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"Can you make these bloom?" He asked. "Do what you did when you made the egg hatch."
Cera opened her mouth to protest, but sighed instead. "I'll try, but I don't know how I did it."
Isael said nothing, only watched her carefully as she stared at the buds. Cera waited for him to grow impatient as the minutes passed, but he remained silent.
Feeling some pressure ebb, Cera focused on the buds, trying to recall the train of thought that had led to the incident with the egg.
"Can you tell me about these flowers?" she asked. "What they look like when they're in bloom?"
"I'll show you."
He lifted his hand and Cera's breath caught as the balcony burst into bloom with thousands of tiny, bell-shaped blossoms.
"Oh," she breathed, her hand going to the diadem. "They're mountain drops. That's what we call them in Atera."
She couldn't remember what Maewyn had called them, but she did remember what she'd told her about them.
"They're the flower of Ishvalier, where you're from?"
Nodding, Isael plucked a cluster of buds and handed it to Cera. She held the flowers in her hand, brushing her thumb against them to take in their texture. Just as she brought them to her nose to smell them, the flowers vanished. She looked from her palm to the balcony, which was once again nothing but dark vines.
An illusion.
She'd been so taken with the sudden appearance of the flowers that it hadn't even occurred to her that they weren't real. And they had looked so real. It was disturbing to think that she could be so easily bewitched.
Locating the buds he'd pointed out before, she imagined them back in bloom. It was easy enough, after seeing Isael's display, although she couldn't help but feel underwhelmed when the buds began to unfurl, revealing three small and flaccid looking flowers.
"Can you..."
She was going to ask if he could see what she'd done, but Isael was already kneeling down to be at eye level with the little flowers. Cera took a step back, wringing her hands.
"I tried to imagine them looking nicer. Like what you did, but they came out like that. I'm quite tired. I think, perhaps if I got some rest, I could do better tomorrow."
"Youimaginedthem, and this happened? That's all?" He asked. His back was to her, and she could not read his expression. Not that he was the easiest man to read, even with his face on full display.
Cera rolled her shoulders. "I think so. And I wasn't trying to make you see them, it just happened. I really don't understand it. I'm not trying to bespell you."
Isael stood, plucking a flower as he rose. He turned and held it up to her, but Cera looked past the flower to his face. His lips were parted, his brows drawn together.
"You are not...bespellingme, Cera. This isn't an illusion. It's real."
Cera took the flower and rolled it in her fingers. It felt no different from the diamond or Isael's flowers.
"How do you know? It feels the same as when you did it."
"I know when someone is trying to cast an illusion on me. This is not that. This islife magic."
"Ah," she said, trying to stall while she racked her mind for what that meant. "Life magic. So... I can make things grow. Can't all elves do that?"
Her castle had few elven servants, and nearly all of them had worked as groundskeepers or in the stables. It was well-known that elves had an affinity for nature.
Isael said, "Elves respect nature and strive to maintain harmony with it, but we cannot simply will a plant to grow, or an egg to hatch. That is life magic, and it has been lost to us for a very long time. The last elf that had life magic was my grandmother, and she died five centuries before I was born."
"I'm sorry," Cera said, because it was the appropriate thing to say when one spoke of deceased kin. "I can't tell, is this a good thing?"
Isael held out his hand. Cera took it, not sure what to expect. She certainly wasn't expecting him to pull her forward into an embrace.
At first, she went rigid with the surprise of it. After a few seconds she tried to relax, but she still felt awkward and unsure of what to do. People never held her, not since she was a child.
