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For an instant, within Yarrow’s arms, Terlu felt safer than she ever had, as if all was right with the world and everything would turn out just fine. But then he released her.

“We have to save Lotti,” he said.

She liked the “we.” It had been a long time since she’d been a part of a “we,” perhaps all the way back to Eano with her sister and cousins.

In the city and especially in the Great Library, it had felt like everyone was on their own, even before they all figured out their paths and she didn’t.

But as nice as the “we” was, she still grabbed his sleeve as he turned to charge forward. “Keep the sunflower wall to your left.”

Yarrow shook his head. “We don’t have time to solve the maze.”

“We don’t have time to get lost,” Terlu said firmly. “If we’re thorough, we won’t miss her. If we’re not, we’ll run in circles.” She was certain she was right about this, and she braced herself for an argument—but he didn’t argue.

A sharp nod. “You lead.”

She started forward, and he followed.

“Lotti!” they took turns calling. “Are you okay? Where are you? We’re coming!”

Above, the false aurora rippled, and the sunflowers turned their heads to face it.

If she wasn’t so worried, she would have been fascinated by the light show.

She’d never heard of a spell that could create such an effect, but then she hardly knew everything there was to know about magic.

In the library, she’d been responsible for whatever tasks the second floor, east wing librarian set for her, which often included rebinding old texts and sorting through donated material from retired sorcerers—some of which was interesting and important and some of which was decidedly not, though she was certain that the sorcerer who had cataloged the various ways to enchant socks to be tear-resistant found his topic of study intriguing.

She’d been more interested in why the long-gone sorcerer had been drawn to socks as his focus.

What led a person to devote their life to enchanted socks?

Similarly, what had led Laiken to devote himself to creating this greenhouse?

And why had he crafted this maze with its false sky and miniature dragons and sunflowers that—

Ahead, the row of sunflowers lifted their roots out of the soil and tiptoed into a new position before piercing the soil again.

Terlu gasped. “It moves .”

Yarrow trotted past her at a near jog. “Plants in here can do that.”

“Yes, but…” She knew the evergreens at the entrance had shifted, but she’d thought the maze itself would be stationary, though she supposed there was no reason it had to be, except for the fact that plants normally didn’t uproot themselves and wander about.

She kept pace with Yarrow, keeping the flowers to their left, but the effort felt pointless—if the maze was continually shifting, that made it unbeatable. “It’s cheating.”

“I never solved it, remember? This is why.”

“It can’t be solved if it rearranges itself.

” If the walls were constantly moving, it was impossible.

The sunflowers could keep presenting them with dead ends until they were too exhausted to continue.

“It could take years.” They could die of old age before the maze let them through.

It could hide Lotti from them for an infinite amount of time. “I’m sorry. This won’t work.”

Stopping, he eyed the stalks. “We could break through.”

“But the dragons…” A cramp squeezed her side, and she leaned over her knees to pant.

“If we’re quick…” He withdrew clippers from within his coat. “I hate to do this. It’s not the plants’ fault they’ve been spelled to behave this way.” With his free hand, he touched one of the sunflower leaves, as if in apology. “But we can’t abandon Lotti.”

She saw in his eyes how much he didn’t want to do it. “There has to be another way.”

“Any ideas?”

“If it’s endlessly shifting, Laiken would have had to solve it anew every time he wanted to visit his treasure,” Terlu said. “I think it’s likely he had his own secret path through the maze.” He’d liked both puzzles and secrets.

Above, she heard a yowl and then Emeral streaked by, chased by a flock of dragons. They flew like a swarm of bees, clustered together, their wings making a whooshing sound.

The key isn’t the sunflowers; it’s the dragons.

Maybe they could be tamed.

“Do you have anything to eat?” Terlu asked.

Yarrow grunted. “I don’t think now is the time—”

“Not for me. Do you have anything that a dragon might like?”

His face lit up. “Ahh!” Quickly, he began to unload items from his pocket: an egg with a blue shell, a chunk of cheese wrapped in a handkerchief, a handful of nuts in a little pouch, dried seeds, and nuggets of honeycomb.

“This,” he said, as he unveiled the honeycomb.

“Little dragons are pollinators. Perhaps they’ll be drawn to honey? ”

Terlu had many questions about how he had all these items—the nuts and seeds made sense, given the variety of plants in the greenhouse, but the cheese?

Where had it come from? She had similar questions about the flour he’d used to make the honey cake.

Did he trade for all of it? If he did, who facilitated the trades?

Was it the sailor who could be summoned with a raised flag?

Had that same sailor brought Terlu in statue form, or had it been another supply runner?

What had they thought of such a delivery?

Had they known that Yarrow intended to revive her?

How many knew Terlu was here? Did anyone know besides Rijes Velk and the supply runner?

So many questions, but this wasn’t the time to ask any of them.

Lotti was somewhere in the heart of the maze, likely scared, certain she’d been abandoned again.

Terlu wondered if anyone ever recovered from that—did you ever stop being afraid you’d be alone again?

“All right, how do we draw their attention so they notice the honeycomb?”

Yarrow moved with purpose toward the sunflowers. He opened the clippers and positioned the blades around one of the stalks, lightly touching the green—and he waited.

Above, the dragons howled.

They broke off pursuit of the winged cat and pivoted midair.

In arrow formation, they flew at Yarrow and Terlu.

Lowering the clippers, he held up the honeycomb in the palm of his hand.

Terlu tensed. She didn’t know what she’d do if the dragons attacked him.

Pull him to safety? Try to hit them away and hope they didn’t shoot flame? Throw egg and cheese at them?

The first dragon, a golden queen, swooped down and delicately broke off a bit of honeycomb with her talons. Another, a green-and-black scaled one, grabbed another chunk. A third. A fourth. Until the honeycomb was all gone.

“Pollinators,” Yarrow said.

The other dragons wheeled off toward the sky, searching for the cat, but the half dozen who had secured their treasure began to fly between the sunflowers with purpose.

“Hurry,” Terlu said. She ran after them, and Yarrow jogged beside her.

In front of the dragons, the sunflowers shifted out of the way, forming a straight path. Terlu and Yarrow followed the little dragons with the honeycomb to the center of the maze.

On top of a pile of watering cans, gloves, hats, pine cones, and various glittering rocks—the dragons’ treasure—was the little resurrection rose.

“Took you long enough,” Lotti complained.

While the dragons munched on the bits of honeycomb, Terlu and Yarrow sorted through the treasure hoard. It was an unusual assortment: an uncut ruby the size of Terlu’s fist, a single left-hand gardening glove, a stick shaped like a heart, a solid-gold brick…

“They didn’t hurt me,” Lotti explained. “They just scooped me up and brought me here.”

“Every time Laiken came to access the heart of the maze, he must have brought them a treasure,” Yarrow said. “They must have thought you were one too.”

“I am a prize,” Lotti agreed.

Kneeling by the stack, Terlu tossed aside a diamond. Yarrow picked it up and whistled. “I don’t know much about gems, but this must be worth the entire island.”

Lotti unfurled her leaves. “Ooh, let me see.”

He handed it to her, and she placed it in the center of her blossom. “It suits you,” he told her. “But I wouldn’t get too attached. It’s part of the dragons’ hoard.”

Sighing, Lotti set the diamond aside.

Terlu continued to sift through the tiny mountain of junk and jewels.

If I were a sorcerer who wanted to protect my secrets, this is precisely what I’d do.

Or maybe not precisely. She wasn’t sure she’d think of an ever-changing maze of sunflowers guarded by miniature dragons—that was rather specific.

A little golden dragon with obsidian-black wings broke away from the others and trotted toward them. He picked up the diamond with his talons and set it back into the center of the rose. He chirped wordlessly at her, nodded his head, and then waddled back to the honeycomb.

“I like that dragon,” Lotti said, closing her petals around the diamond.

At the base of the hoard, Terlu found it: a slim book, bound in green leather, with no markings on the cover or the spine. She extracted it from the pile and opened it.

“Yes!” she cheered.

“What is it?” Yarrow asked. “Is it the spell?”

“Better!” Terlu crowed, holding it up for him to see.

“It’s Laiken’s codebook.” She plopped onto the ground, cross-legged, and began to read through it.

“He was writing in First Language, but he mixed it with… ooh, that’s interesting.

I haven’t seen that dialect in a while. Knew it had to be connected to Ginian. But it’s an older variant.”

“Can you break the code?” Yarrow squatted beside her and peered at the book.

She beamed at him. “Oh, yes. Very much yes.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a chunk of chocolate. He held it out toward the dragons and then pointed toward the codebook. After miming it a couple of times, the dragons seemed to understand: the chocolate for the codebook.

A few minutes later, the three of them and their prizes exited the maze—straight through, with sunflowers opening a path to the door. Above, the aurora danced with the dragons as they cavorted in the sky, shooting tiny flames like they were stray fireworks.

Emeral was pawing at the greenhouse door. He’d clearly had enough of chasing and being chased by tiny dragons. Terlu picked him up, and he snuggled against her, tucking his head beneath his wings, as if he wanted to pretend the dragons didn’t exist.

“Thank you,” Yarrow said solemnly to the little dragons.

“We’ll bring more honeycomb and chocolate next time,” Terlu told them.

Yarrow glanced at her, his eyebrows raised.

“They liked it,” Terlu said in answer to his eyebrows.

“Yes, they did.”

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and he turned away before she could ask.

They hurried through the greenhouses and outside, down the snowy road, to the sorcerer’s tower. While Emeral flew to curl up on the hearth, Terlu shed her coat and immediately headed for the stack of encoded notes that Lotti had separated out from the rest.

“What do you need?” Yarrow asked.

“Paper,” she said immediately. She liberated a charcoal pencil from the array of beakers, jars, pots, and gardening gloves, while Yarrow located blank papers in a drawer in Laiken’s desk.

“How else can I help?”

She shook her head. She just needed to concentrate. “I don’t know how long this will take me…” She’d work as fast as she could, but it would take a bit of time to understand how Laiken constructed his code and then learn to use it with ease.

“I’ll bake you honey cake.”

Terlu grinned. He was a man of few words but an excellent understanding of what was required for a proper research project. “Thank you.” She kept reading.

“Thank you, ” he said. “You… don’t have to do this. You could have raised the flag on the dock and left on the next boat. Not everyone would have stayed.”

Placing her finger on her spot in the text, she looked up at him and studied the sadness mixed with hope in his deep green eyes.

A lock of black hair with a streak of gold had fallen across his forehead, and she fought the urge to push it away from his eyes.

How could she look into those eyes and then walk away?

The way he’d gazed at her when she first met him, like she was the answer…

The way he was looking at her now… It’s worth the risk.

He is worth it, whether he knows it or not.

And so’s Lotti. Softly, she said, “I’m sure your family would have come back if they’d known what it was like here. ”

He shrugged and then looked away. “I’ll return with honey cake,” he mumbled. With that, he bolted out of the tower, and she watched him leave, wondering how many thoughts and feelings went unvoiced behind those deep-as-the-sea eyes.

From across the table, Lotti said, “You save his greenhouses and that boy will walk across water for you.”

“That’s not why I’m doing this,” Terlu said. But it was nice that she knew he’d return, unlike when she’d initially arrived, when he’d fled at the sight of her. In the maze, it felt like they were facing the world together. She’d liked their brief time as “we.”

“Why are you doing this?” Lotti asked, curling her petals around another charcoal pencil.

Carrying it, she waddled closer to Terlu.

“He’s right—you could leave. You don’t have to stick around and help us.

You have plenty of reasons not to and no real reason to stay.

You aren’t connected to Laiken or me or any of the plants here. ”

But I could be. Rijes Velk had thought she could do good here.

She’d given Terlu a second chance. And I’m not going to waste it.

If she could be useful… if she could have a place here…

if she could have a purpose… that was worth any amount of effort.

It was why she’d left her family and her home island in the first place, and it was what she’d failed to find in the Great Library of Alyssium.

“Because I want to,” Terlu told Lotti, taking the spare pencil.

She did not say out loud: Because I need to.

She needed her second life to matter.