Page 1 of Skyblossom
Chapter 1
THE LEGENDARY BLOSSOM
CADENCE
Skyblossom.
It looked like a perfect match… I turned the pages back and forth, looking between the reference pictures and the flower I had on the table in front of me. The greenhouse was quiet, outside of the sound of two galobalos playing in the bushes, thefeeling of magic strong on my senses and the air sweet with the scent of rich magic earth and plants.
I pinched my lips together, looking back at the book, and I sighed, picking up my tea. I laughed when a lumini fluttered its wings and landed on the other side of the teacup, looking at me with the characteristic magic light from its wings flicking brighter with curiosity, tilting its colorful-crested head looking at me, and I held out a finger for it to step onto, transferring it onto a nearby branch before I sipped my tea and settled back to look at the notes.
I’d found the flower during one of my field trips through the campus grounds, growing wild in a little cluster in the knots of a feybough tree’s roots. It was a beautiful thing, with thick, creamy white petals and vivid streaks from the center outwards, a different color on each petal. I could tell it was magical, but I hadn’t seen it in any of my textbooks, and I practically lived in my textbooks.
So I’d plucked one of the flowers, kept it in a magical stasis, and I’d been spending the past two days looking through every reference document that existed at Starfall. I’d just about emptied the Sparkes Center of Herbalist Reference looking through every book, and just when I was starting to wonder if the flower was an illusion, here it was, an exact match, looking up at me.
But this was fey tricks. There was no way it was right.
A legendary rare blossom, some pockets of it are rumored to exist somewhere on the grounds of Starfall Academy and its neighbor school Elara Magica.
The skyblossom flower has a deep connection to the ley lines and to fate itself. If you trust in your heart and pluck the right petal, the ley lines will grant a wish.
But beware! If you don’t listen to your heart and go astray and pick the wrong petal, it unleashes a terrible curse upon you.
Sure. And I was secretly a dragon.
Talk about sensationalist… it felt less like I was reading an old reference document and more like a tabloid written for a nonmagical audience.
There was a stir across the table, and I looked up at where Knot crept up over the side of the table, looking at me—well, he was a snagweed I kept, a magic flowering vine, so it was a little generous to say helookedat me. But he had a very charismatic presence, and I set down my tea, holding up the flower like I was showing him.
“What… do you think?” I said. “Think it’s a legendary magic bloom that can make my wishes come true?”
He curled up around the vase on the other end of the table, one leafy little stem curling out to poke at the supposed skyblossom in curiosity. A touch of magic rippled from the point where he touched it, and I took the flower back, turning it slowly, staring into it.
“Guess we’ll give it a try,” I said. “I just want to be done with this thing… I’ve got exams to focus on. What do you think, Knot? Six petals means I’ve got a five in six chance of being cursed. What do you think I should wish for to make that worth it?”
He raised one stem up high like a head looking curiously at me, and then back to the empty chair opposite me. I slumped back in the chair.
“Don’t… don’t attack me like that, Knot.”
I mean, I knew he was just poking around feeling things like a dog would sniff rocks. But it still felt a little targeted.
I knew it had been a minute now since Natalie had left—we’d only been together for three months, and it had been longer than three months since she’d left. I had no reason to stillbe sitting here with a second chair out at the table, like I was waiting for her to show up and things to go back to normal.
It wasn’t like I was likely to ever find somebody else. I spent all my time either in greenhouses and gardens or in private study rooms cramming mountains of material. It wasn’t exactly the best place to find a date.
It shouldn’t have bothered me. I had my studies to focus on. I didn’t need a lot of people. I had my friends at the galeria. And I couldnottalk to somebody without embarrassing myself anyway.
But I knew how I spent my time daydreaming. How I would read romance novels and then curl up in the chair by my window looking out over the gardens and ache in my chest wishing for my own love story. That somebody would walk into my life and I’d… I don’t know, somehow manage to charm them by talking about flowers. I wasn’t exactly a smooth talker.
Natalie had been a miracle. And I’d known that, and I’d clung to her so hard it drove her away. Which probably only made it harder for me to find somebody, if I was hung up on my ex.
I took the petal with the purple streak between two fingers—I didn’t feel some divine power guiding me, but purple was my favorite color, and I spoke in an awkward mumble, trying for a casual kind ofI’m just playing around and don’t believe this is a thing.“I wish… to meet the love of my life.”
I plucked the petal.
Nothing happened.
A slight shimmer of magic, just like you normally would when picking a magic flower. The petal was a little heavier than it looked, the soft texture of it dense in my fingers. I lay the petal down on my herbal bank alongside the other samples I had on right now, and I held the rest of the flower up to the light.
