Page 2 of Flowerheart

“Miss Lucas,” said the wizard, “I’m Master O’Brian.”

I curtsied. Magic hammered against my breastbone. “Welcome, Your Greatness.”

I let him step through, and at once, Papa set about shaking the wizard’s hand and finding him a seat.

Another wizard filed into the room, and then a witch, and then another, until there were eight of them, dressed in their austere black gowns and suits. As I bent in curtsy after curtsy and welcomed each magician, Papa scurried into the kitchen to find a stool.

I looked back at the group of magicians—a small murder of crows, the lot of them—and my mind stirred.What sort of judgment have they come to bring me?

All I could do was hold tight to the doorknob and to old lessons on how to calm my magic.Focus on your breath,my teachers had said.

I inhaled deeply and drew the door closed—

A shiny black shoe stuck itself into the crack of the door.

“Sorry,” came the voice of a young man—a voice I knew.

With a frown, I pulled back the front door.

My thoughts scattered about like leaves in the wind.

Xavier Morwyn.

As a child, I had always found him comely, but now, to my great chagrin, I found that he had grown to beveryhandsome. He was taller than before; we used to look one another in the eye, challenging each other to stare the longest without blinking. Now his hat nearly brushed the lintel. His once neatly trimmed hair now hung past the stiff white collar of his shirt. He was paler than I remembered, too, and there were dark circles around his brown eyes, like he hadn’t slept in many, many nights.

He slowly removed the top hat from his dark hair, pressing it to his heart.

“Hello,” he said softly.

If we had been children, we would have embraced each other, laughing and chattering away and picking up right where we’d left off.

Perhaps we still might have done so now if he had ever bothered to write me back. If he hadn’t ignored me for five long years.

And now, of all days to visit, he’d chosen this one.

“What areyoudoing here?” I asked.

A blush painted his pale cheeks and spread to his ears. “Oh, er, they called a meeting of all the Councilmembers in the district.” He pointed to the golden sun pinned to his black cravat.

Envy pricked my heart. We were nearly the same age. There was nothing truly different between us;Ishould have been practicing magic. Instead, he was here with his peers to bear witness to my failures.

I offered him a stiff curtsy. “Welcome, Your Greatness.”

He winced and opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to think better of it. Instead, he bowed and stepped over the stoop, hanging up his hat with the others. I shut the door behind him and, turning back, found that he was still standing in the entryway.

“Papa will help you find a seat,” I said. In the back of mymind, the whispering of my magic started up again, growing in intensity every time my gaze flitted to Xavier’s.

His eyes were so beautiful. I’d forgotten.

“Miss Lucas?”

His voice was warm and gentle as spring air, marred only by the coldness of his address. I’d always been Clara; in our earliest letters he’d even called me “my Clara.”

Xavier meekly pointed at my hair. “You’ve got some... some flowers.”

My hands flew to my frizzy, bright orange plait, where large pink camellias had indeed started to grow.

Almost every night, Papa used to read to me from an old book that had belonged to my mother—Waverly’s Botany Defined. The book had no story; it was just illustrations of plants with their names, their origins, how to grow them, and what they meant. After years of repetition, the cadence of the flowers’ meanings was etched into my mind.

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