Tender of the Garden by Anne Zoelle

Author:Anne Zoelle [Zoelle, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Anne Zoelle
Published: 2016-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

He sighed as she appeared next to him at the feldragon fire revel two days later—a second celebration for his renewed brethren, who were up and walking and now making merry a safe distance from him.

“Go away,” he said, lazily flicking an ember stick in the direction of the bonfire with his middle finger.

“I think I shall stay.” She settled herself next to him, wrapping the watery cloak around her as she sat. She had worked herself and the garden hard, gathering all the splintering bits of magic that she could in order to be here.

It was far from the first time she'd accompanied him to a revel, but it was the first where he wasn't snapping his jaws at her.

“They all think me increasingly daft,” he said. “Speaking to the air.”

“They think correctly.”

The response almost earned her a smile. He leaned back against the wall of vine-filled stone and closed his eyes. “Leave.”

She encouraged one of the leaves of a climbing non-venomous vine to curl into his throat. “And miss the chance to watch you rave at yourself? Never.”

Without opening his eyes, he pinned the leaf back in place with a retractable claw. “Speaking to oneself is considered a sign of trance fever.”

The vine shook its leaf free and nestled back into the stones.

“You do look feverish,” she said. His skin was highlighted by the fire with a healthy glow. She reached forward, as if to touch him, before curling the fingers of her ghostly hand into her palm. “But I think the fever agrees with you.”

He opened his eyes, gaze pinning her, then leaned forward to grab his drink.

“The fever is a menace,” he said, draining his tankard and throwing the empty vessel in the general direction of a servant who barely caught it—juggling six other vessels while trying to catch the seventh with his tail.

“You could have handed it to him,” she said pointedly.

Set showed his teeth. “I'm neither a peasant nor a man taken to kindness. I'm a prince and an extremely terrifying one, at that.”

She held his challenging stare for a long moment, then looked up at the star-filled sky, dotted haphazardly through the canopy of the mangough trees. “Your terror is only eclipsed by the beauty of the trees from which you reign. Your own view must be extraordinary—the sentinel point of the village, a wide expanse of valley and sky to view.”

A group of girls came by, casting glances Set's way. His lips curved, and the slant was both mesmerizing and alarming. The girls reacted to the disparate urges caused by it in a strange way, pushing and pulling at the others in multiple directions—some wanting to approach, others outright scared.

He leaned back and looked to the sky. “I should be observing it there instead of here.”

Lirah watched the girls whispering—some low, some insistently—and she scooted closer to him. The water from the garden rippled around her as she moved. She looked down at it, an idea forming, then pulled the thin sheet of it over his form.

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