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Then she pushed through the door and pulled Ambrel in with her.

Terlu lingered behind, thinking about Rowan’s words.

She’d never asked Yarrow if he’d reached out to his relatives, and he’d never said.

Granted, it wasn’t her business, but she’d privately dumped all the blame on his father, sister, cousins, aunts, and uncles for leaving him behind.

She hadn’t thought about the fact that he’d chosen not to go just as much as they’d chosen not to stay.

Following them through the door, she asked, “Was the letter I sent the first time he’d ever tried—”

She halted and stared.

False moonlight bathed the greenhouse in a pale blue light.

At the peak of the cupola, an imitation moon was cradled in a web of glittering strands.

Swirls of sparkling cloud drifted through on a breath of impossible wind.

The flowers were a deep blue, black, and gray—the colors of a garden at night.

Even their leaves were a dark gray. Starlike sparkles drifted up from the blossoms, as if the flowers were breathing out stardust.

It smelled like jasmine. Terlu inhaled deeply as she walked forward.

“You’ll want to sit down for this,” Rowan said.

Ambrel dropped to sit cross-legged on the ground, and Terlu sat nearby. Rowan plucked the nearest flower. It looked like a black teacup, with petals that curved in her palms. She knelt and held it out to her wife first.

“Is it safe?” Ambrel asked.

“Would I tell you to do something that wasn’t safe?”

“You would if you thought it would be funny,” Ambrel said. “Is this going to be make me act like I think I’m a monkey?”

“Embarrassing isn’t the same as unsafe,” Rowan said, a wide smile on her face. “And you were a cute monkey.” She bopped her wife on the nose.

Ambrel bared her teeth at her and made monkey noises.

Both of them laughed. “Sorry,” Ambrel said to Terlu.

“This was several months ago, back in Alyssium, before the revolution, when we all thought everything would be fine and it would be resolved peacefully. Rowan and I went to a party thrown by a minor sorcerer. He’d offered as entertainment spell-candies that were supposed to transform you into an animal for five or ten minutes. ”

“In reality, the spell was a trick. It only made you think you were an animal.”

“Rowan believed she was a hedgehog.”

“Spent the entire time rooting around the carpets, searching for insects with my nose,” Rowan admitted with a grin. “I’m told I made snorting noises.”

“But at least you didn’t try to swing from the chandelier and throw paté at all the other guests,” Ambrel said.

Her eyes sparkled with the memory, and Terlu thought their experience of Alyssium had been very different from hers.

She hadn’t been to any parties, except the Winter Feast at the Great Library.

Sorcerers, minor or not, did not consort with Fourth Librarians.

Or at least they never consorted with me.

There had been one once, a lanky green-skinned sorcerer from one of the outer islands, who had acted like he wanted to woo her—it hadn’t taken her long to figure out he just wanted access to restricted books.

He hadn’t been subtle. She’d cried for a few days over him.

“The sorcerer deserved paté in his hair.”

Ambrel grinned. “He really didn’t like that. He’d spent a lot of time and magic on his hair. As I recall, it changed color every few minutes.”

Rowan snickered. “After the paté, it alternated between green and gray. Anyway, dream flowers aren’t like that. You are the one who guides the dream.” She lifted the blossom to her nose and said, “Dancing on the beach.”

Closing her eyes, she inhaled, then smiled.

A few seconds later, Rowan opened her eyes and exhaled. “Easy,” she said languidly. “My beach had warm sand, gentle waves, and a breeze.”

“You just… ask for whatever you want to dream about?” Terlu asked. She hadn’t seen a spell for this in Laiken’s notebooks, but there were still many she hadn’t translated, much less studied. She wondered what other wonders she hadn’t discovered yet.

Ambrel took the blossom from Rowan. “I want to dream about kissing you.”

“You can do that any day, any time,” Rowan said.

“On the moon,” Ambrel clarified. She inhaled the dream flower’s scent, closed her eyes, and then opened them again a few seconds later and leaned forward and kissed her wife.

She passed the blossom to Terlu.

Terlu cupped it in her hands and looked down at the sparkles that floated in it. She could ask it to show her any dream she wanted to see. But as she looked at the depths of the flower, she realized she didn’t want to be here, at least not right now.

She had wanted friends, people, conversation.

She’d wanted it so badly in the library that she’d risked her life for this kind of companionship.

And now, these two had welcomed her along, opened up to her, talked to her, included her in their jokes and stories, but instead Terlu just wanted to find Yarrow and share this with him.

I don’t want just someone. I want him . Even though he refused to deal with his feelings about his family.

Even though he hadn’t shared anything about his anger and his disappointment in them before they’d arrived.

Even though she still didn’t know how he felt about her.

“I’m sorry, but I have to go,” Terlu told Rowan and Ambrel.

Neither of them noticed—they’d plucked another blossom and were holding it together, their fingers laced around the petals.

I want what they have, Terlu thought.

Laying her blossom gently on the ground, she left the lovers and the dream flowers in search of her silent gardener.