“What really happened in Westwatch?” His eyes are tender, gently probing. “You haven’t been the same since you came back.”
“Nothing changed,” I answer placidly. Nothing did. Eldas is still the icy Elf King. I’m still forced to be his Human Queen. Whatever we found in that cottage was a dream, a moment, as fragile as butterfly wings.
“Something did.” He frowns and sits across from me. “Is it what happened with Harrow?”
“How’s he doing?” I ask, continuing to allow Willow to think that my general malaise originates from the incident with the fae. Since we’ve returned, Willow has taken over Harrow’s treatment. But the youngest prince still hasn’t woken. That’s another thing for Eldas to resent me for. I’ve no doubt he blames me for the non-responsive state of his brother since it was I who first treated him.
“He’s fine, but still no changes.” Willow pats my hand. “I’m sure he’ll come out of it soon.”
“Yeah…” I finish looking over the last of my plans. There’s only two weeks left before the coronation. I bite my lip and sigh. There’s something I’m missing to achieve the balance, I know it. But my thoughts are scattered like dandelion seeds on the wind.
Part of me can only think of Harrow—worried for his recovery and wondering why he has yet to wake. Part of me wonders if I’m making the right choice. I wonder if there’s any other choice to be made. Then, there’s Eldas…
“I need to grab a few things from the conservatory,” I say, slipping out before Willow can probe again. I’ve become too fragile. I’m teetering on the edge of spilling all the feelings I’m carrying at once just so someone else can see them all—so I no longer have to carry them alone. Yet I can’t. It’s better to pretend none of this exists.
The heat clings to me from the second I step into the conservatory and doesn’t let go. I inhale deeply the now-familiar scent—the unique aroma of the plants that grow here, the moss, the earth, the compost Willow fastidiously tends in the back.
“Be good when I’m gone,” I say softly to all of the plants. They seem to rustle in reply.
I wander the rows of planters, looking for what I might want to take with me. I need to find something that will mirror the strength of the redwood throne. Something that can grow deep roots in the natural world and provide a counterweight to the throne in this world. I thought about taking a trimming from the throne itself, but another queen tried that once for other reasons and the throne was impervious to all knives and chisels.
The first Human Queen planted something to make the throne—I believe that’s what the statue in the center of Quinnar is showing. The Fade and throne, made at the same time in a magical process, almost like a ritual. But what can I plant that could possibly mirror the throne in might? What is still outstanding in the balance?
Then a small, bulbous plant catches my eye. I stare at the heartroot, blinking several times. It’s as if I see it for the first time.
“The heartroot remembers,” I whisper, echoing Willow’s words.
There’s the seed of space that my consciousness goes to within the throne. It’s the seed from which the throne was born. In that place I felt the life of past queens, the energy of the world.
Lilian wrapped a piece of dark bark—bark that mirrors the heartroot and that seed at the core of the redwood throne—on a necklace with filament. It was the necklace she hid in the box. A necklace of magic that Eldas couldn’t understand.
She commissioned her statue at the center of Quinnar to have her kneeling. Not because she intended queens to be subservient, but because she was showing the way everything came to be…and how everything would end.
“That’s it.”
The two flowers that bloomed instantly when I first touched the plant seem to wink at me, as if overjoyed that I’ve pieced it all together. Carefully, I scoop up the pot cradling the unassuming plant. I can almost see the phantom memories I first witnessed when I touched it, reaching out to me.
I saw Queen Lilian taking the heartroot and planting it the first time I came in contact with it. This is what she was planting in the statue. I know it. I feel it with every part of me. This was what the redwood throne grew from, and what will help bring balance in the Natural World.
“Did you plan for this all along, Lilian?” I murmur. A human woman who negotiated peace with a warring Elf King. She was clever. She pulled the heartroot intentionally into just Midscape. She made the worlds out of balance. Lilian built in a way out for the Human Queens for when the time was right—when peace was stable and Human Queens were no longer needed as trophies. She left the clues behind—starting the tradition of journals, the statue, using the heartroot that would trap memories of her—hoping someone would find them.
I’m going home.
Rushing back into the laboratory, I put the plant down and sweep Willow up into a tight embrace. He goes rigid, startled, and just as he moves to return it I’m already pulling away. “Thank you, thank you,” I say.
“What?” He blinks.
“It’s because of you, because of the heartroot, because—oh, never mind. Listen, I need you to do something for me.”
“All right.” Willow nods slowly. “What?”
“Take this.” I carefully snip one of the flowers. His eyes widen. “And make it into an elixir for Harrow.” The heartroot has helped in my healing of Harrow to date. The flower will be just what he needs—a merger of the plant’s body and mind properties.
“The flower, but it’s for…” He trails off.
“Poison, I know. I can’t explain why I think it’ll help,” I say apologetically. “Please just trust me because I need to focus on my other work.”
“Oh…okay.” Willow slowly begins to move, doing as I instruct. Meanwhile, I’m running through my plans. I search the laboratory for everything I might need to sacrifice to equilibrium to make the heartroot propagate faster.