The Lost Garden: The Complete Series

by D. K. Holmberg

  Desia had seemed different the last time Eris had been here. Part of her suspected Desia was angry that Eris managed to learn she was a keeper. It meant what Desia knew—what she’d been learning from Lira—wouldn’t lead to the same power Eris had discovered. Ferisa leaving had to bother her as well, probably more than Jacen’s death. Desia and Jacen had never been particularly close.

  “Will you speak to them?” her mother asked.

  “Me?” Her mother nodded. “What do you think I can accomplish by speaking to them?”

  She took a breath and drew herself up straight. “You are a keeper of the forest, Eris. There is much you can accomplish if you try.”

  “I couldn’t save Jacen.” She couldn’t let it go. The memory of her brother’s dead eyes lingered, haunting her days. And thoughts of the magi attacking consumed her nights, keeping her from sleep.

  Her mother’s breath caught, and she closed her eyes. “No. I don’t think anything could have saved Jacen. After what happened to him, I think he wanted to die fighting the magi. Even the priestesses couldn’t soothe him, regardless of how they tried.” She touched Eris’s arm. “Please. Go to them. See what you can do to help. Desia especially. I think Jasi will be fine in time, regardless of what we do, but Desia…we could lose her if we don’t do something.”

  Eris considered protesting, but the set to her mother’s jaw told her it would do no good. At this point, she was no longer a keeper of the forest; she was the girl her mother had raised, regardless of who her birth mother might be.

  “I will try,” she agreed. What harm would it do to speak to her sisters?

  Her mother watched her for a moment longer and then started to turn. She hesitated, her gaze drifting toward the arrangement of flowers on the table as if seeing it for the first time. “Interesting. Roses and camogines. The roses look nothing like those Master Nels grows in our garden, and the colors create an odd contrast, but that other flower—” She sucked in her breath and turned back to Eris. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  Eris studied the arrangement again. What had her mother seen? “My strength is not in reading the messages written within the flowers,” she admitted. That fact had nearly killed her before. She had nearly overlooked the warning the priestesses had written into the flowers.

  “But you are a keeper!”

  Eris snorted. “An untrained keeper of flowers. And trees. I have strength without knowledge.” She didn’t need to be reminded it was a dangerous combination.

  Her mother leaned toward the flowers. She took a deep breath and held it, seeming to taste the fragrance of the flowers on her tongue. “The camogines are ours, aren’t they?”

  “They are yours,” Eris agreed.

  “And these grasses. I think I should have seen them before.”

  “What do you see in the flowers? What do you think the arrangement means?”

  Her mother stood. She pulled the yellow rose from the arrangement. “The yellow would indicate friendliness. Depending on the setting, it can mean a specific word, sometimes a phrase.”

  Eris nodded, surprised her mother would recognize so much from what was written in the flowers.

  “And then there is this one,” she went on, plucking the purple rose. “At first blush, it would be kindness, but the streaks of navy worked into the petals add a different texture to it. A sense of darkness that contrasts with the flower itself. A warning of sorts.”

  “I recognized the warning,” Eris said.

  “But there is more. This flower,” she said, pointing to the blood red veratrum. “I have seen it before.”

  Eris frowned. “You recognize it?” She thought she had seen most of the flowers in the palace garden. Could she have overlooked some?

  Her mother placed the flowers back into the arrangement. She carefully wiped her hands on her dress and straightened her back. “Lira has always placed messages for me around the palace, and when your sisters began to learn the language, they would as well. It became a game.”

  Eris stiffened. It might have been a game for them, but it was one she had never been allowed to play. Another way she had been kept apart from the others. “Continue,” she said.

  Her mother nodded. “After you were gone, the messages stopped. Lira’s lessons with your sisters became infrequent. She spent her time rebuilding the gardens. After the magi attacked, the gardens were destroyed. Lira’s power was weakened. So when I saw an arrangement like this, it caught my eye.”

  “When did you see it?” Even as she asked, Eris suspected she knew.

  “It was shortly before I fell ill. I-I don’t know what it means, but the fact that it appeared before I became sick is worrisome.”

  Eris stared at the flowers, seeing the warning in a new light. If the last time the message appeared her mother fell ill, did it mean Eris would become sick?

  Or could the warning be different?

  An even greater concern struck her: did it mean the priestesses had returned to Eliara?

  Chapter 64

  The svanth tree at the center of the palace gardens had grown tall in the time since Eris first planted it. Branches swayed in the gentle breeze, full leaves unfurled. Teary star flowers bloomed along the vine, running up the trunk, providing additional strength and helping support the tree as it grew. Petals, each a different color, rolled from the tips of the woven vines formed the flowers. Their fragrance filled the air, overpowering even that of the massive gardens Lira had planted.

  Eris knelt alongside the tree and traced a finger through the damp earth. She had nearly lost her mother here. Had it not been for her ability with the trees, she would have lost her. And still, she had been unable to save Jacen.

  “You finally returned.”

  Eris looked up to see Desia watching her from a long wooden bench angled away from the svanth tree, a remnant of when her mother had lain within the garden. Golden hair so much like their mother’s hung to her shoulders, only a slight curl to it. Eris stood and turned to face her sister.

  Their mother might want her to understand what troubled her sisters, but Eris feared she didn’t have the time, not after finding the arrangement in her room. She needed to find Lira, but the Mistress of Flowers was nowhere to be found. Eris had looked in her quarters and the gardens but had not found her.

  “Would you rather I stayed away?” Eris asked.

  Desia opened her mouth to answer before snapping it shut. She smoothed her brightly colored dress—bold yellow and azure stripes alternating in a pattern around the dress—and looked up at her. “I would rather you not have left.”

  The answer surprised Eris. “I have much responsibility now.”

  Desia laughed and shook her head. “Responsibility. Eris. When it was supposed to be Jasi and I serving Errasn?”

  “You don’t think you still serve?”

  “I don’t think there is anything for me anymore. Father refuses to find a suitable match for Jasi, which leaves me…” She sighed and looked away, staring out at the garden as if contemplating an arrangement of flowers. “Leaves me nowhere. And then there’s you. You finally return from running off with your gardener—”

  “I did not run off with Terran.”

  Desia turned back to her and frowned. “And save Mother and stop the magi with your flower magic. You—of all people!—have become the savior of the kingdom.”

  “That’s what bothers you? That I finally found where I fit? All these years you and Jasi have tormented me about how different I am, and I finally understand why. Now you won’t even allow me that?”

  Desia stared at her and then dropped her head. “Tormented you? We’re sisters, Eris. We might have our differences, but that doesn’t change the fact we’re sisters.”

  Eris decided arguing with Desia would do no good, but how could she not see the way they treated her? They had always taunted her, though Eris hadn’t made it easy on them.

  Desia went on. “With Jacen gone, Jasi will sit on the throne. It no longer suit
s her.”

  Eris bit back the retort she thought she would need, suddenly understanding where Desia’s anger came from. Jasi would be queen. Eris was now a keeper. Ferisa had abandoned them all for the priestesses. But what would Desia do? Would she still be married off as their father once intended?

  “I’m sure Father will find you a suitable match,” Eris said.

  Desia looked up, her eyes narrowing. “And if I don’t find a suitable match, what then? Will I forever be left to wither in Eliara?”

  Eris shifted on her feet, struggling to understand what bothered Desia the most. “Don’t you want a match?”

  Her sister sat back onto the bench in a huff. She stared at her hands, bunching the fabric of her dress in clenched fists as she did. “I thought I did. Now…can’t I find something of value to offer?”

  Eris stepped over to the bench and sat carefully alongside her sister. She took her hand, pulling it from the dress and squeezing it. “Why would you think you couldn’t?”

  “You don’t understand what it’s like. Now that you have this…this ability. Mother speaks so highly of you. Jasi even supports what you do. And Father… When you healed Mother, you won Father over. I bet he’d even let you marry that gardener now, if you wanted.”

  Did it still matter what her father decided? Though Terran had gone as far as to speak to her father, Eris had chosen Terran. They needed no permission. “And you get to enjoy the safety of the palace without fearing what will happen were the magi to capture you. You never had to know the fear of waiting to die, not knowing what will happen when they complete their chant.”

  As much as she’d learned since the nights when the magi had abducted her and dragged her off with Jasi to the Svanth Forest, she still couldn’t shake that helpless feeling. She’d felt it again after she’d been stabbed—either Ferisa or one of the other priestesses. Eris remembered awakening long enough to overhear their conversation about what to do with her. And then Shadow had intervened, dragging her off to the forest in the north, to Imryll.

  Desia leaned back against the bench. “Sometimes I wonder if death would be better than languishing here, useless.”

  Eris laughed. “You’re not useless.”

  “No? Mother keeps me from her council. And since Jacen died, Father allows Jasi to join in his sessions with the generals. I’m left to my ‘studies’, as if there’s anything I can study that will take my mind off what has happened.”

  Eris closed her eyes. This was what her mother asked of her. “Then you can help me.”

  Desia frowned. “Help you with what? You think you can suddenly teach me to master the secrets of your flower magic when I failed Lira all these years?”

  “You didn’t fail. You were never destined to be a keeper.”

  “And you were?” Desia shook her head. “You were no more destined to this magic than any of us. Honestly, Eris, I didn’t expect you to let the power go to your head, but I see that it has.”

  Eris sighed to herself. She could either push Desia away or she could draw her closer. It would be easier to push her away. Pulling her closer meant opening up to a sister who had been awful her entire life. At least with Jasi, the experience of nearly dying had brought them a sort of understanding.

  But if she pushed Desia away, what would happen with her? Already, Eris sensed Desia drifting away. And wasn’t her role as keeper to heal rather than divide?

  “I was destined to be keeper, Desia. You might not understand, but let me explain.”

  Desia stood and started away.

  Eris grabbed her wrist, unwilling to let her run from her. “I’m the reason Lira came to the palace. She came here to ensure I was trained.”

  Desia jerked her hand away and shook her head. “Really? She came for you? You really have let your power go to your head. Now you think Lira came to Eliara for you and not because Mother asked for her to help design the gardens?”

  “Mother asked her to come.” Eris stood and faced Desia. How could she tell her the truth without upsetting her further? “But she asked her to come because she knew I needed to be trained. Because my mother knew I would need to be trained.”

  “Your mother? She’s my mother, too.”

  “No, Desia, she’s not. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  Desia shot her a look that Eris ignored.

  “There’s a reason we’re different, the same reason I can use the energy stored within the flowers. I was born to it.”

  Desia snorted. “Born to it? And how, exactly, are you born to it and not me?”

  Eris swallowed. “Because Rochelle is my mother.”

  Desia stared blankly at her and then started laughing bitterly. “Had you tried that joke on me when Mother was sick, I might have been angry. Now, it’s only foolish. Claiming you have a different mother? And Aunt Rochelle, at that! I know you’re angry with what you claim Ferisa did to you and for what you think Jasi and I did to you growing up, but that’s no reason to say hurtful things. And here I thought you came to apologize.”

  She stormed away, leaving Eris staring after her, uncertain what else she could have said.

  She sighed again, turned to the svanth tree, and ran her hand over it. The barbs worked along the vine pulled back from her, avoiding piercing her skin. She released her breath and delved into the roots of the svanth. This tree connected to the others she’d planted, reaching toward the svanth tree planted in the Verilain Plains, the one she’d used to heal the area the magi had attacked months before. That tree connected to the forest itself, drawing her awareness along with it.

  Part of the connection was off. Perhaps she had been away from the forest for too long. Maybe the keeper should not be apart from the forest for as long as she had, but she had other tasks, and by adding trees along the border, she had been adding to the forest.

  A soft touch pressed on her arm, and she pulled back from the connection.

  Terran watched her, worry wrinkling his eyes. He looked different than when she’d first met him. His dark hair was cut short. There was a hardness to him that hadn’t been there before. A sword hung at his waist, and he spent every moment he could learning from her father’s soldiers how to wield it. Gardeners serving keepers had their own gifts and Terran learned quickly. But his eyes had changed the most. The tight lines worked around the corners were ever present, as was the worried look pursing his mouth.

  “I saw Desia leaving the gardens. Was that you?”

  “Mother asked me to reach out to her.”

  Terran laughed. It didn’t reach his eyes. “And that was how you chose to do it?”

  “I tried to tell her about Rochelle.”

  “You think that was the best timing to tell her?”

  “I don’t know if there is a good time to tell someone you’re not actually her sister.”

  Terran squeezed her arm. “You are their sister. You may not share the same blood, but you’re their sister. Recognize what you have to tell them will be difficult to accept. They already have to come to terms with the fact you have an ability they do not. Now they will have to understand why your mother hid the truth from all of you.”

  Eris hadn’t thought of it that way. Their mother hadn’t simply hidden the truth from her—she’d hidden the truth from all of them. She had reasons, but the decision had impacted them all. “I hope she never has to tell Father.”

  “And if she does, let me know so I can be far away.”

  Eris turned and rested her head on his chest. He smelled earthy, the pleasant mixture of soil and decaying leaves, and strong. He touched her hair, smoothing her dark curls.

  “At least I have a pass now. And according to Desia, after healing Mother, he wouldn’t care if I brought home two gardeners.”

  “Don’t you think the connections you have are confusing enough?”

  He referred to Shadow. The great creature she’d bonded to who had helped save them when under attack from the magi. He lurked outside the walls of the city, prowling thro
ugh the Verilain Plains. She had only to think of him, and the awareness of his location returned. She still didn’t know what the bond meant.

  “He helped save us,” she reminded.

  “I know that without him we would have died along the border, but I’d like to know more about where he came from. Why would he suddenly appear to help? I’ve never heard of other keepers with such a creature.”

  Eris looped her arms around his waist and looked up at him. Holding Terran felt comfortable, though she still had a nagging sense of impropriety about embracing him so casually here in the palace. Outside the palace, when it was only the two of them, they shared an indescribable connection. When she’d thought she nearly lost him, she had almost died herself. As he lay dying from the magi attack, she had been willing to risk herself, pouring everything into the svanth tree needed to fuel her healing of him.

  “Imryll had a guardian,” she said. “A wolf. I remember thinking how he seemed to stare at me as if he could understand what we said.”

  “As Shadow understands you?”

  Eris nodded. When she had time—if she ever found the time—she needed to find Imryll again. As a keeper of trees, Imryll could teach her much that Lira wouldn’t be able to explain. There was a difference between what Lira and Imryll could do with their abilities. With Lira, the patterns she created within the flowers augmented the energy she could draw. With Imryll, it was a sense of the trees respecting her, moving to aid her. The trees themselves provided the energy she needed as keeper.

  Except Eris had seen patterns within the Svanth Forest. The pattern had to be intentional. If she could understand it, she might be able to serve the trees even better. She might be able to understand what she was meant to do, what role she was intended to play.