Azalea was quiet then; she must have been in one of her moods. Releasing a breath, Bisma looked over her shoulder.
Azalea was frowning at her hand and Bisma’s heart missed a beat when she saw it was shot through with blue. She leapt to her feet, immediately going to her, while Nori’s eyes welled with tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ Nori said. ‘I’ll try harder, I promise!’
‘Great!’ Azalea grimaced with pain, leaning back against the sofa. Bisma turned to ask Luna or Mei to grab a dose of the freezing potion when Mei arrived by her side, holding the potion in hand.
‘You’re going to be just fine,’ Bisma said, sitting down next to Azalea.
‘Tell me it doesn’t taste awful,’ Azalea said. She was shaking with pain, face pale, but still had time to be sassy.
‘No promises,’ Bisma said. She emptied the liquid into Azalea’s mouth, and Azalea swallowed.
‘At least I get to take a nap now,’ Azalea said. Then, her eyes closed, and her skin went gray. She was frozen. Bisma released a breath, turning to look at her sisters—those who remained.
She pulled Nori into her lap, wiping the little girl’s cheeks.
‘At least we won’t have to listen to her complaining,’ Luna said, attempting levity, but they were all dispirited. The treehouse felt so much quieter without Azalea’s noise, without Deeba’s.
‘I’m going to the greenhouse.’ Bisma lifted Nori to her feet and stood. With the Forest’s help, she put Azalea onto her pushcart, then brought her sister over to the Chapman Estate.
When Xander heard her approaching with the pushcart, he left what he was doing and rushed to her side, taking it from her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She nodded, unable to speak. Frustration and anger coursed through her. Who was doing this? Why? If someone had a problem with her, she wished they would be upfront and say so, attackherif need be, but leave her sisters out of it. Shehatedthis.
‘What was her story?’ Xander asked.
She blinked, looking at him. ‘Azalea was left as a one-year-old,’ Bisma explained, as together they transferred Azalea to a cot beside Deeba. ‘There was no note to explain her story, so nobody knew it. Azalea never wanted to learn it either because that way, she got to choose and craft her own past.’
‘She was never curious?’ Xander asked.
Azalea was settled, and Bisma took a moment to look at her frozen face.
‘For a while, she tried to convince us she was the child of the king,’ Bisma said, smiling at the memory. ‘She told this elaborate tale of how she must have been kidnapped and left in the Enchanted Forest for safekeeping, but one day she would return to the castle and be the princess she was always destined to be.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Azalea would tell them. ‘When I’m back at my castle, I won’t forget about all of you. You can even come stay with me! Only so long as you’re nice to me, of course. Mei, get me another biscuit, will you?’
This was when Azalea was around ten; as she got older, she stopped believing in the stories, but sometimes in jest she would still remind her sisters that she was a lost princess.
On Azalea’s birthday, they called her Princess Azalea all day, and she spent the day wearing a crown of twigs and flowers.
Azalea’s birthday was coming up soon—would she be awake for it?
‘Let’s get to work,’ Bisma said, clenching her jaw.
For the next few days, Bisma worked twice as hard, spending most of her time with Xander in his greenhouse. Luna was left incharge of Nori and Mei and the housework, while Bisma tried to keep up with selling her poisons and working on the cure.
She still thought that if she found out who had made the poison, it would help with formulating a cure. As much as she tried to fight it, her thoughts went back to Eleanora.
Xander extracted the poison from Azalea’s blood and compared it with the extraction from Deeba, finding both samples to be identical. This was a good sign, for it meant that the poison was no longer mutating or changing, and once they made a cure, it would work on both of them.
If only they could make it!
Xander focused on mixing the perfect potion (they did not attempt another growing lesson after the previous disastrous outcome) while Bisma tried to use magic to break down the poison in order to find out how it was made, which might in turn give them a clue aboutwhohad made it.
She had not forgotten that Xander’s mother might be involved in all of this, but she would not make an accusation without solid proof.
