Page 2 of Shift of Heart (Shifter Lords #1)
Moira and Tess gathered around, and a shuffling from the back revealed Ash, yawning and stretching as he walked over.
He was a dryad who lived in the shop and one of my best friends.
Ash was tall and lean, with golden brown skin and tawny hair streaked in gold and light brown.
His eyes were a strange moss color and changed to a stunning emerald when he performed magic.
If anyone were closer to the earth than me, it was Ash.
Every few months, he had to return to his tree to refresh his magic, but for the most part, he was here helping out during the busier parts of the year.
It always felt odd when he wanted to watch me perform magic, but when I asked him, he’d given me an odd look and merely said, “You are the heartbeat of the earth, Evie. No greater life magic exists. I am merely the power of a single Heart Tree. You are the world.”
I had no idea what he meant by that, but it made me feel weird, so I didn’t ask him to explain.
Moira, Tess, and Ash gathered chairs and put them around me in a semicircle. Shaking my head, I closed my eyes and steadied my breath.
Every week, I added some kind of blessing to Hattie’s flowers.
She had no idea, nor was I sure she’d welcome it if she did.
But it kept her coming back to us, and it was something positive I could do when the rest of my magic was so dangerous.
I liked building her bouquets because it was something small I had control over while the rest of my life spiraled.
“What shall we do this week?” I asked.
“Last time she was in, she mentioned her hips were hurting,” Moira said.
A healing blessing. Always a good one and easy to perform, but my magic strained and pushed against me, so I wanted to do a little more.
“She mentioned she gets pretty lonely in that house,” Ash said. “Maybe something to bring more visitors or opportunities to get out of the house?”
I nodded. “Both of those are good. Tess?”
The banshee’s reaction made me smile. Even if she didn’t mean to, the breeze from Tess’s sigh rattled the wind chimes and made the plants sway.
“I suppose if I have to come up with something…” Tess paused as she thought. “She mentioned her favorite restaurant no longer delivered to her house.”
There wasn’t much I could do about that. “Anything else?”
Tess frowned. “She said she likes it when the peonies are in season, and she wishes she could grow them here.”
A slow grin curved my lips. “Ah. Perfect. We can definitely help her with that.”
A soft green light trickled from my fingertips, and I wrapped my hands around Hattie’s vase, keeping my intentions firmly locked in my thoughts.
A swirl of pink flowed over the green—a small spell for pain relief and ease of movement, followed by another swirl of orange, the color of warmth and nature, to open Hattie up to the possibility of more social gatherings.
When the inevitable crimson sparks followed at the end of the spell, I pretended not to notice and filed the knowledge away in the deep recesses of my mind that liked living in the delusion that I was not a freak of nature.
Growing peonies was another matter, but I had that well in hand. When the spell had soaked into the vase and the plants, I smiled and flicked my fingers, shaking the rest of the magic away.
My audience clapped and whistled, making me laugh. “Cute, guys.” I waved my hands at them. “Let’s hurry up and get the shop cleaned up so we can make this delivery.”
“If I had a scorecard, it would be a ten out of ten! You could ruffle my blooms any day!” Moira called, as everyone scrambled out of their seats.
She went for a broom. Tess floated in the air and investigated every nook and cranny for any weaknesses in the wards and protection spells woven throughout the shop.
Ash brushed his hands over the bottom of all the potted plants, checking all the roots and nutrition.
Today, he winced only once when he touched one of my aloe plants.
He picked up the small pot and hid it behind his back to take with him when he retreated to the back.
I pretended not to notice. Ash would “unlove” it for me and return the plant to the front once he’d depleted some of the magic I’d added to its roots.
Normally all was well, but when I first started siphoning my magic into the flora, he had to move some plants away from the brunt of my attention with a gentle warning. “Sometimes you can love something a little too much, Evie.”
As an apology, I had Ash double-checking all the plants a few times a week to ensure I wasn’t going too overboard with my “love,” as he put it. I was getting better, but sometimes I added a little too much oomph to one versus spreading it out to all my plants.
I counted out the registers and wiped down the area before picking up my glass mister and paying some extra attention to the orchids blooming in the window.
Fredericksburg wasn’t nearly as humid as Seattle was, so some of the plants I’d brought with me needed a little extra TLC while they acclimated.
And some, like the tender orchids before me, never acclimated at all, and I was keeping them alive by sheer force of magic.
It was a small sacrifice considering how long it took them all to re-acclimate to me when I returned with the new magic boiling in my veins.
For a long while, I thought I’d never be able to use my Floromancy again, but all it took was time.
And even though my magic had eventually come back stronger than ever, time would never heal my wounds from that night or the changes the attack had wrought in my soul. But every day I woke up still myself, still Evie , I counted it as a blessing.