its boughs releasing a gentle rain of tiny silver petals.
“I always imagine you sitting under such a tree on a warm day, on the great lawn of the Conservatory, with a carton of pinemelon ice from Mrs. Hinderstone’s by your side.”
She shook her head. “There are no trees on the great lawn.”
“Now you tell me. Well then, I had better order one planted, so it will be there for you when you are a student at the Conservatory.”
“Will it look like this tree?” She tilted her face up for one last glimpse of the green canopy, which was already disappearing.
“Yes, of course.”
She glanced back at him. Until this moment, she hadn’t noticed the pajamas he wore. She had seen him half-dressed a few times, but she had never seen him casually dressed. No matter how early she arrived in his room for their morning training sessions in the Crucible, he was always already in his school uniform.
He returned the light in the laboratory to its normal brightness, and she saw that the pajamas were soft-looking dark-blue flannel, with the top button of the shirt undone. Her heart thudded: she couldn’t look away from the skin that one open button exposed.
And she didn’t want to. “Kiss me.”
He took a pretty glass jar from the cabinet. The jar was filled with sweets. He opened the jar and held it out toward her. “Try one.”
She put a green-striped bonbon in her mouth. And when he kissed her, the bonbon melted with a burst of freshness: mint, basil, and a hint of silver moss. But it was he who made her pulse race: his hands in her hair, the sinew of his arms beneath her fingertips, the scent of Pears soap that still clung to his hair and skin.
“What do you think?” he asked softly, his eyes dark.
Her fingers toyed with the second button on his pajama shirt. “Did you make all these yourself?”
“I stole everything from Lady Callista last summer. Want another one?”
She placed an iridescent, almost glass-like lozenge on her tongue. It was marble-cool and tasted like it too. She snapped that second button on his pajama shirt open and pressed the pad of her finger against his skin.
He sucked in a breath—and kissed her so thoroughly that her head spun and the sound of distant wind chimes echoed in her ears.
“Open your eyes,” he murmured.
She did so reluctantly and saw that they were standing under a rainbow. And the soft tintinnabulation of wind chimes still vibrated the air, growing fainter as the rainbow faded.
They were pressed together from shoulders to knees. He touched his lips to her ear, sending a current of electricity through her. “Still think rose petals are a terrible idea?”
She encircled his wrist with her fingers—his pulse was as erratic as her own. “You, Your Highness, are made of clichés.”
“Hmm. I take it you do not want me to make it rain hearts and bunnies?”
“Of course I want to see something that ludicrous!”
He dug deeper into the cabinet and extracted yet another sphere. “Delectatio amoris similis primo diei verno.”
Love’s delight is as the first day of spring.
The sphere split open. No hearts or bunnies emerged, but hundreds of sparkling butterflies did, flitting around in the laboratory, landing on beakers and drawer pulls before evanescing, leaving behind a pastel shimmer in the air and a barely perceptible fragrance, like that of meadow flowers drenched in bright sunshine.
She half laughed, caught between the absurdly sentimental nature of the tableau and its innate and unabashed sincerity. She laughed again, only to find her eyes stinging once more with tears.
She cupped his face in her hands. “You didn’t make it rain hearts and bunnies.”
“Next time,” he murmured. “May I stay here tonight—with you?”
Her heart rolled over. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“By the way, Your Highness, you lied,” she said, much later, her head on his shoulder.
He laced their fingers together. “Hmm, shocking. What did I lie about this time?”
“About there being occupants in one of the rooms of the lighthouse. There’s no one here except us.”
“A most desirable outcome.” He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “You are sure that there are no trees on the great lawn of the Conservatory?”
“None when I lived there.”
“I will need to pretend some had been planted in the years since you left.”
She turned toward him and trailed her fingers along his arm. “Have you ever visited the Conservatory?”
“No, I have only seen it in pictures. On the whole I spent very little