Chapter Six #2
I scowl, but it doesn’t last long as that magic warmth diffuses into my skin again.
“I have my reasons,” I say, then find I can’t keep my mouth closed. “I like being helpful in a way that doesn’t use my—well—I know I go to extremes to deliver, but my bouquets can help my customers connect, or heal, or move on. I want them to trust I can do a good job. I want them to trust me.”
I flush with embarrassment at what I just admitted.
Willoh takes his hands from my knees and walks around to stand at my head.
He presses gently into my shoulders and says nothing to rebut my confession.
Is being trusted a sentiment he’s also had concerns about? I’m not popular, but he’s even less so.
The silence continues as he examines the muscles around my collarbone, then lifts the back of my neck off the pillow to smooth his thumbs down the top of my spine.
My heart skips a beat. It’s fine. It’s nothing.
I’m just not used to anyone touching me so gently.
This is a professional, medical situation.
That’s all. I let him test the rotation in my shoulders and lift up my hands to check my wrists, and when he’s healed my remaining injuries and the heat of the spell is fading, his fingers brush the side of my neck again.
There’s a flicker of something in my stomach that I’m determined to ignore, because when I tilt my chin back to look up at Willoh, his eyes are closed and creased in confusion.
“What is that…?” he whispers to himself.
“What?”
“Hmm…” With the barest graze, his fingertips move to my throat and all the breath goes out of me. “You have like a…”
A few seconds pass. Beneath his fingers and my pounding pulse, I can feel his magic diving into my skin, into my muscles, into my voice box—oh.
“Wait—” I warn. In the same instant, Willoh leaps away.
“Fuck. Gods, Farrow— Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I bolt upright.
He staggers against the nearby desk. His fingers twist, magically summoning a vial of blue liquid to his palm, and without waiting, he downs it, then slams the empty glass on the table. I catch the smell of Saint-John’s-wort, a flower used to ward off evil.
“Gods above, that hurt! Fuck. Gods. Fuck.”
I stay quiet until he wipes his hair back and leans against the edge of the table, breathing hard. He’s looking at me like I stabbed him through the stomach.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’ve just been blasted back by a dark curse, but, sure, yeah, I’m great…Farrow, why on earth do you have…? You have, like, this lock around your throat. It did not like me getting close, I can tell you that.”
“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t know how much I mean it. “I, um…”
He massages his forehead but doesn’t push for answers. I don’t have to tell him. I can choose silence. But there’s an urge, an ache to share, to finally talk freely about my curse with someone who understands magic.
“A sorcerer cursed me before I was even born. My mum said it’s her fault but won’t tell me why,” I say, keeping my eyes locked on him for any reaction. All he does is wait. “Sometime after I started talking, it became evident that I…I can’t say anything that isn’t true. I can’t lie.”
There it is. The big confession. The truth of my life that twists every conversation into an all-consuming torture and keeps me at arm’s length from others.
Willoh runs his eyes over my face.
“The truth can be subjective,” he simply says.
I attempt a smile and a shrug. I’m not sure if it comes off as confident as when he does it.
“I’ve tried to find ways around it—ways to word things, like phrasing sentences in certain patterns, but…”
Willoh folds his arms. There’s a glint of something in his hazel eyes like he’s stumbled across something unusual, something surprising. Something that he’s never seen before. I can’t hold his gaze for long and drop my chin to stare at the hands I’m twisting in my lap.
“That’s why I take time to reply,” I say, and pick at a hangnail.
“I think through every sentence, every word, before I speak. My ex used to get annoyed with me. He’d say things like, ‘Are you listening? Did you hear me? Why can’t you just spit it out?
’ Then he’d get mad when I said something he didn’t want to hear.
The truth has the ability to hurt and I have to be careful. ”
“He sounds like an idiot.”
“Well, we’re not together anymore.” The heaviness of Lark wraps vines around my ribs.
I don’t usually talk about him these days, even with Card.
He’s worse than a sprain in my ankle, did more damage than a fall, and I don’t want to let Willoh see those injuries.
There’s no spell in his textbooks that can heal them.
If the sorcerer notices the plummet in my mood, he doesn’t show it.
“How’s your ankle and shoulder now?” he asks.
I stretch the memories away. “Much better, thank you. What do I owe you?”
“Hmm?”
“What do you usually charge for healing?”
Willoh pushes off the table and closes the distance between us, standing only an inch from my knees. My mouth goes dry as he tugs that smirk across his face.
“How about a promise?” he asks, and I have to wonder if he’s teasing me on purpose.
He reaches out a hand to tuck the cinquefoil flower snugly behind my ear.
It must have been falling out of its clip.
I’m surprised it survived the avalanche.
“You can say no. I don’t know how promises or conversations about the future work with your curse, but next time you get a crazy request for a flower, promise that you’ll ask me to come with you first. Only so you don’t end up injuring yourself further.
It does seem to be a skill of yours, and I’d hate for your loyal customers to lose their dearest florist.”
I swallow away the flutters. “Um, I…um.”
“Well, don’t say it out loud. Just think about it and we’ll call it even.”
He reaches for my belongings, and I take them from his hands gingerly.
“Why?” I ask, and follow him to the door.
“Why not? Besides,” he replies, and throws me a wink, “my mother would kill me for abandoning a princess in need.”
A bristle runs down my spine. He always ruins it.
Willoh pulls open the door again to find that Mustard has not moved an inch.
“Hey, you. Budge.” He crouches to poke Mustard’s fluffy back. The cat twists his head around slowly and gives him a glare that would put Bastion to shame. “Or stay there. Fine. Come on, Farrow, I’ll walk you out.”
We step over the door guardian and out into the flower-filled garden where Willoh tucks his hands in his jacket pockets.
“You know, you can get past the wards now—that’s what I was doing when you woke up; I have to press a spell to someone’s forehead to give them permission to enter without fainting.
But the magic protecting this place means you can’t point to it on a map or tell anyone the location,” he says, leading me past some shy daffodils and through the same gap in the trees Pigeon disappeared into.
“Don’t worry, I’m used to choosing my wording carefully.”
He frowns, but says nothing. Sometimes this happens when people find out about my curse.
They become reluctant to reply. Reluctant to share.
Besides Card, who upon finding out about my curse a few days after we met, simply shrugged, told me that words are only one way to communicate, not our whole identity, and that language changes so much over time that, in years to come, historians will argue over how many interpretations there are of my truth.
He had squeezed my hand, not one to linger on sensitive topics, and immediately changed the conversation to tell me about his grandparents’ recent trip to the deserts of Ject.
I suppose not everyone can be as self-assured.
I have to wonder if Willoh’s regretting letting me in at all.
Soon the trees widen, and I spot the wild crocuses that bloom outside the citadel, adding color to either side of the dirt path. They’re wilting slightly today, which is strange for spring.
Willoh comes to a stop. “You know where you are now, Farrow?”
“It’s Fliss. Felicity. Farrow is my last name. Um, thank you for your help, Willoh.”
“Ouch, so formal. Will is fine.”
“Then thank you…Will.”
I open my mouth again. Close it. I find myself wanting to stay, wanting to ask a thousand questions I shouldn’t.
Why do Bash and the queen hate him so much?
What exactly happened five years ago? Why does he have wards around his house, and why can Pigeon get through them?
Also, off topic, but who whittled all that cute furniture? Because I’d truly love some for myself.
I say nothing, as usual, and take a step away.
“Try not to injure yourself on your way home, Princess,” Will calls. I shake my head, and he turns back in the direction of the cottage.
It isn’t until after I’ve greeted Godfrey at the gates to the citadel that I realize the questions in my mind are a bud unable to bloom.
Questions I’ve actively avoided for years.
They’re going to gnaw away at me from now on.
Right beside them, the memory of Will’s hands on my skin refuses to shrivel, digging a home like the roots of an oak tree.
I know that I’ll be keeping the promise he asked of me.
It’s almost disappointing to find the submission box empty.