Page 30 of Growing Memories (Valley of Sylveren #2)

Chapter Seventeen

Nevin—Sorry this took so long, but I had to hunt just for this much. Noc Lowe is liaising with the Coalition for waterway access, might know someone who knows more. Let me know if you want to get in touch.

Ollas’s friend who clerked for the Sentinels had finally written back.

If one could call this brief letter such; it was attached to a hasty copy of the Sentinel inventory logs.

Many items were scratched or blacked out, with a scribble at the bottom indicating transfer to an unintelligible name.

A jaggedness to the magicked pigment used for the copying work implied that parts of the logs had been torn away.

At the end of the last page was a weak impression of the Coalition’s seal of a wheel enclosing a coin.

He didn’t have a lot of hope that Ranger Noc Lowe could get any more news if the Coalition was involved, but anything was better than the pages of heavily redacted records.

Frowning at the sorry state of the “logs,” Ollas went into the storage greenhouse to check on the new tray of cuttings started from the delegation plants.

He knelt to observe them where they were stowed on the lower shelf.

All but one had fully converted from resembling grass to bearing blade-shaped leaves.

Further inspection revealed that the lone outlier wasn’t simply slower to change than its brethren—it had died.

Removing the dead plant from the tray, Ollas carried the pot back into the greenhouse’s main room.

He left the pot in the washbasin to be cleaned later and carried what remained of the plant over to the counter, stopping short of the compost collection bucket.

A physical inspection didn’t reveal any signs of rot or disease, no pest infestation or anything else that would indicate a need for the burn pile.

But there was also nothing that would easily explain why the plant had turned a deadish brown and gone crispy, as if it had dried out.

The soil around the brittle roots remained moderately wet.

A quick test with one of the soil probes reported good parameters, which were echoed when he checked the surviving starts, too.

A frown creased his brow. Ollas never expected a perfect success rate, and sometimes an individual simply didn’t thrive. But seedling death didn’t usually appear so at odds with the growing conditions. His failed plantlet looked as if it had been dehydrated.

Ollas summoned a touch of his magic and gently pushed it into a browned leaf. The plant didn’t absorb his magic so much as the drop of golden light shattered, breaking apart into the tiniest wisp of smoke and fading away.

“What happened to you?” Ollas murmured.

“Nev!”

Ollas turned to the greenhouse door, a smile already spreading across his face as he looked for her.

Eunny came in, a glass jar from her water propagation setup in one hand.

She set the jar on the counter, bumping her hip against his side before letting an innocent amount of space form between them.

Ollas cupped her cheek and went in for a kiss. Happiness zipped through him from head to groin when Eunny’s tongue darted out to tease his lips before she pulled back.

She pouted at him. “You get up too early.”

“Creature of habit. Got to be up with the sun.”

Eunny huffed a laugh. “Well, Professor, fancy some more experimentation?”

He’d rather do more experimentation of her, but there’d be time for that later. He made a noise of pleasant surprise when she showed him the explosive growth of her cutting. “This is amazing. Did you add something else to the water?”

“Nope. As you said, I guess they like us.”

Ollas gave her a quizzical look. She spoke in a light tone, but there was something veiled in her expression. He looked from her to the plant. “You mean, from us…sleeping together?”

“Or they just really like my new place,” she said. “Ever hear of that for imprinting enchantments?”

“No, proximity alone shouldn’t be enough to satisfy the spellwork,” Ollas muttered, more to himself than Eunny. He gestured to the dead plant he’d set on the counter. “Nothing about these has been typical or ordinary, though.”

Eunny glowered at it. “Unacceptable. You want for nothing. All the food and water a plant could ask for. Get to live all cozy inside. The least you could do is grow.”

“To be fair, they’re doing that part really well,” Ollas said. “One failure in?—”

She transferred her glare from the plant to him. “Don’t excuse their malicious compliance.”

“They’re plants, Eunny, they don’t have malice.

” Ollas paused, mouth twisting. “ Most don’t.

None that we’d grow in the school’s greenhouses do, anyway.

” He edged away, reached into his pocket, and withdrew a sealed jar with a tiny brush attached to the lid.

Uncapping it, he dabbed a light green powder onto the dry, flaky parts of the old vines that hung around the antechamber’s windows.

“Appeasing our future floral overlords?” Eunny teased.

Ollas shrugged. Trunk wasn’t a hotbed of activity, of either the magical or mundane sort.

Hard to say if the aged resident protection plant retained any of those instincts or if it had gradually lost them as it went creaky with age.

But, he figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

“We could always conduct more research. See if we can get the cuttings to grow more.”

She laughed. “Oh, Nev, I intend to.” His cock stirred in response to the way her voice lowered.

“However,” she continued, “I’d rather you have my full attention, and in the meantime, I’ve heard back from Dae about the baby plant she took home.

Transplanted like a champ, and it has healing properties. ”

“Really?” Ollas grabbed the notebook where he was keeping a record of the delegation plant experiments. “Did she say what the growing conditions are?”

“It was a short note, but I know it’s planted in contaminated dirt,” Eunny said. “Strong preventative qualities, not a cure.”

He copied down her words. “More than what I got back from the Sentinels, though that’s not really their fault.” He pointed to where the redacted logs sat on the counter. “We might be on our own for this. I’ve got another contact to try, but…”

Eunny perused the papers, which were more blackened bars and scratches than words.

She let out a low whistle. “You weren’t kidding.

Oh, great, more Coalition fuckery. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they inserted themselves, since they were part of the delegation, but this is ridiculous.

What do you need to censor in a report about a failed trade delegation?

Aside from them failing, I guess, but that’s a moot point. ”

“The Sentinels have a ranger working with the Coalition now. Maybe he’ll have better luck. But in the meantime”—Ollas gestured with his pencil toward her rooted cutting—“we have a shipment of soil from a containment zone. Want to try potting this up?”

“Sure. Need me to grab anything special?”

“The amendments the elective is using for the healing trial. Time to see if our theory about these plants wanting light magic holds up.”

Eunny left to gather the requisite materials from the Adept levels’ greenhouse while Ollas retrieved one of the enchanted terrariums being used to house smaller amounts of Rhell’s blighted soil.

When they met back up in Trunk, Eunny lifted her cutting. “Can I do the planting?”

“Of course.” Ollas offered her a pair of gloves, but she shook her head.

“I want to feel the soil, like a proper grovetender . I’ll be quick, promise.”

He hesitated. “Is that wise?” Even though the contact would be brief and they were in the Valley, the thought of her unprotected skin touching the corrupt ground made his hands shake with the urge to snatch her away.

“I won’t tell if you don’t.” She flashed him a quick smile, though her eyes remained tense. “Talk me through this again.”

He did, instructing her on combining amendment with the corrupted soil mix and the depth of the hole to make, reminding her to keep a light touch when firming the soil around the roots and stem of her cutting.

He poured a small amount of accelerant into the terrarium and gave her a fresh stirring rod, advising that she fluff the area around the stem.

Eunny nodded along, eyes glued to her task. Her bare finger swirled through the soil, her expression serious. “Tell me the timeframe we’re looking at again?”

“This is all guesswork,” Ollas said. “But if it goes as well as it did for Anadae, we could see changes by tomorrow. Morning, if it’s really fast.”

He watched Eunny, noting the tightness in her features. The fine sheen of sweat forming on her brow.

At the edge of his mind, he felt a slight tug of awareness. Of recognition. Of magic.

He went still, but Eunny was too consumed with her task to notice.

Magic. That brush against his senses, weak as it was, weak as his magic was, couldn’t be denied.

Ollas wasn’t a powerful mage, but he could recognize the arcane.

Had enough ability to identify the essence of magic, if not the signature, and what he felt now wasn’t from any branch he knew.

Which made sense; Eunny wasn’t an elementalist at all.

He was feeling Eunny’s light. Something hazy in the back of his mind warmed at the familiarity.

Slowly, he made the connection to the buzzy feeling when they’d had sex, the sparking sensations between their skin.

At the time, he’d been so enthralled with being with Eunny that he hadn’t done any critical thinking.

But as he tried to grasp the details steeped in euphoria, deeper memories stirred.

Ones that didn’t have the same blissful glow.

Their magic intertwining—he’d felt that before, too.

Ever so briefly, before everything went horribly wrong.

“Nev.”

Eunny’s voice broke Ollas from his musing.