Chapter 14
CHAPTER
Fourteen
Thea was reading in the bath when an idea for Malek’s key popped into her head: a spirit could cross thresholds without a key. And she was certain she had just the right thing to represent a spirit. Somewhere.
She sat up, dislodging the garden of rose petals scattered in her copper tub.
Periwinkle bubbles floated up to the ceiling, each one the size of her head, conjured with fresh lavender and a breath of spring air from a weather-witch.
Neither had worked: her head still pounded.
But she was on a time limit to forge Malek’s key and it wasn’t as if she would have been able to sleep anyway.
Setting Eudora and the Ship’s Captain out of the bubbles’ reach, Thea dried in a hurry and pulled on a nightgown, ignoring her hair, damp and curling at the ends.
As she padded downstairs, barefoot, lantern in hand, Cinnamon hopped along at her heels, nose twitching with delight at being allowed along on her night-time secret.
The apothecary was best at the witching hour, when Thea’s sole company was her rabbit and the swollen moon with its baleful glow.
When the contents of her bottles and vials gently twinkled and rustled in the lantern’s path.
The floorboards were cold against her bare feet but there was something freeing in only wearing her soft white nightgown when all the windows peered out onto a sleeping street.
‘Where did I put it?’ She slid out boxes and jars in her back room. ‘Ah, here.’ It was at the back of a drawer, beneath a large cobalt snail shell hiding it like a coffin: a dead man’s finger bone. ‘You are going to be my key.’
Perhaps she didn’t need the other ingredients after all; perhaps having this as her physical key, with a little extra magic and fate’s embroidery, would be sufficient.
Then she wouldn’t have to worry about confronting a lake spirit, let alone finding a lake in that nightmare-inducing part of the forest.
Reaching for the jar she’d stashed the silver-dapples in, Thea pulled half of the glowing fungi out, pausing to admire their light before she crushed them with her pestle and mortar.
Thea’s hands and thoughts fell into a dance, slow and rhythmic.
When the mushrooms had been reduced to a luminous powder, Thea added rose water and a single fairy’s tear and gave it a brisk stir, until it took on the consistency of melted silver.
She popped the finger bone inside the bowl of liquid.
It was as Thea was watching the bone soak in that magical mix that it occurred to her: she had power.
Her bones were soaked in Jasper’s power; she should be able to do anything she set her mind to.
Including solving the trouble settling over the Magic Quarter like a belligerent shadow.
She did not need Jasper’s help nor his permission for that; she might be his apprentice, but she had made the apothecary a success all by herself.
She had friends, a life in the Quarter. And he did not live here – his townhouse was buried in the foothills of the castle.
Perhaps if she was able to make this key for Malek, to allow him to enter anywhere without trace, she could make the inverse for the Magic Quarter. Some kind of key that would lock them all away safely.
Pulling out her leather-bound journal, she reached for a fresh quill and a pot of her favourite sapphire ink and jotted down some notes while the bone bathed in forest magic.
First, she methodically described what she was making now, before working out her thoughts on creating a key that could be used for protection.
When she’d finished spilling her thoughts and ideas across the pages of her journal, Thea pulled the bone out. It gleamed like a jewel. Now to harness fate. Sharpening her focus, Thea relaxed her gaze, waiting for fate to make itself visible.
The pain in her head surged, sending nausea writhing through her stomach, but she had to get this key forged.
She’d already kept Malek waiting long enough and the situation with his sister couldn’t be getting better.
She couldn’t wait until her headache went.
No little part of her also relished the idea of having an excuse to send Malek a raven to come and collect the key in the morning; she hadn’t seen him since the opera, and their kiss.
Shoving the pain into the darkest crevices of her head, Thea concentrated on the threads.
They appeared and vanished, slipping in and out of view as Thea struggled to hold on to them.
Gritting her teeth with the effort, she gave it everything she had, and suddenly they blazed to life.
Thea wove fate around the glowing finger bone, tying intricate knots to alter its shape, turning it into a skeleton key.
Her energy ebbed but she refused to stop, reaching down into that well of borrowed power pooled in her marrow, forcing the spell binding her chest together in blood and bone to tick harder, faster, to keep up with the fate she was altering.
The apothecary door swung open as if it had not been locked for hours and Jasper strode through, an argument already spilling from his tongue, ‘What part of send me a raven did you not comprehend—’ When he caught sight of Thea, elbow deep in a magic more powerful than any she’d ever conjured before, the words died in his mouth.
‘What do you think you are doing?’ he growled.
Thea knotted strands around the key, giving the holder the power to open any door, to remain unseen as though they were a spirit passing between walls. But when she let go, the key turned dull, returning to bone.
‘It didn’t work,’ Thea gasped. ‘Why didn’t it work?’ The spell holding her together gave a weak patter. ‘Oh,’ she said stupidly, feeling the floor undulate, as if she was standing on honey rather than oak. She staggered to her counter.
‘What is it?’ Jasper asked, appearing at her side, his hands slightly outstretched towards her though reserved as usual, he did not touch her.
‘The spell you made me.’ Thea clasped her chest. ‘I think it’s giving out.’
She was vaguely aware of Jasper calling her name, sharp with alarm, before the fog rose and swallowed her whole.
Something cold touched Thea’s lips. She closed her mouth, refusing it entry. ‘Drink this,’ a familiar voice ordered.
‘No,’ she murmured, unsure if she’d spoken aloud until the voice sighed.
‘Why must you always be so stubborn?’ Jasper grumbled.
Thea cracked open an eye. She was lying on the apothecary floor with Jasper peering down at her.
Her head was cradled in his lap. His large hands wrapped around her, holding her tight and safe and warm.
Which was strange. If she hated him, why did he make her feel so safe?
He was bent over her, his jawline stubbled.
‘Drink.’ Jasper lifted the cold vial to her mouth once more.
It looked like molten diamonds, glimmering with fate. It looked beautiful. It looked like something from another realm.
Her head roiled with pain. Intense, skull-shattering pain that washed over her in a wave she couldn’t withstand. Clamping her hands to her temples, she screamed, arching her back as it possessed her whole. Jasper didn’t wait for permission before tipping the elixir down her throat.
Liquid warmth spread through her chest, sunrise creeping through her veins.
Like magic, her headache vanished at once.
Sweetness lingered on her tongue. It was chased by awareness.
She’d never been this close to Jasper before, never felt him wrapped around her, never stared back into his gaze and seen how deep those blue eyes ran, like an unending sky washed clean by a storm.
What worlds had those eyes seen? What unimaginable horizons had Jasper been born to?
She leaped up, breaking that contact between them. The second she left his arms, she was colder. Less . . . secure. A tinge of regret chased it that she did not wish to examine. ‘What did you give me?’
Jasper rose to his feet. ‘You told me that business was slow, not that you hadn’t been taking prices for your weaving.
’ Outside, a thunderclap as loud as a breaking heart punctured his words.
Cinnamon came running, paws scrabbling in his panic to reach Thea.
Thea wrapped her arms around him and lifted him, holding him snug against her chest as Jasper looked at them. ‘Is that – a rabbit?’
‘Business has been slow. It has been since the Hunters started investigating.’ Giving Cinnamon a kiss on the nose, Thea let him back down again.
He scampered away. ‘But that wasn’t the whole truth.
I’m sick of exploiting people. I have power, I can help them, why should I have to charge them for that?
You told me that it was to balance fate, to keep time intact, but I haven’t taken a price in weeks and the world hasn’t ended yet. ’
Jasper stared silently back at her, his face set harder than stone. ‘You collapsed, Thea. Fate took its price from you. If I hadn’t entered when I did, then I do not know how much more it would have taken.’
Thea swallowed hard. ‘Did I break the wards?’ she whispered.
If it had been her fault that the Hunters had invaded their lives, she didn’t know how to forgive herself.
‘I worried it was me . . .’ Her eyes drifted to the cracked ceiling.
‘But the Crypt was damaged before the apothecary ceiling cracked, remember? And that was before I refused my first price.’
‘Really?’ Jasper’s stony frown was unyielding, the tension between them cut deep as a ravine.
‘Then it cannot have been you.’ He sighed.
‘I don’t understand why you felt the need to test this.
I explained the balance of fate-weaving in depth many times before I gave you free rein with the apothecary. ’
‘It started with a girl.’ Thea’s throat thickened. ‘There was something familiar about her. I thought she could have been . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I just couldn’t take her price. When nothing happened, I distrusted you.’
The street lamps and candles extinguished as one, sending them plunging into darkness. Thea gasped, gripping the countertop.
‘It is only a storm, it will pass,’ Jasper said.
The moon dangling down from the ceiling glowed dimly, the sole lantern in this sudden night.
Iced arrows flew at the windowpane. When Thea went to look out of the window, the world was painted a fierce white, hurling snow down with a vengeance. Jasper came and stood beside her, watching the Magic Quarter slowly disappear behind a blanket of snow.
Her heart-spell gave a weak flutter; there was no way Jasper could battle through such a blizzard anytime soon.
They were trapped here together.
‘Oh no,’ Thea sighed bitterly.