by Lily Luchesi
Poisons rarely had the same antidote, but without knowing just what the white powder was, potioneers had created a very basic remedy to most natural poisons. It wouldn’t work on animal venom, but anything floral or fungi could usually be cured with it. There were other small caveats, but nothing that should prevent it from healing Salem.
She filled the cauldron with spring water and quickly gathered the ingredients required. Bezoar, mint leaves, preserved mandrake roots, raw honey, lavender oil, calendula, and Pege hair.
The bezoar was chopped and then finely ground, put into the water first. As it boiled, she shredded the mint leaves and the mandrake roots before crushing them in the mortar as she had the bezoar. She then added those, and poured in the proper measure of the raw honey. The Pege hair came next, and it needed nothing done to it, just placed in the cauldron. The calendula was next, and she picked off exactly thirteen petals and placed them, whole, in the cauldron. Finally, five drops of the pure lavender extract.
The potion didn’t take long to brew, and Harley stirred patiently as she waited for it to come to a full boil. She returned the heat to ‘medium’, and kept stirring clockwise and counter-clockwise, switching every five stirs, until the potion had turned a translucent silver with threads of purple and gold running through it.
Few people could understand how it was that she was so calm and patient while brewing, while at the same moment her father was languishing with a system full of poison a few floors above her. But brewing had been her safe space. Had been where she could shut down all emotion and concentrate solely on the ingredients in the cauldron in front of her. It helped to centre her when she felt like she was flying away in twenty different directions at once.
The only other thing that gave her that feeling of peace was being in Caelum Lynx’s arms.
Carefully, so as not to spill any, she ladled the potion into a silver flask and put it in her dress pocket. She turned on her heel and ran back upstairs, hoping that she was not too late.
Salem still lay there, silent and pale. His breath was wheezing, and it didn’t sound like the flu or pneumonia. When Caelum had been kidnapped, the people who took him had injected him with a new strain of influenza as well as pneumonia. Harley could clearly recall how he sounded. Salem sounded worse, and that made her stomach feel like dryadali had set up camp inside of her. The potion she had made to heal Caelum wouldn’t work on her father.
Not waiting for Madam Maysa, she pushed past the Medic and bent down at her father’s side. As gentle as she could be, she lifted his head up so that he could drink the potion.
As she held the flask to his lips, she felt her resolve and control falter as her hand trembled. A fearful sob escaped her throat and she knew she was about to spill the potion, thus wasting it and whatever time Salem had left.
At that moment a hand cupped hers, holding it steady and saving the potion, while an arm wrapped around her shoulders.
“It’s okay, Princess, I’ve got you,” Caelum whispered.
Her first thought was to wonder how it was that he was always there when she needed him. Her second was that, if Salem was well, he’d hex Caelum silly for being in his personal chambers without invitation.
The two men had grown up together, and the only reason Caelum was still in his early twenties was because he had been murdered and brought back to life earlier that spring. They’d hated each other until just two days ago, when they’d agreed to a sort of truce because Harley was dating the shifter.
Caelum held Harley steady and helped her get Salem to drink the potion, and she was more grateful for him than she could ever articulate. Once he’d been forced to drink the entire flask, Harley felt whatever was left of her energy flag and she leaned heavily against Caelum.
He helped her up and held her tightly to him while she trembled and gripped his maroon cloak in her fists. “What now?” he asked Madam Maysa.
“Now we wait. This cure takes up to fifteen minutes to work,” she said.
“And if it doesn’t?” he asked, his hand rubbing Harley’s back.
Maysa sighed. “Then we must try to figure out what the white substance was and why the traditional cure doesn’t work for the King.”
“How?” Harley asked. The poisons had been working for two days in his body. They didn’t have a lot of time.
It was now she recalled, after he had inhaled the powder, that he had been coughing and unable to hold the Zookeeper still. Caelum had had to help him. It hadn’t seemed odd at the time, but now she knew it was a tell-tale sign that something wasn’t right. Something that she missed completely.
“Draw his blood. If we can filter it through a poison detection parchment we can see what it is,” Maysa said.
“Then I’ll do it now,” Harley said. “I don’t want to wait fifteen minutes. That might be too late.”
“If someone tells me what this parchment is, I’ll get it and bring it here,” Caelum offered.
“Detection parchment is a Medic’s tool,” Maysa explained. “It’s a thin sheet of parchment, see through and quite fragile. When any liquid is filtered through it, it will reveal if there is any sort of poison in said liquid once a spell is spoken over it.”
“And you’ve got some, I assume?” Caelum asked.
“In a drawer in the infirmary,” she replied.
He no sooner heard that and he was off, surprisingly swift and lithe for someone so tall.
“It’s locked, he can’t get in!” Maysa said, alarmed.
“You weren’t the head Medic when they were students, were you?” Harley asked with a small smile. “Locks and rules are two things that mean absolutely nothing to Caelum Lynx. Hand me that water glass, please.”
Madam Maysa did as she asked without question and Harley held the glass in one hand. She waved the palm of the other over the top and said, “Evanescet.” It made the water inside vanish. She rolled Salem’s shirtsleeve up, revealing his pale forearm. The veins were starkly blue against his sun-starved skin and it was easy to sever one.
“Caedas,” she cast. It was the Bleeding Curse, a spell that Salem had created when he was seventeen and that their bloodline, Clan Munro, had perfected. It was Dark magic, but had been used for good more than evil in recent years.
The skin severed, bringing viscous red blood to the surface. “Volant,” Harley cast, and a river of blood floated up and into the glass. When she was certain that she had drawn enough blood, she put the glass down next to her and healed his wound.
At that moment, Caelum returned, carrying a sheet of thin, semi-transparent black parchment. Without words, he handed it to Harley. His eyes moved from her to Salem, obviously wondering how much longer they had.
“Thank you,” Harley said to him. She stood up from his bedside and moved a few things from the nightstand: a heavily notated Brewing textbook and fountain pen, a half-burnt candlestick, a framed photograph of Daphne, Harley’s mother, and one of Harley at her graduation ceremony from the Coven’s school.
She spread the parchment on the surface and reached for the glass of blood. She poured the entire thing over the parchment and began to use magic to spread it over, running the magic over the blood multiple times until it fully saturated the parchment as she repeated the spell over and over. “Venenum revelare.”
Once the parchment had soaked up all of the blood, it began to gather in the centre. Harley watched, with Caelum peering over her shoulder, as a word began to form in vivid red: “Apocynaceae.”
“Is … is it broken?” Caelum asked. “I don’t even think that’s a word.”
“It’s a family of plants. They’re known as dogbane because they were once used to poison dogs,” Harley said. “But … if that’s the case, he should wake up in five minutes. The potion can cure any of the plants within that family.”
Unless you brewed it wrong, her mind taunted her. It did that sometimes, reminded her that she wasn’t as talented or special as others might make her believe. It was one of the many drawbacks of
having depression and anxiety.
I brewed that potion perfectly, she said, trying to push the irrational part of her mind back. Something else is going on if he doesn’t wake.
She moved back and crossed her arms tightly around her middle, almost as if she was trying to subconsciously hug herself and get comfort. Caelum moved closer and put his arms around her, over her own. Harley revelled in his comfort, wishing that she didn’t need it so damn often. It had only been two days since they had taken down the organisation known as The Zoo. She had barely had a chance to breathe.
“Madam Maysa, what if…” She couldn’t say it.
“If it doesn’t work?” she asked. “Then we have to find out why. It could be something in his past, some abnormality within his physiology.”
“How the Hell am I supposed to do that?” Harley asked, forgetting her manners.
“There’s a way, but it’s complicated. Mrs. Donahue can show you,” Maysa said.
“And how long will it take? How long … how long does he have?” she asked. She could hear the desperate edge in her voice and hated it. She hated always being unable to control anything that happened in her life. Sure, she pretended to, but she was always a victim of fate, ever since she was conceived, and she despised it.
“Five hours, give or take, and this shouldn’t take that long,” the Medic replied. She checked her pocket watch. “You have three minutes. I will go and fetch her.”
It was obvious that the Medic did not believe that Salem would wake within three minutes any more than Harley did.
Five hours. Salem only had five hours to live. Harley’s stomach roiled and she could feel her fingertips going numb from fear and worry. If not for Caelum, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stand.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Caelum said softly. “I promise, I’m not going to let you do this alone. We’ll save Salem, you’ll see.”
“How are you so bloody optimistic?” she asked, her voice barely a gasp as tears began to gather in her eyes.
“Because once upon a time, I lived through actual Hell. Optimism and sarcasm are the only defences I have,” he replied. He turned her around to face him and held her face in his hand. “I believe in you, Princess. You can save him.”
The three minutes ticked by, and there was no change in Salem. He was still sweating, feverish, and wheezing. Mrs. Donahue entered the sickroom then, looking a bit more put together than she had when she’d initially gotten Harley. She carried a long white candle with peculiar markings along the side.
“Oh dear,” she muttered, looking at Salem as he lay there. Donahue was in her eighties, she had been Salem and Caelum’s teacher when they were children. “Madam Maysa told me you needed to see into the past, to see why he can’t be cured by the potion?”
Harley nodded.
“Then come with me. Both of you. But first you need something of his. A lock of hair will do,” she said.
Harley turned toward her father and stepped up to his pillow. “Praetrunco,” she cast, and a lock of shiny ebony hair was severed into the palm of her hand.
That done, the two of them followed Donahue down the castle stairs and into the courtyard. Harley noticed that the party had broken up, her brother and his friends were nowhere to be seen.
Harley wasn’t a person who asked a lot of questions. She found that, more often than not, when you stayed silent, you got the answers you wanted without ever having to say a word aloud.
As Donahue led them across the grounds, Harley saw where she was taking them: the Watchtower. The Watchtower was built before the magicians had made this their Coven, and was used during the First, Second, and Third Clan Wars to signal for help or exchange information with undercover magicians.
It was also, apparently, haunted. Or so Harley had been told.
When they reached the entrance, Donahue paused to catch her breath. “By now you might have heard that spirits inhabit this tower,” she said to the two of them, sounding as if she was about to give a Coven History lesson.
Harley and Caelum nodded.
“Technically, that is untrue. The reason you can hear, feel, and occasionally see spirits is because the Watchtower was built where the Veil is the thinnest. The Veil, so it is called, is what separates our plane from Heaven, Hell, and what some might call Purgatory,” she continued. “The spirits used to help guide magicians, and even humans when George Gordon was in charge, in times of trouble.
“They can also assist in giving you something much more valuable than advice: they can give you memories. If you use the proper spell.”
“Memories?” Harley asked. “If someone starts crying silver, I’m out of here.” The human pop culture reference flew over the heads of the other two.
Donahue gave her a withering stare and said, “The memories of the spirits, Miss Sinclair. Essentially, they can allow you to literally see the past as if you were there. In this case,” she gestured to the lock of hair in Harley’s hand, “Salem’s past. Mr. Lynx, I wanted you to come with because you, too, can add your memories and give Harley a bigger picture than she’d otherwise get.”
This was all interesting, and now Harley was finally understanding what Mrs. Donahue was telling her to do.
“So, if I go into his past, I could discover why the potion didn’t work and come up with another remedy?” she said.
“Precisely, Miss Sinclair.” Donahue gestured to the candle. “Burn the hair over the flame and recite this spell.” She handed the candle to Caelum and a slip of parchment to Harley with a spell scrawled onto it. “When you recite the first part, the spirits you need will come to you. When they are ready, you, Mr. Lynx, will throw your own hair on top of the flame as well. Miss Sinclair, you will recite the second half of the spell. And then you will be transported.”
“What are those markings on the side of the candle?” Caleum asked.
“It’s a clock candle,” Harley replied. “But instead of telling time, this one will mark the passage of years, not hours. Correct?”
Donahue nodded. “You’re still one of my brightest students, Miss Sinclair. Now go, both of you. And I hope you get the answers you are looking for.” She placed a warm, shaking hand on Harley’s shoulder and began the trek back to the castle. Harley watched her go for a moment before turning back to the Watchtower.
Without thinking about it, she threaded her fingers through Caelum’s. “Okay. Let’s go have a tête-à-tête with the dead.”
The walk up there felt almost dreamlike. As if it wasn’t really happening. Yet when she got to the top of the tower, the wind bit into her skin and she knew that this was a frightening reality.
“Okay, what do we do now?” Caelum asked.
“I’ll do everything. Just add your hair when I tell you,” she said, placing the candle in the centre of the stone floor. “Ignis,” she cast, lighting the wick. She took out the paper Donahue had given her and began to recite, “Earth, bone, and winding sheet. Let this spirit come to me. Yet send it in peace or not at all.”
The Watchtower began to get severely chilly, and a wind whipped around them, making the candle flame flicker and dance. On the other side of the candle a misty greenish white form began to take shape before her eyes, and she felt her heart began to hammer in her chest. It continued to take a human form, still unrecognisable as it began to shift and contort. Finally, her ghostly visitor was standing before her.
“Hey, kid,” Draven said, smiling softly. “Long time no see.” He was whole, healthy, unharmed. No blood marred his clothes, no bones were broken in his neck. Even his scars seemed to be gone. Is it possible for one to look healthy in death?
Words and feelings Harley had never consciously acknowledged came spilling forth, barely keeping tears at bay. He was her godfather, and he had died because he had saved her life.
“I’m so sorry, Draven, you died protecting me from the wolf. Had I been faster, or surer of my magic, I’d have been able to stop it myself, but it was so close to you, I was
afraid I would accidentally kill you. Had I only hurt it harder, quicker, you never would have died!”
Draven’s eyes softened. “Oh, Harley, that wasn’t your fault. Werewolves had been trying to kill me for decades. One can’t outrun the inevitable. My death was no more your fault than it was my own. You would have been able to handle the wolf, but I couldn’t see it hurt you, so I interfered. No one is at fault for my death except for him.” His eyes narrowed. “Speaking of…”
Harley put her head in her hands. Her one use of the Decaying Curse, a Dark, illegal curse. She’d tried to block it from her mind. “You’re dead, Draven, and you’re still going to lecture me?”
“Actually I was going to thank you,” he corrected. “It takes a lot of love for someone to possibly damn their soul to avenge you, as you did for me.”
“I had to,” she said quietly. “We’d turned over a new leaf. And then you were just gone.”
Draven smiled at her. “Those rare moments you sound like your mother bring me more joy than you could ever know. I’m proud of the woman you became. I’ve been watching over you, we all have. You bring us a lot of happiness even when you don’t know we’re there. And believe me, someone’s always with you.” His eyes flicked over from her to Caelum.
It was then she remembered: Caelum and Draven had dated. They’d been planning their wedding when Caelum had been killed. Harley turned to look at her boyfriend, whose golden eyes were wide and filled with unshed tears.
“Just my luck: I die, and you come back to life,” Draven said loftily, but Harley could see tears in his eyes, too.
“This can’t … I …” Caelum took a step forward, and must have realised that he couldn’t touch Draven. “I miss you.”
“And I miss you. I missed you for years. Watching you die killed me, Kit. I knew I was going to outlive you, eventually, but I didn’t think it would be that soon,” Draven admitted.
