Page 28 of Prince of Flowers
“You know, Sylvain, from all our conversations, it never sounded like you knew very much about Earth. But now I’m learning that you can speak a bit of French, that you know about our flowers. That’s a little suspicious, if you ask me — especially for someone who speaks so highly of the Verdance.”
His eyes darkened, the gears in his head turning as he reached for a response.
“First of all, I am a fae of the Summer Court.”
“A prince,” I said. “So you keep saying. Please keep that part down,” I added in a lowered voice.
He kept on rambling, indignant. “It’s only natural that I would know about all sorts of flora and fauna. Some of them find their way into our world. Some of them originated from our world. And besides, who said that humans had a monopoly over words? The fae speak all sorts of tongues. There are fae everywhere in your world, all throughout history. Have you perhaps considered that we have communicated and commingled the way you have? Made one or two trades, exchanged coins, shared our cultures, even languages?”
“Huh,” I said, staring off. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”
“Clearly, you never have.” He huffed triumphantly and kept on walking.
I shook my head, already growing accustomed to Sylvain’s mood swings. Gods above and below. When I decided to go down the path of a summoner, I never once thought that having an eidolon tag along with me twenty-four seven would be part of the bargain.
See, most eidolons didn’t actually live with their summoners, or even accompany them. It was built into the name of our profession, wasn’t it? We summoned monsters and creatures of myth as we needed them for various purposes, whether that was battle or for achieving greater feats of magic.
My doves, for example, came from around the world, answering when I called, appearing through little portals that my magic opened for them. The same applied to Evander’s butterflies. Rumor had it that Evander’s family owned a butterfly farm, something that he had never made any attempt to correct. But that was hardly the most irritating thing about him, anyway.
And so the same worked with other summoners, whether they were calling on a phoenix, a golem, or an entire school of merfolk. We used arcane essence to erect these portals for them: a command, a plea for help, or an invitation, depending on the summoner.
Eidolons would, of course, have the choice of whether or not to answer. In a pact of absolute mutual trust, the process might be near-instantaneous. But whatever thing a summoner attempted to conjure still had the choice to finish up on the toilet, or to scarf down their last few bites of breakfast before they stepped through a portal to answer the summons.
Yet here was Sylvain, not only strutting around the Wispwood, but taking up space in my quarters, taking showers, eating meals. I adjusted the straps on my backpack, testing its weight to make sure my grimoire was still in there. None of those pages and none of the other tomes I’d ever read had told me that forging a bond with an eidolon was the equivalent of getting myself a new roommate. A really hot, but honestly kind of annoying roommate.
“Up these stairs,” I told Sylvain, gesturing toward the spiral staircase that led up into darkness. He shrugged and led the way again, the main character of his own story.
“Quite dim in here,” he said, glancing past the landing behind us, trying to angle for a glimpse of the lower levels. “Quite unlike the rest of the courtyard and the castle. Does the light of the Wispwell not reach here? The wisps themselves?”
“No,” I said. “But it won’t be dark for long. Some places in the Wispwood, you might need a lantern or some magical light to make it through. But not this place. There’s nothing to worry about.”
He puffed his chest out. “I’m not worried at all.”
Yet he lingered on the stair, stretching his neck as he looked over my shoulder, still searching hopefully. For what? Yet another view of the Wispwell?
“Do you think that if we placed a measure of the Wispwell’s water in a phial that it would glow, provide its light? I would like to see if that would work.”
I looked behind me precisely as one of the motes from the Wispwell floated up past my face, a ghostly little speck. Why was Sylvain so focused on the Wispwell? He’d even asked about drinking the stuff on that first day, even if he wasn’t thirsty.
The Wispwood was beautiful, sure. Maybe that was it, something I took for granted, a sight he secretly admired when he wasn’t bragging about his beloved Verdance. But you see something daily and it starts to blend into your everyday, just part of the background.
I turned back to him, nudging him up the stairs. “Maybe we can try and test its luminescent properties once we come back. Or Bruna might know and we won’t even have to.”
“Come back from where?” he asked, distracted, hesitantly ascending by a single step. Wow. Progress.
“The Blood of the Earth,” I said, nudging him more.
Sylvain stopped on the stairs again so abruptly that I bumped into his back. His very muscular back.
“But the exit is down there,” he said, pointing. “Or there?” He pointed at a different side of the courtyard. “Hmm. I can’t remember where we came in. But surely it isn’t up these steps.”
“You’ll find out when we get there. Come on. Get moving.”
The spiral staircase grew brighter as we ascended, the blank stone walls eventually featuring windows as we went round and round. Light streamed in through the glass, filtered at first, as if seen from beneath a forest canopy, then brighter, like we were climbing toward the sun itself.
According to the headmasters of the Wispwood, this was one of the areas of the castle that had been preserved from before it was even known as the Wispwood. The sprawling campus, both a castle and a fortress, had once belonged to a powerful ancient mage lord, one who attempted to bend nature to his will. And as the present state of the Wispwood would indicate, nature positively refused to bend.
Sylvain jerked in surprise as we reached the top landing, possibly from the sight of three human portraits staring him dead in the face. Maybe I should have warned him. Well, two human faces, and something else.
