Page 25 of Skyblossom
“No way,” I said, shifting further back into the window seat of the old alchemy lab—most alchemy labs on campus, this one included, were public and open for anyone, but I knew enough alchemists to know they’d typically pick one and claim it, but Summer had always bounced around until we’d started… doing whatever we were doing, and we’d sort of claimed thisone together. I’d even moved in some of my herbalist cultivars, looking after them while Summer brewed, and I busied myself with the long drooping vines on the tomb leaf plant now while I said, “Winter-blue blossom? That’s such a controlled cultivar, it would take ages and so many requests and such high permissions to get a sample.”
“Think again,” she said with a wink, dropping her bag on the chaise and taking her notebook out, tossing it to me. “Lumi met with her friend Giselle at that event, a wandcrafter who runs in some pretty interesting circles, and heard a rumor thatsomeoneis secretly cultivating a winter-blue somewhere on campus.”
I raised my eyebrows. “They need such specialized care in the modern world… they needed dragons’ influence in the ley lines. There’s, like, six places in the world now where you can grow them. Who’s got that kind of magic?”
“Multiple people pitching in together, seems like. Hence why Lumi was able to pinpoint them from what Giselle said at that event, and she texted me during classes today to say she’s got it.”
“The location? Of a winter-blue blossom, here, at Starfall?”
“A spot north of Glimmerdeep, hidden away in the woods. It’s probably still too immature to harvest it, but this kind of arcane lichen that grows around the base of the winter-blue should be balanced just right for this potion design, and it grows like Vashnar’s, so we can grab a sample and no one will even notice in the morning.”
I leafed through the pages of the notebook, my heart beating faster. I could see what she meant… designs showing the structure of the plant and its arcane sequences seemed like it was almost unbreakable against all the arcane drift effects that kept destabilizing the potion. If we were able to get our hands on this, putting the rest together would be a flicker.
It just… wasn’t lost on me, how everything tied up neatly. Get the winter-blue lichen and finish our classes, just in time to wrap up what Summer and I were doing so she could be with hertrue love.
More and more, I was realizing the skyblossomhadcursed me. But at least I was in the good part of it right now.
“No dragons on the way there, right?” I said, and she laughed.
“If there are, I’ve come prepared with the potions for it this time.”
“I mean, you were last time, too. Popped one and literally swept me off my feet…”
She winked. “Didn’t fly you anywhere, though. Notyet.It’s coming up soon. Do you want to go right now?”
“Now? To get the winter-blue blossom?”
“Well, yeah. The sooner I get it, the sooner I can brew this potion, and the sooner I can go flying with my…” She stopped, making a face briefly. “With you.”
I wished she’d finished that sentence… even if she’d just saidfriend,at least I’d have known. I looked back down at the book, at the charts and the illustrations showing the plant, and I nodded, sliding down from the seat.
“I guess we’ll leave our work supplies here and go… get ready for action.”
“I’ll pop some bases on the burner. Going to need it if I want to get that potion ready ASAP once I have this stuff in hand.”
Rosie and Kali were having coffee and cookies together over an intense end-of-semester study session when I got back to the 313thGaleria, and Rosie beamed at me, offering a cookie and stopping when she saw my face.
“Hey, girl… oh. Hi. Something up?”
I put on a smile. “Big trek into the woods. Good chance, I think, that we’ve found the secret ingredient.”
Kali spoke lightly. “She’s not going to dump you because you finished being useful.”
“No, but she’s going to dump me because she’s going to go meet her true love.”
Rosie snorted. “Everyone in this galeria knowsyou’reher true love. We’ve all seen you two together. Even Opal’s noticed, and neither of you even have any artifacts.”
“We’ve already agreed on this. Okay, off to my dorm,” I said, just to end the conversation, pushing into the dorm and getting changed into forest-trekking clothes. They’d jump me with more emotionally loaded conversations if I went through the galeria, so… I opened the window, pulled up a spark of herbalism magic, and I beckoned the tree to lean closer, bending its branches to make a sling that lowered me to the ground once I stepped out. A little flash of Rosie’s telekinetic flicker—that spell wasalwaysgoing to make me think of Summer now—and I had the window shut behind me, heading out for the meeting point with Summer.
It started to rain a little, a pale gray sky turning dark and plinking rain droplets down over campus. We took the wyvern cars again, and I tried not to think about the symbolism of how it wasn’t one of the old fleet this time, just a standard car. The crystal-blue surface of Glimmerdeep rippled with the rain coming down, nixies splashing and playing on the surface, and we disappeared into the cover of Amber Woods’ heavy canopy as the rain picked up more. We talked and laughed over little things and in-jokes and references to what was now our collective group of friends, including the million casual friends I’d met briefly through Summer’s campus-wide network of people, but there was a sad little undercurrent to the conversation.
Or maybe that was just on my side. Summer was going to move on to meet the love of her life. And if we were calling thisrehearsal, I’d say she was perfectly prepared. Me, I’d wallow in a withering skyblossom curse for the rest of my life.
It took ages to get out to the spot in question, where we had to walk over the edge of a rocky ravine with the surface slick from the spray of a choppy waterfall just across from us, and my breath caught when we squeezed through a tiny crevasse in a stone face to get to a hidden grotto where magic was so thick in the air it felt like I could grab it in my hand. It was bright from the magic glow of fey motes in the air and pixies dancing through the boughs of the great big tree in the center and of glowing mosses and mushrooms along the high stone walls of the grotto, and the tree in the center—the winter-blue blossom.
It didn’t look immature. It was as tall as a house, great big boughs that looked like gold leaf, the trunk thick enough I would barely be able to wrap my arms around it, and I let out a breathlesswow,stepping closer and holding my hand up to one of the boughs. It rustled at the touch, a shimmering magic sweeping like a light breeze through the grotto when I did, and I let out a small, nervous laugh.
“It’s so… alive,” I said. “I didn’t expect it to be this big…”
