Chapter 169 Dirt and Love

Chapter 169 Dirt and Love
Rae
I wake to Cian standing over the small table in our room with a look of deep concentration on his face.
The flower crown sits in front of him, resting on a clean square of cloth. Around it, he has gathered twine, little strips of paper, a shallow wooden tray, a pair of scissors, and several books stacked open to pages covered in careful drawings of pressed flowers.
I blink at him from the bed.
He is trying to preserve it.
My heart does something soft and painful in my chest.
The crown is already beginning to wilt a little, the white blossoms bowing at their edges, the bluebells hanging lower than they did last night. Cian looks at it with the intensity of a male preparing for battle, which would be sweet if the flowers were not so small and his hands were not so very large.
“I can do that for you,” I say, rubbing sleep from one eye.
Cian freezes, his shoulders drawing close to his ears. Then he lets out a long breath and slowly lowers the scissors.
“You do not have to.”
“No,” I say, pushing myself upright. “But would you like me to?”
His gaze drops to the flowers. For a moment, he says nothing. Then he bites the inside of his cheek, the smallest, most human little gesture, and nods.
“I want to keep it forever.”
There is no guarding in his voice when he says it. No careful distance. No princely restraint. Just the truth, bare and quiet, laid between us with the crown.
The ache in my chest spreads.
“Then forever you shall have, my love,” I tell him.
His eyes lift to mine, and I think I might cry before my feet have even touched the floor. The amount of love in his eyes is enough to make me weak at the knees.
No morning tears before coffee, I repeat in my mind until the ache in my throat vanishes.
I climb out of bed and guide him away from the table. He goes, though reluctantly, his gaze still fixed on the crown.
“I will be very careful,” I promise.
“I know, but maybe I could help?”
“You have the hands of a man who could crack stone.”
“I have cracked stone.”
“Exactly. Go be useful somewhere else.”
His mouth curves, and the sight of it warms me more than the blankets did.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asks.
“Coffee would be nice.”
He nods once, serious as ever, already turning for the door.
“And soil,” I add.
He stops.
“And seeds.”
He turns back slowly.
“And pots, if there are any. Maybe little tools? Not fae tools that require a blood oath or anything unsettling. Normal gardening tools—also rosemary, lavender, mint, thyme if anyone has them. Maybe sage. Maybe chamomile...”
Cian stares at me, and I stare back.
“You want to garden?”
I look down at the flower crown again, at the fragile stems woven together by small hands.
My fingers brush one bent white petal as a smile spreads on my lips, and an old love spreads through my chest.
It has been too long since I did something that didn’t involve magic or ceremony. I want dirt under my nails and the sun burning my skin. I want to plant something that doesn’t care what I am. Something that only needs water and light and a bit of good old-fashioned elbow grease.
And love.
Nanna had always grown things by hand. Not because she had magic, though now I wonder if maybe some part of her did, or if love is its own kind of spell when done over and over for years. She grew herbs in chipped pots. Flowers in crooked beds. Rosemary near the kitchen door. Mint where it absolutely should not have been allowed to spread but did anyway because Nanna claimed stubborn plants deserved respect.
I used to think gardening was just something she did.
Now, standing in Hollow Hill with a dying flower crown beneath my fingers and Cian watching me like every small want in my chest matters, I understand it was more than that.
It was how she made home.
“Yes. I’m going to make a garden,” I say.
Cian nods slowly and places a kiss along my brow before he turns, ready to start my honey-do list for the day.
I take a seat at the table and pick up the flower crown, admiring it before I reach for the little tape player I keep on the shelf by the bed, the Fleetwood Mac tape already tucked inside.
It crackles when I press play.
A slow song starts, and I immediately wrinkle my nose.
Too sad.
I stab the fast-forward button and listen to the tape whir for a few seconds before pressing play again. Still too sad. I try again. The third song comes in brighter, with a beat that instantly makes the room feel less like a shrine to delicate feelings and more like a kitchen on a sunny morning.
“There we go,” I murmur.
Once I have the perfect song to go with the morning, I spread the supplies in front of me.
It feels like a very long time since I’ve done this, but my hands remember more than I expect.
Nanna used to preserve flowers between books when I was little. Leaves too. Ferns. The occasional weed I insisted was special because I found it myself. She would let me arrange them carefully on paper, warning me not to crush the petals too hard, not to rush, not to think dead flowers were useless just because they had finished blooming.
I work slowly with one blossom at a time.
I set aside the best pieces to press. The stems I tie carefully together. The crown itself I reshape as gently as I can, saving what still holds and removing what is too bruised to keep. The whole time, the music plays, and my mind slips away from the table toward the garden I have not made yet.
I can see it perfectly in my mind. A little patch of earth somewhere that gets morning light. Rosemary near the path. Lavender along the edges. Mint in a pot, because I have learned from Nanna’s mistakes, thank you very much. Thyme between stones. Chamomile where it can catch the sun. Maybe flowers too, mortal ones if I can get them, and fae ones if they’re not deadly.
An oasis.
A small one, just for the people I love and me.
A place to kneel in the dirt and build something with my hands. To touch grass for no reason other than it feels good and alive and free.
The thought makes me smile as I press the first white blossom flat between two clean sheets of paper.
I won’t use a single drop of magic in my garden.
No Heartroot pull. No ancient roots humming beneath my palms. No impossible power waiting to answer me.
This one is going to be grown with dirt, patience, stubbornness, and love.