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In exchange for all the jars of honey, the three little dragons relinquished their new hoard.

It was arranged beautifully: each shell lined like shingles, overlapping one another, in a spiral within the upturned sea turtle shell.

As Yarrow held the lantern over it, Terlu saw the mother-of-pearl insides of the shells sparkle.

After all this time, the spell ingredients were perfectly intact and displayed.

No wonder the spell hadn’t ended.

If it weren’t stopped, it would keep destroying greenhouse after greenhouse until every flower, every tree, every vine was dead.

He laid the lantern down and pulled a batch of dried grasses from one of his pockets. “From one of the failed greenhouses,” he said. “Seemed appropriate.” He laid the kindling between the shells.

“I feel as if we should say something profound,” Terlu said.

Yarrow grunted, and then he took out his fire-starter and lit the kindling on fire. He continued to feed the flames as smoke rose to the top of the cave.

The dragons chirped, and they all retreated to the doorway. Yarrow carried the lantern with him. The shells within the turtle shell continued to flame and smoke. Every time they dimmed, Yarrow would step back into the room and add more fuel to the fire.

At last, the flames dwindled low, and he didn’t add more.

Breathing through her sleeve to avoid the worst of the smoke, Terlu checked the turtle shell. Within, the nutshells were gone, and the seashells had crumbled into ash.

He picked up the turtle shell as it smoldered. “I think it’s destroyed.”

“We can throw the ashes into the sea,” Terlu said. “Let the tides take them away.”

They followed the charcoal markings on the wall back to the start of the string. Terlu picked up the end of the string and began winding it as they walked. The three dragons settled again onto her shoulders and head. One of them munched on honeycomb next to her ear with sweet slurping sounds.

“Do you think the greenhouse is truly safe now?” Yarrow asked.

“I don’t know,” Terlu said. “But I think so?” It occurred to her that this was the same as her own situation.

Now that she knew the empire had fallen, she thought she was safe, but would she ever truly know?

She supposed it was close enough. To the best of her knowledge, the plants were safe.

And to the best of her knowledge, she was safe too.

Maybe that was all anyone ever got, a hope and a belief. Maybe that’s enough.

As she wound the string into a ball, she heard voices ahead. In response, the dragon on her head flapped its wings and crowed. The voices grew louder and more excited.

Light bounced off the walls, and Terlu heard her name being called:

“Terlu? Yarrow? Are you okay?”

“We’re here!” she called back.

They rounded the corner. Up ahead, she saw a crowd—Birch and Rowan in the lead, with Lotti riding on Rowan’s shoulder.

Dendy was hopping beside them. She spotted Yarrow’s uncle Rodrick, as well as Rowan’s wife, Ambrel, behind them with the other plants.

She heard Yarrow’s intake of breath, and she knew until that moment that he hadn’t believed they’d come to find him, even though years had passed since he was that little boy alone in the cave, even though everyone knew why they were here and what was at stake.

Rowan grinned when she saw them. “Hey, you’re not lost or dead! Yay!”

“Glad you’re happy about that,” Yarrow said.

“Of course I’m—wait, you’re happy. I think you’re happy. You’re actually smiling.” She twisted to look back at her wife. “Ambrel, is that a smile on my brother’s face?”

“I am capable of it,” Yarrow said.

“I wasn’t sure.”

Birch peered at the turtle shell with the ashes. “You found it?”

“And burned it,” Yarrow confirmed. “We’re going to throw the rest into the ocean.”

Birch exhaled heavily. “I was so willing to give up, and all along, the answer was under our feet. I’m sorry. I thought… I thought a lot of things that were wrong, but I should never have given up on our home—or on you.”

That was a real apology.

Looking at Yarrow, Terlu could tell that he heard it too. Unlike Birch’s earlier attempts, this one sounded like it came from the heart—that he both wanted to fix things and understood why they’d broken.

Rowan rolled her eyes. “You seriously can’t blame yourself for that. I don’t think any of us would have ever have guessed… Hey, are those dragons? From the maze?”

Perched on Terlu, the three dragons chirped at Rowan.

She cooed at them. The dragon on Terlu’s left shoulder flew onto Rowan’s shoulder and immediately curled its talons in her braids, like a cat kneading a blanket. She laughed. “Ahh, that tickles!”

The other two dragons stayed on Terlu. One of them wrapped its tail around her neck, like a necklace of warm jewels. The other curled on the top of her head.

Following the string, they trooped out of the cave together.

Hopping between their feet, Dendy reported on the progress that the plants had made with sealing the cracks and how they were preparing more ingredients in order to teach whichever humans wanted to learn.

Lotti talked about how she’d visited Laiken’s ghost again and told him how they were searching for the ingredients.

She thought he seemed happy about it, though it was admittedly difficult to tell, given how little of him there was left.

The ghost’s breeze, the rose reported, smelled more like lavender, which was nicer than skunk cabbage.

When they emerged from the cave, the tide had inched closer. It licked at the pebbles a few feet from the opening of the cave. “We should dump the ashes off the dock,” Yarrow suggested. “It’s deeper there.”

“Throw,” Terlu said.

“Same thing, yes?”

“But it sounds more dramatic,” Terlu said. “Words matter.” The right words could heal shattered glass. And hearts. And families. And lives.

“That’s too bad, since I never find the right ones,” Yarrow said.

“You do, when it matters,” Terlu told him, with a smile.

She looped her arm through his, and he handed the lantern to his father.

He carried the turtle shell cradled in his other arm.

They climbed up the slope into the trees and followed the mass of footprints through the snow to the road, and then their little parade continued to the dock.

Yarrow and Terlu walked alone to the end, while the others waited behind them.

“Do you want to do it?” Yarrow offered.

“It should be you. You’re the one the spell hurt the most.”

“But you’re the one who fixed it,” Yarrow said.

“Together?” Terlu said.

“Together,” he agreed.

They threw the ashes into the waves. A moment later, they threw the turtle shell. It floated for a moment and then gradually, as the waves hit it, it filled with water and began to sink.

“It’ll probably wash onto shore,” Yarrow said.

“It’s okay. This was kind of symbolic at this point. The fire was thorough.”

“Good.”

They both watched the turtle shell as it disappeared beneath the waves.

Rejoining the others, they walked back through the snow.

As they reached the sorcerer’s tower, Lotti asked Rowan to help her inside.

She wanted to let Laiken know what they’d done and that his plants were safe, but she couldn’t work Laiken’s door handle.

After transferring the little dragon from Rowan’s shoulder back to Terlu’s, Rowan and Ambrel peeled away to let the little rose into the sorcerer’s home.

The two remaining humans, Birch and Rorick, excused themselves when they reached the cottages to join the work on the roofs, windows, and chimneys.

The blue cottage was livable now, as was the one in sunrise colors.

They were working on a third now. A lot remained to be done, but at least the family wasn’t sleeping all piled together in the workroom anymore.

The other plants stayed with Terlu, Yarrow, and the dragons until they reached the greenhouse, and then they said goodbye and left to continue their work fixing the cracks. Terlu and Yarrow brought the dragons back to the sunflower maze together.

Once the chrysanthemum puzzle door was opened, the three little dragons took to the air and flew back inside with happy trills and coos. They were greeted with calls from the other dragons. Above, the aurora rippled in green-and-yellow ribbons.

“Thank you for your help,” Yarrow called after them.

Terlu placed the jars inside the door, where the dragons could easily reach them.

“We’ll leave the door open from now on.” She glanced at Yarrow to make sure he agreed, and he nodded.

Just because Laiken had treated the inhabitants of Belde a certain way didn’t mean they had to do the same.

Like Lotti and the other sentient plants, the dragons had proven they were more than what they’d been allowed to be.

It’s time for things to change. “Let us know when you want more honey.”

All three dragons flew back into the maze. She watched them for a moment as they cavorted above the flowers. She wondered if they were telling their story to the other dragons and decided that yes, they were.

“Do you think they’ll leave the maze, if we leave the door open?” Yarrow worried.

“Yes,” Terlu said. “But then they’ll come back. Their family and friends are all here.”

“Mmm. Also, their treasure hoard.”

“Sure, that too.”

Side by side, they watched the dragons fly for another few minutes before Yarrow said, “I wonder if they’d like honey cakes. I could bake smaller portions so they could lift them…”

“I think they’d love that.”

Leaving the dragons, they strolled back through the greenhouses.

She expected him to hurry off to weed or prune or re-pot, but perhaps he didn’t need to, now that it wasn’t just him caring for the hundreds of thousands of plants.

She wondered how he was feeling about the fact that his father had come into the caves for him.

Granted, he wasn’t a child anymore, and he hadn’t been lost, but maybe it would at least be the beginning of something?

She wasn’t going to ask, though. That was up to Yarrow to work through.

“So, I guess we just wait?” Yarrow said. “See if any other greenhouses fail?”

“I think so.” Only time would show if they’d succeeded. But she was certain they’d done it. She trusted her translation of Laiken’s final notebook.

“Hmm.”

As they strolled through the rose room, beneath the many shades of pink and red and white, Yarrow asked, “Now that you’ve saved everything I’ve ever cared about, what do you want to do for an encore?

” He wrapped his arm around her waist and shortened his strides to match hers.

Leaning against him, she breathed in his scent—honey and sea and sweat and sweetness—with the roses.

She thought about what came next. “I think… I want to write a letter.”

“Huh. Okay.”

The more she considered it, the more certain she was.

“That was not the answer I was expecting,” he admitted.

“I want my family to know I’m alive,” Terlu said.

“And happy.” She was ready, at last, to reach out.

She wasn’t the same as she’d been when she’d woken cold and alone in the woods, the island wasn’t the same as it had been when she first walked through its wonders, and the world beyond… it wasn’t the same either. It’s time.

“Ahh,” Yarrow said. “Yes. I’ll make us lunch while you write. There’s a quiche recipe I’ve been wanting to try…” He continued to tell her about the quiche with the same adorable enthusiasm as when he talked about planting garlic.

Snow began to fall again, lightly, on the trees and the cottage and the greenhouse. The winged cat met them by the door of the cottage, and the three of them went inside.

While Yarrow broke several eggs and began whisking them, Terlu sat at his desk and pulled out a clean sheet of paper. She dipped the quill tip into the inkwell.

Dear—

She paused.

Should she write separate letters to her parents and her sister? What about her cousins? Aunts, uncles, grandparents?

Dear Family, she wrote.

She paused again.

“Tell them you’re well,” Yarrow advised.

She wrote that. And then once those first words were there, she kept writing.

She told them about when she first came to Alyssium, full of hope and fear.

She told them about the library, how proud she’d been to get the job and how disappointed when it turned out to not be what she’d imagined it would be.

She told them about how much she missed home, how much she missed them, and why she hadn’t returned—because she wanted to find a place where she belonged and had purpose, and she knew it wasn’t Eano, as much as she loved them.

But it wasn’t Alyssium either. As it turned out, it was Belde.

This place. With this man.

She smiled as she wrote about Yarrow and her life here. I found a place I want to be and a future I want to have. I’m happy, and I hope you are too. Please write back.

I miss you.

Love,

Your Terlu