My stomach flips and I gag. This is, without a doubt, the most disgusting thing I’ve ever witnessed. Even worse than helping Rixenda disembowel lambs. I stuff my nose down my shirt and close my eyes, but after three more nauseating incisions, I can’t take it anymore.
“Haven’t you cut it into enough pieces?” I wave at the hunks of mutilated flesh lying across the table.
Mirabelle’s eyes flit to mine, but she must not like my expression—which I admit feels rather hostile—because she hurriedly wipes her sweaty forehead on her sleeve and returns her attention to the beast. “Not until I discover its inner workings. The beasts are half mine, so I should be able to control them the way Lesage does.” She blows a curl away from her eyes, slices off another hunk of meat, and tosses it into the nearest pot.
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“By boiling it down to a broth, which I will then drink—ifI can swallow it,” she adds when she sees my horrified expression, “with the hopes that it will join my composition with the beasts’.” I shudder and avert my gaze. “I still don’t understand why we can’t allow Gavril and the orphans to take care of them. They’re good at it, and they seem toenjoyit.”
“It’s not enough. No matter how many they kill, Lesage can always conjure more. In order to defeat the Shadow Society, we will need command of the monsters.”
“And if your putrid stew doesn’t work?”
She looks down at the pot with a wary yet determined expression. “Then I’ll try making its skin into an amulet or grinding its bones into powder.”
“So much to look forward to,” I groan.
“You can leave if you need to,” she says, and I spring to my feet faster than a jackrabbit. But before I reach the door she adds, “Or you can help.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
“Not help with the beast, obviously.”
“What, then?” I turn and let my arms slap against my sides. “I’m not permitted to do anything other than chop herbs, and as much as I enjoyed that …”
Mirabelle purses her lips and pushes her father’s red grimoire across the table toward me. “Help me brew another antidote to Viper’s Venom.”
My laughter is sharp and cynical. “I thought I’m not to be trusted with your father’s recipes.” Which I’ve decided is fine by me. I don’t trust myself with them either. Not after seeing Mirabelle, a trained alchemist, fail to create the proper antidote. “I know nothing about alchemy.”
“Lucky for you, I’m an excellent teacher. I’ll walk you through each step. I haven’t enough hands to dissect the smoke beast and distill the antipoison at the same time. I need you, Josse.Please.” The way she saysplease—so soft and beseeching—it sounds more like an apology than a request. But I’m even more dumbfounded by what she called me—my name, rather than “princeling.” I can hardly bear to look at her, yet my traitorous ears revel in the sound of my name on her lips.
“Fine,” I grumble, and skulk back to the counter. “But if this goes horribly—”
“You will be held blameless,” she promises. “Now take up a gallipot and set it on the fire, then pour two measures of hyssop into the mortar bowl and grind the leaves to a fine pulp. I think that’s what the previous antidote was missing.”
“Two measures of what?” I stare down at the cluster of herbs and instruments, most of which I can’t begin to describe, let alone operate. I wipe my palms down my breeches, but they’re as cold and clammy as a herring.
“Father’s notes should answer all of your questions.” Her lips are pinched and her hand hesitates, but Mirabelle eventually opens the grimoire and sets it on the tiny corner of the counter not overtaken by her beast.
I stare at the lines and lines of messy, cramped writing and puff out my cheeks, once again feeling like the incompetent little boy listening in on Louis’s lessons. Mirabelle is making a grand gesture including me like this, so I’m not about to ask her to read it to me, but I feel even more uncomfortable and out of place than I did among the courtiers at Versailles.
Take it one word at a time. Pretend you’re in the kitchens with Rixenda and her recipes. How hard could it be?But the thought of Rixenda makes my stomach twist with rage and grief. She’s dead because of Mirabelle.
The pain is still sharp, like the tip of a poker burning my flesh, but when I start to stagger back, I’m overwhelmed by the memory of Rixenda’s craggy face. The scent of her lavender soap tickles my nose, and her rasp of a voice fills the smoky shop.
Be strong, Josse.
Holding a grudge will help nothing. It’s not what she would have wanted.
I roll up my sleeves and lift the pestle and mortar bowl.
Despite my struggles reading, in an hour’s time I’ve made decent headway on the anti-venom. Turns out alchemyisquite similar to working in the kitchens, and I’m more proficient than I could have hoped. I know this because Mirabelle keeps checking my progress and humming with surprise. Or lifting her brows in shock.
We work like this for several hours. Neither of us say much, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable like before. And I no longer stand at an arm’s length as if she has the pox. I even ask her to pass me a stirring spoon and neither of us recoils when our fingers accidentally brush on the handle.
When the sun falls behind the buildings, melting like a pat of butter into the river, Mirabelle lights the tapers situated throughout the room. She pauses after lighting the final one beside me and whispers, “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. There’s a good chance I’ve fouled this up completely.”
