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No breaks. No seams. Also, it was beautiful.

She watched the colors shift and undulate, more colors than she’d ever seen before, in shades that blurred into one another before swirling away, like a living rainbow.

“If we form it against the perimeter of the greenhouse, we’ll be able to control the temperature and humidity inside the dead greenhouses.

You’ll be able to have summer in the middle of winter again.

” Terlu paused. “Assuming this holds heat.”

“We can test it. I can light a fire. I have a starter with me.”

“Good idea.” She loved that he came so prepared.

He crossed the walkway to retrieve dried grasses from the pots of dead plants. After collecting a few handfuls from within the bubble, he reached for a wad of grass just beyond—and his hand stopped with a thump. “Huh. It’s solid.”

He laid his palm flat on the bubble and pushed, and it didn’t pass through.

She hurried to his side. They’d walked through greenhouse after greenhouse, passing through the invisible barrier in the doorways, and it had never been a problem. This bubble spell was modeled after that. It was supposed to act as insulation, not as a wall.

Terlu knocked with her fist on the bubble.

It rippled but didn’t dissipate. “Okay, maybe it’s not perfect yet.

We’ll have to try again.” She told herself she shouldn’t be disappointed.

Of course it hadn’t worked right away. She wondered which line she needed to tweak to make it passable without being permeable—

He pushed harder at the bubble. It bowed out but didn’t break. “Huh.”

Terlu leaned against it with her shoulder, expecting to pop out the other side—but instead she bounced back. A wiggle of worry wormed itself into her throat. It was just a bubble. They couldn’t be trapped . Could they?

He drew out his clippers and tried to slice into it. The bubble bent around the blade. “I think we’re trapped,” Yarrow said grimly.

“That’s… not good.” Don’t panic. It’s just a bubble. It’ll pop.

While Yarrow bashed his clippers against the bubble, Terlu hurried back to the spell.

She read through the words. It didn’t say— Oh.

She saw the line that specified the durability of the bubble.

It was required to ensure that the bubble was capable of keeping in the levels of heat and humidity, but it didn’t include a line to allow everything else to pass through.

Perhaps it was supposed to call back to a line in a different part of the original spell?

At the perimeter of the bubble, Yarrow was now ramming his shoulder into the bubble, putting all of his strength and weight into it.

He was beginning to utter oaths under his breath.

Each hit reverberated with a thud that was then swallowed by the bubble, rippling like an innocent rainbow around them.

What if he couldn’t break it? What if they were truly stuck?

“Someone will find us,” Terlu said in the most soothing-librarian voice she could manage. She told herself that she had to focus on solving the problem, not on the what-if s.

“Unlikely,” Yarrow said.

“Eventually, Lotti will wonder where we are.”

“And what will anyone do when they come? It’s impenetrable.”

“Working together…” If enough force were placed on it from the outside, that could break it, couldn’t it?

Granted, the spells on the greenhouses had lasted for decades, perhaps centuries, despite all the wind, snow, and rain that the sky could throw at them.

They only burst when the magic decayed enough to fail.

What if she’d created a spell that was that solid?

“Okay, maybe we need a better plan than wait for rescue.”

“What’s its weakness?” Yarrow asked.

“I’m not sure,” Terlu said, studying the spell.

Concerned about the fragility of the bubbles in her prior attempts, she’d been more focused on its strength.

Did I take it too far? What have I done?

She couldn’t have just trapped them here for decades, without food, without water, without… “Oh. Oh no.”

“What?”

“I didn’t want it to rupture, shatter the glass, and kill all the plants. So, I made it as strong as I could.” She’d dialed up that section of the text, using a word that would amplify its abilities. It had made sense at the time. “It’s holding in air.”

“And us.”

“But air, Yarrow. It’s not letting air in or out.”

Yarrow stopped shoving at the bubble. “You mean to say that if we don’t break out, we are going to run out of air?”

Terlu nodded. She felt tears prick her eyes. She knew she shouldn’t have messed with magic. These spells… It had just been ego to think she could understand them, and now…

“Don’t,” Yarrow said.

She gulped back the tears that were about to spill out. “I’m sorry.”

“Look at your notes and figure out how to break it,” Yarrow said, calm and confident and just as soothing as her librarian voice. He didn’t sound angry or fearful. He should, though, she thought. He should be angry at me. But he wasn’t. “You can do this.”

Terlu shook her head. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Later, you can do the should-have, shouldn’t-have. Right now…” Crossing to her, he knelt next to her. “Terlu Perna, look at me. It’s not your fault.”

She almost smiled. “It’s absolutely my fault.”

“Well, yes, but you’re trying to pull off a miracle. You weren’t really expecting it to work right away, were you?” Gone was the Yarrow who had been throwing himself at the iridescent wall like a furious bear. Now his voice was soft, his eyes understanding, and his hands on her shoulders gentle.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be deadly right away!

It’s a bubble. Not…” She shook her head.

Wallowing in guilt wasn’t going to help.

“Okay, how to break a spell. You broke the spell on me. I broke the sleep spell on the plants.” In both cases, though, they’d used an additional spell to reverse the effects of the initial one.

She didn’t have a counterspell on hand that she could cast on the bubble that would break it.

Maybe there was one, but she didn’t know it.

If she had access to the full library of Laiken’s notebooks…

But all she had were the spells she’d brought with her, the ones that she thought were relevant.

Perhaps the clue was in them somewhere. Spreading her notes out in front of her, she studied them.

“You read,” Yarrow said. “I’ll keep trying to break through.” He hefted up a pot and hurled it at the barrier. The bubble bowed out, absorbing the impact, and the pot was flung back into the circle. It crashed to the ground and shattered.

The words swam in front of her. She balled her fists and tried to focus. Her throat felt dry. Swallowing hard, she said, “What if we dig under it…?”

He pulled out a trowel and, kneeling, began to dig. As he dug through the soil by the edge of the bubble, she tried to read. What if it didn’t work, what if the air ran out, what if no one found them… Her thoughts chased one another, tossing up horrible scenarios.

A few minutes later, he reported, “It goes into the earth.”

Of course it did. It had formed a sphere.

Do not panic, she ordered herself. You can think your way through this.

He rested his hands on his knees. “Can you… I don’t know… reverse the words?”

“It doesn’t work that way. Every spell requires the correct words to activate certain ingredients…” An idea came to her. A spell was words plus items. What if you took away the items? Getting excited, she suggested, “What if we destroy the ingredients?”

The protective shield was an active spell, continually maintained.

Laiken’s notes had been clear about that.

In fact, her primary theory about why the greenhouses were failing was that the ingredients had degraded.

She’d even thought about trying to refresh the ingredients rather than recasting the spell, but since she didn’t know where Laiken had positioned the original ingredients for each greenhouse…

Regardless, that wasn’t the case here, and the bubble had thankfully formed beyond the ingredients, trapping them inside with Terlu and Yarrow.

Yarrow began to stomp on the paste, smearing it into the dirt.

“That won’t destroy it.”

“Fire?” he asked.

“Maybe?” Except, didn’t fire use oxygen? “Wait, what if the fire eats all the air?”

“Do you have another idea?” Yarrow asked.

Wordless, she shook her head.

He withdrew a fire-starter from his pocket.

Looking around, Terlu spotted more dried and withered plant material within the bubble.

She broke as much of it off as she could to serve as kindling.

Carrying it to Yarrow, she handed it to him.

He wound it into a kind of makeshift torch and then lit the end.

A spark caught. The flames spread along the dried plant matter. He blew on it, and she wondered how much air they’d used already and how much more the fire would eat. If this didn’t work…

Squatting, he held it to the paste. It charred at the lick of flame. Meticulously, he crawled around the perimeter of the circle, burning the ingredients.

She held her breath.

How much air was left?

What would it feel like when the air was gone?

Would it hurt? Or would they just fall asleep?

She pushed those thoughts from her mind.

It had only been a few minutes since she’d cast the spell and sealed them in.

There were plenty more ideas to try before their lives were in danger.

Except that she didn’t have any more ideas.

She knew very little about how to break spells without access to a specific counterspell.

Perhaps that’s something I should have studied before trying to cast any.

As each wad of grasses burned to ash, Terlu fed him new kindling.

He added it to his makeshift torch, trying to keep the flames from touching his hands.

She saw him wince as a spark landed on his fingers.

She opened her mouth to tell him to be careful and then shut it again.

He knew to be careful; he had to be thorough.

Finally, he reached the last bit, grinding the flame into it.

And the bubble dissipated like a cloud dissolving in the air.

Yarrow swatted the air. “It worked.”

Clutching the pages of her notes, Terlu darted outside the circle and sagged against a pillar.

She was never going to try that again. It was too much of a risk.

The laws were right—magic should be left to trained sorcerers, and amateurs shouldn’t experiment with spells, no matter how convinced they were that they understood the First Language.

A real sorcerer wouldn’t have endangered their own life and the life of the person they loved.

Loved?

She liked him. She wanted him.

Love?

He crossed to her and wrapped his arms around her. She leaned against him and breathed in his solid strength, as well as the smell of smoke. “Are you burned?” she asked.

“I’m fine. You?”

“Fine. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Accidents happen. Next time, we know how to break it faster.”

She shook her head against his chest. “There can’t be a next time.

It’s too dangerous.” It had been foolish to try, even egotistical.

She was playing with forces she didn’t fully comprehend, and she had no one trained in spellcraft who she could ask.

She was winging it, and she’d nearly gotten them both killed.

He tightened his arms around her. “ Next time, I’ll be there with you again. Next time, we’ll know more. Next time, I’ll have the fire ready.”

She almost laughed, but she was afraid if she let the laugh escape, it would turn into a sob. “You trust me to try again? After that? We could have died. If we’d run out of air… If that hadn’t worked…”

“It worked,” Yarrow said, “and I know we can do this.”

He sounded so confident. So calm. Leaning her cheek against his chest, Terlu breathed in and out, trying to calm her racing heart.

We, he’d said.

He believes in me. In us.

“All right,” Terlu said. “We try again. But only after I figure out what went wrong and am absolutely one hundred percent certain I won’t accidentally murder us again, at least not in the same way.”

“Agreed.”

She kept her cheek against his chest, breathing steadily, until she felt her heart rate slow from a gallop and the panic subsided to a soft hum. Above, she heard snow falling softly on the glass ceiling. Far in the distance, a plant was singing.