Chapter 20: Spring

The garden lay behind the Fire Palace, inside a wall of black stone.

It was a square of grey dirt with a dry fountain in the middle and a stone bench worn smooth by somebody's patience.

Phlegon pushed the iron gate open with his shoulder.

"Nothing grows here," he said. "I used to sit on that bench and tell myself it was resting."

"For twenty years?"

"For nineteen. The first year I was busy being angry."

I laughed, and the sound went out across the dirt.

The ground answered.

I felt it before I saw it, a warm pulse through the soles of my boots.

Then a single green thread broke the grey beside the fountain.

It unrolled into a leaf.

Another came up beside it, and another, and a row of white buds opened along the wall.

Phlegon stood completely still.

"It knows you," he said.

"It knows us." I took his hand. "I'm not the only warm thing here."

He looked down at our joined fingers and then at the white blossoms climbing the stone.

"I didn't plant anything," he said, in a strange voice. "I only wanted to see it."

"Then sit and see it."

I sat on the bench and pulled him down beside me.

The fountain gave a cough, and began to run.

He laughed out loud, a sound I'd heard maybe four times in my life, and put his head back against the wall with his eyes closed.

"Your brothers are going to hate this garden."

"My brothers are going to sew in it."

"Aethon can't sew."

"Eous can't either. Lampos can, I think. I saw him darn his own sleeve once."

"Poor Eous," he said, and didn't sound sorry at all.

I turned his face toward me with two fingers.

His eyes opened, grey with a ring of orange.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Day I Married the Fire God, Three Brothers Regretted It from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.