Chapter 12
CHAPTER
Twelve
All day, nothing Thea took eased her headache. Not her feverfew and fairy’s tear elixir, not a hefty dose of quinine, nor any attempts to weave fate to her will. It was a stubborn beast, clinging to every crevice of her skull.
‘I heard you required a price?’ The young witch standing in front of Thea peered anxiously at her.
Tendrils of fog escaped their shirtsleeves, creeping down their wrists like bracelets of cloud.
‘That I needed to be prepared for whatever you might ask of me.’ They dragged in a breath, fog skulking around their collarbones.
‘I want people to notice me. I’m tired of being the smallest voice in a room, of being constantly overlooked. I just – I just want them to see me.’
Confidence, that was what they needed. Paired with a lick of enthusiasm.
Ignoring her headache, flickering in the corners of her vision, Thea focused on the power thrumming through her until the apothecary distorted and fate layered over it like a veil.
Ready to be manipulated by her own hands, a flick of her fingers.
The witch’s threads were worn thin in places, grey and fine and insubstantial as their wandering tendrils of fog.
Thea wound other threads around them, bolstering them until the witch’s self-belief was strong enough to command a room.
The necessary price needled against her head: the memory of their single greatest accomplishment.
She did not take it. Other than perhaps her headache, she had yet to notice any consequence from refusing prices.
And if her headache was the sole consequence, well, she could withstand that if it helped others.
‘There,’ she said. ‘I’ve ensured you’ll be seen everywhere you set foot.’
The witch almost evaporated with relief. ‘Oh, thank you.’
Thea held their gaze. ‘But be warned, sometimes what we seek isn’t what we need.’
Frowning, they adjusted their thistle-purple coat with care, another wave of fog seeping out between the decorative stitches. ‘And the price?’
‘It’s your lucky day.’ Thea didn’t bother to berate them for not visiting at night – customers were still few and far apart since the wards had been damaged and Pan Novak’s Hunters had ransacked her wares.
It was just as well; between working on Malek’s key and this incessant headache, restocking her shelves was taking time.
They looked at her as if she’d plucked the moon from the sky and handed it to them. ‘Are you quite sure?’
‘Go before I change my mind.’ Thea rested her head on her arms with a groan. Never mind the champagne she’d enjoyed in the carriage last night, it felt like she’d downed the entire bottle.
A raven darted through the apothecary door before it closed.
When Thea groaned again, it hopped over and prodded her arm with its beak. It was carrying a little package. Untying it, Thea smiled at the biscuit it had carted over. She didn’t need to read the note to know who had sent it:
I can hear you groaning from across the street. Eat this, close shop and go for a walk.
Everyone needed to befriend a kitchen-witch.
Thea did as ordered. The biscuit was soft and light as a cloud, and as it burst on her tongue with the taste of blueberries, her headache retreated enough for her to pull on her warm cloak and her battered boots.
She slid her journal into her pocket. She wasn’t sure where she might find a lake spirit in the forest, nor how to take one of its fingernails, but if she didn’t start looking, she’d never find one.
Another raven swept in before she left, bearing a missive from Rose:
Urgent meeting in the Magic Quarter tonight at nine.
Thea had just skimmed it when a third raven fluttered in on the wingtips of the second.
Can we hold it somewhere else this time? Sarah has a severe sunflower allergy.
Thea sighed, wondering if the ravens were getting lost. ‘You need to take this to Rose,’ she told the raven as yet another bird appeared at her window.
‘This can wait,’ she muttered to herself, darting outside.
The skies were besieged with messenger ravens, criss-crossing the street.
No wonder the messages were going awry. Pulling up her cloak-hood, Thea headed for the forest.
It felt different at this time. Softer, somehow.
More magical with the sun sending out its final rays and the canopy muting everything into a glow.
She didn’t overhear any other conversations about fate-weavers toying with Prague though she kept her senses sharp, listening out for every snap of a branch, each skitter of a creature, trying to hear anything that could be a whisper.
Looking for any shimmer of water, large enough to harbour a mysterious lake spirit.
She didn’t see or hear either, but she did stumble on a little meadow, tucked away in the heart of the forest.
And there was Jasper. Alone.
Thea halted, bracing herself against a spruce tree as she caught her breath, undecided whether she ought to steal away before he noticed her, or say something. She peered around the trunk at him.
He was kneeling in the earth, clenching a bunch of wildflowers – crocuses and lilies and violets – hard enough to crush their stems. Magically out-of-season flowers for a magical spot. Seeing him sitting there, vulnerable and alone, gave Thea a peculiar feeling she could not name.
She knew she should leave. She was intruding on something private.
‘Careful, you’ll squash them,’ she said instead, stepping free of the bracken.
Jasper started, staring up at her. Devastation was writ upon his face.
‘What happened?’ Thea whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’
His hair was untied, falling around his cheekbones, his eyes midnight-dark. Before he composed himself, there was half a moment where the forest stilled around them, when the birds hushed their songs, and the wind ceased to blow, when Jasper looked at Thea as if she was the answer to everything.
Then Jasper tipped his head back, staring up at the sky. At the edge of the canopy, where the leaves didn’t quite meet, chinks of rose-red clouds were revealed, along with a setting sun that bathed the forest in a petal-soft glow.
‘Today is a difficult anniversary for me.’ His voice splintered, cracking wide open. Exposing the valley of hurt beneath.
For a moment, Thea forgot that this man had taken her heart. All she saw was pain.
She crossed the distance between them and laid a tentative hand on his arm. She had never dared touch him before, and he jerked as she did so, setting her heart-spell thrashing in her chest.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘I’m here if you want to share anything. Sometimes it helps, to talk.’
‘Thank you.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘I lost my daughter this day, many years ago.’
‘Oh, Jasper, I—’ Thea swallowed. ‘I have no words for that. I cannot imagine the hurt you carry every day. How old was she?’
Perhaps all this time, he had been as lonely as her, had suffered the way she did when she awoke in the thickest part of the night, too many thoughts running through her head, each one a ripple in a lake, starting small, then growing and growing until she could not look away.
Maybe this was why he behaved in the manner he did; he wasn’t grumpy and uncaring; he was living with a great loss.
Jasper lowered his gaze to the earth and the wildflowers he still clung to. ‘Just twelve.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Thea whispered. ‘I should never have said anything—’
She choked back her curiosity over what might have happened; over who the girl’s mother had been.
This was not about her. Instead, she sat beside him, not caring that her dress would stain, or that she shouldn’t be showing sympathy for the man who had taken her heart and kept it to this day. All she felt was his pain.
So, she stayed with him until a fresh wash of the deepest, duskiest blue crept over the bowl of the sky.
‘The sun has set,’ she told him, as he seemed not to notice. ‘The day has ended now.’
The corner of his mouth twisted, wry and weary. ‘It always does.’
He stood, reached back and extended a hand to Thea, who took it without hesitation; after hours spent on the ground, her bones had soaked up the cold, stiffening. Jasper dropped her hand and frowned, as if seeing her properly for the first time. ‘What were you doing here?’
‘I was sitting with you.’ Thea shot him a disbelieving look, pausing in brushing the loose earth from her skirts. ‘You seemed as if you could use the company and I didn’t want to leave you alone—’
‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘Before that. You were walking alone in this part of the forest, just before sunset?’
‘Yes, I do so often.’
Gone was Jasper’s moment of vulnerability, the peeling back of his armour to reveal his true heart, raw with grief. His armour was firmly back in place.
Jasper’s frown grew into a glare. ‘Have you lost your mind?’ he demanded. ‘Do you realise how dangerous this forest is ?’
‘Is this the part where you tell me that there are vampires in the forest?’ Thea asked wryly, though the last time she’d ventured here, she’d been sent fleeing from a posse of bludi?ka.
‘No.’ Jasper raked his hair back. ‘Most vampires reside in Prague. Or in Vienna, or Paris. They have a fondness for court life; I believe the strict social structure and rules appeal to them, and their needs can be passed off as mere eccentricities among the nobility.’
‘I can look after myself,’ she said coolly.
Jasper drew a step closer. ‘You are standing on the brink of the Crossroads. Have you not noticed the way the trees hum in this part of the forest? The peculiar things that grow around here, the deer with their white stares, the strange lights that dance through the trees?’
The back of Thea’s neck tingled. ‘Of course. But some of the best plants and fungi grow here. This is the perfect time to harvest them. I use them for crafting elixirs and—’