Chapter 12
The official term was a suspension pending a further review.
There was no sign when that review might take place.
It wasn’t quite being sacked. It wasn’t really anything.
It was a way of fobbing her off, of delaying things, of casting her into a purgatory where the only real way out of it was to resign and have done with them.
That was clearly what they were hoping for. That she would give up and walk away.
Portia clenched her teeth as she read it again.
The cover letter was painfully polite. The rest of it, all the documentation, the minutes of the meeting of the council, the statements from the crown representative, the accusation of wilful and careless use of magic, of turning it against another, the hints of assault and theft…
Milo had spoken on her behalf – a risk for him, she knew that all too well. He didn’t have the protection of being from a noble family. All he had to his name was his magical abilities and his skill at navigating academic politics. He had been using every ounce of that, she could tell.
But ultimately, they had told him to continue the research on his own and promised him full credit for everything so far. Her name would be removed from their papers but he would be allowed to continue, and he would take all the glory allotted to them both. Their work would become his. A bribe.
He didn’t have a choice but to agree, did he?
Portia chewed on her lower lip and tried to push down the sense of injustice. They had cornered him really. How far was he willing to go to support her? She would never have asked him to give up his entire career on her behalf. He needed this. If he failed, he’d ruin his parents.
Someone had known that and used it against them both.
His letter was altogether more sombre and every line bled devastation. He’d let her down, he said. He would try to keep fighting, or find some way to clear her name. He’d still send her their findings and try to get her the credit she deserved. He promised.
Milo was good at promises, Seb had once said. Not so much at following through. Portia had chided him at the time, called that unfair. But right now… maybe he was right.
‘Well,’ she said to Ophelia, once she had finished. ‘That’s that then.’
Her eyes were burning but there was nothing she could do about it. Absolutely nothing.
Ophelia wrapped her arms around Portia and held her, but didn’t speak. She had no idea how long they stayed there, in silence, and she wasn’t sure she really wanted it to end.
Finally, Portia pulled back. Later. She would deal with this later. She would lock herself away and weep until there were no tears to shed. But not in front of her little sister.
‘I have work to do,’ she said, and found her voice unexpectedly hoarse.
‘We’re here for you,’ said Ophelia. ‘You know that, don’t you? You don’t have to go through this alone.’
For a moment she started to wobble. But there wasn’t time for that, was there? She had never dealt with sympathy well, especially not from her siblings. Portia pasted her bravest smile on her face. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s better to know, isn’t it?’
For once, Ophelia didn’t sound entirely sure. ‘But maybe—’
‘Maybe,’ she conceded before her sister could come up with more dreams that would never come true. Ophelia always wanted to believe the best. And for a while, so had Portia.
But she should have known. After her parents. After Seb.
She should have known.
She turned her attention to the book, trying to read her uncle’s scrawl as her vision blurred with unshed tears. Ophelia squeezed her shoulder and then slipped from the room.
Art’s book was an education and a frustration all rolled into one, but Portia had to admit, it was exactly what she needed to take her mind off her troubles.
She lost herself in it and was grateful to do so.
Because sooner or later she was going to have to pull her head out of it and face the rest of her family and the evidence of her abject failure.
Not only had she made a mess of the dragon-scale balm recipe, and endangered all the teacup dragons in the sanctuary, she’d lost the one thing she had strived for since she was a child, a chance to redeem their family name.
It might not matter to the others, but it had mattered to her. And now it was gone.
A knock at the door pulled her out of her thoughts and she realised that the sun had set and the room had grown dark. At some point she’d kindled a ball of witchlight by her shoulder but she didn’t really remember doing it. Just something to let her keep reading. Instinct.
And what had she found so far? Nothing of use.
Noah stood in the doorway, holding a covered tray like the most unlikely waiter imaginable.
‘Is everything all right?’ she asked, suddenly afraid something had happened to Jade and she’d been locked away in here.
‘Everyone’s stable,’ he told her. ‘Your family and friends are all having dinner. I thought you might be hungry.’
Her stomach instantly betrayed her by rumbling loudly. As she moved, her back and shoulders joined in the protest and she had to twist her neck to work out the sudden kink.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I suppose I am. Thank you.’
He smiled that maddeningly attractive smile. She ate the stew and soft bread without really tasting it while Noah watched her and she tried not to think about him. And failed.
‘You should get some sleep,’ he said at last.
‘I have too much work to do.’
‘You’re exhausted, Portia.’ He was using that voice, the one you wanted to listen to, that told you that if you just relaxed and did what he said then surely everything would be all right.
Of course she was exhausted, but she had worked through exhaustion before. And she would again. She had to.
‘Did you talk to Seb?’
‘Yes, he suggested that the answer might lie in your own work rather than your uncle’s book. Something about prime threads.’
‘In our work?’ She blinked, trying to figure that one out.
Because it hadn’t occurred to her. The answer had to lie in Art’s book.
He knew about dragons and her studies – her and Milo’s research – were about…
‘Thaumaturgical fields,’ she murmured. ‘Not prime threads though. That’s an ancient theory.
They disproved that ages ago. But the fields, I can work with that. ’
With a burst of excitement, she grabbed the letter from Milo and scanned it again, past the apologies and the promises, past the excuses and explanations, to the last section. She threw the rest of it on the floor and studied that bit.
The results of Milo’s latest experiments.
Mostly, he complained about the whole problem of having to do it all without her, but she skipped that as well.
Milo had mentioned fluctuations he’d observed in the field under certain conditions which might have something to do with emotion, or could be naturally occurring.
They all knew that magic depended on location for power.
The island was famous for it. The same spell performed in two different places could have different degrees of strength in the outcome.
And hadn’t she seen something in Art’s book about the island itself and its points of power?
Lines in the land, he’d called it. No, threads…
She flicked through the book again, trying to find the right place, her magic turning the pages faster than her hands could.
Noah gathered up the dinner things and returned them to the tray. He must have left without a sound because she didn’t realise he’d gone for some time.
* * *
Portia worked through the night. She didn’t mean to.
Noah was right, she was exhausted, but now that she was actually on the trail of something she couldn’t let it go.
What if the idea lost that tantalising shape it had taken in the back of her mind, not quite formed, not yet, but there nonetheless. There was definitely something there.
Why hadn’t she thought of her own work to begin with? She had been considering it in terms of something that had happened to the dragons, rather than something that had happened to the magic surrounding them, but now… now…
The next section of the book was mainly botanical drawings and she flicked through them in search of text, but when she tried to turn the page again it seemed to freeze, the whole book vibrating.
Like it was trying to tell her something.
The page featured a tiny white flowering plant that had been painted by someone else.
Not Art. It looked like her mother’s work.
Something caught in Portia’s throat. All of these pictures had been painted by her mother.
It had been a particular talent of hers, botanical art.
She’d painted those plants she had gathered from across the realms. Portia stared at this one until it blurred with the tears forming in her eyes.
She had let them down so badly. All of them. They’d be so disappointed in her.
Portia forced herself to blink back the tears. She didn’t have time for this. Melancholy and regrets were no use to her. Neither were paintings of pretty flowers and…
Art had written in the lower corner of the page, detailed notes of the plant, its nature, its properties, possible uses, and a recipe.
A Universal Restorative.
Those words made her heart leap. She read rapidly.
She’d need the flower itself. It was a key ingredient but it grew here on the island – a moonflower.
Not a common plant by any means but not very rare.
It loved the woodlands behind the castle.
Art’s notes said to harvest it at night where it was attuned to the prime thread of the island.
She could do that right now. The techniques weren’t so different from those for the elixir she and Milo had been working on, that blending of mundane ingredients and the thaumaturgical forces around them.
She’d need to tap into a thaumaturgical field to complete it but that wasn’t a problem either.
She was a living breathing one of those.