80. Kat
Kat
W ithout the prospect of Kaliban to take my memories, I went to the Hall of Healing the next day with a sickly feeling in my stomach.
My nerves hummed, the magic around me too, and if not for numerous chances to let go recently, my hands would’ve been covered in my purple stain. I might even have hazed.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Rose stood beside me at the bottom of the stairs. “I can come in with you.”
“I…” I blinked up at the marble building. “I was about to say I’d started this journey alone, but… that isn’t true. Bastian was here when I woke. And you’ve been with me almost every day since.” I gave her a sidelong look. “Would you?”
“I offered, didn’t I? And it wasn’t out of politeness, but… if she really does have a cure for you, I want to be there to support you. I’m sure Ella would come, but…”
“But she isn’t the best with blood.” I scoffed, the tightness in my stomach easing to know I had Rose.
“Gods willing there is no blood, but…” She shrugged, then nodded towards the doors. “Shall we?”
I squared my shoulders and offered a silent prayer to the gods I’d told to fuck themselves more times than I cared to admit.
Please, please let this be the last time I have to do this.
* * *
Elthea gave Rose an evaluative glance, but otherwise gave no reaction to her sitting at my side.
“Well.” She clutched the notebook, fingers tapping an agitated rhythm on its cover, but said nothing more.
“You said you’d made progress with my cure?”
She drew a long breath, chin rising. “I think I have. In fact, I’m sure I have.” A fleeting smile lit her face, and I had to bite back a laugh.
Elthea, the woman who remained calm and deadpan ninety-nine percent of the time, was excited .
“I realise my mistake now. I was attempting to cure all of your ‘affliction,’ but”—she shook her head and sighed—“magic is not an affliction or an illness or anything bad at all.” She raised her hand.
“It’s not good, either, to be clear—it just is .
Like fire—it can be used for good or ill, but in its own right it’s a neutral state. ”
I blinked at her speeding sentences, barely keeping up.
“But your having magic isn’t bad for your body.
Only the poison attacking your system is.
My work has shown me there are two separate things going on in you.
Magic and poison. The poison lingering in your bloodstream is one element.
But your ability to draw on magic—your gift, which manifests in a poisoned touch in your case—that is a separate matter entirely.
And they’re not as closely intertwined as I thought. ”
She gave a breathless little laugh. “It’s so obvious. I should’ve realised sooner, but there’s never been anything quite like this before. The poison you took is what’s trying to kill you each day. All the attempts to save you are what gave you magic.”
She opened the notebook and pointed, but she pulled it away again before I had a chance to read any of the spidery text. I only glimpsed a sketch of what might’ve been branching veins or a tree.
“All right. And what does this all mean? Separate cures for the two elements?” I bit my lip.
She waved her hand. “That’s not the really interesting part.
It’s what he put in the poison.” She went on, words tripping over each other like mine had when I’d explained to Bastian about the Crown of Ashes.
“Not only aconite. I knew there was some magical element, but without a sample, I couldn’t deduce what that was, exactly.
The fact I couldn’t heal you said it was powerful.
But now I’ve taken a good look at you and gone over all my findings, I understand why. ”
Avoiding my question. Did that mean there was no way to get rid of my magic?
I exchanged a glance with Rose, who widened her eyes to say she understood as much of this as I did.
“Where is this all going?” She folded her arms, head canting to one side.
Elthea huffed. “Sun and Stars, I make the most exciting medical-magical discovery in centuries and the only people I get to explain it to are a pair of humans .” She spread her arms and took a deep breath.
“In order to strengthen the poison and make it incurable, thus ensuring the Serpent could not be saved by the antidote, he used a great power source.” She spoke slowly and loudly, like we were particularly stupid humans. “He used part of the Great Yew.”
I fell stock still. Rose gasped.
My eyelids fluttered. “Dusk Court’s Great Yew?”
“Do you know of another one?” Elthea clicked her tongue.
“Bark or leaves from it, perhaps. But if I was a gambling woman, I’d bet everything I own that he used a berry—after all, they’re poisonous.
At least now it makes sense why it resets each evening—the trees, the Great Bargain, the change between king and queen… they’re all connected.”
“What does this mean?” My thoughts raced, finally catching up.
A bow made from the Great Yew’s wood had chosen me.
Had it felt the tree’s power? Like reaches for like , or so I’d read in my research.
“The Great Yew is… it’s tied to the magic of Elfhame—that’s what I was told.
” With the Oak, it was a marker of great power.
If that had fuelled the poison I’d taken, it didn’t sound like the sort of thing that could be stopped.
I swallowed my rising disappointment. “You said you had a cure. How could anything counter that level of magic?”
She straightened and smiled like I’d asked exactly what she’d hoped. “Only its equal and opposite—an acorn from the Great Oak.” Gaze flitting to the door, she cleared her throat and pulled a small vial from her inside pocket.
Inside, something dark writhed against the glass. Shimmering gold danced through the viscous, moss green liquid as it worked against gravity.
“Officially, that isn’t what’s in here. No one’s meant to gather anything from either tree, but…” She spread her hands. “Well, sometimes rules must be broken in the name of science.”
I exhaled, not quite a laugh. In the name of science, she’d done things so terrible I’d entrusted my mind to a stranger to erase them. And now this—something that had to come with a much steeper punishment.
In that moment, I finally understood her.
She wasn’t interested in hurting me. Nor was she interested in helping me. There was only science. Understanding. A puzzle to be solved.
I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than it being personal.
She held my gaze a long while, then lifted her eyebrows. “You realise this is a danger to me. I have to trust you not to reveal what I’ve done with the acorn, and you have to trust me to take this. It works both ways. Understood?”
I dipped my chin, and she held out the vial. Its contents lapped at the glass where my fingers touched. “How is this supposed to work?”
“It’s an updated version of what we tried before. I’ve refined it, so it won’t be so painful. Your magic fights the manticore venom—a distraction—while the antidote, powered by the acorn, deals with the aconite in your bloodstream.”
I nodded like I understood what she was talking about. One of the appointments I’d erased. “So the venom won’t harm me?”
Frowning, she cocked her head and gave me a long look. “I told you before—you’re immune. Are you having memory problems? Perhaps I need to—”
“No, I just… I haven’t been sleeping well—since the attack, you know?”
“Right.” She was still giving me that odd look, though.
I cleared my throat and tilted the vial so the liquid shimmered. “And my magic?”
There was a long pause before she pulled another vial from her pocket. “You have a choice. Take that alone and the poison attacking you will be cured. Take this after, and the iron in it will nullify your magic.”
“Iron?” I grimaced at the memory of how unpleasant it had felt to wear the ring for a long time. “You said I should steer clear of it.”
“Because it’s dangerous. It will wrench your gift away.
This isn’t a cure but… an injury. It’s normally hard to get hold of, but I used your ring to make this.
You must take it immediately after that—it’s reliant on the acorn and antidote and venom all working together.
If you drink it in a week’s time, it won’t work. This is a now or never deal.”
I stared at the rust-coloured liquid.
All I’d wanted for so long was a cure. It had meant going back to what and who I was before. Here she was offering me that.
And yet…
There was no going back. I didn’t fit in that mould anymore. I may still be haunted by memories of the old Kat’s lessons and rules, but I didn’t live by them.
When I shot Rose a look, she gave me a reassuring smile.
Swallowing, I drew a deep breath. “I’ll just take this one.”
Elthea smiled at that, shoulder sinking.
Before I lost my nerve, I removed the cork and downed the fortified antidote.
It slithered over my tongue, making me gag as it wriggled against the back of my throat.
I covered my mouth, afraid of coughing up a precious drop.
It burned on the way down, and I braced for pain, but it faded a moment later as my gift fought back.
Magic hummed over my skin, my body sucking it in on instinct.
Then, nothing.
In fact, I felt… good —better than I had in months.
“Kat?” Rose leant in.
I blinked, touching my belly. “It’s… it’s gone.” A constant feeling of wrongness in the pit of my stomach—only now it was gone did I realise how much I’d forced myself to ignore it.
Elthea smiled wide enough to show her canines—I hadn’t seen them before—and Rose leapt up with a crow, like my victory was hers. Tears stung my eyes as I laughed and let her grab me in a hug, secure in my ability to hold in my magic and not hurt her.
I was free. From Robin. From needing a daily antidote.
I wasn’t bound to Bastian by an accident of magic. Every touch between us was our choice.
Everything that happened now was for us to decide.