“Seemed more important for the court to adjust to working with each other. Now . . .” He shrugged.

“You really want me to contact the Queens on the reserves?”

“Yes, I do.” Besides, he added silently, it’s not likely any of them will come.

He opened the door for her. “Come on. Once you wade through the paperwork Powell seems to create overnight, you’ll be free the rest of the day to save the posies from the nasty weeds.”

She stopped in the doorway and looked at him as if she suddenly saw a different man.

“You don’t have a feel for the land, do you?” she asked. “It’s just dirt and boundaries to you.”

“I don’t fuss over it like you and Gray seem to,” he said dismissively. “It’s the people that matter. It’s the people that need tending.”

“How do you take care of one without taking care of the other?”

Since she didn’t wait for him to answer, he guessed she didn’t expect one.

Gray set the items in the box on the potting bench, one by one, and marveled at this gift.

Cassie’s mother had written this book. Cassie’s mother had sent this box. No hasty reply to his letter, but a bundle of information from a woman who seemed to understand that he was hoping to put down roots in her daughter’s heart.

And the flowers, preserved in shields so he could study them at his leisure.

His own mother had given him a fierce kind of love. He didn’t know if it was because she was unable to be soft, or if because he’d been destined for the killing fields, she hadn’t wanted to give him anything a warrior wouldn’t need.

He could still see her face, filled with hard pride, on the evening when Talon came to take him to the mountain camps. He’d been seven years old, but there had been no tears, no hugs. To her, he was already a warrior. To her, he always had been.

He didn’t think Cassie’s mother was a fierce woman. Didn’t mean she couldn’t be dangerous if there was need, but he thought, maybe, she’d be the kind of woman who wouldn’t be afraid to hug a boy.

Was his mother still alive? Did she know how to find him—if she wanted to find him?

He hadn’t wondered until now. Maybe Powell, being the Steward of the court, would know how to find out.

A knock on the shed’s door. He used Craft to vanish the box before the door opened and Ranon walked in.

The Shalador Warlord Prince glanced at the empty potting bench.

“None of my business,” Ranon said, “but I saw the box this morning. Well, a few of us did, and we wondered. . . .”

Gray called in the box and showed Ranon what Devra had sent to him.