Page 5

Sure enough, Terlu found the next door, framed in the same delicate ironwork as the others.

“How many greenhouses are there?” she asked as she opened it.

She was proud that her voice only shook a little, even if it didn’t fill the cavernous room.

She spoke louder. “And do these count as multiple greenhouses, or is it a single greenhouse with multiple rooms? If so, are they greenrooms? No, that doesn’t sound right.

Greenhouses within a greenhouse.” She’d studied linguistics extensively, but none of the texts she’d read had answered this specific question.

Language was rife with oddities. It was one of the things she loved about the discipline.

A single smaller room, the next greenhouse was filled with shelf after shelf of pots.

Inside, it was the perfect temperature. It reminded her of the first day of spring in Alyssium, when people filled their window boxes with seedlings and aired their freshly washed sheets out on their balconies.

She walked farther in while the winged cat purred on her neck.

The vast majority of pots only held soil, but a few had a green shoot punching through like a tiny fist raised in victory. Next to one was a trowel.

Stopping, Terlu stared at the trowel. Her knees felt watery, and her lips curved into a smile. “There is someone here.”

A gardener.

Someone had been tending to these pots, planting new seedlings or bulbs or whatever was in the soil.

These plants weren’t overgrown and neglected; they were new growth, clear of weeds and debris.

“Hello? Hello!” She rushed through the rows of pots into the next greenhouse—and walked directly into the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.

It was a room full of roses.

Everywhere she looked, roses climbed out of pots and over trellises, up the windows and into the cupola, every shade imaginable: pink, yellow, white, champagne, sky blue, purple, fuchsia, coral, dusty pink, salmon pink, deep red, an even deeper red so dark it was almost black…

And the scent! It was intoxicating. Terlu breathed it in.

It was such a rich, luscious scent that it made her feel as if she were floating on clouds at sunset.

The cat sneezed.

“Don’t be like that,” she said. “It’s nice.”

He stretched his wings and flew up toward the rose-coated rafters.

Her shoulders felt instantly colder without him, and she wished he’d come back.

Eyes up toward the ceiling, Terlu followed the cat as he soared, emerald feathers extended, across the greenhouse.

She was so intent on watching the cat that she nearly missed seeing the man.

On his knees next to a rosebush with an overabundance of pale pink buds, a gardener was pruning dead sprigs. His back was to her, and he had one basket next to him filled with twigs and a bag that was filled with clippers, trowels, and other tools.

“Oh!” she cried. “Hello, hello!”

Startled, he dropped his clippers as he jumped to his feet. The clippers clattered onto the slate as he swiftly turned to face her.

Without thinking about whether she should or not, whether it was appropriate or not, whether it was welcome or not, Terlu threw herself forward and hugged him.

She wrapped her arms around him, pinning his arms to his sides, and she squeezed, her cheek pressed to his chest. It had been so very long since she’d touched anyone.

Clinging to him, connecting with him, made her feel like she was really, truly here and whole again. “I’m alive, and you’re real!”

A second later, she realized she was hugging someone she’d never met and who might not want to be hugged, and she sprang backward—and the moment of connection was over. “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have— I’m so terribly sorry. I won’t do that again.”

He looked shocked, as if she’d dumped a bucket of water on his head.

He also looked very handsome, even though there was a smear of dirt on his gold-hued cheek that she very much wanted to wipe off. She resisted the urge, though, since he was looking at her with so much confusion and alarm in his face that she thought he might flee if she tried.

She knew what he was seeing when he looked at her: a short, plump, pastel-colored woman who was pretty in the same kind of harmless way that bunnies are pretty.

She had a wide smile, big purple eyes, and round cheeks, plus chipmunk-brown curls that bounced around her face.

She did not look like the kind of person who ever popped up somewhere uninvited or did anything unexpected, which always seemed to mean people were extra shocked when she did exactly that.

“I’m sorry,” Terlu repeated. “It’s just—I thought this place was abandoned, and I didn’t know if I was going to find anyone ever.

And I didn’t know what I was going to do if I couldn’t find anyone.

Except for the cat. Who is very nice. And soft.

” She was babbling, she realized. She closed her mouth and attempted a friendly smile.

“Who are you?” he asked.

I really shouldn’t have hugged him. That was not okay behavior. Should she apologize more? She desperately wanted to touch him again, to reassure herself that this wasn’t a dream. “I’m Terlu Perna, Fourth Librarian of the Second—” Formerly Fourth Librarian…

“How did you get here?”

She pointed the way she’d come. “Through a door, which I was very lucky to find. It’s cold outside, and I wasn’t prepared for—”

His expression lightened. “Oh! It’s you ! It worked!”

She blinked at him. It’s you, he said. But Terlu had never met him before and had no idea who he was or how he’d know who she was. “I’m sorry?”

He was smiling at her, and it was dizzying to be smiled at after everything that had happened and all the shouting and accusations from before she’d been changed—the last sorcerers she’d met had been less than friendly.

There had been a lot of scowling from the balconies in the courtroom.

But this sorcerer looked happy to see her.

He also looked remarkably handsome, even more handsome the longer she looked at him.

He had gorgeous gold-and-black hair—jet-black streaked with gold that matched the golden sheen of his skin—and eyes that were as green as the cat’s wings.

He hadn’t shaved recently, and his speckled-gold almost-beard looked soft enough to pet.

“Do I know you?” she asked. “Do you know me?”

Still smiling, he pointed his finger at her.

“You’re the statue.” He had short fingernails with soil stuck under them.

She’d never seen a sorcerer with dirt under his nails, but he had to be one if he’d cast the spell that restored her.

Unless he wasn’t the one who had cast it?

She hadn’t found anyone else. It had to be him. “You woke up.”

“Yes, I did,” Terlu said. Was she not supposed to? Maybe it had been a mistake and that’s why she’d woken alone and in the cold.

He marveled at her. “I didn’t think it was going to work.”

Terlu felt herself begin to blush, knowing her lavender cheeks were deepening to a vivid magenta, which made her blush harder.

She’d never been looked at like this before.

He was staring at her as if she were a wish he’d been granted—gazing at her with his deep-as-the-sea, beautiful green eyes.

“You were the one who restored me? Thank you so much. I… Thank you. Really, I am so very grateful.” She’d feel even more grateful if he’d point her toward a snack.

Or better yet, a very large meal with at least half a loaf of bread.

Would it be rude to ask for food so soon after he’d restored her life?

She wasn’t certain about the etiquette of these kinds of situations.

Some sorcerers were known to be fussy. “I thought the transformation was going to be permanent. I didn’t expect to ever be human again.

To breathe, to smell, to talk—you have no idea how great it feels to be able to fill my lungs again after so long!

” She cut herself off before she waxed on too long about the joy of having lungs and a heart and a nose. Just having skin again was glorious.

He walked in a circle around her, as if checking to see if any of her was still wood.

“How.…” Terlu swallowed hard. She needed to ask how long it had been, what today’s date was, but she couldn’t make the question come out of her throat. She wasn’t ready to hear the answer. She knew, deep in her bones, that she wasn’t going to like it. Instead, she asked, “Why did you save me?”

“Because you’re a sorcerer.”

“I’m not a sorcerer,” she said. “You are.”

His smile faded. “I’m not a sorcerer.”

“But you restored me. That requires a spell. You have to be a sorcerer.” It was illegal for anyone else to work magic.

If her trial and punishment had made anything clear, it was that.

It didn’t matter the kind of spell, the intent of the caster, or the results; the emperor refused to allow anyone who didn’t have the proper training to attempt any spellwork whatsoever.

“I was sent the spell, along with the statue. You, I mean. You were the statue, weren’t you?

You aren’t trying to trick me?” He was scowling now, his eyebrows low and his forehead crinkled.

His eyes were still beautifully green despite the scowl, and she told herself firmly that she shouldn’t be noticing that, especially while he was accusing her of trickery.

What sort of trick could she possibly—never mind.

It didn’t matter. She had far too many more questions to ask.

“Yes, I was the statue,” Terlu said, “but who sent me to you? Who are you? And where is this? It’s not Alyssium.

I would’ve heard if there were such an extensive greenhouse anywhere in the capital.

Which island is this, and why am I here?

” He wasn’t looking at her as if she were the sun and moon anymore, and she missed that.

Actually, he looked a bit like a wild bear when he scowled.

A handsome golden bear still, but not a happy one.

She added, “If you don’t mind me asking. ”

“You’re supposed to be a sorcerer,” the gardener said.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

“Then what are you?”

“I’m a librarian.”

“Oh.”

He stared at her, and she stared at him.

I’m usually much better at this sort of thing, she thought.

She’d mangled this conversation from the beginning.

I shouldn’t have hugged him. Taking a breath, she marshaled her thoughts to begin again.

She’d start over, introduce herself, ask her questions one at a time, and then—

With a humph -like grunt, the handsome golden bearlike gardener picked up his basket and his bag of tools. “You should rest. Whoever you are and whyever you’re here, you went through a lot. Rest and eat.”

That did sound like a good idea, and she had been through a lot, but—

“My cottage is just outside the greenhouse. You can stay there until you, um, leave.” As if that resolved everything, he began to walk away.

“Wait, where are you going?” Terlu asked. I’m supposed to leave? Leave and go where? Why was he walking away from her?

“I… ahh… I have to think…” He picked up his pace. “I just… I have to go. I have work to do?”

If she weren’t fully aware that she was the least intimidating person ever to exist in the Crescent Islands Empire, she would have thought he was fleeing her.

That’s not possible. He was dismissing her because she wasn’t a sorcerer and therefore not worth his time.

Once again, like home, like the library, she was somewhere she wasn’t wanted and didn’t belong.

Except this was worse, because she didn’t know how she’d gotten here.

“Please,” she called after him. “I still don’t understand why I’m here or who sent me here or where here is or anything.”

“Neither do I,” the gardener said over his shoulder. He then turned a corner, leaving her staring at only roses.