She knew she had to work quickly to wake up Raph before the plague took him too far. His body was still weak after the last time. If she didn’t succeed, he’d end up just like the boy lying in her father’s bed. The uncanny resemblance to Ari had been quite unsettling. There was no doubt they were related. Poor Ari had been devasted to find him there like that. If only she could have stayed to comfort him.
She went to the Alchemist’s personal supply cabinet and selected the oils she was going to need. This was far easier than having to create them from scratch.
She found the bergamot and lemongrass with ease, had to dig a little harder in the back of the shelves for the cardamom and cypress, then located the lemon and peppermint in a separate cabinet. She put the bottles on the bench and smiled as she remembered the light in Raph’s eyes as he’d talked about his secret ingredients.
Returning to the cabinet, she picked up various bottles, hoping the Alchemist had a stock of wintergreen. She found it a strange fragrance, assertive and strong, impossible to ignore. She could see why Raph had selected it, and not just because their entire kingdom was named after this distinctive aroma. It was the way it shot straight up your nostrils and into your lungs. It was an aroma that made your eyes spring open and take notice. Perfect for true love’s kiss.
She then searched around for the final two ingredients. The ones Raph had kept from her, yet she was certain she knew what they must be.
Picking up various bottles to check their labels, her hands landed on the right one.
Cinnamon.
Raph was certain to have put a small part of their mother in this elixir. Their father was present in every oil in this apothecary, but their mother’s scent had been cinnamon.
She put down the bottle and went back to the cabinet to look for the final ingredient, finding it hidden at the back with its label turned around.
She picked it up, removed the lid and held it to her nose, smiling as memories of playing in the gazebo as a child flooded her mind. It was a shame it’d burnt to the ground when they’d lured the Alchemist away from his house. So many happy memories were contained within those timber beams covered in trails of… jasmine.
Jasmine had to be it. The secret ingredient that Raph added, not only because of her name, but because of the way it brings balance to the body. Its light, floral fragrance would have been lost underneath the wintergreen and bergamot, but she was certain it was there. It was the only oil that would have made Raph smile at her in the way he had.
Working quickly, she blended the oils together, using some almond oil as a carrier. It smelled… perfect. Exactly like true love’s kiss.
She broke into a smile just as Ari burst through the door, with the opposite to a smile on his face.
“Oh, I found you,” he said. “I looked all over the apothecary. Nobody had seen you. I was starting to worry.”
“I needed quiet to work quickly. We don’t know how long Raph has.”
Ari gestured to someone outside the door and Jasmine gasped to see Raph appear, grinning at her.
“Raph!” She left the workbench and went to her brother, wrapping her arms around him. “How? What? But…”
He laughed, squeezing her around the waist and resting his head on her chest.
“Ari saved me,” he said.
She let go of him so she could turn to Ari. “You saved him?”
He shook his head. “No. I just encouraged the Alchemist to wake him up. I realized that what he’d given Raphael couldn’t have been the blue plague. It had to be something different. Otherwise, how could he wake him up to extract the cure from him?”
“Of course.” Jasmine shook her head, feeling naive. They’d been rushing about so much, they’d made some serious errors in judgment.
“The Alchemist had a separate elixir to wake Raphael,” Ari said.
“I should have been there,” Jasmine said, rubbing Raph’s back and holding him close.
“There wasn’t time to fetch you. I’m sorry. We still urgently need the elixir you’re working on. The whole kingdom is depending on it.”
Jasmine went back to the workbench and held the small bottle in her hand. “I did it. I think…”
“I didn’t tell you the secret ingredients!” said Raph, reaching to take the bottle so he could smell it for himself.
“You didn’t need to.” She smiled. “I knew what they were.”
“What were they then, smarty nose?”
“Smarty nose?” She laughed. It was so good to have her brother back, even if he decided to make up words to suit himself.
“Yeah, you couldn’t possibly have been able to smell it underneath the wintergreen.” He pouted and took another sniff of the bottle.
“I didn’t need to.” She tickled him, until he let go of the pout in exchange for a giggle. “It was cinnamon and jasmine, wasn’t it?”
Raph’s eyes turned into saucers. “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
“I think Mother named you Jasmine on purpose,” he said. “She knew it would save our lives one day.”
“Maybe,” said Jasmine, ruffling his hair. “She knew a lot of things. Although, I suspect you know them all now, too.”
“Jasmine,” said Ari, stepping closer. “I need to tell you about something that happened just now. Something important.”
“Go on,” she urged.
“The Alchemist is dead.”
She staggered back a step, trying to process this news. Dead? It didn’t seem possible that someone filled with such power could be… dead. “What happened? You didn’t—”
“Of course not!” His mouth fell open and he shook his head.
“No, Ari! I would never think that. I was going to ask if you told him about his son.”
“Oh, yes, I did. So, I suppose it was my words that killed him. He had no idea. As soon as I told him, he took his own life. I didn’t have time to stop him. I feel so responsible.”
“How did he do it?” asked Jasmine, unable to help her curiosity.
“He had an elixir for the purpose,” said Ari. “He took it from his pocket before we could react and inhaled it. He was dead on the floor in moments.”
“You’re not responsible,” said Jasmine, not wanting him to be the one to feel guilty here. “He killed himself. And I can’t say I’m sorry to hear it. I know he was your sister, but… he brought so much suffering to this world.”
“Including to his own son,” said Raph, still hovering close by.
Ari nodded, seeming to accept this as true.
“I need to get back to my father,” he said. “I think he’s in shock.”
“Of course.”
Jasmine wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him that everything was going to be okay but held back. His nephew was dead and there was nothing okay about that. There’d be time for soothing words later. Right now, they still had work to do.
ARI
THE NOW
Ari returned to the main house with Jasmine and Raphael to look for his father. He’d asked to be left alone for a few moments when Ari had gone to look for Jasmine, trying to process the loss of his daughter and grandson. It was a lot for anyone to take in, even a King.
The guards had closed Raphael’s bedroom door with the Alchemist’s body inside and were standing watch to make sure nobody went in.
“Where’s my father?” Ari asked.
“With the dead boy, Your Highness,” one of the guards replied.
Ari didn’t know whether to be pleased or concerned by this.
“Please give me a moment,” he said to Jasmine.
“Of course,” she said, touching him on the arm.
He reached for her hand and brushed it against his lips, wanting her to know that he was aware of how much she cared, before leaving her to find his father.
He opened the door, expecting to see his father hunched over the bed staring at the boy. But instead, he was standing up straight, grinning at Ari. Had he lost his
mind? This wasn’t the time or place for smiling.
“What’s going on?” Ari asked.
“He’s alive! I found a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there. Come and feel it for yourself.”
“What?” Ari went quickly to the bed and reached for the boy’s wrist once more. “I can’t feel anything.”
“I told you it’s weak,” his father said, repositioning Ari’s fingers. “Just press very gently. You’ll feel it.”
Ari sat very quietly, moving his fingers around, desperately hoping his father was right. Had he just felt what he’d wanted to feel?
And there it was. The slightest, weakest pulse Ari had ever felt, but it was a pulse all the same.
“You’re right!” Ari looked up at his father with wide eyes. “He’s alive!”
His father patted him vigorously on the back. “He needs the cure. My grandson needs the cure!”
“Jasmine!” called Ari, turning to face the door. “Come quickly! He’s alive!”
“Oh, my goodness,” said Jasmine, rushing into the room. “This is incredible. Are you sure?”
“He has a weak pulse,” said Ari. “Do you have the cure with you?”
“Raph has it.”
Ari looked over to see Raphael hovering near the door, keeping a respectful but curious distance. He beckoned to him.
Raphael took the small glass bottle from his pocket and handed it to Ari.
“What do we do with it?” Ari’s father asked, stepping back to give him some room.
Jasmine took his place by the bed. “Rub it on his chest, then place a few drops under his nose.”
Ari undid the top buttons of the boy’s shirt. His skin was cold, his breathing so shallow it couldn’t be detected. He really wasn’t far off death. It was no wonder they’d thought it’d already claimed him.
“I wish I knew your name,” said Ari, tipping the bottle so that a few drops came out to land on the boy’s chest. “Hopefully soon you’ll open your eyes and tell me.”
He rubbed the oil into his skin in smooth, gentle strokes with his fingertips, then put some oil underneath his nostrils.
“That’s right,” said Jasmine. “Let him breathe it in.”
But the boy didn’t stir, his health no worse or better than before.
“We need to add some frankincense,” said Jasmine “His breathing is too shallow for this to save him.”
“The Murderer will have some in his jacket pocket,” said Raph from the end of the bed. “He always kept a few elixirs in there.”
“Then let’s get it,” said Ari, hardly able to wait to wake up his nephew and meet him properly. Perhaps there was still a part of Ana left in this world. The good part.
Ari went back out to the hallway, asking the guards to open the door they were keeping watch over.
“I want to see him,” said Jasmine from behind him.
He shook his head and turned to her. “No, you don’t. It’s not safe for you.”
“I need to,” she said. “I won’t feel safe from him unless I do.”
“Wait here,” he said, not wanting to put her in danger again. “I’ll just get the frankincense and be right back.”
The guard opened the door and stood back. Ari had opened the shutters before he’d left to find Jasmine, so that the smell wouldn’t build up. That fatal oil had seemed awfully toxic.
“Oh!”
He turned to see Jasmine standing behind him with her hand over her mouth.
“I told you to wait outside!” He tried to lead her out of the room. “There are toxic fumes in here.”
“The window’s open,” she said, pulling away from him. “And I’m here now.”
Ari sighed. So stubborn! And beautiful. How could he ever deny this woman anything? And she of all people should know if it was safe to be in this room or not.
“He looks so sad,” she said. “And sort of innocent now that he’s dead.”
“What do you think he used?” Ari asked, certain that Jasmine must have an idea.
“I’m not sure, although I doubt it was an oil. Might have been some kind of nectar. They can be fatal if ingested.” She crouched down next to the body to get a closer look.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Ari. The thought of anything bad happening to Jasmine was unthinkable.
“I grew up around these oils,” said Jasmine, opening the Alchemist’s jacket. “It’s okay. The air’s clear in here.”
“He is dead, isn’t he?” Ari wondered if it were possible he was asleep, just like his poor nephew, and the nightmare would continue.
“Oh, he’s definitely gone.” She rummaged in the jacket pocket and placed half a dozen bottles on the floor next to her. Ari stooped to pick them up and Jasmine joined him to look at them.
“Which one do you think is the frankincense?” Ari asked, noticing that none of them were labeled. “We don’t want to smell the wrong one and end up like… that.”
Jasmine held them up to the light and studied them carefully.
“This one, I think.” She undid the cap.
“That’s not a good idea!” He tried to snatch the bottle from her hand, but she was too quick, having already taken a cautious sniff of its contents.
A smile lit her face. “Knew it. This is it.” She held it out for him to smell. “He wore this scent every day to influence us. Cunning but clever.”
Ari took several deep sniffs, desperate to draw in the aroma, knowing it was pointless. The reason he couldn’t smell it was the same one that had made him certain that he was immune to the plague and all of the Alchemist’s other tricks.
“I can’t,” he said, pushing Jasmine’s hand away. “I can’t… Jasmine, I can’t smell.”
“Yes, you can,” she said, not understanding. “This one’s safe.”
“No, Jasmine. I can’t smell. Anything. I can’t smell anything.”
The truth that Ari knew about himself that nobody else was aware of, except his sister who was now gone, was that Ari had no sense of smell.
He waited for her to react, as his stomach folded itself in half. He couldn’t do the one thing that was most important to her in the world. How could she love him now?
A small smile twitched the corners of her mouth and his stomach pulled into an even greater knot. Great, now she was going to laugh at him.
“So that explains it,” she said, breaking into a smile.
“You mean why I can’t catch the plague?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. Why you were so hopeless in the perfumery. Why you couldn’t make sense of anything in there.”
“I wasn’t that—”
“Oh, Ari!” She laughed now, but not at him. It was with affection and love in her eyes.
“You don’t care?” he asked, just to be sure.
“Of course I don’t care.” She lowered her voice and blinked up at him, her eyes fixed on his lips. “How about we go and wake up your nephew and then I’ll show you how much I don’t care?”
He had no idea what she had in mind, but that sounded like a good idea to him.
She left the room ahead of him and he paused to take one last look at his sister’s body on the floor. This was going to break his mother. Hopefully, returning to the palace with the grandson she never knew she had would be enough of a healing balm to help pull her through. Before Ana’s disappearance, she’d been fun and loving. That was her true self and he was certain that part of her was still in there, just like the true Jasmine had lain dormant inside herself when she’d been trapped in the Alchemist’s spell.
He followed Jasmine down the hallway, back to his nephew.
“We got it,” he said to his father, pointing toward Jasmine and the small bottle she held in her hand.
“Excellent,” his father said.
Jasmine passed Ari the frankincense and he tipped some oil into his palm and rubbed his hands together.
“Keep doing that,” said Jasmine. “The elixir should start working any moment now. The
scent is filling the room nicely.”
He gave her a brief smile for letting him know what he couldn’t tell for himself. His lack of smelling sense had always left him feeling like he wasn’t a whole person. When someone smiled at the scent of a flower or screwed up their nose at a rancid piece of meat, he felt like he was missing out on some vital part of life. Like everyone carried a secret that he wasn’t able to share.
He held his hands in front of his nephew’s face so that he could draw in the scent and Jasmine nodded encouragingly at him.
“His breathing’s picking up,” she said, pointing at his gently rising chest. “And look, his color’s returning.”
She was right. A soft pink color was rising to the boy’s cheeks.
“Please, Your Majesty, come closer,” Jasmine said to his father, stepping back so that he could take her place.
Ari’s father came forward. “Thank you, Jasmine,” he said, tears welling in his eyes. “I believe I owe you an apology.”
“Not now,” she said, smiling softly. “Your grandson needs you. Let the face of his grandfather be the first one he sees when he opens his eyes.”
“You’re a good person,” he said to her. “I can see why you’ve stolen my son’s heart.”
Ari saw Jasmine let out a breath and her shoulders relax. She looked across at him and he held her gaze in place of her hands, telling her that he loved her in the only way he could right now.
A small noise from the boy drew his attention back to the bed and he leaned over him, his father only inches away doing the same on the other side.
The boy’s eyelids fluttered open and he looked between the two men leaning over his bed, taking them in as his breath hitched in his throat.
Then he screamed.
GRIMM
THE NOW
“Who are you?” Grimm sat up in bed and clutched at the sheet that fell to his waist. “Where’s Father? Where’s Mother? What have you done to me?”
The Kingdoms of Evernow Box Set Page 42
