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Terlu was chilled to the bone by the time they reached Yarrow’s cottage. Within her wet socks, her feet felt like blocks of ice. Coming inside, she shed her coat.

“You can lay your wet clothes by the fire,” Yarrow said. He added more logs to build up the flames. The fire sizzled where he dripped on it. Immediately, he stepped back and stripped off his wet shirt.

Before, whenever he changed, she’d politely looked away or she’d been in the washroom, but this time, he’d acted so fast that she was looking straight at him.

He was… wow. So many muscles. Broad shoulders, yes, she’d noticed that with his clothes on, but she hadn’t seen his bare chest or bare arms. She stared at the way his arm muscles flexed as he shook out his shirt and draped it on a chair near the stove.

She hadn’t realized she’d made a sound—a chirp-like peep —until he looked over at her. Blushing hard, she pivoted to face the bed and pet the winged cat. “Nice kitty.”

Curled in the blankets, Emeral purred. Terlu felt her face flush all the way down her neck. Nice kitty? Ugh, why couldn’t she just—

She felt his hand on her shoulder. Warm. Solid.

Terlu turned and looked into his eyes. He had flecks of gold in his irises, swimming in emerald green. Her breath caught in her throat. He had the kind of eyes you could sink into.

“You’re dripping on the cat,” he said.

“Oh!” She jumped away from the bed. Scurrying over to the fire, she shed her clothes and pulled on a dry tunic that he handed to her. It was made of the softest wool, and it hugged her body. Act normal. “Should we heat up soup?”

“I’ll bake rolls,” he offered. “The dough should have risen by now.”

“When did you have time to make dough?”

He shrugged. “It relaxes me.”

“Oh. Oh! I didn’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t be taking the time to make dough.” She wished she dared say that she could think of another way to relax… She also wished she could command her cheeks to stop blushing.

He divided the dough and began rolling each chunk into a ball. He paused halfway through and frowned. “Honey butter,” he muttered as he turned toward the sink to wash his hands.

“I’ll get it,” Terlu offered.

She went to the icebox and found a full pot of honey butter.

Carrying it over to him, she noticed he was staring at her— Probably because he thinks I’m odd, not because he thinks…

anything else. She was certain he didn’t dislike her anymore, but that wasn’t the same as wanting to kiss her.

She tried to not fixate on his lips and instead she plastered a smile on her face as she held out the butter.

“A spoonful on each roll,” he said.

He didn’t move away as she scooted closer to spoon a heap of honey butter on each unbaked roll.

Without looking at him, she was conscious of his nearness—her skin was as aware of him as it was of the warmth of the fire.

She listened to him breathe as she spread the butter.

Her hand shook slightly, and she hoped he didn’t notice.

Stop being ridiculous. He barely tolerates me, and that’s only because I can read spells. She stepped away when she finished, and he slid the tray of rolls into the brick oven.

“What’s your favorite memory?” she asked him.

Yarrow began to shrug for the millionth time.

“You don’t have to answer.” She wasn’t sure why she’d asked, except she wanted to know more about him, to know what he was thinking and what he was feeling. Maybe if she could understand him… if he could understand her… the awkwardness would melt away. “My favorite memory is of an orange.”

“An orange?”

“I grew up on Eano,” Terlu said. “Lots of sandy beaches. Lots of guava and sweet-berry juice. No snow ever. My grandmother had an orange tree, a very special orange tree that had lived three hundred years, at least according to family stories. Not sure if that’s true; it easily could have been like my cousin’s pet koi that my uncle kept swapping out for a new fish every time it died.

Anyway, not the point. My grandmother’s tree bore fruit very sparingly—three oranges a year, if it felt like it—but they tasted like sunshine.

Sunshine at dawn on a perfect day. Everyone would compete to be worthy of one of these sunrise oranges, and she’d dole them out as a reward for special achievements.

Like one year, a kid down the street saved his sister from drowning in a riptide.

He got an orange. My aunt gave birth to twins.

She got an orange. Anyway, my parents wanted me to spend the summer working in their store, learning what it was like to earn a wage, but instead of stocking shelves like I was supposed to, I read—I’d come across this old book in my grandmother’s house, and it was written in an old Eanoan dialect that no one these days speaks.

People knew a few words here and there, but no one was taught to read it anymore.

So I taught myself.” It was the first language she’d ever taught herself, the first time she’d realized she had a knack for it.

Her parents had thought it was a waste of time.

A near-forgotten language. What was the point?

“On my grandmother’s birthday, I surprised her by reading stories from the book.

It was an old book of tales that her parents used to read to her.

She didn’t know how to read the language, even though she could speak it—she hadn’t heard those tales read out loud since her father had died.

” Even though Terlu’s parents hadn’t understood, had in fact punished her by not paying her for the time in the store (which she’d admitted was fair since she hadn’t done the work she was supposed to), it had been every bit worth it. “Grandma gave me an orange that day.”

“And it tasted like sunshine?”

“Like sunshine at dawn.” Terlu smiled as she remembered it. Some tastes you never forgot—they were too packed with memories. “It was the first time I realized I could be good at something. Before that… well, it was a memorable moment. Okay, your turn.”

“Um…” Yarrow shifted.

“You don’t have to.” She didn’t want to force him to share if it made him uncomfortable. She just thought… “It’s fine. I think the soup’s ready.”

He checked on the rolls. “A few more minutes.”

“Okay.” She busied herself with pouring water and setting out bowls and spoons. Over on the bed, Emeral stretched, spreading his wings out and then folding them onto his back.

Yarrow spoke into the silence. “When I was six or seven, I was given a plant to care for. After a few weeks, its leaves turned yellow, it developed spots on the stem, and the roots began to rot. I thought it had developed some kind of disease.” He paused.

“Wait, you said a favorite memory. I don’t know if this one qualifies. ”

He was talking. That was all she wanted. “It’s fine. Go on.”

“It was a nice memory, I guess, in the end. I went to my father, and he told me I’d overwatered it.

I hadn’t known that was possible. All I knew was that plants needed water, so I thought I was doing the right thing.

” He paused and took the rolls out of the brick oven.

The cottage filled with the scent of fresh bread.

Terlu ladled soup into the bowls, and she scooped some grouse into a bowl for Emeral. Hearing the sound of the food plopping into the bowl, Emeral perked up. He launched himself into the air and flew across the cottage, while Terlu and Yarrow sat at the table.

She’d missed this, at the library: having a meal with someone. I’m not going to jeopardize it by throwing myself at him. She didn’t need love. She just needed soup and fresh bread and someone to talk with. And he was, miraculously, talking.

“I was crying, and it was my tears that convinced my father I was ready, that I cared enough to want to learn. He started lessons that day on how to care for plants.” He continued the story while they ate.

“We went through an entire greenhouse, and he identified each plant and told me how to prune it, re-pot it, and water it. The next day, he asked me to lead him through and parrot back what he taught me. When I failed, he started over.”

Hot, the rolls tasted like honey-drenched clouds, and the soup was even richer than it had been the day before, now that the herbs had seeped into the broth. She split her attention between his words and the broth.

“Once I mastered one greenhouse, we moved on to the next.”

“You learned plant by plant,” Terlu said. “All of them?”

He shrugged. “Eventually. Took a bunch of years. But it only took a month until that plant—the one I’d overwatered—was healthy enough to bloom.”

“Your father must have been proud of you,” Terlu said.

“It was a good day. I wish…” He trailed off.

“What?” she prodded.

“I just hope he’s all right. That all of them are okay.”

“You said they’re florists, right?”

He nodded.

“Then there’s no reason to worry. A florist shop wouldn’t be anywhere near the palace or any place revolutionaries would strike.” She said it with as much conviction as she could. “I’m sure your family is fine, and we’ll get a reply from them any day now.”

Yarrow exhaled and a rare smile crossed his lips. “Thank you.”

She felt herself blush.

After they finished the soup and the bread, they cleaned up together, and Terlu, for once, didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with words.

It was a nice silence, side by side. It would be nicer if we were kissing.

But no, she wasn’t going to allow those thoughts to ruin a lovely moment.

He opened up about an emotion. And he told me about himself. That was a huge victory.

It wasn’t a trivial detail either. This was formative. Plant by plant, he’d learned to care for this place… Maybe that’s the way to fix it. She’d been trying to recreate Laiken’s spells, but he’d been a master sorcerer. “Maybe… I need to think smaller.”

Yarrow raised his eyebrows, listening, waiting for her to say more.

Pulling out the spells, Terlu spread them over the bed and studied them.

She could identify a few of the disparate parts.

What if she extracted a few lines of spell at a time and focused on fixing just a small facet of the greenhouse, instead of trying to tackle the entire structure?

If it were a smaller bit of magic she was attempting to work, then maybe the results wouldn’t be so…

wet. “The spell’s too large, at least for me.

It’s like you trying to care for a plant without knowing how.

I just don’t know enough to understand how much of what to do when, at least not in the way a sorcerer with massive amounts of training would, and there’s too much that can go wrong.

If I break it down into pieces… Like here.

” She pointed to a section of the text. “This line is for fortifying an individual pane of glass. In the context of the full spell, Laiken did it all at once, to seal the full greenhouse in one spectacular effort, but… I think I could adapt it to focus on healing a crack in a single windowpane, which might be a much more reasonable goal, at least at first.” She shook her head.

“But what if another greenhouse fails while I’m taking it slow? ”

He shrugged. “Slow is better than not at all.”

Terlu frowned at the spells, trying to rearrange the lines in her head. “Do you have any writing charcoal here?” She’d left the set she’d been using in Laiken’s workroom.

Opening a drawer at his desk, he withdrew a writing set. She sat cross-legged on her bed and began to work. Outside, the moon rose higher, spilling pale blue light across the snowy forest. Inside, the winged cat curled up by the hearth.

“You should sleep,” Terlu told Yarrow.

“ You should sleep,” he replied. “Especially if you’re going to work magic.”

She waved that off. She was close to an idea. “As soon as I finish this…”

Terlu fell asleep with her face smushed against her notes. Waking, she blinked at the moonlight streaming through the window. She hadn’t used the privy before falling asleep and now she desperately needed to. She dumped her notes on the table as she padded past it.

She used the toilet, swished some toothpaste in her mouth, and then stumbled out. Her limbs felt heavy, and her eyes were only half-open. She climbed back into bed, grumbling a bit at how much space the winged cat was taking up, and fell immediately asleep.

Hours later, when sunlight streamed through the window, Terlu realized that she’d crawled into the wrong bed.

It took a moment for the facts to penetrate her foggy-with-morning brain: she was nearer to the window than usual, the winged cat was sprawled across the other bed, and Yarrow’s arm was flopped across her.

It was nice.

Very nice.

And she should definitely not be in his bed, uninvited.

But if she moved, would that wake him? What was she going to say? What was he going to think? Did he know she was here already? Was he going to think she’d climbed into bed with him on purpose? And would that be a bad thing?

Yes, yes, it would. If she was ever going to move beyond friends—were they even friends yet?—with Yarrow, then she wasn’t going to do it by being sneaky. He deserved to have a choice.

Yarrow shifted in his sleep, curling around her. His breath warmed the back of her neck. She felt like she fit within his arms, like a book properly shelved.

She dithered so long about whether to stay or move that Yarrow woke up.

“Um, hi?” he said.

“Hi.”

“You’re in my bed.”

“Yes, I am.” She winced at herself. “I got up in the middle of the night and… uh, missed my bed.”

“Ahh,” he said.

He didn’t move his arm from around her.

Terlu searched for what to say. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, very well,” he said gravely. “You?”

“Very well.” Her voice squeaked a bit.

“Good.”

“I’m glad you slept well too,” Terlu babbled. “It was… warmer this way, even if it was a mistake. Because of the cold outside. There must be a draft from the window, but I couldn’t feel it. Because it’s warmer with two.” Oh, for the love of the sea, stop talking!

“It is warmer,” he agreed. Then: “It was a mistake?”

“Yes,” she said.

Should I have said no?

He began to withdraw his arm.

“No,” she said. Then winced. “I mean, yes, it was a mistake, but it was a nice mistake.”

“A warm mistake?”

“Yes,” Terlu said.

Yarrow slid his arm back around her, and she wondered what it meant. And then she wondered if she was being an idiot—and then she decided that even if she was being an idiot, that didn’t mean she had to continue being one.

Terlu twisted until she was facing him, within his arms, her breasts pressed against his chest. His eyes were wide, the flecks of gold brighter than she remembered. “I’d like to kiss you,” Terlu told him, “if that would be okay with—”

He kissed her.