Breakthrough #2
He remembered her telling him in the Smokewood that using her magic to manipulate an existing plant was easier, which meant whatever was hurting her when she used magic wasn’t at play in the same way.
The little scientist who lived in his brain began taking notes, and Nathaniel sat up, dislodging Violet with a squeak of surprise.
He pressed an apologetic kiss to her temple and stood, ignoring the protests of his limbs after lying on the hard ground.
“I need to try something,” he said, excitement bubbling in his chest as he pulled her to her feet.
He tugged on his trousers, not bothering to look for his belt.
Behind him, he heard a rustle as Violet donned clothing too.
Nathaniel plucked one of the flowers that grew from the seed chest and examined it, sniffing the flower and rubbing the stem between his fingers.
He turned to look for one of the conjured flowers as a comparison, his eyes flaring a moment when they settled on Violet wearing his shirt and nothing else.
“That’s yours now,” he said, pausing to kiss her again.
He wanted to see her wearing his clothes every day.
She chuckled against his mouth. “Good. I wasn’t planning on returning it.”
Scratch that last thought, he wanted to see her wearing nothing at all every day. He couldn’t even bring himself to be frustrated at how easily she distracted him from his task.
“How am I supposed to stay focused when you look like that?” he muttered, dragging his gaze over her from head to toe once more.
“Go on,” she said, shooing him toward his workstation with an indulgent smile, following close behind. Her expression turned sly. “Teach me, professor.”
Pleasure leapt through him, and any restraint he had mustered instantly vanished. Perhaps she was evil after all—she was trying to kill him, it seemed.
“Oh, we’ll be revisiting that, believe you me,” he growled, catching her around the waist and drawing a delighted laugh from her as he hauled her against him.
He kissed her soundly once more before tugging her over to his half of the greenhouse.
“But for the moment, would you conjure a flower for me, please?”
Now that he was watching for it, he noticed the tight set of her jaw and the little wince of discomfort before a round, yellow flower with spiky-looking petals appeared in her hand.
He had a number of salves and creams at the apothecary; as soon as they were done here he’d fetch her a whole selection to see if any of them would help her hands.
Nathaniel took the flower from Violet and held it aloft in his free hand. “This, erm, flower,” he said, gesturing with the spiky one.
“A dahlia,” she supplied patiently, albeit with an amused smirk. “You work with plants for a living, shouldn’t you know this?”
He treated her to a look of practiced disdain. “If it has no medicinal or alchemical use, then no.”
“Aren’t they used to treat intestinal ailments?”
He paused mid-retort—dammit, but she was right—and booped her nose with the dahlia. “You’re awfully clever today, aren’t you?”
“Just today?” she teased, pulling the flower from his hands and twirling it between her fingers.
He could feel himself getting distracted by her (again), and was very grateful that she didn’t seem to mind, though not so grateful when she pulled away from him, once again directing him back on track. “Now what’s this about the dahlia?”
“You envisioned it and created it using nothing but magic, and despite appearances, it didn’t actually grow from anything but your mind.
It’s more like a fancy illusion brought to life.
It’s real and corporeal, and like we proved with the mugwort, it’s at least partially organic. But it’s not a genuine flower.”
She shifted on her feet, looking defensive. “So?”
“So you’re absolutely brilliant, Violet.
You’re creating flowers that have a scent and texture and—forgive me, I’m not as familiar with flowering botanicals as I am with herbs—seem to bear an exact resemblance to the real thing, and you’re creating them using nothing but your mind and memory. That’s incredibly advanced magic.”
She seemed appeased, if a bit puzzled. “Thank you?”
“But it’s not all you can do.” He held up the flower he’d picked from the overgrown worktable and the mound of flowers that had once been her seed collection. “This flower—” He waited for her to fill in the blank.
She grinned placatingly. “Freesia.”
“It grew from a seed, not your imagination.”
“Bulb.”
“Pardon?”
“It grew from a bulb.”
He shot her a look. “My point is you used magic not to form the flower but to encourage the bulb to start and complete its life cycle. Everything in the world has its own reserve of magical energy, you see, but some things far more than others.”
“Like the Eye of the Serpent,” said Violet thoughtfully. “It has its own magic, which users can draw on.”
“Exactly, but not everyone can draw on the magic inherent in everyday substances because they simply don’t have much to spare. An artifact like the Eye contains an immense store of power compared to a single seed—er, bulb.”
She smirked at his correction.
Nathaniel continued. “By pouring your magic into the bulb and asking it to grow, you evoked the energy that was already within it, the same way a water mage can bring a kettle to boil, or how the Clerics of Rava can shape structures from raw earth.”
“So that one’s an actual flower, then?” Violet asked. “And the dahlia isn’t.”
He shook the dahlia at her and turned to his worktable, where a sample of the blight was contained within a large glass jar while he waited for his new safety equipment to be delivered. “If my suspicions are correct, then yes,” he clarified, opening the jar.
He dropped both into the jar, Violet looking over his shoulder, and watched with satisfaction as the rot crept over the dahlia and, just as with the mugwort, slowed and stopped.
The freesia, however, was quickly overtaken in its entirety, collapsing within the jar to become a stringy mess of black goo, soon indecipherable from the rest.
“So what does that mean?”
“Well, it means that the blight reacts to magic.”
“We knew that already, didn’t we? It pushed back when I tried to use my magic to reverse it.”
“Yes, but why? Magic is balance, remember, so what is the blight balancing by pushing back?” He looked up at the rain-splattered panes of the roof, his mind whirring. “When did you say the pain in your hands started getting worse?”
“Not long ago. It stopped going away just after—” She sucked in a breath, her mouth falling open. “After I saw Sedgwick.”
Nathaniel took her hand between both of his and absently began massaging it again. “Magic shouldn’t hurt,” he murmured, kissing her fingers. “You said it first started when you came to Dragon’s Rest?”
She nodded, frowning. “I—yes.”
“Sedgwick came here that very same week, did you know that?” He looked down at their clasped hands.
“And the ingredients he came looking for when he first came to the apothecary—how could I have forgotten?” Nathaniel thought back to that list. Minotaur horn.
Mane of marea. Both were elements of magical creatures that could be used to perform powerful magic—or inhibit it.
“What if Sedgwick is trying to obstruct your magic? The blight affects plants. Wouldn’t it make sense that he’d identify a powerful plant witch as a threat to his plans?
That he’d take steps to deter anyone who could potentially stop the blight otherwise? ”
Violet’s eyes widened. “You think Sedgwick is targeting me?” She appeared thoughtful. Quietly, almost to herself, she added, “That…makes a lot of sense.”
Nathaniel squeezed her hand. “If we can figure out how he’s affecting your magic and counteract it, we could stop your magic from hurting you anymore.”
“And get rid of the blight,” she reminded him.
“Yes, the blight. Of course.” He smiled sheepishly. Distraction, he thought again, with no shortage of fondness. “That too.”
He’d been focusing too hard on the blight, but the answer had been staring him in the face all this time—Violet could reverse it.
If Sedgwick saw her as such a threat, then it meant her magic was the key to stopping the blight.
He only needed to help her unlock whatever alchemical means Sedgwick was using to hurt her, and luckily Nathaniel had a lifetime of experience as an apothecary.
He knew how to combine alchemy and medicine.
Nathaniel reached for a pair of gloves. “I need to test a theory. I need to—”
“Get dressed,” Violet finished, smirking at him. “You need to put your clothes back on before you do any experimenting. I’m not an alchemist, but even I know you probably want to be wearing a shirt.”
He looked down at his bare chest. “Ah,” he said. “You are correct.”
“I often am, much to your chagrin,” she teased, and reached for her buttons. “Do you want your—?”
He grabbed her wrist, stopping her, and they stared at each other for a moment.
“You undressing right now is going to lead us in one direction and one direction only,” he told her, smiling.
“And as much as that’s a road I’d happily travel down again, Dragon’s Rest needs a solution to the blight, which means you need a solution to Sedgwick. ”
She redid the offending button and stood on her toes to kiss him again.
Nathaniel allowed himself to sink into the kiss for just a moment before pulling away.
Truly, he felt he’d never be able to get anything done again in this greenhouse.
If it weren’t for the matter directly at hand, he didn’t think he’d actually mind at all.