’t or she can’t?”
“Does it matter?”
Terran shrugged again. “Of course it matters. With Lira, it always matters.” He looked back toward the bed of flowers he’d been working on. “You know that you’re different, Eris.”
Her heart pounded. Hearing Terran call her different hurt more than anything else. Always different. It shouldn’t bother her. And it usually didn’t…except this time it did.
He raised his hands and stepped toward her as he tried to soften the comment. “Listen—you don’t have the same connection to flowers as Lira. You have some—choosing a teary star tells me that—but I wondered if your connection to the trees made a difference.”
Eris sighed. “Lira won’t even tell me that. She thinks I can access more power than her. I tried reminding her about how little I know about arrangements and the way a proper arrangement can focus the energy drawn. All she promised was that she would try.”
“Give her time.”
“We don’t have time. Not with what I know the magi are doing. Not with what’s happening to my mother.”
Terran looked around the garden and then touched her arm.
Eris glared at him. “You’re still worried about what my brother said?”
Terran shrugged and swept his hat off his head, balling it into one of his hands. Dirt stained his knuckles, and Eris reached over and wiped it off. He closed his eyes as she touched his hand and took a deep breath.
“Worried isn’t quite the right word.”
“Then what? You have been avoiding me, haven’t you?”
“Eris—”
She shook her head. “You’re the one who pushed me to return. I would have stayed in the Svanth and listened to the trees. There were other lessons for me.” She suspected she could delve through the r
oots of the forest for years and still not learn everything the first keeper wove there. She would try, though. “At least there I have the chance to learn. Here, Lira won’t even look at me.”
“You know that’s not it.”
“And now you’re hiding from me because you’re afraid of my family.”
Terran met her accusing stare. “You’re still a princess. And your father…”
She shook her head. “I’m a keeper. And you are my gardener. My father will understand that.” Eris would do what she needed to make him understand.
“You think it’s so simple?”
“Why shouldn’t it be? Once I’ve learned what I need from Lira, we can return to the forest.”
“Just like that.”
Eris took a step toward him as a surge of annoyance bloomed within her. “What are you saying? That you don’t want to return to the Svanth with me? Will you make me find another gardener?”
She didn’t know where his reticence came from, but the idea of returning to the Svanth Forest without Terran left her feeling empty inside, like a week of rain without the sun.
Terran glanced around the garden before shaking his head and touching her arm. “You know I won’t do that. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
Terran sighed. “You’re not the only one with much still to learn. What you can do…the way you read stories from the roots of the trees in the forest…that’s nothing like any keeper I’ve ever heard about. I don’t know what it is you do, and I’m not entirely certain how to help you. I had hoped returning here would give you a chance to connect with Lira and I could…”
He trailed off and took her hands in his without looking around the garden, the familiar gesture something they’d done often while alone in the forest.
She understood now why Terran pushed so hard to return to Eliara. “You wanted Master Nels to teach you as well.”
Terran nodded.
Eris looked at his crisp, green jacket, and began to understand. “He won’t teach you?”
Terran sniffed. “As much as I’ve tried, he tells me there’s nothing more he can teach me. Oh, he’ll take all the help I’m willing to offer, he just doesn’t think he can instruct me as a gardener any longer.”
Since Lira felt much the same, was it any wonder Nels would, too?
Terran squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. I can be nearly as stubborn as Nels.” He led her away from the greenhouse, still holding her hand.
Eris wondered if he realized that he guided her toward the elms at the heart of the garden or if it were accidental. “There’s nothing I can do for her,” she whispered as they approached.
Terran nodded. “You told me that already.”
Eris nodded. “I was with her today. I just sat, searching for something I could do.” She shook her head. “I don’t know enough to help. Even were I strong enough here, I don’t know enough to help my mother.”
Terran pulled her to a stop and steered her toward him. She looked up into dark eyes that gazed upon her with concern. His hand held hers gently. She couldn’t help but notice how he smelled of dirt, a different earthy odor than the way he’d smelled within the forest. Not unpleasant, only different.
“If what I’ve seen means anything, your ability as keeper isn’t what makes you strong. Your ability is different than Lira’s, but not so much that you can’t use what she knows or share the connection with her garden.”
The garden felt unlike her forest. The connection more tenuous, delicate, than what she experienced within the forest. There, the heavy undercurrent of power raged like a river. The power around her within the garden was more like a breeze. And outside the palace, surrounded by nothing but grasses, it was little more than a stale wind.
“But she’s not willing to share what she knows,” Eris said.
“She said she’d try.”
“She did. But with everything else…”
As they continued past the elms, Eris glanced toward the trees, sensing a rising shift in the power around them. Lira would be in there. During the time Eris had sat with her mother, Lira had not come at all. Maybe she’d known Eris was there and had preferred to stay away.
They reached the door leading into the palace. Terran stepped away from her, as if unwilling to enter.
“You can come with me.”
He glanced at his dirty hands and stretched them out before him. “I’m sure the king doesn’t want me inside the palace like this. Besides, there are other things I can be doing for Nels, especially if I want to get him to help me.”
“I can make the work go more quickly,” she offered.
A smile spread across his face. “And leave nothing for me to do?”
“There are other things for you to do. I’m sure Jacen would find tasks for you if I asked.”
Terran’s eyes went wide, and Eris laughed.
She turned toward the door and stopped.
Next to the door was another arrangement of flowers. Neatly done, vibrant colors swirled together. Had she not seen the message earlier, she might have missed this one.
Hyanlillies and ulsens, greens and yellows with some deeper shades of red interspersed. Were those orchids?
“What is it?”
Terran stepped up alongside her. With his presence, she wished they were back in the forest, wished it would be just the two of them again. She looked over to see him frowning.
“I’m not certain. A message.” But one she couldn’t quite read. The message wasn’t as simple as the last. That had been bold, the meaning clear. This…this was something else. Too subtle to be one of her sisters. That left Lira, but why would Lira leave messages in the flowers for her to find, especially after what she’d said in the library?
Unless…was it some kind of test?
Lira had said she would see what she could do. Did she want Eris to learn on her own, much as she had while trying to find her flower? That had been a struggle, each day spent wandering the garden, each day learning in spite of herself, until she mastered more flowers than she realized.
A sudden surge of excitement worked through her. Maybe Lira expected her to be able to puzzle out the meaning in these displays. Perhaps they were lessons, or messages meant to start her lessons. Could that be why Eris hadn’t seen much of her since her return?
“Ask Lira what it says if you don’t know. She can’t expect you to have learned everything from your time in the Svanth.”
Eris shook her head. “I don’t think she wants me to ask. That’s not what this message is about.”
Terran shot her a quizzical look. “I thought you couldn’t read what was written here.”
“I can’t. But like with my flower, she wouldn’t simply tell me the answer. She wants me to work it out on my own.”
The idea excited her, the first thing to do so since returning to Eliara. As much as she’d hated it at the time, she had learned much while wandering the garden and sitting in the library. Besides, if she hadn’t spent so much time in the garden, she never would have met Terran. Though, perhaps she could have met him a different way.
She suppressed a blush, thinking of how he’d found her sitting atop the wall after she’d climbed up looking for a flower. While she’d found her teary star, she had gotten stuck and needed him to rescue her. And now…now he was her gardener.
Eris closed her eyes, wishing he would hold her as he did in the forest. There, his touch seemed to make everything better. Here, she had to figure it out on her own. If only she could figure out what she needed to do.
“You don’t seem disappointed.”
Eris inhaled deeply, tasting the fragrance from the garden. She had returned to Eliara to learn, hadn’t she? And if this was the way Lira intended to teach, then she would follow.
Only, she had no idea where to start to learn how to read what was written in the flowers.
Chapter 38
Terran came up with idea first.
Eris sat alone along a shadowed wall
of the garden atop a rough-hewn bench. She’d spent the afternoon combing through the palace looking for other messages, only to find another that she couldn’t read. By evening, she went looking for Terran.
Again, he’d been difficult to find. This time, rather than getting frustrated with him, she found a quiet spot in the back of the garden where she could simply sit.
With slippers off her feet and toes dug into the earth, she listened to the sounds around her. The air practically hummed with energy, attuned to the way Lira had grown her garden. Life swirled around her. Not just flowers and trees, but the insects crawling along leaves, the squirrels jumping from tree to tree, the birds flittering through the garden, some pausing to snap up a bug or nip at nectar. So much life.
And then there was her mother. Disease worked through her, eating at her, serving as a sharp contrast to the life around her. Only Lira’s touch kept her alive, holding the illness at bay. But it advanced, slowly, ever so slowly. Eventually, it would overcome even what Lira did to delay it, and her mother would be gone.
Eris breathed slowly, knowing it was the cycle of life. The priestesses had taught her that lesson at a young age. Now, as a keeper, she’d seen the way the forest cycled, the dying becoming food and sustenance for the living. Had not the first keeper taken her final breaths beneath the trees towering at the heart of the Svanth—trees she had planted and nurtured herself—before slowly turning into nutrients for the trees themselves? A cycle, one meant to repeat again and again, no matter what anyone did.
But there was something different about what she sensed.
Eris almost knew what it was. As she tapped into the energy of the garden, its touch tingled against her senses like a faint aberration.
“You could ask for help.”
Eris looked up. Terran leaned against the stone wall towering over them, shadows coursing across his face. As within the forest, the shadows didn’t quite obscure the look of concern he always wore when looking at her recently.
“I don’t think that’s what Lira intends.” She hesitated, uncertain how Terran would react to what she planned to say next. “I’m starting to wonder if maybe I need to return to the Svanth.”
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