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“And you think one of our plants will help you now?”
“It’s the chemicals from the plants that are important,” I say. From his furrowed brow I can tell he doesn’t really understand the term. It doesn’t surprise me. When they have magic, I doubt the fae need to dabble much in science. But he’s watching me like he expects me to go on, to explain more. It’s such a rare occurrence—from anyone—that I feel a bit lost.
“There’s a reason why marigold soothes and mint is icy and lemon burns on open wounds,” I say. “Once you identify the elements that make them work, you can distil them and then use them for a new purpose.”
“Fascinating,” he says, and seems to really mean it. “You found that out yourself?”
“My mother was the one who first started asking questions about why certain ingredients were good for certain ailments. I just took it from there, really.”
“It takes an imaginative mind, to discover such truths,” Ruskin says, tucking another bloom in the edge of my bag, which is by now heaving with samples that I’m unfamiliar with—dark leaves and strangely shaped flowers—all of which might unlock the answer to my task.
I stare at him, the comment like a glass of water to someone with a desperate thirst. How long have I waited for someone to see the merit in my work? But no one has cared before. Even Sanna and my father, those who love me best, couldn’t grasp why it meant so much to me.
“Ruskin,” I say and step towards him. His scent fills my nostrils, delicious and sweet, and I know if I look into his eyes, it will be easy to get lost in them, searching out the bolts of green in his irises. “I want to say thank you. For saving me. Again.”
I look up through my lashes at him and think I recognize the spark of want that was written so plainly across his face last night. I reach up my hand, obeying the longing I have to run it across his strong jaw, but it never gets there. His own hand catches mine at the wrist, holding it still. His face hardens, losing the trace of emotion it had a moment before.
“If you have everything you need, we should get back to the palace,” he says.
Then he drops my hand, and we silently return to his home.
Chapter 20
Ifeel like an idiot. I thought we were on the same page, I thought he’d want me to touch him, but instead all I got was cold, stiff rejection. I throw myself into my work when I get back to the palace, trying to drive my embarrassment away…and maybe also the sting of it. Of him not wanting me.
Obviously, his behavior the other night really was all just a side effect of the moon. Now he’s back to being the moody prince who doesn’t have any interest in me like that when his rational mind is in control. If only I’d known that before I went and ruined it all by trying to make a move.
A move I shouldn’t have been making anyway, I remind myself. I’d decided there was a line when it came to getting close to Ruskin. Getting him to open up emotionally was fine, teasing out information that could help me decipher his secrets was allowed. But that was where the intimacy should end.
In my workshop I lay out the plants we collected, trying to decide what I should start testing first, but I can’t seem to concentrate. My brain isn’t cooperating. Instead, it just keeps on throwing up an image of a handsome, dark-haired fae with an aggravating smile on his beautiful lips.
I push the plants and flowers aside and my eyes fall on my sample bag. I take out the vial of gryphon blood I swiped and examine it again. Initially it looks like nothing but red liquid, then something happens as I hold the vial in my fingers: a metallic sheen floats to the surface, specks of something glittering dancing in the darkness. I unpack my equipment, trying to remember my basic test for gold, and notice that the moment I set the vial down the particles disappear, sinking back into the depths of the blood.
It’s strange, but I keep working. As I strain the contents of the vial, and prep the salt and tin I’ll need, I imagine the annoyed look on Ruskin’s face, the one he’ll have when I learn exactly what it is he doesn’t want me to know. I’m tired of not being given any proper explanations. Of being strung along. If I’m “too important,” like he said, it’s high time he stops keeping me in the dark and tells me what I’m actually doing here, instead of expecting me to get results while working blindly.
I heat my solution of salt water and tin shavings, then soak a piece of parchment in them. This trick is one cobbled together from Mom’s notes and my imagination, and I’ve used it many times in the past to gauge the success of my experiments. I drop the soaked parchment into the strainer I used for the blood and wait. Thirty seconds later, it’s speckled with black.
I’m right. It’s gold. That’s what’s making the blood shine. But I saw it spill straight from the gryphon, and these are tiny particles, small enough to travel through its very veins. Is it possible gryphons naturally have gold in their blood? Certainly, I’ve never heard of such a thing. But if it’s not natural, how could it have gotten there?
My mind goes to a conversation I overheard a week ago in the kitchens. The food. Wasn’t the cook complaining about bitter produce? I have no evidence to link it, but my gut is telling me there’s a connection there. Just like there’s a reason Ruskin’s hauled me here.
And I already know it’s got to do with removing gold from where it shouldn’t be.
“Hi, Halima,” I say as I walk out the workshop door, sensing her fall in behind me. I’ve almost grown used to her sizeable presence.
“Good afternoon, Eleanor,” she rumbles.
“I’m just heading to the kitchens for a snack.”
She doesn’t need to say anything. We both understand that when she’s not with Ruskin, she’s duty bound to make sure she always knows where I am.
“You were right, by the way, about last night,” I say. “I shouldn’t have gone to see him.”
I feel her eyes on me. “Are you all right?”
“Fine, I just wish…” I sigh. The pain is sharp enough that I feel compelled to share it, even with someone as stoic as Halima. “You said he wouldn’t be himself, and I should’ve remembered that. I shouldn’t have let myself forget that what he did or said wasn’t the real him.”
“I didn’t say he wouldn’t be the real him,” Halima says, like she’s correcting me.
