Page 40 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

She laughed like birdsong. “You are too late,” she said, bitterness laced through her voice. “The pain was there before you arrived. You are just poking the bruise.”

“I’m sorry for poking.”

Mara shrugged. “Perhaps I needed to be poked. Ofelia would say so.” She cast him a sleepy, seductive look. “She sometimes has good ideas.”

“Are you trying to distract me again?”

“Probably.” She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “I do not know where to start.”

Ethan swallowed. “You said it wasn’t joy. That was what I said that made you…” He tried to gesture in a way that communicated upset and not inexplicably horny.

She rolled her eyes as if to say this silly prudish man, but then she nodded. “Yes. It is…frustrating that you have seen so much, and yet you see so little.”

A puzzle piece fell into place. “The garden is you. And you’ve been here alone for five years.” Nobody spends five years alone because they’re happy. Not for rage, not for joy…

“Five years,” she agreed. “Since Tristan died. My husband.”

Grief. Five years of grief. You loved him, he thought but was smart enough not to say. Of course she had loved her husband. It was there on her face, in the deliberate tranquility of her words.

Mara reached out, touched the same blossom he’d been stroking in his asinine experiment in seduction-by-proxy. “I did not plan to stay so long,” she said. “Nor did I plan this garden. Not at first. I only knew I needed to be alone. And I came here, and I wept, and I slept, and when I awoke, the flowers were there for me. To comfort me.”

Ethan swallowed. The hum of bees and trill of distant birdsong seemed heavy on the moment, like he and Mara were both being pressed down into the earth. Like her grief might drag them both under at any moment.

“It was an accident,” she said. “A ridiculous accident. He was driving to work—”

“Seriously?” Ethan blurted out. “Why would a fae need to…” He trailed off, face heating. God, he was an idiot, interrupting her.

“He was not a fae,” she said softly. “He was human. Like you.” She regarded Ethan steadily, her green eyes bleak. “He had a human job, and we lived in the human city, and partook of the human world as much as the fae underworld.” She smiled then, nostalgia brightening her features. “He loved music and museums, the nights and days of the city. And so did I, when he was with me.”

A memory tickled at Ethan’s brain. Something about music and the night, flowing hair and green eyes. He ignored it. “You were happy,” he said carefully.

“We were. We had been for so many years I cannot even count them.” Her mouth twisted slightly. “When a human spends much time in the fae world, they are changed. The magic changes them—not enough to make them not human, but enough. Enough that I could have expected centuries more by his side.”

“C-centuries?”

Mara suddenly dashed her hand through the sand by her side. “It was foolish. He was late returning home. I had gone to meet him, flying along his usual route, and I saw—” Her voice caught sharply.

“God.” Ethan reached out, almost touched her knee, hesitated.

She took his hand and grasped it tightly. “There was nothing that could be done. Not by man or fae. And I…” She heaved a breath. “I did what I had to do. Endured the rites for his family and for mine, let him be laid to rest in my own earth. And then I ran.”

Words were inadequate, but he gave them anyway. “I’m so sorry.” God, he was a dick. Insisting that his tenure was more important than any reason she might have, not knowing anything. She was right. He was a fool.

“I am no stranger to loss,” she said in a quiet voice. “I have lived long. I have lost friends and family to the cycles of the elements. But we were not finished.” Her fingers gripped his tighter. “There were plans. Hopes. Journeys we wished to take. Adventures. Children. So many things we were not ready for, and now will never be.” She hitched in a sob, then released his hand. “I am sorry, as well. I have been told I am overly dramatic.”

“No, it’s… You’re fine.”

“You must think five years is too long to mourn.” She cast him a glance.

“No. Of course not.” He scratched his head. “I mean, it’s a long time, but… Grief doesn’t have a set timeline. Only you know when it’s been long enough.”

She smiled wryly, gazing up her hill. The setting sun had turned it all to gold. “Each blossom on this hill, each plant and cactus and tree, is a memory. Decades of them. They are my tears and my wails, my lamentations against the cruel world.” She looked back at him. “I do not cry out to the skies as prettily as you, but it seems the skies were watching me nevertheless.”

Ethan took in a deep breath, let it out. “I understand now,” he said softly. “Why your garden called to me. Why I can’t walk away from it.” He looked at the garden so that he didn’t have to look at Mara’s face, feel her sadness stab him like the penance he deserved. “You loved him very much.”

“I will always love him,” she whispered.

And never love again, Ethan completed in his head.