Chapter 6 #3
As a matter of fact, she did. She opened her handbag and took out her potions kit.
From within, she procured a small glass bottle containing phoenix ether, one of the most difficult potions to make.
An experienced potion master could make it in a few months.
Lesya had made it in a week. The uses of this potion were diverse.
An anesthetic in surgery. A calming agent for hysterical patients in the hospital.
A blood coagulant if mixed with wyvern scale powder.
A muscle relaxant if taken with yarrow. An anxiety suppressant if mixed with dover cloves.
He took the glass bottle and immediately went to the purification testing table, adding different chemicals and adding drops of her potion within.
“Your potion is inaccurate,” he said, holding up four test tubes, all of them showing different colors. Red, golden, blue, black. “Do you know what can happen if you make a wrong version of this potion? Loss of limb function, paranoia, paralysis, seizures, even death, Lesya!”
“I don’t like it when you shout at me,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Shout at you?” He gasped at himself, laughing out of frustration. “My love, you’ve been dosing yourself with straight-up poison! Here, come here. Take this…”
“What is this?” she asked as she took another bottle from him, this one filled with clear liquid.
“The antidote,” Cassian said. “Drink it whole.”
She did. And then immediately, within one second, the panic dissipated, leaving her feeling confused as to why she’d packed her things, as to why she’d been thinking of leaving.
“Oh dear,” she said, looking at Cassian awkwardly, embarrassment flush on her face.
“Self-conducted chemical experiments, Lesya… Better mages have died of smaller blunders.”
“You don’t know how it felt, holding it all in!” Lesya said. “And I’d do it again if I had to.”
“Instead of coming to me, you’d do all that again?
Instead of trusting me? I could have given you something myself.
” Cassian sighed, sinking into his desk chair.
It was only now that she noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the dirt on his clothes, and his hair all matted because of sweat.
He’d been out all night, and the day before.
Where, she didn’t know.
“I’m sorry,” she said, walking up to him, holding his hands and lifting his head so he could look at her. “I’m sorry, okay. I get scared. I… Up until now, I wasn’t even sure how you’d respond to my story, my dark past. The things my mother did, the dreams I get.”
“Those don’t define you,” Cassian said, a kindness in his soft gaze. “What your mother does is her business. And we don’t control our dreams. What we do control is the level of trust we give each other. I’m just sad you didn’t trust me enough to tell me this sooner.”
“Hey, that makes us even. You’ve not told me where you go, what you do.”
“I was under an oath. That was different.”
“So was I,” Lesya said, laughing. “An oath to myself that I’d never tell anyone of this. Ha!”
“You’re hopeless,” Cassian said, finally breaking into a grin. “I guess I can tell you about my business now, right?”
“Let’s try. And if you don’t choke up, I guess you can.”
Cassian stood up once more, taking a deep breath, searching for something in her face. She wasn’t sure what it was. Was it trust he was looking for, the very thing that he’d just been preaching about? Or was it something else?
“I…I’ve been…” he stuttered. “I’ve been traveling all over Aladria under the orders of the headmaster in search of the Grath Nomad and his followers. I’ve been doing this for well over a few months, back when the first whispers of a necromancer reached the Solignis Covenant’s ears.”
Lesya stood there waiting for something to happen. The oath was supposed to act upon Cassian by now. But it didn’t. It meant that she, too, was now under oath. Despite the fact that she no longer felt paranoid enough to run, this thought did not sit easy with her.
She should have resisted.
“I think, given everything that has happened to you,” Cassian said, taking her handbag from her and placing it on the floor. “Let me take you away from this place for a bit. We haven’t had any time to ourselves lately, have we?”
“I’m not a child,” Lesya said.
“I never said you were,” Cassian said, shifting uncomfortably. “I…want to take you out. I do. Get you some fresh air, maybe go out for dinner, buy you a dress, take you to a festival.”
“Who’s being a child now? All of Aladria’s caught in a scare. Who in their right mind would be throwing a festival?”
“Nothing, not even if Sol or Aeterna descend upon earth, is going to stop Aladrians from celebrating the Harvest Festival,” Cassian said and grinned. “Come on, Rosefield. Don’t tell me you packed all that for nothing.”
“Where would we go?” she asked, her chest feeling light at the thought of leaving this place, even if it was for a little while.
Cassian took her hand in his, raised it up to his lips, and kissed it. It didn’t hurt any longer, especially after what Elara Moore had done to it, but there had been a phantom pain lingering along her fingers, in the cup of her palm.
A pain that went away when Cassian kissed her hand.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise,” Cassian said, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her on the lips.