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“You have no herbs in yourgarden.”
He tapped his nose. “You’re looking in the wrong place. They’re all the way at the back on shelves after the berrybushes.”
“Of course they are.” At the rear, I found an array of herbs from hyssop to myrtle tothyme.
“I’ll leave you here,” Ash said, hugging me from behind and kissing my head. Then, he vanished, and I turned to the herbs, figuring I’d make as many spells as I could remember, taking into account everything I’d learned. We were dealing with a bitch of a curse crafted with death magic. Nothing like tackling theimpossible.
* * *
Three potential concoctionsdone and yet bile bubbled in my gut, and with each passing moment I spent in the greenhouse trying to create a solution, my chest constricted. I’d never read about such a complicated enchantment involving various individuals. Add to that mix, my magic and Lilita’s. As much as it terrified me, my thoughts keep pointing in one direction. Could tapping into Lilita’s dark powers offer a possibility of counteracting the curse? Except I had zero idea how to do that without releasing her. And she would not save the men, only herself. Then she’d go on arampage.
I stared down at my palms, wishing I’d learned to better manipulate magic, not only to control what lay inside me. Most spells I worked came from books, and they usually worked amazingly. But Mom used to put things together from thought alone while I memorized them to look like I knew what I was doing. Half the time, I was terrified of trying something different in case I opened the portal to my darkness. Sticking to safe spells had kept everyone around meprotected.
Mom would say my fear blocked me from spreading my wings. Maybe she was right, but for too long I’d lived with dread, and now I didn’t know how to freemyself.
I collected the small bowls of paste I’d created and crossed the greenhouse when something red caught my attention, and I turned myhead.
My sights caught on a tiny red rose that grew in the snow, blossoming on a new branch where the stem had jabbedme.
I stood frozen, trying to make sense of what I was looking at. That wasn’t therebefore.
Ash had said his ancestor used blood and enchantment to create these snow roses, and how everything he’d tried to regrow them had failed. But did they normally grow thisfast?
In the herb book, there was a section on the power of rose petals. A shudder rocked me. These flowers had the most positive vibration of any living thing. And coupled with these specific ones being borne through magic… What else did it say aboutthem?
Hope burst across my chest. I dumped the bowls in my hands on the ground, grabbed the smaller pot with the flower, and sprinted back into thehouse.
I took a detour to the kitchen, snatched the book I’d left there, and made a dash toward the library. Juggling the plant and the book, I shoved open the door with ashoulder.
Ash and Talin were upstairs, while Leven sat a table, his nose in a book. There was no sign ofRaze.
“I found something,” I yelled, plonking the stuff in front of Leven. “This might help us.” My voice squeaked, and I bounced on my toes, the earlier dread dissected by thejoy.
“What is it?” Ash and Talin said in unison, huffing as they rushedcloser.
Raze appeared from behind the stairs, but Ash had already gasped and pointed to the plant. “Fuck! It grew aflower.”
“Yes,” I said. “But remember how I cut my finger on athorn?”
“Your blood awakened the plant?” Raze blurted out. “How does that helpus?”
I pulled up a chair and flipped through the fat book until I landed on the page about roses. “Here, it says to use crushed petals to reverse a spell.” I glanced across at the men, who clearly weren’t believers with their arched brows and pinched lips. “I saw this before but thought nothing of it since we had no roses and half the stuff in here talks about curing an ailment. But now we have a plant we know grows with magic and reacted to my blood, like Raze did in the woods. What if this helps? It could purify us of the curse and energize me to controlLilita.”
Leven’s brow creased. “It says that in there?” He leaned over myshoulder.
“It doesn’t talk about an enchanted rose,” I said. “But combined with my ability, this spell might work. Mom often grew normal roses around the house, insisting they kept the property purified and clear ofevil.”
“We all need to take baths with the rose petals,” Levenexplained.
“Together or each of us with Bee?” Raze asked,smirking.
I pulled the book back and read the passage about the cure needing petals from twelve redroses.
“Sounds easy enough,” Talinsaid.
I swallowed the boulder in my throat and stared at the men. My knees bounced under thetable.
They all nodded without a word exchanged. Getting my hopes too high was out of the question, but this was the closest thing to a potential cure I’dfound.
“Okay, so I guess I need to now donate blood. Who’s coming with me to thegreenhouse?”
