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After a few weeks, the final crack was sealed.

Terlu had been expecting it—she knew the talking plants were working on their final dead greenhouse.

In fact, this morning, she’d shortened her daily swim with the sea turtle, in hopes that she wouldn’t miss the moment.

So when she heard the cheers in the distance, she knew exactly what it meant.

When it happened, she was working on spell variations in what she’d dubbed her practice greenhouse, the one where she and Yarrow had nearly suffocated inside one of her earlier attempts.

Lotti burst in with the news. “We did it!” she caroled. “All the glass is fixed!”

“That’s wonderful!” Terlu said, celebrating with her.

The little rose danced around her with her petals shaking in the air, and Terlu spun to watch.

It was indeed a tremendous achievement. After thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of cracks, the glass was at last whole. Every greenhouse could host life again.

“We need a new spell to do.”

Terlu laughed.

“I’m serious.” The little rose widened her petals, as if she was trying to look more earnest. “It’s spectacular that the glass is fixed, but there’s much more to be done.”

“I don’t have a new spell yet.” Terlu waved at the pages she was struggling with. She’d written out reams of notes and tried countless variations, but no success so far.

Lotti hopped closer to the pages. “What’s this one do?”

“Ideally, if it’s working right, it forms a protective shield just within the glass—it’s what makes it possible for some rooms to be hot and humid enough for tropical plants and others to grow vegetables so close to the winter solstice.”

“But it’s not working yet?”

So far, she’d managed a bubble that was permeable enough to allow people to walk through and sturdy enough not to burst—she’d cast it each time from outside the ring of ingredients, to be safe.

However, it also didn’t hold in heat, which was the point.

She was confident that if she tweaked the spell enough, she’d get it eventually.

She was closer to understanding how the phrases interacted.

But the key word was “eventually.” “Not yet. How about you get Birch and the others to teach you how to plant seedlings?”

Lotti let out a gasp. “Ooh, do you think I could do that?”

“Absolutely. I think you could do anything you want to do.” Or at least anything that was physically feasible for a very small flower with a base of feathery leaves, though really Terlu wouldn’t have put any limitations on the rose.

“I see no reason why you and the other plants can’t be gardeners, now that you’ve finished proving you can be sorcerers. ”

“No offense, but I’d rather be a gardener. It’s more important.”

Terlu grinned. “No offense taken. It is more important.”

Pleased, Lotti hopped out of the greenhouse.

Terlu jotted a note in her journal about the results of her latest experiment and then collected the ingredients to be set aside for her next attempt.

It was a shame that she didn’t have anyone she could ask to study the texts with her, because even after she decoded the sorcerer’s notes, First Language was notoriously tricky to parse.

Ah well, it just meant it would take her more time—which she had, now that Laiken’s malfunctioning spell had been disabled.

Not a single greenhouse had died since they destroyed the ingre dients, and she was allowing herself to hope that it was over. Additionally, Laiken’s ghost had dissipated after Lotti told him the news, which was further proof that they’d done the right thing.

Her theory was that a piece of Laiken had known he’d condemned his beloved plants, which was why his ghost hadn’t been able to let go.

Now that his mistake was undone, he was at peace, which was nice.

At the very least the upstairs bedroom was less windy, even if no one besides Lotti (who slept in a pot on the bedside table) was willing to claim it as their own—there were simply too many memories bound up in it for any of Yarrow’s family to move into the tower permanently, and the neighbor with the toddler didn’t want a home with either stairs or spells.

After everything was tucked away, Terlu headed out of the practice greenhouse.

Reaching the rose room, she strolled through.

One of the tiny dragons was busily flitting from rosebush to rosebush—ever since she’d left the door open, they’d chosen to help with pollinating, though they always returned to their sunflower maze by the end of the day.

The dragon, a golden one with sapphire-blue eyes, trilled at her.

“Come by the cottage later,” Terlu told her, “and you can have some honey.”

Satisfied, the dragon flew to another rose, balancing on the stem as the bloom bobbed beneath her weight. She stuck her snout into the center of the flower.

Continuing on, Terlu found Yarrow outside by the cottage that was formerly home to the feral gryphons—the gryphons, she’d been told, had been relocated to an unused shed on the other side of the island.

Luckily, she hadn’t been involved at all in that maneuver.

Yarrow was working with his father on the roof, fixing the shingles.

She noticed that Yarrow was working below Birch, in position to catch him were he to ever lose his grip—she wondered if that was a conscious choice or instinct.

He doesn’t even know what a great heart he has.

“Did you hear?” Terlu called up to him. “All the cracks are fixed!”

“That’s fantastic!” Yarrow said.

It would be a while before she’d have enough of a grasp on the magic for the old failed greenhouses to be properly enchanted greenhouses again, but they’d function just fine as they were, subject to the ordinary laws of how greenhouses worked.

Some of the destroyed rooms had already been reclaimed, designated for plants that didn’t require unnatural heat or for plants that the gardeners wanted to keep in a normal seasonal cycle.

Other reclaimed greenhouses wouldn’t be used until spring.

Yarrow had his eye on one as a future home for herbs from the southern isles—he had seeds squirreled away and had been just waiting for the right space to plant them.

All of the gardeners had plans, and winter was the perfect time for dreaming.

“I thought we could add an extra celebration to the Winter Feast plans?” Terlu suggested. “Something that acknowledges that the glass has all been fixed?” She shielded her eyes from the sun. It reflected off the fresh blanket of snow, glittering so hard that it made her eyes water.

Helping his father first, Yarrow scooted over the roof and climbed down the ladder. A few rungs from the ground, he jumped off and landed near her. “How about a confection made of sugar glass?”

She’d been thinking a toast or some kind of speech, but that was a much better idea. “I don’t know what that is, but it sounds wonderful.”

He held the ladder while his father climbed carefully down. When Birch reached the bottom, Yarrow helped steady him. Chuckling, Birch said, “I’m probably too old to be climbing on roofs.”

“I told you that,” Yarrow said mildly.

“It sounds better when I say it myself,” Birch said.

Yarrow grunted.

“Will you two be joining us for dinner tonight?” Birch asked as he reclaimed his cane from where it had been leaning against the house. “Rorick caught some stripe fish, and he wants to grill them all while they’re fresh.”

“You mean he wants to show off how many he caught,” Yarrow said.

“Exactly that.”

Yarrow glanced at Terlu and lifted his eyebrows.

She shrugged. Whatever he wanted was fine with her.

“Not tonight,” Yarrow said. “But if there’s leftovers, save some for Emeral.” He took Terlu’s hand, and they walked back toward their own cottage.

“You have plans for tonight?” Terlu asked.

“Zucchini, squash, and tomato sliced thin, seasoned with thyme, salt, and pepper. I already have dough on the second rise so we can bake a loaf to have on the side.”

“If you already prepped all that, why even consider joining the others?” Terlu asked.

He shrugged. “I thought you might want to.”

“Not if the dough is already on a second rise.” She liked spending lots of time with lots of people, especially ones who enjoyed each other as obviously as Yarrow’s family did, but a fresh loaf of Yarrow’s bread?

And an evening alone with Yarrow? She’d never say no to that.

“I attempted another variation of the spell today.”

“Oh?”

She told him about what she’d tried and what had happened, as well as her ideas for what to attempt next.

He listened as they both went inside and shed their coats.

Crossing to the kitchen counter, he began slicing the vegetables and arranging them in a skillet.

She built up the fire and put a kettle for tea over the flames.

Seated at the table near Yarrow, she added notes to her notebook—she’d begun her own journal to match Laiken’s, though hers wasn’t in code.

She was aiming for a clear and organized record of everything she’d discovered about the greenhouse spells, which was rather more than her lack of progress with the bubble spell showed.

Terlu had successfully extracted several of his spells: the sunflower maze, for example, as well as the singing plants.

She was confident she knew the spell for creating more sentient plants, which she had promised herself she’d use if and only if the other plants asked her to.

But the trickiest spell of all remained the convoluted spell that he’d used to create the greenhouses.

It was woven from multiple other spells.

Granted, she was making strides in understanding how the threads were interconnected, but it could require a lifetime of study before she could recreate what Laiken had done to enchant the greenhouses.

At the very least, though, she was going to leave clear notes for whomever continued her work after her.

In the meantime, she’d also discovered a spell that would let her swim with the sea turtle without needing quite so much oxygen.

There was so much to learn and so much to do. And so much to eat and feel and think and be! It still left her breathless sometimes to think how close she came to missing all of this, to never even taking a full breath again, much less having a full life.

Yarrow shaped the loaves and loaded them into the brick oven to bake while he cooked the vegetables on the skillet. The scent of herbs and cooked tomatoes filled the cottage, and Terlu breathed it in. “Smells incredible,” she said.

“It’s an experiment,” he said. “See what you think.”

“I like your experiments. They’re much tastier than mine.” Setting the table, Terlu poured water for each of them and added icicles as stirring sticks. She dropped a fresh mint leaf in each glass.

When the vegetables were done, he served them onto two plates. He spooned the rest into a serving dish and placed the skillet in the sink to soak.

“Go on, eat.”

She picked up a forkful, blew on it to cool it, and then put it in her mouth. Flavors exploded over her tongue, and every herb filled every bit of her. “It tastes like summer.”

“That’s what I’d hoped.”

While she ate another bite, he checked on the loaves. Taking them out, he thumped the bottom. Satisfied, he set them aside to cool while he returned to dinner.

They alternated between talking and not talking. When a loaf had cooled enough, he sliced it and served it with his dragon-approved honey butter.

“You should make this for the Winter Feast,” Terlu said.

“I’ve been working on another specialty for that.”

“Oh?”

“You’ll have to wait for dessert. I’ve been experimenting with that too.”

She grinned. “That sounds interesting.”

When they finished and cleaned from dinner, he brought out a plate from the icebox.

It was underneath a napkin embroidered with pink and purple flowers—a gift from his father who had brought it from Alyssium.

Birch had learned to embroider while he was recovering from the illness that had sent him there, a weakness in his heart that only specialist doctors were able to cure.

The flowers were lopsided, but it was still pretty.

Yarrow set it in the center of the table and then, with a flourish, he lifted the napkin.

“You do like drama—” she began, and then stopped and stared.

They were chocolate-covered orange slices, each slice perfect and plump as a jewel, with smooth-as-silk chocolate encasing half of them.

She felt a lump in her throat. She hadn’t known he’d been listening when she talked about oranges weeks ago.

He’d barely liked her then. In fact, she was certain he hadn’t.

All of a sudden, it felt like her family was here with her, even though they hadn’t yet written back to the letter she’d sent—it had been picked up by a passing sailor weeks ago, but no boat had returned with a response. Still, here was a bit of home.

Terlu blinked quickly.

“You don’t like them?” he said, concerned. “I know you said you remembered candied oranges from your Winter Feast, but then I thought with your story about the orange tree…”

“It’s perfect,” she said. “You’re perfect.”

Yarrow snorted.

Standing, she crossed to him. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. She drank in the warmth of him as her hands moved around his neck to tangle in his hair. He whispered her name as he moved to kiss her neck and her ear.

Much later, they ate the chocolate oranges.

And they were indeed perfect.