Antheia Botanis's Arc

Chapter 11 of 15

Antheia held Iant on her hip until the girl slept. She laid her in the cot beside Coro and stood over both children. Coro's vine mark rose and fell with his breath. Iant's mark was darker now, the leaves inked deep against her skin. Antheia set a hand on each small back and felt the two currents run under her palms, green and black, mirror and mirror. Verdis had gone. Verdis would come back. At dawn Verdis came through the gate with a pot in their hands. Inside the pot sat an orchid with petals the color of a moonless sky. Verdis set the pot on the low wall by the anemone bed. "For the girl," Verdis said. "She should learn on something that will not die from her." Antheia stepped between the wall and the house. "She learns from me first." Verdis looked past her at the doorway where Iant stood barefoot in her nightshift. "She is already listening." Iant walked out to the wall. She put one hand on the pot. The dark petals lifted toward her palm. A shimmer moved along the leaves, and a small figure uncurled from between the blooms, no taller than Antheia's hand. An orchid nymph, pale-limbed, marked with purple stripes. The nymph bowed to Iant. Not to Antheia. Not to Verdis. To the child. "That is not a gift," Antheia said. "That is a claim." Verdis did not answer. Antheia knew the shape of it then. Verdis had not come to teach. Verdis had come to take. The heir, the nymph, the bond, the rest of the balance Antheia had thought she still held. Verdis meant to gather it into their own hand while Antheia stood watching. Antheia knelt at Iant's level. "Do you want to go with them?" she asked. Iant looked at the nymph. Iant looked at Verdis. Iant looked at Antheia. "I want to learn the black," the girl said. "Mama does not know the black." The words landed flat and true. Antheia's crown lost one petal at her feet. She stood. She did not lift Iant this time. "Then you go for the day," she said. "You come home at dusk. Every dusk. Coro stays with me." Verdis inclined their head once. "Agreed." They lifted Iant by the hand. The nymph climbed to the girl's shoulder. They walked out through the gate together, and the anemones along the path went black in a clean line and stopped where Iant's shadow ended. Antheia stayed at the wall until the gate closed. Coro came out and pushed his hand into hers. She looked down at her son and counted what she still held. One child. One half of the seat. One garden. The rest walked east with Verdis, and the road they took led toward a scorched grove Antheia had not yet seen.