Chapter 9
Iris
“Rise and shine,” Sam chirps, pulling the blackout drapes from the window.
I squeeze my eyes shut at the sudden burst of blinding light searing my retinas.
Styx, Sam’s hairless cat, startles me as she nimbly jumps on my chest. She looks down at me as if she’s a queen, casting a glance at an undeserving peasant.
“Go away,” I grumble and pull the blanket I’ve been rotting under for the last three days in Sam’s guest bedroom—trying to forget all about the demon who stomped all over my heart—above my head.
Styx lets out a fierce meow to scold my insolence.
“C’mon, Iris. Get up already. I made breakfast, French toast slathered in hazelnut cream, your second favorite,” Sam says, exasperated as she swipes the blanket off my body.
I snort. “You made breakfast? Are you trying to poison me?” Sam is a fire hazard in the kitchen. It’s beyond me how the heck she is so good at brewing healing potions.
She rolls her eyes. “Fine. I got breakfast from that brunch place two streets over that you love. Same thing.” Her nose wrinkles. “For the love of Hecate, please take a shower before you come into the greenhouse. My plants are going to wilt under your hobo aroma.”
“I’m not hungry.” I turn my back to her, hide my head under the pillow, and crush the third black iris I’ve found on my bedside table in a tight fist. He’s been here, every night since I left, and he wants me to know.
Fuck. I haven’t told Sam about it, though; I don’t want to freak her out.
I’d been holding the iris and sobbing into the pillow for hours before Sam came into the room. She must have had enough.
She wrestles the pillow from me and hits me over the head with it before throwing it on top of the blanket on the floor.
Planting her hands on her hips, she pins me with a stony glare.
“Iris, I swear to Hecate, if you don’t get up in the next five minutes, I’m going to throw a bucket of ice-cold water on you and use a wire brush to scrub you down.
You stink, and I could probably fry an egg on your hair.
You’ve barely eaten anything these past three days.
I’m getting worried…” her voice trails off.
“C’mon, you said you wanted to go to the cemetery today. ”
“I changed my mind. Stop hounding me.”
Sam mutters under her breath at the ceiling, “Hecate, help me,” then flicks those burning emeralds my way.
“I did you a solid when I told Ezekiel you’re not training today, so you owe me.
Get the fuck up if you don’t want poisonous mushrooms growing on every available inch of your skin.
Don’t think I won’t hex you if that’s what it takes to force you out of bed. ”
I ponder her words, then huff, “Fine.” I refuse to acknowledge how much I resemble a petulant child.
“Shower first.” She gives me a poignant look before stalking out of the room, Styx hot on her heels.
Pushing myself off the bed, I trudge into the walk-in shower in the en suite.
Staring blankly at the water swirling down the drain by my feet.
If only it were as easy to get rid of your feelings as it is to cleanse your body of dirt.
It doesn’t count as crying if the tears get mixed with the water raining down on my face, right?
I feel weirdly detached from my body as I take care of my business and finish getting ready, slipping into the clothes Sam brought over from my apartment yesterday.
Then I lumber down the curved staircase to the first floor.
Sam lives in a gorgeous two-story, restored Victorian house near my aunt in the residential area of Ashville.
It’s decorated in an eclectic mix of colors and patterns, matching the personality of my spitfire best friend.
The best part of the house is the massive greenhouse that offers a view of the sprawling garden outside.
Sam transformed it into a dining area. Thriving plants of different sizes and colors cover every inch of available space, and I blink slowly as I enter the sunlit jungle, its walls and ceiling made entirely of glass.
However, since I arrived three days ago, everything has seemed muted, as if I’m crawling through shades of gray.
The happy trill of bird songs spilling from the open door grates on my brain like sandpaper.
Sam steps into the room through the kitchen archway, holding two mugs of steaming coffee. She heaves out a relieved breath the moment her eyes land on me.
“Shouldn’t you already be at the flower shop?
” I ask, plopping down on the scalloped, hot pink chair at the massive glass table.
Even though I’m not hungry, I cut the French toast into tiny pieces and chew on a small bite.
It tastes like the ashes of what is left of my heart and settles at the bottom of my stomach like a thick layer of cement.
“I didn’t want to go in case you needed me,” she tells me as she slides the steaming mug of java on the table next to my plate and sits down on the chair opposite mine with feline grace.
My eyebrows knit in a deep frown. “Sam, I…you shouldn’t upend your life because of m—”
She cuts me off. “Have you looked in the mirror? Fuck, Iris. I’ve never seen you like this. Not even when Noah ghosted you. How could I just leave you here? You know who you remind me of? Me, a few years back, after Ian betrayed me and erased all traces we had ever met.”
Her words plow through the paper-thin barrier I erected over my hemorrhaging heart.
Apparently, bricks are too expensive these days.
You need mental fortitude and a spine of steel to afford them.
Both of which I clearly lack because how the fuck did I allow myself to fall head over heels for a demon?
I didn’t want to acknowledge this before, but now that Sam spilled it in front of me like spoiled milk, I can’t deny the truth—Kaiden’s betrayal cut me deeper than Noah’s ever could.
I put on a mask of what I hope resembles my usual self.
“I’m fine. I’m already feeling better,” I say as I reach for Sam’s hand and intertwine our fingers.
“Thank you for taking care of me. You know I love you, right?”
She nods, but the deep lines etched at the corners of her eyes and between her eyebrows tell me she doesn’t buy a word.
“I love you too. Finish your toast. I’ll drop you off before going to the boutique.
I need to pluck some fresh delphiniums and snapdragons from my garden first.” She clears her throat, visibly uncomfortable.
“Um, there’s another truck full of flowers outside.
I gave the delivery guy twenty bucks and told him to wait in the driveway. I don’t know what to do with them…”
Since I arrived at Sam’s, Kaiden has sent two trucks full of the same rare, wild black irises from Jordan that he secretly gifted me every year on my birthday.
I didn’t want to accept them, but the delivery guy said he would lose his job and possibly his life if he took them back.
Reluctantly, I instructed him to unload the flowers in Sam’s garden, where I planned to set them on fire.
But just as I was about to light the match, Sam came back from work and balked at the blasphemy.
Apparently, these irises are so rare they cost more than a lung on the black market, per piece.
So, I told her she could resell them if she wanted.
Massaging my throbbing temples, I say to Sam now, “Can’t you tell him to deliver them to your shop, like the last two days?”
“Iris, the shop is so full right now you can’t even drop a pin on the floor.
There are too many flowers to sell before they die.
My magic keeps them alive, but not forever.
I thought maybe we could find a women’s shelter and drop them there.
Hecate knows their abusive, dickbag husbands never gifted them anything nice. ”
“That’s a good idea,” I mumble through another bite of ashy French toast.
Thirty minutes later, I’m staring at the wrought-iron gate of the cemetery, my mother’s journal in a tight grip.
Even though I’ve repeated every encouraging mantra I could think of…
my legs seem to have grown roots thicker than a mangrove’s, planting me in place.
The guilt of surviving when she hadn’t is still too heavy.
Not only that, but it’s entwined with the feeling of shame that I had years to find the demon who killed her.
And failed. But most of all is not knowing how my mother would feel about everything. If she would be disappointed.
I’ve only been past this wrought-iron gate once—at the funeral.
That day is forever seared into my memory, even though I was high as a kite on pain meds.
Grayson pulled some strings and got me out of the hospital for a few hours.
There is no honor for a hellseeker who leaves the Order, so it was only me, my aunt, and him watching the casket being lowered into the ground.
Of course, it was out of the question for my mother to be buried in the Order’s cemetery at the edge of the compound’s property.
My aunt chose the one closest to her house since I was going to move there in a month or two anyway.
But then I swallowed a bottle full of pills.
I remember how out of touch I felt, not only with the world, but with my body, too.
As if I was missing important parts of myself.
As if someone had taken all the shattered pieces and glued me back together all wrong.
I didn’t even cry. I stared at the scene unfolding in front of my eyes as if watching a movie.
I kept thinking to myself, This is your mother.
Aren’t you going to at least shed one tear?
Just one. They’re going to think you’re a fucking robot.
Even the sun radiating warm rays from the cloudless azure sky mocked me.
Because if I didn’t care that my mother was dead, why should the weather?
The fury came one week later. At the world.
At the injustice of it all. At my stupid body for healing faster than humanly possible, but not being able to mend my broken brain so I could get my memories back.
All that apathy was the ocean drying one drop at a time to expose the bare bones before the wall came.
You know that wall of water right before the tsunami hits?
It reached a hundred feet before it smashed into me with a deadly force.
I couldn’t escape it. It flooded my airways until it reached every single cell in my body to the nucleus.
So, I did the only thing I could: I trashed my hospital room.
The bill was astronomical. My aunt was beyond livid, but she understood I was only a teenager.
I think she was relieved that I wasn’t a zombie anymore.
Luckily, the inheritance my mother left covered the cost because Aunt Josephine couldn’t afford it.
The aftermath of that tsunami wasn’t pretty; the flooding waves continued to slam into me for weeks on end.
However, the rage turned inward until I was choking on guilt.
I just wanted to disappear. To fade away into nothingness…
So, judge me all you want for trying to kill myself, but at the time, it was my only way out.
When two hours pass—and I haven’t moved an inch—I let out a sigh of defeat before trudging back toward Sam’s house.
Maybe next time…