Page 49 of Homegrown Magic

Margot walks over to them. “Normally, I’d like nothing better, but I’m already awake and restless. I’m going to find us some tea.” She kisses them on their forehead.

Yael tilts their face upward, closing their eyes.

She cups their cheek, tenderness filling her as her lips find Yael’s. “I’ll be back soon,” she murmurs after they kiss for a long moment. “You sleep.”

“That I can do.” Yael tugs lightly on Margot’s braid and steals one last kiss. “And shut the window before you go?”

They’re already sliding under the covers as Margot closes the window and slips out of the room.

Outside the Glowing Coin, the streets are even louder than the noise that filtered through the window would have Margot believe. A stable hand leading a horse nearly flattens her as she moves through the courtyard and down the nearest lane. She has no idea where she’s going. Yes, she grew up in Ashaway, but she’s never been down this particular street, and the city has changed so much in the years she’s been hiding in Bloomfield.

No, not hiding. Creating a new life for herself. A life she was exiled to, but still, one that she has managed to make her own. A life she desperately hopes to keep.

If she knows Yael, and she thinks she does fairly well by now, they’ll sleep for hours yet without the pressing concern of their chores in the greenhouses. Which means Margot is free to wander the city. If she gets too lost, she can ask for directions back to the Golden Court and the Glowing Coin. It’s not like Yael put them up somewhere subtle. Even as she thinks it, Margot turns to look back at the inn.

Really, to call it an inn is ridiculous. It has no more likeness to the Abyssal Chicken than a strawberry plant does to a cherry tree. Beyond the basics—all inns being buildings where people rent rooms for the night—there’s no resemblance. The Glowing Coin is a four-story confection with marble porticoes and columns. Its leaded-glass windows on the first floor are shaped into whimsical designs: swans and tulips and the like. A motif of shining coins tiles its façade, and the guests standing around its lobby this morning had all given Margot sideways glances, as if she didn’t belong there in her dusty boots and simple blue dress.

She wishes that she had spent some of the money from Rastanaya on fancier clothing before they’d left, but where in Bloomfield would she have purchased such items? She still needs to find something to wear to the Claunecks’ ball because, although the dress Rastanaya gifted her for the fashion show would’ve been perfect, she and Yael had promptly ruined it—albeit for a worthy cause.

Gods. The Claunecks’ ball.

Swearing under her breath, Margot turns away from the Glowing Coin. She leans against a nearby ivy-covered brick building, running a finger over the leaves. Her heart races at the thought of seeing all those people, talking to them, wearing a fine dress, being expected to dance with Yael with everyone watching.

“Maybe it won’t be that different from Rastanaya’s fashion show?” Margot whispers bracingly to herself.

But of course it will be. Because the show was a chance to play pretend for an evening. It was one night of magic, and Margot was still a gardener who lived in a cottage at the end of it. Here, as the noise of the city rises around her like a living creature that could swallow her up, she knows that in order to get what she wants, what she needs, she must become someone else. Someone who belongs in Ashaway.

As her thoughts race, she twines the ivy through her fingers. It responds to her touch, and a riot of tiny purple flowers breaks out along the vine, looking entirely out of place against the otherwise stoic façade of the building. The purple is the exact shade of Margot’s hair. Before anyone can see, she untangles her fingers and rushes away. She knows exactly where she needs to go. Back to where it began and who she was supposed to be before everything fell apart for the Greenwillows.

As the sun settles higher in the sky, Margot walks along a mess of familiar and not-so-familiar streets, asking directions a few times until she’s standing outside a tall, sprawling mansion that takes up half a city block. Greenfield House, her childhood home where she lived for eighteen years, not counting summers, until she rushed back to Bloomfield to mourn Granny Fern.

She’s filled with a strange, disconnected feeling—half regret and half repugnance—as she wraps her hand around one of the gilded metal flourishes on the gate. Her parents had always referred to Greenfield, with its four levels and façade of green marble, as a cottage, but that was just an affectation. A bit of rich people’s whimsy, like a queen playing at being a shepherdess. Margot’s childhood home in Ashaway is no cottage. It’s a place built to impress behind its golden gates. Margot resists the urge to demand entrance. She isn’t even sure who lives there now. Maybe the Claunecks sold it to a family friend in better graces than the Greenwillows or an investor in their company. It doesn’t really matter who owns it now; it’s more about who doesn’t own it, which is Margot’s family.

But would you even want it back? If that is an option, would you want to live here again?

Yes? No? She isn’t sure.

She knows Yael’s family home—a dragon of a mansion that reeks of old money—is set away from the center of town because they have land. Lots of it. And stables, and all the things Margot’s parents tried to emulate in their own country estate.

A carriage rolls past, and Margot shrinks up against the gates of her former home, making herself small. Desperate not to be recognized.

It was a mistake to come back to Greenfield. She doesn’t need to focus on the past. She needs to focus on the future. And there won’t be any future for her and Yael, or for Bloomfield, unless she makes good with the Claunecks.

Turning away from her childhood home, Margot heads back into the city. On the way, she stops at a pastry shop and leaves with two bags full of iced buns, fruit tarts, and golden-papered chocolate treats. When she makes it back to the Glowing Coin, she stops by the front desk to order tea for their room.

“Ah, Miss Greenwillow,” the person behind the counter says cheerfully. “I was just about to send this up to you.” They gesture to a small envelope on the counter with Margot’s name written across the front.

Margot hadn’t given her name last night when they checked in, and now she eyes the clerk and the envelope suspiciously. “How do you know that’s for me?” she asks.

“The letter was left for you by Lady Clauneck herself.” The clerk beams. “She said you’d be staying with the young sir’ram, and that you had the loveliest purple hair. That has to be you, yes?”

Margot’s stomach sinks at the mention of Yael’s mother. She touches the tip of her braid self-consciously. “Thank you?” she says weakly, taking the letter.

“Of course!” says the clerk. “I’ll send up some tea now. Will that be all?”

Margot nods, fighting the urge to rip up the letter. Instead, she takes it to a tucked-away alcove in the lobby and opens it.

The script is elegant and the message simple: