I paced the room. Was I supposed to practice seducing Zafir the way I would Julian so it was a closer comparison?Or would the potion be enough on its own? Zafir said it would take a few minutes to begin working. I should thank him for being willing to cooperate, but how was I supposed to word it?Thanks for taking an illegal potion so you can pretend to fall in love with mesounded ridiculous, even in my own head.
The sand in the hourglass slowly trickled down to the bottom chamber, but still, Zafir simply sat at his desk, writing away and acting as though I didn’t exist.
“Do you feel anything yet?” I finally asked after a half hour, sliding over to peer into his face. Shouldn’t he be sweeping me into his arms and declaring undying love at this point?
“Nothing.”
I made a note about dosage on the blank paper I had for observations. “I think you need another drink, then. Maybe one sip isn’t strong enough. Or maybe you dislike me too much for it to work with a single dose.”
Zafir complied, taking a second, longer drink. At least this time he didn’t make me turn away. “It tastes like mango.”
“Better than sea serpent mucus.”
Zafir’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “I suppose,” he said, then bent back over his writing.
Still, there was no serenading, no sonnets of love, and no passionate embraces. Maybe the potion was a dud. I scanned the recipe. Had Zafir left out an ingredient or missed a step? Something wasn’t right. In the fine print at the bottom, it listed that the potion would begin to take effect within five to thirty minutes after consumption. Should we have waited longer, or had Zafir not taken a high enough dosage in the first place like I suspected?
I flipped to the end of the potion book, where there weremore detailed notes about the risks associated with each elixir. There had been a few documented cases of frothing at the mouth and pupils that remained enlarged for several days, but nothing that made me feel that the elixir should be illegal. They may as well market it as a mango beverage for all the effect it had.
“You need to know more about potions if this plan is going to work,” Zafir said in his same bored tone.
“I already have experience,” I said, not looking up from the book. “At Rahil’s, there was that alchemy lab I told you about. I brewed many potions there, and many that were much more dangerous than what you just cooked up.”
“Let’s quiz you then,” Zafir said. He rose and went to point at a bottle on a shelf. “Do you know what this is?”
“Dragon’s blood. It says so on the bottle.”
His mouth dropped open. “And here I was thinking you had no skills at all.”
“I thought I possessed an unparalleled skill at annoying you.”
“You most certainly do. But maybe I just like when you—” He caught himself. “I mean—maybe I’ve just grown accustomed to you annoying me.”
“Then I’ll have to continue. Should I disorganize your notes or turn your bottles so the labels aren’t showing?”
“You wouldn’t be so cruel.”
Zafir looked very much the same as he always did, calm and calculated. I searched his face for any flicker of unhinged desire or wild passion. Infatuation was supposed to be a crazed lust that drove someone insane, wasn’t it? Was Zafir even able to feel such things? Judging by this muted reaction, I would have to give Julian a quadruple dose if I was going to get any response at all.
“So where did you put the potions you stole from me?” Zafir asked suddenly. “I know you took them.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Zafir rolled his eyes. “Must I prove it to you?”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
In two long strides, Zafir was at my side. “Hold still.”
His hands ran down from my shoulders to my wrists, then wrapped around my waist and traveled up my back into my hair.
“I know you must keep the vials on your person; they weren’t under your pillow.”
I tried to pull away, but Zafir’s grip became iron around me and his hands patted down my legs.
“Aha,” he murmured when he reached my ankle. He withdrew the vials and waved them in front of my face.
“So strange. How did those get there?” I said with a slight smile. “Julian must’ve put them there.”
