Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
We followed Freya to a large conservatory out back.
It was nearly as big as a house itself, primarily composed of iridescent glass framed in white iron.
If I’d thought there were a lot of plants in Freya’s living room, this was a veritable jungle.
Everywhere I looked were waxy green leaves, delicate fern fronds, and brightly colored blossoms. We had nothing like them in Achnarach.
It was so much color it was almost painful to look at.
Bri and I walked among the plants, our necks craned to see trees that stretched all the way to the high ceiling, bristly epiphytes and silvery green moss adorning their branches. I startled as a vine brushed my hair, only to find Bri laughing at me.
“You thought it was a bat, didn’t you?” she whispered.
“Wheesht,” I hissed. “I did not.”
Freya invited us to join her at a wrought iron table, where a porcelain tea service painted with hundreds of tiny blossoms was waiting for us. “What do you think?” she asked Bri.
“It’s beautiful. How do you manage to keep so many plants by yourself?”
“I have help,” she said, her gaze following a butterfly as it fluttered past us. “It also doesn’t hurt that I’m a green witch.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering Freya was friends with Marcail, but I wasn’t used to people batting about the term like it was nothing.
I helped myself to a cup of tea and a cardamom-spiced biscuit, forcing myself not to ask any questions.
This was Bri’s visit; I was merely along for moral support.
“What can I help you with?” Freya asked Bri.
“I’m looking for a waliwaga tree. The blossom, specifically.”
Freya was quiet for a long moment. “You’re trying to break a curse, then.”
“How did you know?” Bri asked. She’d become far less guarded than when I first met her.
“The blossoms supposedly smell foul, like rotting flesh. No one asks after them for any other reason.”
“So it works?” Bri asked, her entire face lit up with hope. I said a silent prayer that this was the answer to everything. That I could forget the entire dragon egg mess because Bri would be safe.
Freya frowned. “It might have, once. Unfortunately, waliwaga trees are extinct. As witchcraft has become less commonplace, so have curses, and no one keeps a waliwaga around for decorative purposes. I’m afraid there are none left. None known to humans, at any rate.”
As the light died from Bri’s eyes, I wanted to slap myself for ever putting this ridiculous notion into her head.
Of course there wasn’t going to be some simple answer to Bri’s curse.
Of course I wasn’t going to be the one to help her.
It had been selfish of me to even wish for it, and selfish of Marcail to give Bri more false hope, allowing her to risk her life by coming here.
“I take it you haven’t had luck finding the grimoire with the anticurse?” Freya asked.
“I might have found it,” I said. “But I’m not sure. I didn’t get a chance to look at it closely.”
Freya studied me, causing me to squirm a bit under her gaze. “Marcail mentioned you can read grimoires.”
I wrinkled my brow. “Can’t everyone?”
Instead of answering, the woman rose and approached us. “You girls have an interesting bond, don’t you?”
“We work together,” I said, wary of this witch who seemed to know more about us than we did. “Why?”
Freya leaned closer, staring into my eyes for so long I began to squirm in discomfort. “You’re opposites in so many ways,” she said, straightening, “and yet your strengths complement the other’s weaknesses.”
Bri and I exchanged a glance. Perhaps Freya spent too much time with her plants.
Freya smiled in the same amused, knowing way as Marcail. “Love is a curious kind of magic. It can grow in the most unlikely of places, but it must be tended as carefully as a seedling. Neglect it, and it will wither and die. Push it too far, and it will suffer all the more.”
She plucked a spent bloom from a nearby azalea and spun it in her fingertips before letting it flutter to the floor. “You’re both too young to appreciate it, perhaps. But you would do well to treat your friendship as the precious gift it is.”
Scratch that. Freya definitely spent too much time with her plants. “We should go, Bri.”
To my relief, Bri nodded. “Thank you for seeing us, Freya.”
“It was my pleasure.” She escorted us to the door and paused at a large vase of cut pink dahlias on a nearby table.
She plucked out two voluminous blooms—the kind that could only be grown in a greenhouse—and handed one to each of us.
“Be safe,” she said, and then we were back on the street, each holding a colorful flower like children with balloons at a fair.
“That was odd,” I said.
“Very,” Bri agreed.
“I’m really sorry about the waliwaga tree.”
“So am I.”
I took a deep breath. “I propose we move to Plan B. But I should warn you now, you’re probably not going to like it.”
Bri folded her arms over her chest. “I haven’t liked any of your plans.”
“Precisely.” I started walking down the street, back toward our hotel. I’d passed several dress shops on the way, but there was one in particular that had caught my eye.
When we reached it, Bri leveled me with a look that said she was far from amused. “Willow, this is hardly the time for you to go shopping.”
“I’m not going shopping,” I clarified. “You are.”
“What?”
“I can’t go to the Chancellor’s ball. At least not with a ticket.
But you can. She doesn’t know you; neither do her servants.
Once you’re inside, you’ll create a diversion while I sneak in and steal the egg.
Then we’ll hightail it out of there and take the first ship we can catch back to Ardmuir.
” I smiled with all my teeth. “It’s foolproof. ”
Bri rolled her eyes extravagantly. “How exactly do you plan to steal the egg? You said the house is crawling with massive man-eating cats.”
“It is. But I suspect our new—admittedly eccentric—friend Mrs. Lewis can help us there. All we need now is a fancy gown for you to wear to the ball.”
Bri chewed her lip. “I don’t know, Willow…”
“You were the one who said we have to trust each other.”
“Sure, but mine is wearing a little thin at this precise moment. You don’t have a great track record when it comes to putting me in danger.”
I pulled her to the sidewalk under the awning over the dress shoppe. “Look, I know I’ve let you down. You have every reason not to do this, and I won’t force you to. But there’s one thing you’re overlooking.”
“What’s that?”
“That maybe Freya is right. On my own, I’m not so great. But with you, I’m capable of things I never would have imagined.”
She turned her hand over, waiting for me to continue. “Like?”
“Like how we took the least reputable store in Ardmuir and turned it into one of the most respected. We’ve made our way to the Sapphire Isles without getting killed in the process. Hardened grown-ups don’t even do that.”
“Not if they have any sense, they don’t.”
I ignored her. I was on a roll. “We’ve met witches and traders and a deranged bat. We saved the world’s chubbiest pony from falling off a cliff and lived to tell about it. We’ve survived being roommates, for Pete’s sake. I know you can do this, and I know we can get that dragon egg. Together.”
She eyed me. “All I have to do is put on a pretty dress and go to a party?”
I nodded, solemn. “You really are getting the much better end of this deal, you know.”
Bri looked back at the window of the shoppe, where a gown of deep crimson taffeta waited on a dress form. As soon as I’d seen it on the way here, I knew it was meant for Bri. “That one?” she asked, her mouth twitching in a grin.
“That one,” I said with a matching smile. “And I know just the cloak to go with it.”