“I know I made a big deal about taking care of the iris in the beginning, and—I wish—sun above, Hellebore, I wish I could explain. This was out of your control. You haven’t failed me or our marriage or anyone because it’s sick. Hellebore? Sunshine?”
She buckled her belt, hands trembling.
“Are you in there? Will you please say something?”
Hellebore finished buckling her belt and whirled around, throwing open the door. He was still dressed only in his trousers from the night before. She looked him over with a cold, calculating edge. The same way she examined a vial. “You should get dressed. Or take the sedative and go back to bed if you’re in pain. Either way, I don’t need you this morning. I’ll be in the lab.”
Then she shut the door in his face, grabbed the newly rotting iris, left through her main door, and told herself the panging sensation in her chest was simply imagined because all that was there was an organ pumping blood.
Hellebore spent the morning in blissful silence, mixing a new variation of her last tincture that had brought healing but had not been strong enough to rid the plant of the rot entirely. She also snipped off a still healthy bloom and a few leaves to examine. That afternoon as she was distributing it to her potted test irises, her wedding iris right beside them to also receive a dosage, the door to her lab opened. She lifted her dropper and tilted it up to avoid any unintended droplets from falling as she looked at the door beneath her goggles.
Taiyo stood in the frame, mouth open but eyes locked on their iris waiting for a dose.
His voice came out frigid as he said, “What are you doing?”
“There’s nothing special about it now. Now it’s just another iris to cure. So I might as well start using it. It’s early on in its rot, the earliest I’ve had my hands on. It could be the key to cracking this whole thing.”
Taiyo took a small step into the room. “What is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Hellebore said, turning back to her first iris and finishing the dosage.
“Last night you were sobbing in my arms about it, and now it’s just another test subject to you? You’ve spent months taking care of it and the first hint of rot had you unravelling but now you supposedly don’t care?”
Hellebore set the dropper aside and recorded in her open notebook the dosage she’d given her first subject. “I wouldn’t go that far. If I didn’t care, would I be trying to save it before the rot continues to eat away at it?”
Taiyo didn’t respond, jaw clenching as he stared at her.
She ignored him and moved to administer the dosage when a hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled it back. She gasped as Taiyo pushed between her and the iris, twisting her wrist just enough to force her to let go. The dropper hit the ground, liquid spilling slightly as she stared up at him.
Hellebore took a deep breath, pushing down the burning sensation rising as the precious tincture lay on the ground. “What is wrong with you?”
“Me? The first chance you get, you’re the one ready to tear our iris to pieces. I spent last night trying to comfort you and convince you it wasn’t your fault, but you were just upset you didn’t have a perfect specimen, weren’t you? Have you been sneaking pieces of it away and studying all along? Is anything sacred to you? Does anything actually matter to you?” Taiyo hissed, letting go of her wrist. “Or is it just the second somethingfinally does mean anything to your frigid, steel heart, you get scared and you’d rather destroy it than let it have any chance of hurting you?”
His words cut right through her.
She couldn’t let them.
“You came to my country, demanding my hand in the hopes I’d be able to cure your irises. You got me. You don’t get to complain now about getting exactly what you asked for. What do you want more, for me to let that iris rot and not touch it simply because you tell me it’s supposed to matter to me? Or would you rather I use it while I can to save the rest of your irises, your people, and your life?”
Taiyo pointed to the blunt marks where she’d cut off a bloom, voice burning. “You swore. You swore to me on our wedding night you would not hurt it. You would not turn it into an experiment.”
“I kept my word, even though this isn’t a real marriage.” Hellebore reached for her goggles, pulling them down so he could see her whole face. “Until now.”
“Until it wasn’t convenient.”
“Convenient certainly isn’t going to all this trouble to save the life of the Sun Elf who kidnapped me and forced me to marry him and is now yelling at me because I’m prioritizing practical measures to do so over some silly little tradition that came about because two elves were foolish enough to believe they were in love.”
Taiyo made a noise in the back of his throat, then grabbed the edge of the table behind him. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t you ask me this morning about using our iris?”
“The thought didn’t occur to me. Besides, your answer wouldn’t have mattered.”
He gestured at her. “That. That right there is exactly what I’m talking about. You and your walls and your impossible pride! Atevery turn, you refuse to let me in! Just when I thought—” Taiyo cut himself off, hand falling to his side. “I thought…”
“I will own my mistakes when I’ve made them. I should have been clearer as of late. I should have made this evident the moment I discovered your condition and that you are intrinsically tied to all of this. Here is the truth. We alchemists will study living creatures and organisms. My specialty, as you know, was plants, but I have also done more than my fair share of study on creatures in a lab. You think I knew how to separate the sedative from your body while it was already in your stomach by luck? It took me three dead rats before I managed to successfully master the technique. You think I could have learned as much as I have about rot if I cared about the plants I introduced it to? Back at the academy, I never once saved a sick plant. I killed them. I have been valiantly attempting the opposite in this case, but the principles that guide me now are the same as back then.”
Hellebore came to a stop right in front of him. He gripped the table tightly, leaning back from her.
“The most important principle for alchemists working with living creatures? Never, ever get attached to them. An attached alchemist is no alchemist at all. They won’t have the stomach to do the terrible things they need to in order to advance.”
