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It took Terlu nearly an hour to locate Yarrow, and she only found him by narrowing in on where he wasn’t.

He wasn’t with his family members who were working on restoring the cottages.

He wasn’t with the talking plants fixing the cracks in the dead greenhouses.

He wasn’t visiting the mini-dragons in the sunflower maze.

He wasn’t helping his father with the roses, his uncle with the orchids, or his cousin with the tomatoes.

And he wasn’t in Laiken’s workroom with additional relatives, family friends, and the late sorcerer’s supposed ghost.

She found him in the silence of a greenhouse full of miniature trees. He was bent over a tiny juniper. Focusing on the branches, he didn’t so much as twitch as she crossed to him. She watched him snip with tiny silver scissors.

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

“Are you going to tell me how I should be with my family?” Yarrow asked.

“Do you want to be with your family?”

He snipped again. “No.”

Terlu sat cross-legged next to him and watched him continue to prune the juniper. She couldn’t tell why he was making each cut, but he was doing it with precision so he must have had a reason. “Your sister showed me and her wife the dream flower greenhouse.”

“Ah. Did you like your dreams?”

“I didn’t try any,” Terlu said.

He paused, looking at her. “Why not? They’re harmless.”

You weren’t there, she wanted to say, but she didn’t. She wasn’t sure how he’d react to that. So she just shrugged.

“Laiken made them for us, the kids, to entertain us while the adults worked.”

“That was nice of him.”

Yarrow’s lips quirked into a half smile. “He wasn’t nice. He thought children were a distraction to his workers and a menace to his plants. It was to keep us busy so we wouldn’t be underfoot.”

“Maybe he wanted to be nice, but he didn’t know how,” Terlu said. She thought about what Dendy had told her, about the loss of Laiken’s daughter, Ria. She wondered if that had colored his view of children. Not that it was an excuse, but it could be an explanation.

He snorted. Moving on to a miniature pine tree, he examined its branches and then began meticulously pruning its tiny limbs. He swept the debris carefully away from the roots.

“Is Laiken’s ghost really upstairs in his tower? Your sister thinks it is.”

He paused again. “Huh. I’d forgotten. I suppose, yes, he’s there. Just the bitterness, though, not any of his consciousness. I used to yell at him in the beginning, when the greenhouses first started to fail. He just moaned.”

“How did you forget you had a ghost?” Terlu said. She thought that should have been something that got mentioned, especially when they started to spend more time in the tower. It should have been on the initial tour. Or at least added as an interesting sidenote.

“It’s just his leftover regret. Not him. Doesn’t do any good. Doesn’t do any harm.” He rotated the pot that held the pine tree to study it from another angle. “I should have told you, though. And I should have shown you the dream flowers.”

“It’s all right. You have responsibilities—”

Standing up abruptly, he tucked the scissors into one of his pockets and then held out his hand toward Terlu. “I can show you… I mean, if you want… Do you want to see another wonder of the greenhouse?”

She took his hand and stood up. Her smile felt bright, as if it was beaming out of her. “I want to see everything you want to show me.”

“Has anyone ever made a map of all the greenhouses?” Terlu asked as Yarrow led her through greenhouse after greenhouse—one with tulips and daffodils, one with rows of grapevines, one with water lilies in ponds on either side of the path and fish-shaped flowers hanging upside down from the rafters above.

Minnow-like silvery fish swam between them, as if the air were water.

She watched the school of flying fish zigzag, switching directions as one, between the blossoms.

“Never needed one,” Yarrow said.

“I should make one.” She added it to her to-do list, after she uncovered all the spells that would save the greenhouses.

They passed through a greenhouse with a willowlike tree, with drooping branches that held glowing bubble-like orbs.

It had a sweet, elusive scent, like a long-ago summer’s day that was slipping from memory.

She inhaled deeply. A bird circled above, vanished in a puff of smoke, and then reappeared—another of Laiken’s experiments or just a random magical bird, drawn to the wealth of enchantments?

She wished she had the time to study all the magical creatures here.

“Also, a list of species living here. Might be useful to our new arrivals too.”

“They aren’t staying.”

“Oh? Did they tell you that?” She knew for a fact he hadn’t spoken to them yet.

He opened the next door and held it for Terlu.

She walked into a room with rows of thick grasses, topped with fistfuls of white flowers. It smelled like— “Garlic?” She smiled at him. He’d remembered she’d said she wanted to see it.

It was vast. Row after row of garlic.

“It smells nice,” Terlu said. “I thought it would be overwhelming.” She walked between the rows. Each plant was in a neat row, planted with precision—with love.

“It’s more pungent when it’s cooked.”

“Thanks for showing me this.” Maybe it was just garlic. No diamond dragonflies, leafy mice, tiny dragons, or multicolored butterflies, but this was a room he clearly loved. A piece of who Yarrow was. It meant something that he’d chosen to share it with her.

“There’s more I want to show you.” He held out his hand, and she took it. They walked hand in hand between the garlic rows. “My family doesn’t have to tell me for me to know they’re going to leave,” Yarrow said. “I know them. They don’t want to be here.”

“They won’t leave.”

Yarrow halted outside a blackened door. “Close your eyes.”

She obeyed. “They won’t leave because they don’t have anywhere else to go. Besides, your sister seemed happy to be back. I think they missed this place. And you.”

He snorted.

Terlu laughed. “You know, it’s not impossible that some people might find you likable.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished her eyes were open so she could see his expression. He didn’t say anything, but he drew her forward by the hand.

She felt the temperature change as she crossed the threshold into the next greenhouse.

It was cooler, but not cold. She breathed in and thought the air was heavy with the smell of a sweet, familiar flower.

Perhaps lilac? And roses? And… She sniffed, and the air teased her with other sweet scents that she couldn’t name. “Can I open my eyes?”

“Yes.” He was right beside her. She felt his breath warm on her ear, and she shivered. She felt as if her skin was aware of his nearness. Without meaning to, she leaned toward his voice, and she felt the brush of his shirt on her back—he was that close.

Opening her eyes, Terlu saw stars everywhere. She gasped.

A galaxy was spread out before her.

“It’s the most spectacular if your eyes have already adjusted,” Yarrow said. “That’s why I had you close them. So you could see the stars between the stars.”

“Are they all”—she reached toward a constellation—“flowers?”

“Bioluminescent flowers,” he confirmed. Above, a flower-star streaked across the glass sky.

He added, “Enhanced with an enchantment.” He took her hand again, and they strolled through the greenhouse.

The path curved through the star field, and everywhere she looked, the flowers sparkled and danced.

“They don’t require much care, so I’m not here often.

Except when I want to remember that the universe is vast.”

“It’s lovely.”

In between the lights, she saw the vines that filled the greenhouse. She wondered if they were a map of the stars above the island or whether they were a galaxy that didn’t exist.

“Why did he make this? For his daughter?” Terlu asked.

“He created it after she died.”

“A tribute? A goodbye? An apology?”

“Does it matter?” Yarrow asked. “It’s ours now.”

Ours. Wow, did he mean… No, he means him and the plants.

Or him and his family. His father. His sister.

His aunts, uncles, and cousins. It of course belonged to all of them, the people who’d been born here and returned.

He didn’t mean her, a woman with no ties to him or the greenhouse.

She wasn’t even a gardener. Now that she thought about it, she was embarrassed that she even thought for a second he was talking about her—

“Let me show you the ocean room.”

“Ocean room?”

“I think you’ll like it,” he said. “Maybe even more than the garlic.”

“There isn’t much better than garlic.”

Yarrow smiled, and they kept walking.

He’d mentioned ocean plants once before, she remembered, and she hadn’t asked how and where they grew. Perhaps in ponds like the water lilies? She didn’t ask—let him surprise her.

He was still holding her hand, and she decided it was her favorite sensation.

His hand swallowed hers, and it was like being wrapped in a warm blanket.

She could feel the calluses on his palm and fingers from the work, but he held her hand so gently that his felt soft.

She wondered if he liked holding her hand as much as she liked holding his.

With his hand encompassing hers, Terlu didn’t even feel the need to talk.

They strolled side by side through a greenhouse with translucent flowers and then another that was full of flowers that, every few seconds, released a puff of petals into the air like a miniature firework.

The floor was littered in petals, and the air smelled like overripe plums.

When they reached the next door, she saw blue through the glass, a wavering, pearlescent blue. Could that be water? “When you said ‘ocean room,’ you didn’t mean actual—”

He opened the door.

Inside was a tunnel into the bluest blue.

“Oh. Oh my. Oh, you did.”