And so there was a last sleepless night for her shaped by Kevin Laine. She was awake when the birdsong began outside the Temple, and she had parted her curtains to watch the morning come. The breeze was fresh with the scents of spring, and there were leaves budding on all the trees. Colors, a great many colors in the world again, after the black branches and white snow of winter. There was green once more, so bright and alive it was stronger, at last, than the green unlight of Starkadh. As her eyes looked out on the spring, Jennifer’s heart, which was Guinevere’s, began to look out as well. Nor was this the least of Kevin’s legacies.

There came a knocking at her door. She opened it to see Matt Sören with a walking stick in one hand and flowers in the other.

“It is spring,” he said, “and these are the first flowers. Loren is meeting in the palace with a great many people. I thought you might come with me to Aideen’s grave.”

As they walked around the lower town and then struck a path to the west, she was remembering the story he had told her so long ago. Or not really as long as it seemed. The story of Nilsom, the mage who had turned evil, and of Aideen, his source, who had loved him: the only woman since Lisen to be source to a mage. It was Aideen who had saved Brennin, saved the Summer Tree, from Nilsom and the mad High King, Vailerth. She had refused to be source for her mage at the end. Had denied her strength to him and then killed herself.

Matt had told her the tale in the Great Hall at Paras Derval. Before she went riding and found the lios alfar. Before Galadan had, in turn, found her and given her to the swan.

Westward, they walked now, through the miracle of this spring, and everywhere Jennifer looked there was life returning to the land. She heard crickets, the drone of bees, saw a scarlet-winged bird take wing from an apple tree, and then a brown rabbit dart from a clump of shrubbery. She saw Matt drinking it in as well with his one eye, as if slaking a long thirst. In silence they walked amid the sounds of hope until, at the edge of the forest, Matt finally stopped.

Every year, he had told her, the Council of Mages would curse Nilsom at midwinter when they met. And every year, as well, they would curse Aideen—who had broken the profoundest law of their Order when she betrayed her mage—even though it had been to save Brennin from destruction, and the Tree that lay within this wood.

And every spring, Matt had said, he and Loren would bring the first flowers to this grave.