I lit one of the worktable lamps and tried to shake the irritating snippets of rhyme away. They were a punishment then, and they were a punishment now. That was the requirement: I was allowed in Onal’s special rooms with all their mysterious bric-a-brac if I learned the name and use of each herb in her store. And there were hundreds. I never made it through all of my lessons, though; Father’s death changed everything. I tried to carry on as he did, but I was young and heart-sore; I didn’t last long without him. After the hundredth time a door was slammed in my face with the accusation of witch behind it, I gave up altogether.
Despite the passage of time, most of the items on the shelves were recognizable. Feverfew could be used as a tincture for bruises or an infusion for the treatment of swollen joints in the elderly. Witch hazel for bowel complaints. Primrose for muscular rheumatism. White willow bark: useful as a tonic for the convalescent, to help them gain strength. Water soldier, for healing wounds. Each one was familiar, unmoved from its place on the shelves, bottles and vials all arranged in straight, single rows.
The worktable was crowded with glass alembics and copper retorts, bottles and beakers and flasks of all sizes, looming in the dark as if in a cursed cathedral. I tried to ignore the pounding of my heart as I ran my hands underneath the table. Aha! There it was. The key.
Onal always accused me of being absent-minded, head in the clouds. I’m sure she never realized how closely I’d watched her during those days spent in her tutelage. When she didn’t think I was paying attention, she’d take this little key to the back wall of the room, move aside the bottles and jars on the third shelf from the top, and then fit the key into the tiny slot in the wall behind them. I repeated each step, and as I turned the key, the panel gave way. Behind it was a small metal box.
I removed the box from the wall, brought it to the table, and lifted the hasp. Inside was a carefully carved wooden block with three thimble-size cutouts. The first two were empty, but the third held a miniature glass capsule and, inside the capsule, a treasure. It wasn’t hard to make out, even through the distortion of its glass-and-water encasement. A petal of pure white, shaped like an arrow or a spindly heart, no bigger than my thumbnail. A petal from a bloodleaf flower.
Most in our land knew of bloodleaf—the vile poison that only grows on old battlefields or other soil upon which blood has been spilt—but no one ever spoke of the bloom. I’d seen mentions of it in only a few of my altar books. A magical flower. A miracle cure. Said to be able to heal nearly any wound, stave off any fever—but bloodleaf bloomed only when blood was shed a second time and spread across those thirsty, loathsome leaves. Which meant that for every one life saved by bloodleaf flower, two have already been lost.
The number of murders in our country, one of the books said, was cut in half when possession of the bloodleaf flower became illegal and retribution for being caught with it was swift and severe, usually involving the separation of one’s head from one’s neck.
But that book was printed long ago, and no one ever spoke of the bloodleaf flower anymore. Still, I understood why Onal kept this locked away behind a hidden panel in the farthest corner of her stillroom floor.
There used to be two capsules, I remembered, touching the second empty space before gingerly removing the last one and holding it up in the dim light. That second one disappeared the night they brought my father’s body home in a casket. Onal must have used it to try to save him, but she should have known better. All the accounts agreed: bloodleaf flower cannot bring someone back from the dead.
It’s wrong to steal, I thought as I traced the shape of the petal through the glass. But it was wrong for Onal to have this in her possession, and she didn’t have people desiring to examine the underside of her skin. Without Simon’s blood ritual, this would have to be my safety. And at least this way no one had to die in my stead.
I pocketed the capsule and returned the empty box to its spot behind the third shelf. I had just moved the bottles back into place when I felt a gust of cold air. I turned to see the window above the table bang against its frame. Had it been open when I came in?
Shivering, I picked up the lamp from the desk and went to pull the window shut, snapping the latch down to keep it secure. The breeze was gone but the cold remained. And something else—the faint smell of wild roses.
Prickling apprehension gathered at the base of my neck and crawled across my back and down my spine. I tried to swallow but my mouth had gone dry. Fear collected in my throat like sand. My gaze slid down to the table in front of me, where a string of colored gems dimly gleamed from their fantastical settings: emeralds burning in the belly of a twisting dragon, topaz winking from the feral eyes of a gryphon, sapphires studding a mermaid’s tail, garnets and rubies glinting along the feathers of a carnelian-eyed firebird’s wings, diamonds encrusting the flanks of an opal-winged horse, the Empyrea.
It was the bracelet my father had given me. Trembling, I reached for it. I examined the golden links until I found the crushed clasp that had allowed it to slip from my wrist. It was definitely mine, the very one I’d lost that morning, I thought forever, in the press of the crowd.
“Are you here?” I whispered.
Then the lamp went out.
6
I whirled around.
It was her. The woman who’d haunted me as long as I could remember, lurking on the periphery of every tragedy I’d ever known. I called her the Harbinger, because she appeared only when death was near.
She wasn’t quite like any of the other spirits I sometimes saw, who were simply faded versions of their former selves. She was made of shadow and smoke, visible but intangible, bending light and color into her shape like a water droplet on a windowpane.
Other ghosts clamored to get their hands on me the instant they knew I could see them—but not the Harbinger. She’d only ever touched me once.
I was ten years old at the time. Father was gone on a weeks-long expedition to tour our coastal lands with Toris and Camilla, while Lisette stayed with me and my mother, who was feeling poorly, at the castle. We’d spent several days holed up in my room with books of romance and adventure, though the romance was more Lisette’s fare than mine. I even let her read several of the stuffy, formal letters I received twice yearly from my betrothed, Valentin. It was my opinion that they were detestably boring and likely dictated by a tutor, if the rumors about Valentin’s lack of wits were true. But Lisette had become enraptured with them, reading one after another with eyes aglow.
“Have you replied yet?” she asked when she was done, clutching the letters to her chest.
“Not if I can help it,” I said, wrinkling my nose. I was always too busy helping Onal in her workroom and Father in the city to be bothered with such an unpleasant task.
Lisette gave me her most reproachful look. “Oh, Aurelia, you can’t just leave him hanging! You must write back at once.”
I said, “You can do it for me, if you like.” And she did so with great relish, even signing my name at the bottom and sending it off with a messenger before we went to bed that evening.
That night I had a terrible dream of my mother trapped and dying in a room full of smoke and flame. I woke to find the Harbinger hanging over my bedside, icy hands on my cheeks, sharp fingertips digging into the soft flesh beneath my eyes.