A Queen of Ruin (Deliciously Dark Fairytales 4)

“If I make the plants flourish,” Finley went on, “they’ll work for you like a motherfucker. In return, I’ll want to use a nice, big workstation so I can work with a lot of the different plants in this garden that I’ve only ever read about. Yes? A trade. A fair trade.” She didn’t wait for the approval. “Now fuck off. I’m pissed off at what you’ve done to these plants, and at that fucking cow for trying to claim my golden dragon. I’m not in the mood for fuckstains who want to waste my time and goddess-given talent. Dash, since you’re here, you can help. Sable, start singing the song Nyfain taught you. These poor things are starved for a little love and attention.”

And with that, her family quickly bent to the plants, working as a team in a way that spoke of the long years they’d toiled together. They pruned quickly, petting and stroking the plants, as Sable filled the space with a tune that would melt your heart and then steal your soul.

Faeries drifted over from all over the gardens, their eyes lighting up at Sable’s voice. At what she would almost certainly flourish into when she came of age. Finley didn’t think Sable had the Syflora gift, since her singing hadn’t helped the plants prosper in the past, but she’d learned what she knew from books, and maybe those books hadn’t mentioned that the gift sometimes didn’t manifest until a shifter’s first change. It was something I hadn’t mentioned, either, not wanting to get anyone’s hopes up. Seeing the faeries reacting like this, though…

Well, maybe it would be true after all.

Another handful of hours passed in a flash. Eris had finally gotten up and moved on, taking herself back to the castle to recuperate from her fright. No one seemed to notice. All eyes were trained on Finley. She’d gotten their attention with her brutality, confused them with her tender care of the everlass, shocked them with how she spoke to their matriarch, and then wowed them with her knowledge of plants, those she knew and those she’d just read about.

Finley had come out of the demon occupation a diamond, and I’d cut her into a shape that sparkled and entranced. Still, she’d kept the qualities that made her such a fighter, including her stubborn ability to shove her way into the space she wanted and take up residence.

She’d been allocated one work area. She’d taken up three without apology.

Everyone was too afraid to tell her to move.

Then she did what Dee and I had known she would: she blew their operations wide open.

She methodically worked her way through the garden, picking from plants she’d read about and wanted to try. If she didn’t know the plant, she listened to a faerie’s brief rundown before nodding without comment and tucking a sample into her collection satchel. Just like in my time, there were some plants no one would explain. Properties they kept to themselves.

She meandered through the tents, all of them, checking out their stores of dried plants and herbs and looking into their pots. Her gaze was so sharp and intelligent, her presence so authoritative, that people talked. They didn’t seem like they could help themselves. She’d bark a question, and they would answer bluntly and honestly, something they had never done in my past visits.

Only one person refused to answer her questions. Only one seemed impervious to her presence. It was the snaggletoothed woman. She’d fucked off and left Finley to it, but she was a closed book when it came to her work.

That didn’t seem to bother Finley. When she didn’t get what she wanted, she got to work. She did what she did best—experimented.

It took her no time at all to figure out what the mystery plants did. Like was planted with like, after all. She folded them into her everlass creations, the leaves having been brought from her stores in the castle. Soon she had the whole tent looking over. She created by sight, by smell, and, most of all, by feeling.

Making her rounds in the work tent again, she’d stop at the various stations and ask, “Have you tried using this instead of using that?” Then she’d launch into an explanation of why she thought it might help. She’d wait for the rebuttal, ready to discuss other options, always leaving the faerie ready to try something new. Couldn’t hurt, right? What was the loss? “That plant negates the effect of this one. You’re fucking yourself. I’d use—”

She was a whirlwind, entirely in her element. Her beauty was even more radiant because she was steepled in what she loved—working the plants. Nyfain and Sable might be able to sing plants into health, but Finley could care for them better than anyone I had ever seen. She could understand them in a way that could only be described as divine. It was incredible to watch, even more so because she was in a place that should be foreign to her, meeting several of these plants for the first time.