Page 44 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

But they had all the time in the world.

Until they did not.

“Oh, wow.”

Mara opened her eyes and gazed at the blossom she had called forth. It was a pale yellow-peach, and she frowned. She had been expecting blue.

“What did you do?”

She tried not to roll her eyes, failed. “I have told you. I just do it.”

“There has to be more to it than that,” he insisted.

“I do not know.” She reached out to the flower, tried to turn it blue, tried to analyze her mind as she asked it to turn blue. “I remember things. And I give the plant the memory, and it…”

She paused.

“When the memory is joyful,” she said softly, “it blooms as it should. It remembers spring. When the memory is painful, it blooms…wrong. It imagines a different spring. Colder, warmer. Less rain or more rain. It drinks from me and becomes the color I am in that moment.”

She stared at the flower, the one that was just as it should be. Not the blue of grief. Not any color but the one it should be.

“What were you thinking of this time?”

Mara could not meet his eyes. “A memory. One that was sad, but also…also full of joy. Bittersweet.”

They’d been so full of joy. So hopeful. So in love.

It should hurt more. It should be more bitter than sweet.

The flower should have been wrong.

Why was it not wrong? Why was it not tinged with sadness?

Guilt washed over her, and she turned and scanned her garden.

It was still in bloom. Still hazy with pollen, busy with bees and hummingbirds and butterflies.

But the colors were…

“Mara.”

She started, turned to Ethan. His face was serious.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. His voice was gentle, but firm.

“Of course,” she said, though she was not paying him her full attention. Her mind was whirling with implications, with reflections. With knowledge that she did not want to admit.

Because as soon as she admitted it, it would be real.

And she would have to choose.

Chapter sixteen

White Flag

Ethan had made a decision.

It was the right decision. He was sure of it, as sure as he’d ever been of anything. But there was Mara to consider, too.