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“Sure,” the witch replied. “He disappeared just after you woke up.”
Juliana’s chest heated with the thought of his proximity beside her all night long. She hoped she hadn’t done anything embarrassing like whisper his name in her sleep. It would be hard to find a lie to cover that one up.
The witch returned to watering her plants. There were a few blood-red ones she seemed particularly fond of, examining their leaves and humming to them as she watered.
“What do those ones do?” Juliana asked, almost reluctant now to read.
“They’re curse-catchers,” Mabel explained. “Designed to wither and die in place of myself if someone tries to put a curse on me.”
Juliana counted them. She had almost a dozen. “You have a lot of enemies?”
Mabel shrugged. “I did, once. Never grew out of the habit.” She pointed to a bigger one, larger than any of the others and so old that the pot was now held together with thick, gnarled roots. “Now ifthatone ever starts to wilt, I’ll know I’m in trouble.”
“It looks ancient.”
“So am I.”
Juliana frowned, but didn’t press it. Witches might live longer than mortals, but they never grew ancient by faerie standards.
Mabel turned back to her other plants, and Juliana finally cracked open the notebook. She flicked through insults, some scribbled out and some so over-the-top she couldn’t even try to decipher his meaning.
After far too many pages of this and a few more entries of no matter, her eyes came across a longer entry dated almost a year after she’d started her service.
Juliana paused in her reading, the thought both warming and delighting her. Regardless of the witch’s insistence that their feelings weren’t conjured by the pendants, a part of Juliana had still doubted this. But Hawthorn had made this entry over two years ago.
Two years. Had he felt something for so long? Did hestillfeel it? If last night’s kiss was anything to go by—
It doesn’t matter if he does,she reminded herself.He’s still not yours to fall for.
But it was nice, just for a moment, to indulge the sensation.
She moved through the rest of the pages, indulging in similar entries, comments about her hair, her walk, the way she sliced her apples or her eyes lit up at the delicacies placed in front of her. A tally of the number of times she’d smiled. How had he noticed all this about her over the years? Why did he even care?
Why did every other page offer up insults?
Towards the end of the available extracts were a few pages of appalling poetry, mostly scribbled out or reduced to a few clumsy lines.
He was a smooth talker, but he was no poet.
But there was a short limerick she rather enjoyed.
Juliana snorted with laughter.
“Something amusing?” remarked Mabel.
“Nothing I care to share.”
The witch came over and checked her wound, liberally applying more cream and forcing more potion down her throat in an effort to speed up her healing. It made her groggy, and it became difficult to read after that.
“Will I owe you? For the potions?”
Mabel shook her head. “I’ll take it out of your prince’s payment… unless you want to take on his favour for him?”
Juliana bit her lip, because the truth was, shewouldtake it. And not out of some sense of debt, or because it was less dangerous for the witch to hold a favour from her. She’d take it purely to keep him safe.
“I doubt you’d want a favour from me.”
Mabel smiled, her aged cheeks crinkling like paper. “I don’t know. A favour from you might hold similar weight… one day.”
