23
Soleil
“Alright,” Vayla says late in the afternoon, wiping sweat from her brow. “I think we’ve done all we can for now. The final brew will need to happen right before the doses are administered.”
“Really?” I lean over the cauldron she’s been working on, filled with bright lavender liquid from the blooms. “It’s that temperamental?”
Vayla nods. “Ideally we’d administer doses to patients straight from the final brew, but it can last in vials for an hour.”
“Damn,” I murmur. “Sounds like a challenge.”
“You have no idea.” She moves to drain the cauldron into containers that will travel better. “We’ll recruit as many healers as we can to help brew and run to patients through the city, but it will still be a headache.”
I contemplate that as I help her work, the offer right on the tip of my tongue.
I could help. I could come with so you have an extra set of hands to ease the burden.
But I can’t quite make myself say it.
Not because I don’t want to go.
Far from it.
I would love to go. The challenge of this potion and the delicate intricacy of the brew, the complicated logistics of making sure it gets to the fever patients who need it, all of it sounds like work that would scratch my brain in the very best way.
Complex work. Necessary work. The kind of work that makes me a better witch, a better healer.
The coven is still waiting, though.
My Ascension.
My life.
Everything I’ve been avoiding.
And… Finn.
Goddess, I can’t wrap my head around the tangle of it all.
It’s a balm to have even this afternoon of work to take my mind off it, and as Vayla and I get everything squared away for her trip to the coast, a new distraction blows into the workroom like a tornado.
“Vayla!” a familiar voice calls out. “You here? While I was in the frost realm, I found a merchant selling those minerals you were—oh.”
“Hey, Seren.”
My sister walks into the room like she owns the place, like she’s been here a hundred times. And maybe she has.
How very painfully little I know about her life really kills me sometimes.
But where do we even start with getting ‘caught up’ after nearly a decade on the outs?
After what happened to her in Faerie a few months ago, how Callum brought her to me for healing, and the brief conversations we’ve had since then, I’d like to believe it’s possible.
Even if I don’t know where to begin.
“Hand them over,” Vayla says, reaching out to accept the leather pouch Seren gives her with a grin.
“This is fantastic. You don’t know how impossible these are to get in this realm.
Emilia is going to look at me like I’m a goddess when she has them in her bath tonight.
” She pauses, grin growing even wider. “And you know what? I think I’ll go make that special delivery right now. ”
She bustles out of the workshop, leaving me and my sister alone. Seren sits down on the stool opposite me at the table where I’d been working, and studies me for a few long moments.
“Did you and Finn have a good time on your little outing?”
“You heard about that?”
Seren shrugs. “Word travels fast. Especially when it has to do with witches. We’re big news in this realm, apparently.”
I hum, not sure if I like that or not. “Interesting. And yeah, it was… it was a pleasant trip.”
More scrutiny from my twin. From eyes that are a mirror of mine and have known me since before I really knew myself.
I hate getting that look.
The twin look. The look that tells me she’s about to really piss me off.
“You got dicked down by your demon, didn’t you?”
“Keep your voice down!” I hiss, mortified, even though there’s not anyone else here. “And no, I did not get dicked down. We just… we had a… very nice time together.”
“Nice,” Seren says, dragging out the word. “Was his tail involved? Because I really like it when—”
“Oh, my god,” I groan. “No. Enough. I don’t want to hear about what kinky shit you and Callum get up to.”
As much as I love my sister, that’s just… too much.
Still…
What does she mean about the tail being involved?
Is that… is that a thing? Could Finn use the tip of his long, thick tail to—
No. Not going there.
Flushing even deeper red, I shove that thought aside for later.
Seren just leans back in her seat, arms crossed over her chest and a shit-eating grin on her face.
“You like him, don’t you? I knew you would.”
I stand and pretend to be busy at one of the side workstations. “You’ve met him. He’s hard not to like.”
“That’s such a bullshit answer, Sol. C’mon. Spill.”
Turning to face her, I cross my arms, too.
“Since when do you care so much about what’s going on in my life?”
“Since it got a lot more interesting,” she quips right back. “Maybe if you had this kind of drama going on before, we could have reconnected sooner.”
I huff a breath. “It’s not drama. Finn and I are just—”
“You know I’m not just interested in what’s going on with you and Finn.”
“I’m not talking about the coven with you.”
Goddess, she’s always like this. Changing the topic on a dime, going right for a sore spot because she knows she’ll get a reaction.
And curse me, because I always give it to her.
“How about your Ascension, then? Can we talk about that?”
The reminder is like a shot of ice in my veins. Though it’s not like I needed it, with Samhain and the coven and everything waiting for me back in the human realm looming constantly over my head.
“There’s not a lot to say.”
“Again, Sol. Bullshit.”
“Look, I get it. I really do. I get that you left the coven so now you think you can—”
“You did, too.”
“What?”
She stands from her seat and braces her hands on the table. “You left the coven.”
“I did not leave the coven.”
“Really, then what do you call all this?” She waves her hand at me, at Vayla’s workshop. “Coming here, finding out you have a mate, going gallivanting off through the realms like you’re me or something.”
“I just needed a breather. A little time to think. I just… just…”
“Just what?”
“I’m having fun!”
Seren levels me a look. “Fun? Is that all?”
My face flushes with anger and embarrassment and indignation. “What’s the problem with me having a little fun? Goddess knows I didn’t get very much of it back in the coven hall.”
“And when the fun ends? Where’s that gonna leave you?”
“That’s none of your business.”
Seren’s face softens. “Of course it’s my business. It’ll always be my business. Even if you Ascend and have your magick tied up in that goddessforsaken coven forever, my twin sister will always be my business.”
“You don’t understand,” I say weakly, mind too fuzzy to grasp what this conversation is even about anymore, what I want out of it. “You left.”
“Yeah, I did. But I made a choice, Sol. I didn’t have one foot in and one foot out. I made a decision and stuck to it, for better or worse.”
“That’s not fair, and you know it.”
“Do I?”
“You’re impossible.” I throw up my hands in frustration and pace out of the workroom into Vayla’s greenhouse.
It’s full to the brim with plants and herbs from all over the realm.
I’d love to stay here and learn about them for months, years, the rest of my life if it meant I never had to face any of the rest of it.
Like a petulant child, I park myself by the windows and gaze out, stubbornly not turning around when Seren’s voice comes from the doorway.
“I can’t pretend I know what it’s been like for you since I left, but I know what it was like while I was there. Is that what you want for the rest of your life, Soleil? Truly?”
“We had this conversation ten years ago,” I mutter, and she sighs.
“And your answer’s still the same?”
“My answer is… mine. It’s mine, Seren. Mine to decide, no matter what it is.”
“Fair enough,” she allows, and her footsteps echo across the flagstone floors as she walks over to stand beside me.
We both stare out the greenhouse windows at the blue, blue sky and the brilliant autumn day. Long moments pass, heavy with everything unspoken between us, heavy with the weight of everything that could change in a few short weeks.
Seren bumps me with her shoulder. “Remember the last Samhain I spent at the coven, when Marjorie Ascended?”
I snort. “Yeah. When she spilled the ceremonial wine all over her pretty white robes?”
It was epic. A tale told and retold by countless apprentice witches, especially on the days when Priestess Marjorie decided to be an exceptional pain in the ass to her students.
“I don’t know who was more mortified,” I continue, “her or Esme. For a second there, I thought she’d call the whole thing off and tell Marjorie her Ascension wasn’t happening.”
We both snicker at that, and Seren cuts me a look.
“Try not to let that happen. If you do Ascend, I mean.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She opens her mouth to say something else, but the sound of the workshop door opening cuts her off.
“Star?”
I don’t know who—or what?—the new arrival is looking for, but it only takes a split-second glance at my sister to know it must be her.
Seren practically glows.
“In here!” she calls back, and that glow gets even brighter when Callum steps into the room.
I’ve always found my sister’s demon mate a bit intimidating. Big, bearded, outrageously muscled, he radiates an aura of stay the fuck away from me.
At least at first glance, but the Callum who steps into the greenhouse seems like a different demon entirely when he spots my sister.
His star, apparently.
“Sorry,” he says, as sheepishly as a huge, terrifying demon bounty hunter can manage. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s all right,” Seren tells him. “Sol and I were just having an argument neither of us was going to win, so you’re right on time to steal me away.”
“You’re leaving so soon?”
Argument or not, something in the center of my chest still pinches at the realization that—like always—our time together is going to be cut so short.
Seren gives her head a rueful nod and gestures to Callum. “Yeah. Sorry, this one over here got us an in on a job we really can’t pass up. I should be back at court before too long, though. Probably before…”
Before Samhain. Before I Ascend. Before things between us change forever. Again.