When Taiyo appeared again, this time at the lab door, he looked less tired, likely thanks to the sun's apex. He was also far more dressed, and she left behind her maids but not a plethora of vials. The glass tubes clinked softly in their pouch with each step as she followed Taiyo, who stayed quiet.
Before they reached the rotting garden, she pulled her goggles down and her mask up before looking up at Taiyo. “We ought to get you some too, if you're going to be the one to come with me every time I collect samples. While I haven't proven it yet, I'd be willing to place good money on the chances this can't be good for you to breathe in unfiltered either.”
“Worried about me, alchemist?” He laughed. “Someone might think you actually have a heart.”
Fine. If he wanted to breathe in poison, he could. If he did keel over, she'd be free from even being his wife in name too. Surely if he died and it was his own stubborn fault, her father would let her return to Chymes since she’d done all he’d asked.
Princess Haruko certainly wouldn’t want to keep Hellebore if that happened.
“Didn't anyone tell you?” Hellebore asked as she turned around and walked backward into the rotting garden, smirking beneath her mask as it muffled her voice. “It should be arriving with the rest of my things. I was going to put its jar by the iris. They’ll look great together.”
His horrified and disgusted expression had her laughing as she pulled her leather gloves on and knelt into the decay.
She brushed her fingertips over the dark, browning petals. She then reached into one of her pouches and pulled out her snips and tweezers, cutting off what she needed before carefully depositing it into her vial.
She quickly collected her first round of samples, sticking to the worst of the rot for this round.
The whole time, Taiyo did nothing but hover at the entrance and stare at her. She was certain she was a strange, uncomfortable sight for him, but once she had what she needed, they departed.
As he escorted her back to her lab, she made a mental note that she needed to set up a sanitization system for leaving thegarden and for her lab if she ever potted and brought any of the plants in there.
But for now, she just sent her maids to fetch her something to wear and she discarded the tainted clothes into a corner and slipped into the plain pink day dress they brought her as she went about her work.
She quickly fell into a routine, and by routine, she meant she quickly threw herself into the project, spending all her hours in her lab, breaking only for meals and sleep, seeing Taiyo in passing in the mornings and evenings, when she told him it was too early for her to be able to tell him anything. She didn’t let herself think about the academy, Emerson, Callahan, or Palladia.
That was much easier said than done. During the day, she was completely focused on the rot, reading up on everything the Sun Elves had tried to save the irises as well as the description of the rot that had been slowly taking over their land over the last two decades. At night, however, she was stuck staring at the ceiling, ignoring the soft glow of the iris she begrudgingly watered every morning even though it had no use to her. That was when her memories wouldn’t leave her alone.
One day, maybe Callahan’s lack of faith in her abilities wouldn’t hurt as much. But she didn’t believe the sharp thorn in her side from not being able to say goodbye to her aunt and brother would ever go away.
At night was the only time she let herself feel. When the sun came up, the moon and her weakness disappeared, and she was empty of everything but alchemy.
Her things arrived a week into her marriage, and she left her lab early in the afternoon when she was intercepted with the news. Better to get everything organized so she could move forward with studying her samples first thing in the morning with superior equipment.
She opened the door to her room to see Taiyo already there, surrounded by her trunks and crates and bags. He had one crate open and was examining the chemicals contained in the glass.
He looked up from the vivid blue liquid as she shut the door.
“Looking for my heart?” Hellebore asked with a grin.
He sniffed. “I wouldn’t put it past your people to have managed the feat.”
“Unfortunately, it's still right here,” Hellebore said, pressing her hand over it as she came farther into her room. She moved to open one of the trunks, looking over her shoulder at him as she said, “The organ at least. All it does is pump blood. There's nothing more to it.”
Taiyo huffed, setting the container back in its place before coming up to her shoulder and glancing down at the trunk she had open to see it was full of her clothes. Now she would never have to wear a Sun Elf dress again.
She’d accidentally ruined two already while working on this project.
He looked at her plain blouses and skirts the way his sister looked at Hellebore.
She asked, “Would you rather I ruin all that fine silk or the dresses covered with painstakingly beautiful embroidery that must have taken so much work to artfully create while I'm up to my elbows in plant decay?”
He just glared at the second pair of gloves in the trunk, a gift from her aunt for her sixteenth birthday, identical to her aunt's own favorite pair. Her aunt had wanted Hellebore to have a pair with all her favorite formulas for transmutation. Just looking at the gloves threatened to bring back that pathetic homesickness that had been plaguing her, so she rustled through her clothes, nonchalantly throwing a blouse on top of them as she pulled out a skirt.
As soon as the gloves were out of sight, Taiyo straightened up and started looking about the rest of her things.
Her so-called husband was a foreign creature to her. Maybe once she'd solved the problem of the decay, she'd make him her next subject of study.
The next week, when she needed a new batch of samples, Taiyo came to escort her at noon like before, and when she opened the door, he immediately raised an eyebrow and stared at the bucket in her hand.
