“Naturally,” Iris muttered as she gave him a sympathetic look.
Get Marina to drink a potion? Marina, who trusted no one and suspected everything, would as soon down a malodorous potion as she’d sprout pixie wings.
Vaskel needed a backup plan—and fast.
Twenty-Seven
Vaskel and Irisappraised the mess that covered the countertop of the apothecary shop as the bell over the door still echoed its ring from Erindil’s departure. The elf had swept out with as much gusto as he’d entered, unfortunately leaving the detritus of his potion-making behind.
The cauldron was simmering in the back of the shop on the hot plate Iris typically used for her teakettle, the unusual ingredients waiting for one remaining hair to be added.
"I don't think he's used to cleaning up after himself," Vaskel said, carefully recapping a bottle of something labeled 'Essence of Nightshade - DO NOT INGEST' in Iris's spidery handwriting.
Iris laughed, the sound bright in the hushed shop. "When you travel with a full staff, a personal lute player, and a battle ostrich, I imagine mundane tasks like putting lids back on jars become rather foreign."
They worked in a comfortable rhythm, Vaskel's height useful for returning bottles to the highest shelves, while Iris sorted through the scattered herbs. He knew he should return to thetavern, but he found himself reluctant to leave the peace of the shop and the soothing presence of the apothecary.
"Thank you.” Iris swept crushed lavender into her palm. "For helping with all this. I know you have work and worries enough.”
He paused, holding a jar of what looked like pickled eyeballs. "After everything you've done for me? This is the least I could do."
Iris’s smile was warm and soft, nothing like Marina’s practiced sultry grin. He forced himself to look away before he got lost in it. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Lira and Erindil are related.”
Iris laughed. “Agreed. Thankfully, she didn’t inherit Erindil’s flair for the dramatic. She's much more like her gran—practical and determined. ”
Vaskel knew that Iris and Lira's gran had been close friends, had run together in their younger days on adventures that were only hinted at in conversations. But the details had always remained vague. Now, with his own past adventures creating such current troubles, he found himself curious about theirs.
"What was she like?" he asked, settling a collection of small vials into their proper rack. "Lira's gran? And what were your adventures like?"
Iris's face softened with memory, her hands stilling on the herbs she was sorting. "Elia was brilliant. A whiz at potions—she could brew things I'd never even heard of. Once, she created a masking potion on the spot using only roadside weeds, a scant few drops of fish eye oil, and rainwater. It got us past a sleeping troll without it catching our scent." She chuckled at the memory. "Of course, it also made us smell like rotting fish for three daysafterward. Being chased by a troll might have been better, now that I think about it.”
Vaskel laughed at this.
"And there was the time at Blackstone Fortress," Iris continued, warming to her storytelling. "We were escaping with—well, that's not important—but a pack of direwolves was hunting us. Massive beasts, each one the size of a pony. We reached the gates just as they appeared on the horizon, but the lock was one of those dwarven puzzles, all gears and tumblers."
She mimed picking a lock, her fingers dancing in the air from muscle memory. "I had maybe thirty seconds before they reached us. My hands were shaking, and I could hear them howling, getting closer. Elia stood behind me, absolutely calm, counting down the seconds like she was timing tea. 'Twenty seconds, Iris. Fifteen. You've got this. Ten.' I got it open with three seconds to spare. We got through those gates and closed them behind us just as the first wolf slammed into them.”
She breathed a sigh, the memory clearly a treasured one. But Vaskel couldn't help thinking of his own adventures, and the choices made in youth that now haunted his every step.
"Did you ever do anything you regret now?" he asked quietly. "Things that seemed right at the time but..."
Iris considered this, her fingers absently arranging dried flowers into neat piles. "There were moments, certainly. Times when the easier path called to us, when taking something that wasn't quite ours would have solved our problems, when using our skills for less noble purposes would have paid better." She met his eyes, her gaze steady and understanding. "But Elia and I kept each other accountable. When one of us felt tempted to stray fromwhat was right, the other would pull them back. We were each other's compass."
“You miss her.” It was a statement, not a question. Lira’s gran and Iris’ best friend had been gone for many years, but the loss was still evident in Iris’s green eyes.
“I do. Losing her was so painful that I pulled away from people for a long time. I didn’t want to get close to anyone because it hurt too much to lose them.” The apothecary’s pained expression turned soft. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”
Vaskel pulse quickened. He wanted to be the one that Iris got close to again after so long, but how could he risk her heart being shattered again with Marina’s threat hanging over him?
“Your friendship sounds incredible,” he said, deftly steering the conversation away from himself. “I wish I'd had that when I was younger. Someone to stop me before I made the kind of mistakes that follow you forever. Then I wouldn't be in this mess."
Iris moved closer, resting her hand on his arm. The touch was gentle but grounding, warm through his sleeve. "But you have it now," she said tenderly, her green eyes holding his with an intensity that made his breath catch. "You have Lira, and Sass, and all of us. It's never too late to right a wrong, Vaskel. It’s never too late to choose a better path."
Something shifted in the air between them. The morning sun slanted through the shop windows, turning the dust motes to gold and casting a warm glow across Iris's face. Her hand was still on his arm, and he was acutely aware of how close she stood, close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her green eyes, smell the bergamot oil that seemed to cling to her skin.
She tilted her face up toward his, and he leaned down, drawn to the brilliant, kind woman who'd spent sleepless nights trying to save him, who saw him not as a charming hellkin with a past but simply as Vaskel.
Their faces were inches apart. He could feel her breath, see her eyes flutter closed. Just a little closer and?—
