A rapping right beside Damien’s head severed his connection to Kaz, and he blinked, disoriented as his vision blurred, the voices of the women swallowed up into the empty hollowness of the chamber he actually stood within.
Damien pushed off of the door, swearing under his breath, too far off from the imp to reach him again with his spell. Hopefully, the creature would remember whatever else he heard and be able to find his way back, sneak through the halls, reach Damien’s room—no, he would almost certainly die before accomplishing half of that. Well, Kaz had another good run, he supposed and he drew a quick X over his chest.
Damien answered the door to a new guard, one he had not seen before, this one with the Brineberth crest on his chest.
“His lordship requests your presence.”
The blood mage scratched at his head. “Of course, if the baron—”
“No, the marquis. He would like to thank you, personally and privately, for returning his bride.”
Damien moved to shut the door. “He doesn’t need to do that.”
“Correct, he does not.” The guard’s boot wedged into the doorway, stopping Damien from shutting it in his face. “But he wants to, so he shall. Now.”
CHAPTER 31
THE FUTILITY OF FINDING HUMOR IN EVERY CHAPTER OF A ROMANTIC COMEDY
“W
ith everything he’s done to you?” The look on Laurel’s face had shifted from playful to a sincere desire for blood. But poison?Really? What was Laurel thinking? She didn’t even serve Cedric any of his meals.
Amma steadied her breathing, and then slowly wrapped her arms around her oldest and best friend. “Please,” she whispered, squeezing hard, “let me take care of things. Don’t put yourself at risk like that. You’ve done too much for me already.”
Laurel’s thin lips twisted up as she pulled gently back from the embrace. “I’ll hold off. For now. It’ll give me more time to get the dose just right.”
That warning was likely the best Amma would get, so she nodded and smiled. The comfort of Laurel’s touch and the sound of her voice, even when it needled or proposed murder, made her want to linger in the familiar moment, but the greenhouse was just there, and she was eager to go inside after so long away.
“It’s too bad you didn’t just elope with Thomas years ago, would have made things easier.”
Amma huffed. “Then it would look like the Avington’s only child was favoring one of the seven merchant families, and we’ve sworn to treat them all equally.”
“That’s so silly, you would never be unfair. And youwerefavoring him, in fact I walked in on the two of you favoring each other once.”
“Don’t remind me.” Amma felt her face redden, going for the greenhouse door. “But you know I mean in trade. A Treshi and an Avington together would have upset the balance.”
“So,” Laurel said, following behind her and drawing her words out in that lilt she always had when asking a not-so-innocent question, “this Damien person isn’t the son of some important merchant, is he?”
“No, he’s, um…the son of…” Amma’s voice trailed off as they stepped into the warmth of the greenhouse. It was just as well that the sight pulled all the words from her brain: she hadn’t planned on telling Laurel anything about Damien’s demonic heritage anyway, but the vague description she was going to use instead was ripped right out of her mind as well.
Barren. Never had it looked this way, even after a planting.
“What in Sestoth’s name has happened?” Amma breathed, feet taking her forward, but it felt like being dragged along, like the world around her was a dream, or more like a nightmare.
With darkness falling, the small, arcane stones running along the ground were beginning to give off their dim glow, and it wasn’t much, but it was enough to see the nothingness. The shelves normally covered in clay pots filled with seedlings were bare, dry, crumbling dirt spilled in sad heaps in their places. Pots were stacked in a corner, shards of others littering about a toppled pile. Gardening tools were strewn about, left haphazardly, but the most important, silver tools weren’t to be found anywhere.
Laurel’s hand touched Amma’s shoulder. “I told you that you weren’t going to like it.”
Tears should have come. If there were any time for her to cry, now was it, but instead a rage rose up in Amma so complete she could have set the entire Brineberth army on fire with a single look. And then that look fell on a faint flicker of green, and she ran.
Falling to her knees before a pile of dirt in the greenhouse corner, Amma dug in with clean nails, ripping the soil away and uncovering a stem. She rifled through her hair, pulling the dagger free and using it to more carefully push the soil away and reveal the lone liathau sapling that had survived.
Brilliantly green, its tiny trunk was twisted, three leaves jutting off of its curves and a nest of roots beneath. It was a sad one, but it was all that was left. “Bring me a pot,” she called as with precision, she dug the sapling out. Laurel appeared at her side with a container and started shoveling in dirt for a base, and Amma slipped her dagger beneath the liathau, whispering to it a rush of encouraging pleas.
The white roots twitched and slithered out from the soil, coiling themselves around the dagger’s blade, and once they were hanging on, Amma lifted it and gently placed it inside the pot. The roots unfurled and each worked their way into the loose dirt, and Amma and Laurel hand-placed more soil with the utmost care to pack the earth around its stem.
Amma sat back, eyes on the sapling, dagger in hand. The thing she had used as a weapon on her journey across Eiren was really meant for this. Well, no, for severing seeds from grown liathau and keeping them healthy and their magic intact, but the saplings were delicate, easy to bruise with bare hands or to become infected if touched with anything but silver.
