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“Alaric.” All I could manage was his name, my voice cracking. Tears spilled from my eyes, and I impatiently wiped them away. “Alaric.”

“She—she said you were going through withdrawal,” he said softly, finally breaking eye contact and staring hard at the floor. “That you had to take a small dose of your tonic each day to taper off.” He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Cerise, I think that tonic was poisoning you somehow. But you’ve been taking it for so long that you can’t go without it.”

A shudder of dread rippled through me. After what I’d discovered about my grandmother, I had to agree. I could no longer trust that the tonic was good for me.

“What is that minty smell?” Alaric asked suddenly, wrinkling his nose.

I sniffed, but I couldn’t make out anything except the strange metallic scent. “Um, probably from the tonic. Sapphire basil is tasteless, but when combined with white ash and activated by our magic, it produces a sharp minty smell.”

“So the elixir she gave you had sapphire basil and white ash,” he muttered, as if to himself. “I saw her mixing two ingredients. That must have been it, right?”

Gods, my head was pounding, my body clearly still battered from whatever ordeal it had gone through. I nodded, rubbing my temples. “Yes, but there are other ingredients, too. To help combat the side effects.”

Like a splitting headache, for one thing.

It seemed Geraldine had just given me the essential ingredients I’d needed. But without the lavender and sweetroot leaves, I was in for a rough night. Or… day? It had to be past dawn if I’d already endured the effects of skipping my dose of tonic.

“You have to go after her,” I said, keeping my eyes closed against the relentless pounding in my skull.

“What?”

“You have to find Geraldine. You can’t just let her go.”

“Cerise—”

My eyes opened to find him watching me in concern and confusion. His brows were drawn together, his lips parted slightly. The gleam of his golden eyes seemed more muted somehow.

“She has to answer for her crimes,” I said insistently. “And you have important business to take care of in your lands.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “I’m fine. I swear it. Once I bathe and rest, I’ll be back to normal. But you can’t stay here, Alaric.”

He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “We haven’t solved this. We still don’t know who Elvira was working with.”

Anxiety twisted inside me at the thought. Part of me was desperate to uncover the rest, but the other part of me was too terrified. I had already unearthed unspeakable horrors that had shaken everything I thought I’d known.

Gran—Elvira—had been a monster. She had cut open an innocent Wolven Mage and experimented on him for the sake of research. I already knew she had helped kill the Mage King. But… I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know any more.

I took a shaky breath before responding. “I’ve learned everything I need to. Elvira trapped that Rogue for years. It escaped and killed her. That’s—that’s how she died. And that’s all I need to know.” Tears pricked my eyes, but I impatiently blinked them away and forced myself to meet Alaric’s gaze. He was frowning, his eyes guarded as he watched me.

“You did your part and included me in the investigation,” I went on. “I’m—I’m stepping back now.”

He was silent for a long moment, his lips drawn together and his jaw tight. When he spoke, his voice was far gentler than I expected. “You are… nothing like her, you know.”

Emotion welled in my throat. “What?”

“She may have raised you, and you might have shared blood with her,” he continued. “But you are nothing like her. Despite everything she did and everything she tried to do, you became someone kind and decent and brave.” He shifted slightly so he faced me fully. “You are proof that something beautiful can bloom amongst even the vilest of barbs.”

My heart twisted, and my stomach fluttered. My breath felt trapped in my lungs. Something beautiful. Did he really think that?

“I know that learning the truth is painful,” he said, his voice a soft murmur. “Far more painful than I can imagine. And I hate that you have to go through this. Because you don’t deserve it, Cerise. You deserve so much better than this.”

I blinked rapidly as more moisture pooled in my eyes. With a sniff, I asked, “Why are you saying all this?”

He leaned forward and placed his hand over mine, lacing our fingers together on the floor. The feel of his warm skin on me was far more soothing than I wanted to admit. “Because I know your world has been shaken. And you’re questioning what you thought you knew. But what I know is that you are a beautiful soul who has strived to do good in your life. And just because she was important to you and you loved her doesn’t make you the same as her.”

My face crumpled, and a broken sob escaped me. All the fractured pieces inside of me seemed to cave inward into a yawning abyss that would swallow me whole. “Do you really see all that in someone you barely know?” I asked, my voice cracking.

He squeezed my fingers, then used his free hand to carefully brush a tear from my cheek. “Yes,” he whispered. “I do.”

His golden eyes seemed to scorch right through me, and my mouth went dry. I couldn’t bear to see him look at me like this—like he was desperate to close the space between us. Like he couldn’t live without being near me.