Just like all the other times in gem storage, seconds were all that seemed to pass when he released her into the fall garden. Briar was already there. Rosalea had to blink a few times to reorient herself. Briar grinned.

“Well Briar, she is all yours until this afternoon. Do not forget to have something to eat at some point, and I will come pick her up when I am ready.” Kaylar said placidly, like no fight had taken place. Rosalea could feel her adrenaline dying down, and so she was a little shaky as she waved at Briar. Kaylar smirked and wandered off.

“Ya didn’t tell me you was a plant mage,” Briar said with mock reproach. Rosalea shrugged and tried to just smile it off, though she did feel a little guilty for it somehow. “What happened to you? You look likes you been eluding the guard after nickin’ somethin’.”

Rosalea paused to figure out that for a moment, and she realized she must be flushed looking and she knew she was a bit shaky. Probably like someone who had just run from the city guard. “I just worked on some other magical training with Kaylar.”

The boy cocked an eyebrow and grinned. “Well, maybe we needs to walk around a bit. Wouldn’t want ta rake you over.”

Rosalea had no idea what “rake” meant in this context, but guessed it meant something about being exhausted. Briar began walking, and Rosalea slowly followed. “So, you haven’t been here long, have you?” Rosalea shook her head no. “Me either. I think you can kinda tell, he spends more time with new people, I think. To make sure we settle in an’ all.”

“Are there a lot of people here?”

“I dunno, it seems like it sometimes,” Briar said. “I don’t really get outta the garden much yet. Master Kaylar says I can when I am, um, um, more presentable. Whatever that means.”

Rosalea wasn’t certain either, and volunteered no explanation on behalf of the dragon. She focused for a moment, trying to open up her magical vision, but it didn’t want to come. The little amount of essa she did have connection with was used up for the day. She wanted to see if Briar had the same mental cuffs on that she wore. She would have to check the next time she met him, if the dragon let her come with any magic like that left.

After a little while Briar grinned at her, “Well, you are looking better now. Ready to start? Master said you only learnt the very basics. He theorized you probably learnt basically directly from the plants themselves.”

Rosalea nodded.

“So, uh, plants are different from most stuff, I think. Cuz you are messing with things that are alive and have this kind of way of their own. I don’t think air or water or earth has that way of being as an obstacle,” he said. He knelt and plucked a blade of grass. It wriggled and moved, twining about his fingers as he talked to it, directing it where to go. He stopped, it stopped. “You gotta kinda merge with it a little, make your life part of its life if you really wanna do it right. It moves as you would move, cuz it is a part of you and yer a part of it.”

Rosalea had felt a little like that when handling plants. It was part of what made her a little hesitant to do much with plants because at least the way animals felt to her felt less alien to her normal way of thinking. “I have always felt that it feels a little dangerous? A sensation that if I was not careful, I could get lost in the way a plant views the world.”

“Certainly!” he said with a big grin. “One time when I was fleeing the guard, I thought it’d be this great idea ta try merging all the way with a tree. I way over did it. I got away from the guards and all, but it took me what felt like actual centuries to quit feeling like I needed sunlight for my skin! And that was after I managed to stop moving all stiff-like.” He pantomimed the movements by locking his elbows and knees and walking in a jarring fashion.

Rosalea paled a little. Just what she needed, to be walking around stiff and confused and looking for sunlight and rich patches of dirt.

“But, normally, ya don’t merge so much. Fact, you can merge with many kinds o’ plants at the same time and manipulate them all!” He stood still and closed his eyes. Then he began singing a bit and swaying side to side. All of the plants around them did likewise. Rosalea couldn’t help but laugh as he wriggled his hips exaggeratedly, and she watched flowers curling leaves down to stem and wriggling their stems.

Briar stopped. “It works cuz most plants kinda think and feel the same about the world. Do you kinda see? You try something,” he said, handing the grass blade to her.

Rosalea pulled her plant magic a bit closer to herself, and she could see Briar’s plant magic lingering about all the plants around her. She took the blade of grass. She pushed her magic in it, and it felt like it was breathing anew, taking on life, since it had been ripped up from its life source a moment ago. It drew on Rosalea like it might from the ground. Rosalea tried to understand that feeling, of being ripped up from life and trying to understand a new life. She felt like she knew that feeling a bit too well. Always moving, never really anywhere to stay. Everywhere she had ever been always had something about it that forced her to move onward…

The blade of grass began moving with her fingers. This excited her, which distracted her, and the blade swelled with the surge of her excitement. Briar grinned at her, and urged her to keep working with it.

The dragon said the plants responded to me subconsciously. And I have always had trees help me climb them. Even if I do not think about the oneness that I feel with them, it must be easy for them to feel one with me. I put excitement into a blade of grass just now. That should mean that all I really need to do is open myself up to be receptive to what the plant feels. She turned the blade of grass in her hands, imagining the drive they felt to pull in the air and sunlight of their environment, and to pull her magic in just as easily. Her magic began to easily flow through the grass, and she felt it sustaining itself. The feeling stabilized, and then she willed the blade into an outline of a star, the stem touching the tip. She looked up at Briar.

“You are getting it!” Briar grinned.

From there, Briar made her practice it with plants that wouldn’t be nearly so ready to be dependent on her. When he thought she was worn out, they had some lunch, and she went around the garden with him, learning the names of plants and he worked on showing her how they were the same as one another, and yet just a little different too.

Kaylar returned that afternoon, just as promised. He lowered his nose to Briar’s level and gave him a nuzzle in a way that reminded Rosalea of how Annie used to solicit attention. She felt a pang of sadness as Briar responded by rubbing over the dragon’s face, exactly the way she used to with Annie. He gave her side eye and said, “She does look a little worn out, so you must have done good work.” Briar grinned. “I will be back to practice some writing with you after I take her to her next teacher. Can you finish up whatever chores Garth had in mind for you?”

“Yeah!”

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With that, he raised his head and turned his full attention on Rosalea. She felt almost like he was trying to calculate what she thought about the show of affection, but Rosalea stared at him and was careful not to think anything at all. She had no particular desire to pet the dragon that had trapped her in Mire and gotten Annie killed.

“You do look worn out, but I still want you to try for a few hours with Yelena. Come with me,” he said.

She followed alongside him, not back into the castle, though it was starting to get cold and the sun was on the last half of the afternoon, but up onto a hill that was behind it a bit.

There was a girl there that looked like an Ieshan, recognizable yellow eyes, darker skin, dark hair, and a little smaller in stature than a typical Uryan.

“Yelena, this is Rosalea,” he introduced them, but the reaction from Yelena was instant hostility.

“Your name is Rosalea?” she stepped forward, and there was such intensity in her voice and demeanor that Rosalea stepped back. “Rosalea O’Lindir?” she pressed.

Rosalea put her hands up defensively, in a way to try to help diffuse the obvious onslaught that was about to come. She was not even sure how she wanted to confront it. She had not told anyone her actual identity, and it was one of the secrets she actually did want to keep. Rosalea did not deny the question.

Yelena’s whole face flushed a dark red. “How DARE you -”

“Yelena!” Kaylar cut in sharply and he stepped between them as the Ieshan advanced and Rosalea backed up. “Stop,” he put his head down near her. She froze, but Rosalea could still see clenched fists and that Yelena’s whole body was literally quivering with rage. “Stop,” he repeated, “I will talk to you in a moment,” and with that - the Ieshan vanished from sight - likely into gem storage. Rosalea supposed it was one way to put off a horrible conversation.

Kaylar stood upright and looked down at her. “I suspected you had a lot more to you than you wanted to share.” Rosalea looked down feeling tension wash over every inch of her. She held her breath. She did not know what Yelena had thought about specifically or how much the dragon would now know.

Silence stretched on for agonizing heartbeats. She closed her eyes as the dragon laid down, and he put his head on the ground next to her, getting close to eye level. “This is clearly a critical thing you have had to keep secret. I would like to hear about it.”

Silence. Discomfort. Silence that stretched on and compelled her to speak. “I was raised an Ieshan, and Yelena knows my name because I was important.”

Silence. Kaylar spoke softly. “When you were poisoned, she helped you. She had a good idea how to help call you out of nightmares from time to time with her magic and she is very good with difficult stitches and bone setting. She had no idea who you were, she thought you were some Uryan mutt I picked up. I do not think I ever told her your name. This time, the second she heard your name, her first thought was that she wished she had poisoned you herself because you are an infamous Ieshan traitor.”

Rosalea folded her arms to her body and did not look up. Silence, discomfort, and more silence. She didn’t have to monitor her thinking, she felt so sick and frozen that she could barely think at all. “I understand,” she offered helplessly. She did understand, the Ieshans were willing to erase memories to get her to comply, willing to do and look away from violence, and she was sure that she had been a disappointment when she turned out to be more of a Uryan. Nerric knew. Ulric had probably guessed. She was sure they knew, even though she had run away from them before she had to tell anyone else herself.

“Rosalea,” Kaylar said gently, so gently to her that she suddenly felt her eyes burning with tears. She wanted him to go back to being firm with her, to pushing her and being obvious about how he was manipulating her. “You are not in trouble. I will not send you back to anywhere you have been, and if you and Yelena will not get along, I will just not put you in one another’s paths. You are safe here, even though I am a little like an Ieshan myself.”

She clenched her fists against her body, and she couldn’t look at him. She felt so very trapped, and the trap had sprung so suddenly that she felt so very hurt by it. Yelena had wished her dead, did Ulric and Nerric and Genya feel the same? What had she left behind when she ran away? Didn’t anyone understand she had to do it? Her eyes burned, but she didn’t want to cry. Silence, discomfort, more silence. “A little,” she repeated back to him, her voice thick as she acknowledged he was definitely like an Ieshan. She didn’t want to cry, she reminded herself.

Kaylar edged closer, turning his head slightly, the breath from his nostrils was intensely warm compared to the air around them. “I think we better go inside. You are calling bad weather. Look up,” he prompted.

When she did, she realized the cloudless day was now overcast. There were thick dark clouds all around them, and it felt like night. The wind had also picked up, and even though there were no lightning strikes, the whole temperature of everything around them had dropped so much there were feathers of frost fall in the air. I cannot have done that all by myself, she thought in a startled manner.

“You are a very strong mage with so much environmental attunement that it borders on inhuman. I did not mean to find out so much of the truth about you in one day, but this is how it is now, and that is just fine. Galena will help fix it, and we’ll get you inside doing something for a minute until you can breathe again. Briar will be very disappointed if a fall blizzard kills his flowers.”

Pressure, silence, discomfort, more pressure. She didn’t even feel like she had any room to object when he put her in gem storage and cut her off from the world - and stopped her magic’s influence on it.

***

Kaylar took a giant breath in and breathed out in a big huff. That took a perfectly innocent idea and made it into a nightmare for them both. Yet, he felt relieved. Things clicked into place instantly; he suddenly had the full picture and every part of the puzzle he had been working on for the last few weeks was suddenly all but perfectly clear.

He went inside, calling out Galena and a few other imber and caelus mages to clear out Rosalea’s cold storm of pure distress, and he took himself first to Yelena’s room. He would deal with her, and then he would deal with the stray Ieshan Princess.

Yelena was angry, but her confusion at the total change of environment made it abate for a moment. Kaylar took advantage of it. “I have never seen you react so negatively to anyone before.”

Yelena’s whole body clenched up with the guilt and rage that she felt. “She is a traitor! She’s Princess Rosalea O’Lindir, and she ran away. Her mother ran away! Her great-uncle betrayed the people and got erased, and there’s no other legitimate heirs. The council seized everything and have been expending tons of resources not only trying to catch her, but trying to recreate her. She has all the magics, did you know that? Do you know how rare that is?”

“Yes, it is very rare. But Yelena,” Kaylar interrupted. “I know a thing or two about Myajacs and Gods.” She blinked her eyes and then narrowed them, frowning now with confusion. “The Ieshans value her because a child of Iesha and Urye is meant to do great things for changer magic, right? Where do prophecies come from?”

“Gods,” Yelena said uncertainly.

“Gods,” Kaylar affirmed. “Do you think that the Gods would have let her escape from the Ieshans if she was not meant to?” Yelena paled and considered that for a moment. “If the line of Iesha has been ill-fated for several generations, do you think that she was meant to be there at all?”

Yelena looked up at him with huge eyes, “But… what would that mean for everyone? If she is meant to be a Uryan, then are they right about the prophecy?”

Kaylar shook his head no, “I know she spent time with Uryans. She had Rhainnon and I convinced that is where she was before she came here. They did not keep her either. It is possible the One doesn’t belong to either race in the end, but to themselves. The prophecy is very open-ended.” She turned her eyes down, “And you are here, because you ran away. Things at Castle Ninevah became so intense that you ran away, and you were only part of a family that was distantly related to Iesha.” He paused to give that a chance to sink in, then he continued. “Selfishly, I am glad because it meant that you got to be mine when you got yourself in trouble with Myradulians and I found you. I am glad you are here, but if you wanted to run away, what do you think the pressure was on her? I am not saying that what she did was responsible, but I am saying you can consider that there might be other perspectives to take, and not all of it is bad.”

Yelena breathed in deeply and then out slowly. She fidgeted and was silent for several seconds as she mulled it over. “I understand. I am sorry.”

“I understand. Those experiences were terrible. It is fair to say none of them would have happened if Rosalea had not run away. It is fair to say that the Ieshans are more… threatening, because of what has happened. I understand how you feel.”

She scrubbed her sleeve over her eyes. “I know. But. I cannot look at her. I do not know… how to let it all go yet.”

“You can have all the time you want. There is no reason to force anything. I am grateful you admitted how you feel,” Kaylar reassured again.

Yelena breathed in deeply, and then out slowly. “Thank you. I will get back to work now.” He gave her reassuring nuzzles and more praise. She was in a considerably better mood when she left her room with him and then headed back outside to help with the cattle.

Now for the hard one, he thought as he headed to the room that was basically Rosalea’s lately.