She and Tal both tried to make the bow protocol demanded of them, but it was hard with them tangled together. Evidently Lord Elan didn’t care. He just said “You can go” to Tal.

Tal hesitated, his grip on Jae’s arm going tight for a moment. He couldn’t argue—couldn’t even speak, since he hadn’t been asked a question—and he couldn’t disobey. He helped Jae get balanced, then brushed her elbow with his hand as he glided out. Jae watched him go, wishing she could keep him with her somehow, hoping he’d stay nearby. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to make it back to the Closest’s quarters by herself, assuming Lord Elan let her go when he was done.

“Jae,” he said. “Look at this.”

He pointed down at the fountain’s trough, but when Jae shifted her gaze, the world started to swirl in front of her again. Everything turned sideways; she couldn’t tell which way was up, could barely move her arms to try to catch herself—

Lord Elan sprang forward and grabbed her as she toppled, pulled her up until he had his arms wrapped firmly around her. She shuddered, wanted to pull away but couldn’t. She didn’t dare, and wouldn’t be able to move even if she did.

“Are you all right?” he asked, quietly, concerned. “What happened?”

The Curse nudged her, and she was too exhausted and achy to even attempt to control her answer. “I’m not all right! I had some kind of fit before, and now—now I’m dizzy and exhausted and I don’t want you to touch me!”

His eyes widened, the whites catching the moonlight, the brown so dark she couldn’t tell iris from pupil. His mouth fell open, and he just gaped at her. She braced herself as best as she could. The Curse required honesty, but she wouldn’t usually have shared that particular bit of truth.

“You can’t stand on your own,” he finally said, once he got over the shock and regained control of his jaw. “I’ll set you down.”

He wasn’t as gentle as Tal but managed to maneuver her down onto the ground without dropping her. He left her kneeling, hunched over, her fingers digging into the dirt beneath the pebble path. She concentrated on breathing, on not shaking. He didn’t move any closer, just waited.

Finally her trembling subsided. She could move again, though she didn’t dare go far. All she did was force herself to relax, to sit back on her legs, kneeling upright instead of hunched over. The garden was still too bright, the fountain still glowing under the moon. Not even just the fountain—everything seemed to be cast in an eerie light, as if a silver fire burned inside the cactus and the pathetic bushes. Even Lord Elan glowed, though he looked a little different. That light was dimmer, steady instead of twisting and pulsating like a flame.

He stepped forward a little and pointed at the base of the fountain again. Not at the trough but at the pebbled ground in front of it, where a single purple flower was growing.

Jae gasped.

“That’s what I needed to speak to you about,” he said. “I don’t remember seeing this flower yesterday. Was it here?”

“No, Highest,” she murmured, still staring. The flower, like the fountain, glowed brightly—but that was impossible. It was all impossible. Stone as smooth as the fountain could reflect light, but a flower or a cactus couldn’t. She’d heard of some people who got headaches so severe that they saw strange things, but it had never happened to her before.

“Did you plant it today?”

“No, Highest,” she repeated.

He frowned, but at the flower, not at her. “I don’t understand it. The flower—it can’t grow out here; the soil is too dry. Back home, we have to water gardens twice a day to get blossoms like this, and I know you don’t do that. The water I spilled yesterday, do you think that might have done it? That it was enough for the flower to grow?”

“No, Highest. The flower’s grown too quickly, and it wasn’t all that much water….” She trailed off, squinting at the flower. Something about it was familiar, floating just beyond her grasp, but the thought vanished like the last rays of daylight.

Lord Elan scowled, his mouth pulling to one side. “Well, it can’t just have appeared here.”

She swallowed, glad he hadn’t asked her if she agreed with him. It was impossible, but it had just appeared, sometime in the hours since she’d tended the garden and had her fit. And she’d dreamed about the garden, about flowers just like this one….

Maybe that was all it was; she’d seen the flower as she’d fainted and had turned it into a dream. But even as she thought that, she knew it was wrong. The flower hadn’t been there that afternoon.

She waited for Lord Elan to ask her something else, but he didn’t, instead saying, “It must be nothing, then. Stupid of me to hope otherwise. But I want you to care for this flower, at least. Give it the water it needs. There’s only one, for now, so it won’t be all that much.”

She nodded that she understood as the Curse accepted the order. Then he strode out, not looking back at her.

She heaved a deep breath, relieved to have him gone. Tal didn’t come back into the courtyard, though, which meant that either he really had left her alone or he’d been pulled off to a more important task—or any task at all. Maybe Lady Shirrad had found him again. It wasn’t as if the Lady would care that Tal wanted to help Jae.

Instead of pushing herself up, Jae crawled forward until she could reach out and brush a finger against the flower’s petals, awed. It was like something she’d seen in a dream, dancing at the edge of her memory, just out of her reach. Jostling the flower released the scent of pollen into the air, sharp and sweet, and familiar. But dreams didn’t come with scents, and she’d never seen a flower like this before.

Maybe Lady Shirrad had perfume that smelled like the blossom….

But once Jae touched it, she couldn’t shake the strange feeling that she had seen the flower before, and not in a dream. Maybe she did remember it from some long-ago time, when she’d been a child and the drought hadn’t started yet. But that felt wrong, too. She knew the flower, and it felt more intimate than that, as if it belonged to her alone.

It was impossible, but as Jae stared up at the fountain that was practically writhing under the moonlight, then down at the flower in front of her, she knew that she’d created it.