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His face darkened at this. It seemed her melancholy wasn’t news to him. “She never likes it when my father is away,” he told me. “I’ve tried to ask him to stay more, to have me go on business trips in his stead, but . . . he doesn’t like the idea.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

He was silent for a while, too long, as if he was working out what to say. “He gets restless. Besides, there is work for me to do here.” He nodded down at his desk. I admit, I know nothing of running a business as large as theirs, but by the amount of papers before him, it seemed like busy work.

He then rummaged in one of the drawers, pulling out the same purse he showed me on the first night he came to my home. It was half my payment, he said. I felt awkward taking it, seeing as I hadn’t done much, but he insisted. The other half would come if I was successful in healing Ana completely.

After I took the money, tucking it safely in my bag, I asked how the harvest was going. I’m not sure why I did. I suppose I could have just bade him farewell after that and left. But I admit, I wasn’t eager to leave. It was something about the chair, I think—it really was very comfortable. Or the house. Besides some of the awful paintings, there were so many nicer details I had yet to take in. Or maybe, if I’m being completely honest . . . it was his eyes.

They are like an undertow, drawing you in.

“Well enough. We have a few more days of it, then we’ll see how the new still performs.”

“Still?” I asked. I was not familiar with the term, and I wasn’t sure if I heard correctly.

“Yes, out in the workshop. It is the machine we use to extract the oil.” He went on to explain it more, but frankly I got a little lost. It was clear he was quite knowledgeable about the subject, which I know shouldn’t have come as a surprise—he is the Lavender Prince, after all. But I guess I didn’t expect a man like him, with his gold buttons and fancy desk and finely combed hair, to be so passionate about something as mundane as plants.

Could it be we actually had something in common?

“Sounds fascinating,” I said when he was done. “And here I am using my old kettle and a cheesecloth to make my oils.” I let out a little laugh when I said this, which I immediately regretted. I sounded just like tittering Dobrila.

“What kinds of oils do you make?” he asked.

I listed a few. Lavender, of course, rosemary, sage, chamomile.

He asked where I learned how to make them.

“From my mother,” I told him. It felt strange to say aloud, to speak of you with someone else after years of silence. “She taught me all I know about the foliage of Tolba.”

“But she wasn’t from here,” he stated.

I laughed more freely this time. “I imagine the plants are not so different on Olib.”

He nodded his head in deferment. Just because Olib is smaller and even more remote than Tolba, the people here act like it is such a mystery. Mistrusting outsiders. He must have learned this attitude from his father.

He then asked, “Did she teach you how to heal as well?”

I nodded.

“You seem quite skilled at it for your age.”

This made me stiffen, as I wasn’t sure what he was implying. Did it make me untrustworthy? Did he suspect some sort of witchcraft, as his father did?

But then I thought, here is my chance to enlighten him a little. To explain my skills. After all, I would be using them on his own mother. And frankly, I wished to tell him. I couldn’t remember a customer ever sitting down and asking me questions about myself. They only wanted to take and slip away, as if haste made it easier to pretend they’d never visited me at all.

So, I told him, albeit with some hesitance, “The women in our family have a gift. A healer’s sense, my mother called it. Not witchcraft,” I quickly added. “It’s more . . .” I didn’t realize how hard it would be to explain, or else I might not have mentioned it at all. “Like an intuition, a sense beyond the physical body, of what lies deeper. Their pain, their joy, their fears.”

“Their soul,” Nikola said. It took me aback, how easily he cut through my wandering words to pick out the heart of what I meant.

“Yes. Like that.”

A silence settled between us, one that was surprisingly comfortable. I found myself wanting to know more about him, his own joys and fears, yet it felt inappropriate to ask. He is much higher than me in status, and I am merely offering a service. There can be no true connection between us.

And so, finally, I stood to leave. But as I was about to say goodbye, he asked, “Would you like to see the workshop?”

I froze at his offer, too stunned to answer right away. I had always wondered what was in those buildings at the edge of the field, how exactly they made their oil so pure. And I was curious about this new contraption, this still. But I didn’t understand his intentions. Was it another way to show his gratitude for my help? Or . . . and I hesitate to even put this in words, how absurd it seems, but could he possibly have been curious about me as well?

I had no grace. I stuttered out, “Now?”