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"These are pictures of the flowers you wanted," she says "I’ I had to make the colors I just finished them now, so you’ll have to be careful not to smear the paints"

I’ else that ht, and I’ for the cure "Thank you," I say

Under the flowers she has written their names

Ephedra, paintbrush, mariposa lily

And others, of course Plants and flowers

I’, and I wish I weren’t I wrote that lullaby for so many people And noe may lose almost all of them Hunter Sarah Ky My mother Xander Bram My father

Ephedra, Anna wrote Underneath she drew a spiky-looking bush with sreen

Paintbrush Red This one I’ve seen, in the canyons

Mariposa lily It’s a beautiful white floith red and yellow coloring deep down inside its three petals

My hands knohat I’ve seen beforeout the paperin its shape I remember Indie’s wasp nest, how it had space inside, and I pull the edges of the paper out and then I know

I hold a paper flower in my hand My mother made this She cut or tore the paper carefully so that three pieces fan out from the middle, like petals

It is the saes crimped in and pointed like a star I realize that I also saw it printed in the earth

This is what Oker was trying to find

He sawstone inside

Anna’s picture tells me that the name of this flower is mariposa lily But I never heard my mother speak that na of Queen Anne’s lace What other flowers did she tell me about?

I’m back in the room in our house in Oria, where she showed me the blue satin square from the dress she wore to her Banquet She’s recently returned froue crops for the Society "The second grower had a crop I’d never seen before, of white flowers even o lilies, they called them You can eat the bulb"

"Anna," I say, , "does ht account for the proble this flower as two separate data points, but it was, in fact, a single variable

"Yes," Anna says, after a pause "Soo lily"

I pick up the datapod and search for the name There it is The properties are all the same One flower, reported under two different naht to the top of potential ingredients It was a critical, ele the data, but we should have noticed it earlier How did I nize the name, when my mother had told it toago "Where does it grow?" I ask

"We should be able to find some not far from here," Anna says "It’s early in the season, but it could be in bloom" She looks at the paper flower in my hand "Did you make that?"

"No," I say "My mother did"

It’s almost dark e finally find thee and the path

I drop down to my knees to look closer I’ve never seen a flower so beautiful It’s a si out from a sparsely leaved stalk It’s a little white banner, like , not of surrender but of survival I pull out the cruh rowing in the ground is the one myis much more beautiful But that doesn’t matter I think of Ky’s mother, who painted water on stone, who believed the ih the paper lily isn’t a perfect rendering, it’s still a tribute to its beauty that my mother tried

I don’t knohether she intended the flower as art or e, but I choose to take it as both

"I think," I say, "that this ht be the cure"

CHAPTER 46

XANDER

I can’t see Cassia herself, but the solar-cell lamps cast her shadow on the prison wall Her voice carries from the entryway to my cell "We think we have found a possible cure," she tells the guards "We need Xander to hs "I don’t think so," he says

"I’ you to release Xander," Cassia says "We just need to give him the equipment and have hi to do with it?" another guard asks