9
Soleil
The nap helped.
A little.
I feel… better.
Not good, but somewhere near the realm of okay. Certainly better than when I arrived here earlier.
As long as I don’t think too hard about everything that happened.
Anytime I do, a thick, oily slick of dread spreads in my stomach and up my throat, reminding me how thoroughly fucked I am.
With the coven, with my impending Ascension, with my demon… mate.
Goddess, I can’t think about it.
I can’t think about any of it, and I plan to spend the rest of the afternoon deliberately not thinking about it and losing myself in helping Vayla. There’s nothing like a day of good, hard potions work to take my mind off anything that’s bothering me.
But when I arrive back at her workshop, everything is in chaos.
She put me up in a room just down the hall, and I can hear the noise from the moment I step out of my chamber.
When I glance inside, there are a handful of demons moving around the rooms, gathering ingredients and books and tools for brewing.
They stash them away in large, orderly wooden chests, with Vayla looking on and occasionally calling out an order.
There are more books, more brewing ingredients and instruments, tightly rolled scrolls, vials and bundles of herbs strewn across the tables.
“Did something happen?” I ask, hanging back so I’m not in the way. “What’s going on?
“Sorry,” Vayla says, harried as she carefully packs a few of the smallest glass bottles in strips of linen and adds them to a chest on her workstation. “We just got last-minute approval for a field trip.”
“To where?” I lean closer, peering into the nearest open box.
“The Bone Peaks.” She doesn’t even take a second to look up as she flips through a few scrolls. “Ingredient harvesting mission for the stellarin flowers we need to address a fever outbreak near the coast.”
I hum, trying not appear too interested, but… damn, that sounds interesting.
Not the fever; that part is horrible. But the idea of getting out of a workshop, getting my hands a little dirty, doing some actual, worthwhile work…
“Sorry I won’t be around to help with the grimoire,” Vayla says. “We need as many sets of hands as we can get for this, so I can’t—”
She pauses mid-sentence and looks at me like an idea just struck her.
“Unless… do you want to come? I don’t know how much field work you did back in your realm, but—”
“I’d love to come along.”
Probably unnecessary to tell her that most of my ‘field work’ has consisted of tending and harvesting herbs from the coven’s well-stocked greenhouses.
I’m sure I can handle searching for and gathering a few flowers.
Besides, getting away from the court and away from the demon who looks at me like I’m his salvation sounds like a great idea.
Maybe then I won’t have to think about the warm rush of magick that came over me the first time I saw him.
Maybe I won’t have to think about how rude I was to him.
Maybe I won’t have to remember the look on his face when I fled.
Maybe it won’t be one more thing I have to feel guilty about.
One more way I’ve failed.
“Great,” Vayla says, already turning back to her work. “Then help me with this, will you? We leave bright and early tomorrow morning.”