King of Devotion

by J A Armitage

  She nodded. “Everyone remembers. You didn’t talk about anything else for a week.”

  Maybe that was why the other gardeners were annoyed with me.

  “I’ve been experimenting there,” I said, brushing the thoughts of my staff aside. “With flowers, mostly.”

  Lilian smirked. “I assumed you’d just started growing five thousand kinds of strawberries.”

  I shook my head at her in mock disapproval, but couldn’t help cracking a smile. Lilian never lost an opportunity to tease me about my fondness for strawberries. I’d never told her the only reason I liked them so much was because they were the first plant we’d ever grown together, back when we were children studying simple botany.

  “That will be my next project,” I said. “Five thousand strawberry varieties, and maybe an apple tree just to mix things up.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

  Lilian grinned at me, her smile full of light. We sat in the most expansive and well-tended gardens in all of Floris, and of the thousands of unique blossoms and breathtaking floral displays, she captivated me the most.

  My gaze stayed on her smile even as it faded, my attention caught on the rosy curve of her lips and the dainty freckle just above her mouth. The air between us filled with electricity. My heart thudded in my chest. I wanted those lips—wanted to catch them with my own and taste Lilian’s sweetness.

  Her breath skipped. Her fingertips twitched against the stem of the flower, and she leaned toward me.

  I turned abruptly away and stared resolutely across the garden. In the distance, a tree danced in the breeze, and its glossy leaves caught the sunshine and tossed it back in fragile flashes of light.

  “You should go in.” My voice was strained and throaty. “The duke will be here soon.”

  Lilian hesitated for a long moment, and then her hand closed over mine. Reflexively, my fingers squeezed hers.

  “We have an hour still,” she said, and the weight of the words almost crushed me. “Can I see your garden?”

  It would be like showing her a piece of my heart. And just like my heart, it was already hers.

  My private garden was a long walk from the ones that ringed the palace. We passed through a rose garden, full of vivid pink buds peeking out of their tight casings, then a stand of willows ringing a pond that held ducks and a few elegant swans. Beyond that, was an orchard full of spring blossoms that perfumed the air. Lilian twirled and laughed as pink blossoms fluttered down on our heads like slow-moving rain. I watched her and wished I could save the joy on her face as easily as I could pluck a flower or harvest seeds for next year’s planting.

  Past the orchard, tucked into a walled-off corner, the stone walls of my garden stood heavy with climbing ivy. I brushed aside a rogue vine hanging over the wooden door. Behind me, Lilian stopped and hung back, as if she suddenly unsure whether she was really allowed.

  I gestured her forward.

  “You must be very quiet,” I said, making my voice low and solemn. “The dandy lions might bite.”

  She froze, then narrowed her eyes at me and swatted at my arm. “You think you’re funny, don’t you?”

  “I’m hilarious.”

  I pulled out the ring of keys that always hung from my belt and found the worn key that had once belonged to Hedley and was now mine. It fitted smoothly into the old lock.

  I pushed the door open and nodded at Lilian. She stepped cautiously over the threshold, and I guided her through the doorway with my hand on the small of her back.

  Her sharp intake of breath was everything I had hoped for. She turned slowly as she walked down the paving stone path, lips parted in amazement.

  I closed the door behind us and leaned up against it.

  “You like it?”

  “Deon,” she breathed, and then she didn’t seem capable of saying anything more.

  The garden was wild, every corner bursting forth in a profusion of leaves and blossoms. Vines swung overhead, draping from the stone walls and tree branches and forming a jungle-like canopy that filtered the light and made it fall on dappled patterns across Lilian’s face. The paving stones below were hedged in on every side by moss and succulents—ground covers with opposing needs, that shouldn’t be able to survive side-by-side in the same soil. They grew anyway, each patch of living carpet lush with life.

  Flowers surrounded us in more colors than I could accurately name. The pinks alone were overwhelming—rose and peach and mauve and salmon and magenta and a soft shade the color of Lilian’s favorite dancing slippers. Lilian passed under an arbor that dripped with pale purple wisteria, then stopped to smell a bearded iris the deep garnet of wine. White flutterbys from the nation of Skyla wiggled as Lilian passed them, and every tiny bloom on the compact bush launched itself into the air. The flock of white blossoms shimmered and soared around the garden, darting over vines and between tree branches and eventually settling on a patch of sky-blue poppies like snow on cool blue ice.

  Lilian stopped next to a cluster of gilded goldenrod and touched a flower. The tiny metallic blossoms rubbed off on her fingers like gold dust. She turned to me, frowning.

  “This shouldn’t be blooming yet,” she said. “Goldenrods don’t come in until autumn.”

  I pushed myself away from the door, the excitement from before bubbling again in the pit of my stomach. “I know.” I stopped next to her and looked down at the sparkling flowers. “It’s not the only thing that isn’t doing what it should.” I nodded toward a young apricot tree, which had been only a sapling when I’d transplanted it here and had, over the course of a year, aged impossibly fast and started to produce jewel-like fruits that seemed to only grow to the peak of ripeness and no more.

  Lilian searched my face, but I didn’t have answers for her. I wasn’t even sure I knew which questions to ask.

  “I don’t know why it’s like this,” I said. “Everything I touch decides to thrive. I’ve been cross-breeding flowers and growing things I’ve never seen before.”

  “Hedley taught you well,” Lilian said. “Better than I imagined.”

  She turned again, taking in the literal dancing flames at the heart of the orange dragontree blossoms and the soft white glimmers that pulsed beneath the caps of the near-black moonlight mushrooms. She faced me and stopped, and her hands settled against my chest. Somehow, my arms ended up twined around her waist.

  She looked up at me, eyes as blue as the poppies.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  The admission hung between us. I brushed my thumb against the small of her back.

  “I said I wasn’t nervous about meeting the duke,” she said. “I lied. I’m nervous. I’m terrified to leave this garden and leave my childhood and leave y—”

  The last word died on her lips. One of her hands clenched into a gentle fist against my chest.

  “Part of me always thought it would be funny if we ended up together,” she continued, more quietly. The corner of her mouth trembled, and I wasn’t sure whether a laugh or a cry was trying to escape. “Me with the golden hair, you with the golden eyes. Our children would look like little sunbeams.”

  She tried to smile.

  Everything inside me twisted, my heart retreating into my ribcage, my stomach vaulting up where my heart belonged.

  I brushed a strand of the golden hair from her cheek. “That would have been something.”

  Her back moved under my hand as she took in a deep, shuddering breath. “Deon?”

  “Lils?”

  She looked at me, her gaze jumping from one of my eyes to the other. She grabbed my shirt in her delicate fists and pulled me down to her. She hesitated when her lips were inches from mine, and the lemonade scent of her breath warmed my mouth.

  I closed the gap. Her lips were as soft as I had imagined and sweeter than strawberries. They moved against mine, gently at first and then with a hunger that mirrored my own. She pressed her body closer as she fell deeper into the kiss, everything about her soft and yielding
and perfectly formed to fit me.

  A thousand years of that embrace would have been too little, and when she pulled away, it was as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. Birds chirped around us, and the flutterby blossoms’ petals quivered on the poppies.

  “I’m going to marry the duke,” Lilian said. “I have a duty to Floris. I’m going to do my duty, and I’m going to try to be a good wife.”

  Slowly, gently, she ran one fingertip across my bottom lip. The touch tickled and sent an unbearable tingle down my spine. I froze, afraid of the consequences of allowing myself a single inhale.

  “But you will always be my first love,” Lilian whispered. “And you will always have a home in my heart.”

  She looked over my face as if trying to memorize it. Then, before I could blink, she turned away and headed back down the garden path. I watched her go, and it was a long time before I dared move again.

  26th March

  I stabbed my spade into the soil, breaking up the clumps with far more force than was necessary. Once the dirt was broken up, I used my hands to mix in heaps of rich, fragrant compost.

  We had tools for this sort of thing, and it was the kind of work that usually got delegated to the apprentices. After yesterday with Lilian, though, I needed hard physical labor. It would tire me out and make it easier to sleep, hopefully without my dreams replaying that kiss over and over in my mind.

  In the meantime, I fixed my thoughts resolutely on the upcoming Spring Flower Festival.

  It was an annual event, our chance to show off new plant varieties, trade tricks, and seeds with horticulturists from other nations and compete with breeders and gardeners from all around the world. It was an enormous event and my first-ever as Head Gardener.

  The list of things to be completed over the next month overwhelmed me, and I welcomed the chance to run over our to-do list in my mind.

  My staff and I needed to harden off the thousands of seedlings we would sell at the festival, cut the blooms the palace florists would arrange into stunning displays, set up the elaborate garden galleries, finalize the schedule of speeches and classes that would be offered throughout the event, and, most importantly, pack up the thousands of tulips and tulip bulbs that were the highlight of the event every year. That was to say nothing of the other tasks that made up each day, from feeding the roses to making sure our youngest garden apprentice, Aspen, was managing to avoid overwatering the greenhouse cacti.

  I finished spreading the compost and began planting the host of summer-blooming bulbs that would line this new walkway: fat pink begonias, showy orange cannas, and cheerful yellow lilies with their speckled faces. The path would be beautiful. I took a moment to feel gratitude that, at least, Lilian would be able to see these flowers when they bloomed. She was the heiress to the throne of Floris, after all, which meant the duke would move to the palace after their wedding.

  Knowing Lilian would marry another man made every corner of my soul ache. But even though I was losing my love, I wouldn’t lose my best friend. Not entirely. She would still be here, and I would still grow flowers for her hair.

  It had to be enough.

  When the morning chill had been burned off by the sun, I buried the last bulb and stood to stretch. I tossed my tools atop the compost in my wheelbarrow and wheeled up the path to the palace. Colorful poppies waved at me from either side of the walkway, their petals like ruffled orange silk or striped yellow and white chiffon. And there, up ahead, were the Queen’s Tulips.

  Floris had gardens to rival any in the world, but when it came to our tulips, there could be no rivalry. Their variety and abundance seemed to grow by the year, and the blooms near the palace were the brightest jewels of them all.

  They glittered in the sunshine as I approached, their waxy petals shimmering with gentle iridescence. Queen Rapunzel had bred these tulips shortly after her marriage to King Alder, and she had spent years refining and perfecting the variety until they were beautiful enough to take my breath away. I had never seen a mermaid, but the way the tulip petals sparkled in the light made me think these flowers must look like mermaid scales, or perhaps like gossamer fairy wings or gleaming unicorn horns. They came in a dozen multicolored varieties, but every strain bore the same unearthly sense of magic.

  Hedley had told me time and time again that it wasn’t magic, just patience and a keen sense for selective breeding. I still didn’t believe him. The tulips were enchanting. It was a relief to know that no matter how much work I had to do before the Flower Festival, these dazzling flowers would carry the day.

  Except…

  My heart pounded as if urging me to pay attention. I stopped walking and set down the wheelbarrow, then approached the tulips nearest the palace. They were sitting in the shade of the castle walls, so perhaps—

  But no, it wasn’t a trick of the light.

  The petals had turned gray.

  I knelt and bent across the wide bed of tulips that ringed the base of one of the palace towers. The blooms here had petals of variegated champagne-gold and peach, or at least, they were supposed to. But a few of the flowers, those closest to the palace walls, had turned the same dull, ashy shade as the stone behind them.

  I touched one of the petals, very gently. It was soggy, and the normally stiff leaves hung limp. The stem seemed ready to drop with the weight of the bloom—or what had once been the bloom. I couldn’t quite call the sad thing atop this plant a flower.

  Tulips didn’t usually suffer from root rot in the ground, at least, not in our gardens. If there was any plant we knew how to keep happy, it was these.

  Even so, something had happened—someone must have overwatered, or the shade of the palace had allowed too much moisture to settle into the bulbs. I made a mental note to talk to the tulip specialists about this, although I didn’t relish the thought of taking Jonquil to task for neglecting some of his plants.

  Unfortunately, that came with the territory of my new job.

  “It can’t be all be private gardens and losing the woman of my dreams,” I muttered to the dying tulips.

  They didn’t answer.

  Jonquil received the news as graciously as I’d expected.

  “Are you accusing me of something?” He folded his arms across his chest, his white-blond eyebrows lowering in anger. He was a good decade older than me and a head taller. He narrowed his ice-blue eyes.

  I stood my ground. “You’re a tulip specialist. Something is wrong with the Queen’s Tulips. I’m just letting you know.”

  “Something is wrong with a handful of the Queen’s Tulips, out of thousands,” he corrected, voice thick and dismissive. “You think that’s worth calling a staff meeting over, sir?”

  The word dripped with sarcasm. I clenched my jaw and forced my face to stay neutral.

  “I just want to be sure that if we’re overwatering that area, we stop doing it.”

  Behind him, the other tulip specialists, Myrtle and Olive, watched us in silence. I’d called all three of them to the bulb storehouse to discuss the issue, but only Jonquil had spoken up so far.

  “The festival is coming up,” he said. “We have better things to do.”

  “Then handle this quickly, and you can move on.”

  We locked gazes, testing strength against strength. He was bigger and older, but I was Head Gardener. Finally, he tore his attention away from me and scoffed.

  “Fine,” he muttered.

  “Thank you. The Queen’s Tulips are being entered into several festival competitions. We need to be sure they remain healthy.”

  Cautiously, Olive raised her hand. She was only a few years older than me and new to the palace. “I think it might be my fault,” she said. “I’m usually responsible for that area, and I’ve been so busy packing up the Cream Puff and Angelique bulbs that I may have been neglectful.” She glanced at Jonquil. “I’ll look into it.”

  I shot Jonquil a look as if to say, was that so hard? He ignored me and tapped an impatient foot.

  “That’
s all, thank you,” I said. “Dismissed.”

  Jonquil seemed as though he had a few more thoughts to share at the notion of being dismissed by me, but he thought better of it when Myrtle gave him a contemptuous look on her way out. He tossed me a dirty glare and strode out the door. Olive watched him go, then shrugged a shoulder. One of her brown braids slipped off her shoulder at the movement.

  “Don’t know why he’s got such a chip on his shoulder,” she said. “You’d think he’d just be glad to be working at the palace.”

  “I’ve stopped worrying about it,” I lied. “We’re all stressed about the Flower Festival. Things will cool off once it’s over.”

  She drew her lips toward one corner, her face a comical picture of skepticism. I laughed, and she shook her head and traipsed out of the warehouse and into the bright sunshine.

  I turned back to one of the dead flowers I’d placed on one of the worktables in the warehouse before I’d called our meeting. The tulip’s bulb was rotten, and the plant gave off a sickly sweet odor I hadn’t noticed before amid the breeze and the fragrance of the other blooms.

  I had grown wondrous plants in my private garden—plants that shouldn’t have been able to exist, at least, not in those growing conditions or this season. And yet everything flourished in a way I couldn’t just put down to my long apprenticeship and good judgment. And, I’d heard of people having plant magic before. Some gardeners had an affinity with the earth and with growing things. A magician gardener had first created the dragontree with its flaming blossoms and gentle heat.

  Perhaps, I was another such person.

  I held a hand over the tulip bulb and tried to push life back into it. I concentrated, forcing all of my attention and focus into the flower and the air between us, straining for any hint of magic or subtle energy. I squeezed my eyes shut and imagined the bloom growing bright and strong again.

  I opened my eyes.

  Nothing had happened.