Sebastian

bring a little more Light into the world.
    Calm again, she focused on her heart and will, took the step between here and there, and stepped into her garden a moment later.
    It wasn't until she'd gone back to her house to wait for Lee to return that she thought about the horse's head again—and wondered what had happened to the traveler.
    *
    Sitting alone on a bench in her personal garden, Nadia watched Lee stop and study the plants that had turned brown overnight.
    "Frost?" Lee asked as he walked to the bench. "At this time of year?"
    "Frost," Nadia agreed sadly. She tapped her chest. "That came from here."
    Lee sat down beside her. Looked at her.
    He had his father's eyes, that green that could be soft and dreamy at times or darken toward stormy gray with a mood—or, like now, be clear and penetrating.
    Her boy. But he wasn't really hers. Not for a lot of years now.
    "What's troubling you, Mother?" Lee asked gently.
    No, not her boy. As much as he loved her—and she knew he did—he wasn't hers. "Did Glorianna send you?"
    "She knows something is wrong. Something strong enough to resonate through your landscapes."
    "She's right." After all, the heart held no secrets from Glorianna Belladonna. "When I went to a town in one of my landscapes, something touched me, contaminated me."
     
    Lee stiffened. "A Dark Guide? You think one of them is in your landscapes?"
    Had there been one of them in the marketplace? "Maybe. Or maybe it was the pleasure coming from some of the people because of other people's misfortunes. A Dark Guide nurtures feelings that are already inside a person. It can't create doubt if the seed of doubt doesn't exist."
    "I see." Lee pulled on his lower lip. "So you're the one Landscaper out of all them for all the generations who doesn't have the full range of emotions."
    "What?"
    "You never get angry or sad or grouchy or wonder if you made a good decision or just feel pissed off because it's been that kind of day. No, you're nothing but happy, kind, generous, sweet, loyal, loving.
    Yep. You're just a puddle of goodness."
    Deeply insulted, Nadia sprang to her feet, sure she'd burst if she didn't move. "I can't decide if I should whack you upside the head or wash your mouth out with soap."
    "Before you try doing either, remember what you taught us," Lee said quietly. "The human heart is capable of every feeling imaginable—good and bad—and it's part of our journey through life to decide, day after day, which of those feelings we will nurture so they grow stronger within us and which feelings we'll turn from because we don't want them to dominate our lives. But those feelings still exist inside us.
    The shadows in the garden. Isn't that what the Landscapes call them?"
    She felt as if he'd thrown cold water in her face, waking her out of some foggy dream. She sat down on the bench. "Shadows in the garden," she said softly, the echo of the feeling she'd had as a student when that phrase began to have meaning welling up inside her. "Yes, that's what we call them."
    "And now, when things are turning bad and the whole world depends on the choices she makes, you're wondering what's inside Glorianna that makes her Belladonna."
    Shame stained Nadia's cheeks. "Yes."
    Lee shifted on the bench to get more comfortable. "Do you know where the koffea beans come from?"
    Nadia frowned at him, puzzled by the change in subject. "They come from a land far south of here. A—"
    "Demon landscape."
    She stared at him—and wondered why his smile was a blend of amusement and sadness.
    "Not all of them," Lee said. "The ships that come in to trading ports from those southern lands carry koffea beans grown on farms—no, that's not the word for them, but that doesn't matter. Those other places are human. But the koffea beans that find their way to some of your landscapes as well as Glorianna's come from the piece of that land inhabited by a race of demons."
    "You never told me."
    "You love her and you'd fight to your last breath to protect her from the wizards, but you've never been comfortable with the fact that Glorianna resonates with the dark landscapes inhabited by demons. So I'd like to tell you about this one."
    She looked into his eyes and knew that if she refused to listen, couldn't find it in herself to try to understand, she would lose her children. Both of them.
     
    Her throat felt so tight she couldn't speak, so she just nodded.
    "I was with Glorianna the day that demon landscape resonated so strongly she had to