Page 46 of Growing Memories (Valley of Sylveren #2)

Chapter Twenty-Six

At such an ungodly hour, the university’s grounds were deserted.

Across the courtyard, Eunny picked out movement; a few people could be seen inside the elementalists’ Towers through the atrium’s massive glass windows.

The Heartwood was softly aglow, too, though no sound drifted outward as Eunny and Ollas hurried past. Everything was lit in the bluish cast of pre-dawn, dark but not so dark that they couldn’t see the path as they ran to the furthest of the six greenhouses.

Eunny had made the journey so many times by now she figured she could do it in her sleep.

Nervous energy made her hand shake as she pulled open the greenhouse door.

What if they couldn’t get the cutting to flower?

Or worse, got it to flower but not set seed, and then her mother showed up with enough Coalition muscle to take the plant by force?

Tinkering with her magic when she was tired, stressed…

Her control was already questionable. If the imprinting spell kicked up, if she panicked again, if?—

Ollas gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “It’ll be fine. I know you can do this.”

Eunny cracked a weak smile. “Or I’m about to fry?—”

He took her chin between his fingers, muffling her words with his lips. “Don’t even think it.” He released her and went to turn the interior lamps to their lowest setting. “I’ll get fresh soil.”

“I’ll grab the plant.”

Eunny ducked into the rear antechamber. The cutting was tucked behind several larger plants, safe in its small jar.

When she grabbed it, an electric tingle zipped over her fingers as the leaves stretched against their glass walls.

The tugging in her head intensified for a moment, causing her eye to twitch.

“Stop it,” she whisper-admonished, heading back into the greenhouse’s main room. “I’m going, all right?”

She watched Ollas portion out some amendment and give it a proper mix with blighted dirt.

Eunny hoped it would be enough, that it would matter at all.

Help, in some small way, so feeding the plant didn’t rest solely on her.

On them. If she’d learned anything from her time at the Grove, it was a greater respect for the amount of energy a plant put into flowering.

Accelerating the process would demand more magic than she’d used in a long time.

Six years. She hadn’t lost her magic in a literal sense, but the practiced ability to maintain steady energy and control, that would have lapsed.

The raw source was still within her, but she remembered all too well how magic could escape when one’s control was low.

How magic could take. True, she’d been exhausted when the imprinting spell was first activated, her inner well drained practically dry, her mind too sapped to put up much of a fight when those seeds had called.

But she’d been more practiced then. Confident.

Willing to call herself a mage, a mender, rather than a fake mundane trying to be handy and crafty.

Ollas scooted a clay pot full of soil mix in front of her. “Ready?”

Eunny put her hand on the jar, fingers hesitating over the cork lid.

“No,” she admitted. “But I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“You do,” Ollas said. “We can leave for Rhell right now, and there’s the?—”

She shook her head. “It won’t make it.” She rubbed the glass with a finger. The veins on the cutting’s leaves were starting to glow with a faint, flickering light. “Besides. Running and hiding? I think I’ve done that long enough.”

“What can I do?” he asked.

She offered up her hand. “Keep me grounded.”

He hesitated, his fingers curled away from her even as his palm hovered above. “Eunny…”

She reached out to graze her fingertips across his cheek. “I remembered. Nev, you didn’t make me lose control. Menders tap into others’ light all the time in practice.”

His head bowed. “The seeds were in my pocket when I reached out. If I hadn’t done that, we never would’ve triggered the imprinting spell. It’s my fault.”

Eunny cupped his face between her hands. “It’s not. Neither of us could’ve known.” When his gaze remained downcast, she gave him a small shake. “I forgive you, Nev, okay? Can you accept that?”

Ollas turned his head so he could press a kiss against the palm of her hand. “If you can accept mine.”

“Deal.” Eunny took a step back and offered her hand again. “Ready?”

Ollas laced his fingers through hers. “Yes, but I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do.”

“You’re the grovetender, Professor. If you notice me going off into the weeds, do something teacherly.”

Eunny reached for a thread of her light, mentally taking hold against the increasingly familiar pull as the magic tried to reach for the cutting.

She gently rubbed one of the cutting’s leaves between her thumb and forefinger, letting her magic go.

The glowing line of light coursed from her fingers into the glossy green leaf, filling the stems and branches as it followed the pull down into the soil.

The veining in the leaves went from a flickery shine to a blaze of gold.

Eunny tensed as her flow of magic surged. Panic welled up as she fought the plant for control, instinctively resisting the pull.

“It’s okay,” Ollas murmured. “It needs the energy. Just don’t let it boss you around.”

She exhaled, her breath coming in long and shaky gasps, but she let more of her power go in a steady stream.

She kept her mental touch firm but not restrictive as the cutting drank up their magic.

She could feel the plant filling, magic accumulating within it as if the plant was a vessel.

It left her with a vague yet satisfying impression, as if the veins of each leaf, once sufficiently filled, dropped to the back of her awareness like boxes ticked on a checklist.

When the last leaf was full, the flow of magic abruptly reversed. A strange current zipped back up to burst along Eunny and Ollas’s joined hands. Eunny yelped, more out of surprise than actual pain from the shock, but she dropped Ollas’s hand as she jumped back.

“Nev!” she immediately ran her hands over him, across his face, down his chest, questing out with her magic for any sign of injury. “Are you okay?”

He laughed, catching her hands and dropping his head to give her a reassuring kiss. “Yes. I’m fine, love.”

“What the fuck was that?” she asked, frowning at her hand and shaking it to remove the phantom tingle from being shocked.

“I think it’s the imprinting spell.” Ollas peered intently at his hand, calling up a weak spark of his own magic as he probed one of the leaves. “The way the spellwork was laid into the plant… I’ve never seen anything like it. We don’t apply enchantments like that here.”

They both looked down at the pot. The plant hadn’t grown up so much as out, its leaves so thick they almost looked swollen. It burst with dozens of deep pink buds the size of her thumbnail.

Eunny puffed her cheeks out. “Well, that’s disappointing. I was hoping for a bit more drama. Fit the mood.”

Ollas snorted, kissing her again before gesturing toward the plant. “Look at the buds.”

The tightly furled, immature blooms were lit from within, the intensity wavering with tiny pulses like a heartbeat.

She nudged one with a glowing fingertip.

It didn’t grow, but it and the other blossoms hummed in response.

She could sense traces of her and Ollas’s magic in each bud.

The nascent bloom’s essence had a malleable quality, a sponge-like feeling to her magic, eager to absorb.

The pulling sensation she’d been resisting for months, the feeling of restless certainty, emanated from each tiny flower-to-be.

When she fed in just a drop of her magic, the bud immediately sucked it up.

This time, unlike when she’d tested the handful of seeds six years ago, she felt a soft plucking motion at the edge of her mind, as if the bud was incomplete.

“They’re Eyllic,” she murmured.

Though she didn’t look away from the plants, Eunny felt Ollas turn beside her in question.

“I was brought along for the delegation to check the veracity of some goods supposedly being negotiated for the deal. But really, my mother wanted me to see if these were legitimate healing plants.” She glanced at Ollas.

“But why would the Coalition want seeds for a plant that can only act as a preventative for the poison? Dae and Ezzyn didn’t work out their containment wards until years later.

They couldn’t have known then that we’d have a way to control the spread at the expense of making the corruption stronger. ”

“She wanted you to test the seeds… Seeds that had a strong imprinting spell enchanted into them,” Ollas said slowly.

“Do you think the imprinting spell was meant to keep the supply restricted?”

“At least at first. Their bloom cycle has some unique parameters,” Ollas said with a wry smile. “You did say that the Coalition only cares about profit. Even as a preventative, these plants are valuable.”

But engaging in self-serving trade like that with the Eyllics during wartime wasn’t allowed.

The rest of the Empyrean Territories would’ve blasted Graelynd for encouraging profiting off a humanitarian crisis like that.

Eunny wasn’t versed in the terms of the alliance between the nations, but she guessed that monetizing potential cures, not to mention using the trade delegation as a front for those shady dealings, went against the agreements the Territories had with each other.

And it wasn’t even Graelynd doing it, but the Coalition.

The Coalition who’d orchestrated the delegation.

Who’d gone to great lengths to recover the strange plants.

Bioon hadn’t seemed bothered by Eunny’s reveal that the plants were dying.

The Coalition had trashed the records regarding the seeds, stolen what they’d thought were the remainders of the plants.

Bioon, who’d shown up on behalf of the Coalition to have an interest in the elective.

Who had Ollas and Rai supplying progress reports at a ridiculous rate, which were then being sent off to some random corner of rural Graelynd.

Her mother, who came with her fucking threats disguised as a deal.

So many parts, yet none of them fit together in a way that made sense.

It needled at Eunny, but the last piece refused to come clear.

“Have you heard about anyone else taking notice of these plants?” Eunny asked. “Aside from Zhen.”

Ollas shook his head. “Rai knew I was dabbling, but they’re unrelated to the work we’re doing with the elective, so we didn’t discuss it much. Or, they were unrelated, but Ezzyn mentioned the way they change in heavily poisoned ground, and those could be interesting?—”

The sound of footsteps pounding toward the greenhouse caused them both to look up.

Bioon, flanked by two men in combat leathers, appeared in the doorway.

Dressed all in black, her expression a cold mask—Eunny could see why her mother was known informally as the Scourge of the Coalition.

Bioon strode forward, exuding arrogance with every step. “Eunji, give me that plant and?—”

There’d be no reasoning with her, not while Bioon viewed the greenhouse as yet another domain she’d conquered.

But in all the frenzied hours Eunny and her friends had spent strategizing, reasoning with Bioon had never been part of the plan.

Eunny glanced at Ollas. He gave her a tiny nod. “Go!”