Page 129 of Harbinger

“What do you expect me to do?” I squawk back, but I don’t keep walking to the house.

I need to do something before I turn that bedroom into my own cage.

Flipping open the book, I skim through explanations and diagrams, looking for something to help me clear old growth. But when I find the pattern—the one that tills the soil and enriches it—I don’t have the faintest clue how to actually use it. That was my dad’s work. Then Broderic’s. The lines have to be formed in the right order, crossing and meeting in the correct sequence, or you risk disaster. Just last year, my brother missed a step and scorched an entire field of corn. The fire was contained, but the soil is still useless. Not that anyone would even notice if I took the garden down to cinders. Except maybe the crown’s prodigal bird.

That means falling back on the one thing I know will work: my own damn hands.

The hardest part is picking where to begin. The dead trees and vines creeping over every surface or the skeletal remains of old rosebushes? It all has to go to make room for new life.

Dropping to my knees, I shove my fingers into the rain-soaked dirt. Some tightness eases in my chest as the cool mud coats my hands. Even without tools or gloves or a book with useless diagrams, my hands know this kind of work from years spent doing it with Kieren beside me. They remember it, remember passing tools back and forth with him while we talked about nothing.

And everything.

The memory threatens to swallow me, so I focus on what’s in front of me, trying to forget what’s gone.

Some of the patches are easy, the soil in them yielding their weeds like they’re grateful for the attention. But then I reach the fucking vines. They might have borne fruit once, but now they’re little more than brambles.

Their roots are deep, left too long to dig strangleholds in the earth. I rip them out, thorns tearing into my skin. Mud streaks my arms and clothes as I wrestle them, the stinging in my hands building to a smarting throb. Their barbs are punishing me for evicting them.

But that’s the cycle of life. The way of things. Like the items sitting in that box in my room.

Someone whistles sharply behind me, but I don’t turn around to see who it is.

“Damn, what did those weeds do to you?” Taliesin asks, striding up to watch me work.

“Exist,” I grunt, wrenching one free. Dirt scatters across my lap. I brush it off and keep going.

Taliesin murmurs something else before he leaves me, but I don’t hear him.

Because the noise in my head is gone. I keep working until my hands cramp and my shoulders burn, until the sun slips past the horizon and the moon casts everything in shadow. And when I trudge inside—dirt under my nails, mud mixing with blood in my torn-up palms, angry and alive again—I finally feel like I found a place I might call home someday.

I just have to fight for it.

By the end of the next day, nothing is fixed, but I’ve divided the tasks, turning the garden into zones I can work through one at a time. The first one is nearly clear.

Along with my head.

As if every weed ripped from the earth leaves room for new questions and plans and thoughts, but circles back to the same problem.

Bishop is avoiding me.

I hunt him down and find him hiding in his study.

“Yes?” he grunts, not deigning to look up from whatever new crisis he’s prioritizing over human interaction today.

“I want to train.” The words come out in a rush. I can’t let myself rethink this. Not after what happened in the woods. Not after …

His shoulders tense, and he hesitates before finally lifting his gaze. But he only looks at me.

Studying me like I’m a fucking mess, too, and he doesn’t know where to start.

“It was your idea.” Maybe he needs the reminder, needs to see that I’m finally willing to give in and do things his way.

His eyes slide to my arms and zero in on the skin visible below my rolled shirtsleeves.

“No,” he says and goes back to his paperwork.

My brain lurches around the single word, and I’m forced to shake my head to reset it. “What? Why not?”