Page 194 of Immortal Rose

I brought two candles into the still room with me, setting one on either side of the table to light my workspace. As I tied an apron around my dress, I considered the bottles, the hint of their nature that escaped their stoppers.

I opened the Treasury, quickly turning the pages until I found a perfume that used heatherbore—A Whisper of Mist, for clearing the chest of congestion.

All the Rosebourne perfumes, magic or otherwise, were pleasing to the nose—there was a harmony to their scents. Given the grasses and oakmoss listed for the perfume, heatherbore was likely to be the one that smelled like cool, damp earth—it drew to mind the image of a shadowed grove.

One by one, I worked through them. It was so rare to discover new scents, it was difficult, even under the circumstances, not to be swept away by them, feeling the shimmer of their magic kiss my fingertips through the glass.

Silverbranch had an unusually cold scent, almost like tuberose carved from ancient silver into a key—one used to find what was lost or hidden. Moonflower was a crisp, sweet scent, and like the first bite of a peach, that sweetness kept unfolding, revealing new, nuanced depths. Every perfume that used it involved some form of protection, including from nightmares.

Which left the final bottle. The divine nectar of the flowering Afallach tree.

Tart like strawberry or rhubarb, but rounded by a honeyed note that made my whole soul lift. It was weaker than the other scents, and as I took the bottle in hand, drawing it toward the candle’s light, I saw why.

There was a single drop of it left inside—enough for exactly one dose.

Chapter Forty

Life was so rarely kind, it at least ought to have been fair.

I’d lived the truth of that my whole life, and still—still—that single, shimmering drop of nectar sliding across the bottom of the bottle felt like its greatest betrayal. Because in my hand was salvation for one man and doom for another. It was a reckoning.

My heart or my inheritance.

I closed my eyes, drawing the lip of the bottle up to rest beneath my nose, as if it might whisper the right path.

For so long, I’d believed the only safety for a woman was wealth and freedom—hadn’t Mama proven as much? Losing the first had cost her the second, and her only way to regain it had been through desperation. Death.

The injustice burned in me for years, and there had been no way to unleash it onto the man who had deserved that ire most, and so it had burned straight through my heart. And to know, too late, that William Rosebourne had been searching for me—that he had wanted to find me after twenty-five years . . . That had to mean something, didn’t it?

The House of Rosebourne was meant for me. I knew it down to the marrow of my bones. Mama hadn’t wanted to walk away from it, she’d been forced to, and she’d left a piece of herself with it that she had never been able to recover.

The thought of walking away now, abandoning her there after I’d already failed to save her—after she had died for me—it left me feeling like the world itself was burying me alive. I could scarcely breathe.

Feelings . . . love . . . they could change, couldn’t they? Hardening like deadwood. There was no security there, but that risk was the proving ground for love.

My thoughts raced, dizzying. If we laid them side by side and I opened the perfume flacon between them . . . no. Unlike the other magic scents, including the Crown of Veracity, every healing perfume in the Treasury required the wearer’s blood, to give the magic someone to bind to. Would it dilute the potency of the magic to include both of their blood, or to add in none at all? Would it be a matter of which of them breathed it in first?

Adjusting the formulation for how little of the nectar I had . . . it would hardly be a single dab. Would the scent even last long enough to heal him? With the others I had made before, the magic had lingered in the heart notes of the perfume, after the lighter top notes had lifted. But there was no telling how long the magic would have to work before it faded altogether into the base notes.

My inexperience infuriated me. There was no one left to ask, and there simply wasn’t enough nectar to risk testing any of these theories. There were only terrible choices.

I could use the nectar for one man and be forced to claim an innocent life to make a second batch to save the other, as the Treasury stated.

I could save Hugh and keep what I had gained here at Foxcourt House, or I could save the King and claim my inheritance, accepting all the risk that entailed—not just to my heart, but to the household.

If Hugh died, what would happen to them? They would never forgive me, just as Hugh would never forgive me for choosing him over the King, over the good of the country, and over Eleanor, who would find herself beneath the thumb of a different regent.

In either case, I was consigning at least one person to death.

I don’t know what to do, I thought, the rush of horror and fear crashing over me.

I had been Viola Lockwood, struggling to survive. A man I despised would have me be Viola Greystone, an heiress to limitless greed and power. But the paths I would choose—Viola Rosebourne, Countess of Foxcourt—could not exist in tandem.

I don’t know what to do, I thought, my head aching, my eyes burning. Help me, Mama, please . . .

Was there another perfume—one that might at least alleviate suffering or give one or both more time? Give me more time to procure additional nectar?

My thoughts raced as I picked up the quizzing glass I had left on the table earlier, when I’d retrieved the working blend of Immortal Rose.