Page 38 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

She caught her breath, unable to look away. “It is?”

“You can’t just drop a puzzle like that in front of a scientist. Now I want to run an experiment just to find out how it works.”

Mara raised her eyebrows in challenge. “You do not believe me?”

“I believe you,” he said. “But I want to know more.” He hesitated, then raised his hand. “May I?”

She should say no. “You may.”

Ethan reached out and poked the nearest petal, right in the center. “Okay. Where did you feel that?”

“This is foolish.” Even so, Mara stretched her awareness into the flower.

“Indulge me.” He waited for Mara’s nod, then poked again.

She concentrated. “I feel it here.” She gestured at her stomach.

“Like how?”

She rolled her eyes and poked Ethan’s stomach. The cotton of his shirt was damp. “Like this.”

“Interesting.” He carefully stroked along the petal to the pointed tip. “This one?”

Mara reached out and stroked a fingertip along Ethan’s outstretched arm to the wrist. “There.”

His finger stroked in the other direction, toward the flower’s center, and Mara withheld another gasp as sensation gathered from her extremities, in and in, and warmth pooled low in her belly.

“Here,” she lied, tapping his knee.

He looked at her, eyes darker than they should be, and tapped the pollen-frosted knot of stamens at the center. “And this?”

Mara met his eyes, challenging him to call her a liar. “My foot. Are you done with your ridiculous experiment?”

Ethan leaned slightly toward her, eyes focusing on her mouth, and Mara nearly leaned to meet him, nearly begged him to touch her for real, but then he drew back, eyes shuttering. His hands clutched his canteen again. “So there’s um…” He cleared his throat. “So your senses are connected to your garden. Is it just physical?”

“What?” Mara nearly fell over at the abrupt change of mood.

“The flowers. You said, um, the plants don’t have minds, so do you think for them?”

“No,” she replied on a huff. “They do not need me to think. They manage quite well without a brain.”

“Okay. Okay. Good to know I’m not, um, interfering with sentient life.” He looked down at his notebook, frowning. “What about emotions?”

“Plants also do not feel emotions,” she said sharply.

“Not their emotions,” he said. “Yours. Do your emotions affect—”

“You have too many questions.” She made to rise.

“Wait,” he said, his voice a low growl.

She waited.

“I’m not trying to push,” he said doggedly. “I was just thinking. When we were fighting, it seemed like—well, it seemed like the madder you got, the more…violent the plants got. They weren’t flowers, but… Does that happen, too? Your emotions affecting the ways the plants grow?”

She stared at him for a long moment, then said quietly, “Yes.”

He smiled then, wide and bright. “That’s what I was thinking! So when you were angry it was all spikes and grr and stuff, but these flowers…” He cupped his hand around the blossom, not touching it, but she could feel the warmth of his hand anyhow. “They hold so much beauty and joy—”