The shade of green reminded me of when Lydia taught Genevieve and I to embroider strawberry vines. Mine ended up looking like asparagus stalks. My stepmother scolded me for not possessing an artistic eye like Genevieve.
Afterward, I had gone to Papa and asked him to excuse me from Lydia’s lessons. He consented. I stayed terrible at embroidery ever since. Was my apprenticeship with Lana going to end up the same way?
I shook my head. No. This was different. This mattered. And most importantly, this was enjoyable. I never found pleasure in anything my stepmother forced me to learn, but learning magic with Lana was something I looked forward to, despite her occasional crabbiness.
Lana said potion making took years of practice. If it was practice I needed, it was practice I would get.
I burst out of my room, failed potion in hand, and was halfway to the kitchen until I realized what I was holding.
An extracting potion. Erasmus. He needed to extract the poison from the queen’s goblet. He couldn’t possibly do it without magic.
Without another thought, I grabbed my things again and headed off to the palace. When I arrived, I flew down the halls and winding stairs and burst into Erasmus’s laboratory.
“Did no one teach you how to knock?” the inspector demanded.
He was lounged on an armchair with a book that looked suspiciously likeA Sailor’s Seduction. The room seemed to have accumulated twice as much clutter the last time I had visited.
“You’re right,” I said, out of breath from running.
“No one taught you how to knock?”
I sucked in a breath. Erasmus needed to know. He was the only person I trusted with my secret. “You’re right that I was taught by a witch. Actually, she’s still teaching me. I’m an herbwitch’s apprentice.”
Erasmus stared, his whiskered jaw slack. No doubt Lana’s concealment spell was dissolving before his eyes, revealing my witch traits. “Well. I suppose we have a lot to discuss.”
As Erasmus attempted to clear some space around his work table, I told him everything—how I discovered my magic, what I saw at the Debutante Ball, how Lana taught me about extracting potions and the concept of magical things leaving a trace.
“Aha!” Erasmus exclaimed after listening to my story. “So, you think the duchess used a witch-made poison on the queen.”
“I do. And I can prove it to you,” I said, holding up my extracting potion. “May I?”
“You may,” Erasmus said eagerly. “It’s been much too long since I’ve seen magic in action.” He hovered over my shoulder as I poured the rest of my potion into the queen’s goblet.
Like earlier, most of it vanished, except for the tiniest drop of a blood-red liquid veined with indigo. “I think it’s called manbane,” I said, my voice wavering.
Erasmus took the goblet and inspected the drop. “You think? Did your witch instructor tell you what it does, exactly? Or if there’s an antidote?”
I shook my head. “She didn’t want to talk about it,” I said.
Erasmus hummed. “Poison is always a touchy subject for witches. Probably because they’re always accused of making them. Well, no matter. We’ll just have to test it ourselves.”
“Ourselves?” I said, stepping back.
Erasmus ducked under the desk. Shuffling ensued. A second later, he popped up with a board and a metal cloche in hand. “I’ve been saving this critter for a while.” Squeaking sounded from within.
I sighed. “Is that another palace mouse?”
Erasmus lowered the board into a crate on the ground. A white mouse scampered out and began exploring the box.
“I’ll feed it the poison and we will see what happens. Proportionately, it should be the same dosage as the queen’s,” Erasmus said. “Hand me the goblet.”
I obeyed and crouched down as the inspector held the jeweled cup to the crate. The mouse climbed in the goblet, and then out. Another look at the goblet told us it had ingested the manbane.
“And now,” Erasmus said, “we wait.”
And so we did. Seconds turned into minutes. Minutes turned into hours. It wasn’t long before both Erasmus and I grew bored of watching the mouse scurry around the box.
I furrowed my brows. “Nothing is happening,” I said, slumping onto a barrel. “Maybe it’s my extracting potion. I didn’t brew it correctly.”
