Sebastian

shaking legs support her as she stood up. She wasn't forty yet, but right now she felt ancient.
    "I know they're necessary," a male voice said from the doorway, "but these thrice-yearly evaluations take more out of the Instructors than the students."
    Tears stung Lukene's eyes as she looked at the solid man filling the doorway. "Gregor."
    He hurried across the room to reach her. His warm, strong hand rested on her shoulder.
    She turned into that strength, that warmth, wrapping her arms around him as his arms closed around her.
    "Difficult day?" Gregor asked, resting his cheek against her hair.
    "Not so bad… until this last student."
    "What did she do?"
    "Spoke the name every Instructor in the school fears."

    Gregor tensed. "Belladonna."
    Lukene nodded. "I broke, Gregor. I showed fear."
    "With good reason if this was more than schoolgirl romanticism of a rogue Landscaper."
    "More like another manipulative ploy to push the Instructors into granting her a status she hasn't earned."
    She eased back enough to look at the man who was the Head Instructor of Bridges—and her lover.
    "And how was your day?"
    "Better than yours. Teaching the young men who have the gift to provide a connection between landscapes isn't nearly as unnerving as teaching the young women who will control those landscapes." He studied her, his dark eyes full of concern. "Why don't you go to Sanctuary for a day or two?"
    "Maybe I will. But I think I should be here right now, in case the other Instructors…" She couldn't finish, couldn't say the words.
    "In case the other Instructors feel this girl is too dangerous and needs to be walled in," Gregor said grimly. When Lukene nodded, he asked, " Is she that dangerous? Could she be another Belladonna?"
    Lukene thought for a moment, then shook her head. "She has enough anger and… soul muck… to resonate with dark landscapes, but she'll never be like Belladonna. She doesn't have the power—or the heart."

    Nigelle glowered at every student she passed as she hurried down the wide flagstone paths that would eventually lead to her walled garden. She should have known from the moment she'd seen how far away her training ground was from the school's central buildings that the Instructors would be against her.
    Other students had training grounds that were no more than a five-minute walk from the classrooms.
    Granted, there weren't many students who were given a space among the walled gardens reserved for the Instructors, but there were some, and she should have been one of them.
    "Cold, heart-rotted bitches," she muttered. Abruptly, she turned down another path that headed back toward the school. A path that, while as well tended as all the others, always had a dusty, little-used feel to it. A path students were forbidden to follow to the end unless an Instructor was with them. Maybe that was why it intrigued her enough to risk sneaking down that path several times a year to ponder the mystery at its end.
    The path ended in an archway that was the only break in a high stone wall. In the center of this garden was another high-walled garden that had a locked wrought-iron gate. The only things that grew on the land between the inner and outer garden walls were large, bloated mushrooms and thorn trees that produced a fruit the color of a putrid wound.
    Students whispered that the Dark Guides sneaked into the school during the dark of the moon, harvested those mushrooms and fruits, and cooked them with the hearts of people they had lured into the dark landscapes.
    She liked that story. She spent a lot of nights imagining that one of the Dark Guides had come to the school and snatched all those snippy-bitch Instructors who said they were trying to help her learn how to use the power inside her but were really doing everything they could to ensure that she failed.

    She'd like to see someone like Lukene face a Dark Guide. Snippy-bitch Lukene would wet herself if she came face-to-face with anything truly dark. But she wouldn't be afraid.
    Yes , something whispered inside her. You have nothing to fear from the Dark. There is power in the Dark, waiting for you to embrace it .
    Maybe that was the other reason she so often ended up standing in the archway, looking into this place that caused every Instructor to pale whenever it was mentioned.
    Late at night, the older students would whisper stories about that garden, saying that forbidden landscapes were contained within it—landscapes so terrible they had been