Page 90 of Song of the Dark Wood

He met her eyes, and a familiar heat sparked in the air between them. “I don’t think you’re mad at me right now. You’re just picking a fight to deflect. You can tell me anything, little Red, when you’re ready.”

Her gaze dropped to his lips. She sighed and turned away, leaving him with nothing but silence and the scent of lavender and vanilla on the air.

The next day,Conor followed Rowan around the Dark Garden as she told him where to move sacks of fertilizer, baskets of seeds and bulbs, and buckets of water. She grumbled about how it was far too late in the season to get started before pausing with her eyes closed, as if listening closely to some phantom sound. It was a relief to see her in better spirits.

“What do you hear when you’re in there? Why are you so drawn to this garden?” Conor asked.

She worried her lower lip between her teeth. “It’s like I can hear the melody of the dormant flowers. It’s sad and lovely, like everything else here. Whenever I get close, it tugs on me like it just needs a little help to bounce back. It calls to my magic.”

“Will you show me how to plant?” Conor asked.

Rowan stifled a giggle. “You want to plant flowers?”

“I want to plant flowers with you, yes,” he said. “I may as well after I got you all these fancy seeds and bulbs.”

She grinned, her eyes lighting up. He’d finally stopped trying to resist the way she drew smiles out of him. He was worried that allowing feelings for her to develop would feel like being sucked into an undertow, but surrendering to it felt more like floating along with a gentle current than drowning. As long as he could keep some space between them, he’d be fine.

Rowan brushed her hair back from her face, smearing a bit of dirt from her gloves on her forehead. Conor rubbed it away with his sleeve.

“I’m not sure what exactly is planted in this portion, so I’ll need to grow that a bit to find out before we know exactly what to plant,” she started. “But over here, there’s no music at all, so we can really go wild. I’m thinking of some of these tulip bulbs. It might be a little bit late in the season, but if I help them along, they should survive the winter and be really beautiful in the spring.”

Conor followed her lead as she dug small holes for the tulip bulbs, evenly spaced at the front of the flower bed. He considered the impracticality of planting flowers on the precipice of winter, but the determined look on Rowan’s face kept him from sharing his concerns.

She laughed at his technique, placing her hands over his. “Slow down. You’re not trying to murder the soil. You’re just trying to dig down a few inches. I know you’re not exactly made for delicate things, but I think you can learn,” she whispered.

Her words were laced with innuendo, but he caught no hint of teasing on her face. She pretended as if she’d said nothing as she handed him a few more bulbs and watched him plant them. Once she was satisfied with his technique, she went back to work.

When they finished with the tulips, they interspersed those bulbs with allium bulbs, black dahlia tubers, chocolate cosmos, black pansies, black magic hollyhock, black velvet petunias, and dark purple calla lilies. Rowan was entirely in her element.

“How did you learn so much about flowers?” Conor asked as he pruned back the rosebushes.

“Some of it I learned from Sarai. Some I just know because I can hear things when I listen to them. Here, give me your hands, and I’ll show you. It’s like every plant has its own melody, and from that, I can tell how much space they need, or how deep they need to be planted, or if they like the spot I put them.”

Conor knelt in the dirt as Rowan removed her gloves. She placed her hands over his and guided them over a tulip bulb. She was so close he could hardly focus on anything but her scent and all the places her body pressed against his. Her eyes fluttered shut, and a faint smile tugged her lips up.

“This one will need a little extra coaxing. It doesn’t like how cold it is right now.”

“What does it sound like?” Conor asked.

Rowan listened and then hummed a fluttery melodic tune softly. Conor felt her magic brush up against his hands as she hummed a little louder. He felt the melody—not just in his hands, but in his whole body. It was pleasant and bright, like the first warm days in springtime, when the frost breaks and things melt and the crocuses shoot up from the thawing earth. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation.

After a moment, Rowan drew his hands back, and he blinked, startled as a tulip shot up through the ground and, a moment later, bloomed.

Conor stared at it in shock. He knew what she was capable of, but it was another thing to see her power in action with so little effort. Very little surprised Conor after centuries of existence.

“Can we do it again?” he asked.

She nodded, guiding his hands to another spot. “This one is a dahlia. Let’s see, it sounds like—” She closed her eyes and started to hum again.

This time the melody was slower, winding. It reminded him of a violin concerto. Her magic pulsed through his hands and then spread through his body as she sent it down into the ground. This time the magic felt like lying in the sun on a warm day and feeling the warmth spread over his skin and sink into his muscles.

Once again, Rowan shifted his hands to make room, and he blinked his eyes open in time to watch a stunning black dahlia bloom as if it was the height of summer instead of late fall.

He turned to look at Rowan. “What are you, love?”

She shrugged. “I’m just Rowan.”

Conor pushed her back into the grass and kissed her. His body still buzzed with the aliveness of her magic. For someone who was always surrounded by death, it felt like a high. It was as good—if not better—than devouring. He told himself that, but it had been so long since he’d done it, he wasn’t certain that was true.

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