Hemlock & Hawthorn’s Herbery
She was certainly not in the right district. This looked—and smelled—more liked Valenda’s infamous Spice Quarter, where people traveled when they wished to purchase contacts for assassins, untraceable poisons, people—or just certain body parts. It was also a home for gambling pits, drug dens, and brothels. None of which were legal in Valenda, so they all existed belowground in primeval passages, accessible only through passwords and hidden doors from the exotic spice shops above.
“Not sure a pretty thing like you should be on these streets alone, even in daylight.”
Tella took a nervous step back, though the woman who addressed her looked too old to cause any harm.
The crone had to be at least five times Tella’s age, with wrinkled hands stained with ink, and gleaming white hair that nearly reached the ground she swept. Back and forth, the old woman wiped all the dirt and grime away from the front steps of Elantine’s Most Wanted.
Tella loosed an uneven breath. The Spice Quarter might have been a stranger to her, but this ramshackle store called to her like an old friend. It was the same place where she’d sent all her letters to Jacks.
Tella had never actually been certain if it was a genuine business or merely an address people used to ferry illicit requests and letters. But clearly it was very real. She’d seen Wanted posters for criminals tacked throughout the quarter, and apparently they’d all come from here.
Tella drew nearer, to better look inside. Parchment posters flapped, flickering black-and-white images, with some of the most interesting criminals she had ever seen. Alluring and disturbing, she wondered if the portraits were bewitched, for they tempted her to climb the steps and come all the way inside, to take a closer peek, the same way her mother’s Deck of Destiny had tempted her to play with it all those years ago.
Of course that had led her nowhere good.
“Are you lost?” asked the old woman. “This isn’t a district where you want that to happen.”
In the distance, bells began to chime. If Tella counted she imagined there’d be ten in total. She was definitely late for her appointment now. Maybe she could come back to explore the shop later.
“I’m searching for Minerva’s ModernWear,” she said.
The woman’s gaze turned shrewd. “Not sure what you need in that place, but I think it’s just down that road.” She lifted her chin toward a sign down the block labeled Wrong Way.
“Watch yourself,” the woman called. “Minerva’s isn’t—”
But Tella didn’t catch the rest of the warning as she disappeared down the street. It didn’t take long for her stomach to start sweating, and her heart to labor a little more with its beats. But she kept jogging, until she reached a sunlit sidewalk lined in shops as pretty as freshly wrapped packages. Minerva’s ModernWear rested on the corner. Closed lilac drapes sheltered the windows and heavy plum awnings shaded the door like sleepy bows.
Scarlett would have hated it, given her distaste for the color purple.
Tella felt a stab of guilt then that she’d left the palace without checking in on her sister, especially after what Scarlett had learned about Armando last night. But Scarlett had also probably heard of Tella’s engagement. The moment Scarlett spoke with Tella, she’d know for certain it was a hoax, and very likely try to do something heroic about it that would place her in all sorts of danger that Tella could not allow.
Scarlett was Tella’s person—the one someone in the world whom Tella could always count on. Tella might not have believed in falling in love, but she had literally bet her life that Scarlett loved her. Tella would destroy the world before she allowed anything to happen to her sister.
“Pardon me.” Tella struggled to catch her breath as she reached the front of Minerva’s, where a barrel of a man with slicked-back hair and a plum suit the same hue as the shop guarded the door as if he were an extension of it. “My name’s Donatella Dragna.”
“A little early, aren’t you?” said the man.
Tella was fairly certain he had it backward and that she was rather late. The first of many peculiar observations. The second was the unnecessary number of locks the man unlatched before opening the dark purple door and letting her inside.
16
Minerva’s ModernWear was not an ordinary dress shop. In fact, as Tella entered, she wondered if it was a dress shop at all.
The foyer was decorated with sumptuous lilac lounges, amethyst carpets thicker than uncut grass, and violet vases filled with flowers the size of small trees that smelled of lavender and expensive tobacco. But for all the finery around her, Tella didn’t detect any frocks or fashionable accessories.
“Aren’t you a vision?”
Tella jumped as a plump seamstress came flitting out of a pair of double doors. Her orchid-colored hair was bobbed boldly at her chin, matching the measuring tapes wrapped around her neck like jewelry. “He told me you were spirited, but he didn’t mention how pretty you were. No wonder you captured his attention.”
Tella didn’t want to smile, given that it wasn’t her choice to be here or to be in this relationship with Jacks, but it was rather nice to be fawned over.
“You’re earlier than I expected, so you may have to sit for a bit. Would you like any wine or cake while you wait?”
“I never say no to wine or cake.”
“I’ll have some sent straightaway.” The seamstress ushered Tella into another plush purple hall lined in velvet wallpaper and closed doors as dark as black cherries, with equally dark whispers coming from behind them.
“How much poison can these cuff links hold?” muttered a man.
Behind the next door a woman crisply explained, “It’s woven between the lace, just a gentle tug and you’ll have a garrote.”
A couple of doors down Tella heard someone giggling, followed by an accented voice saying, “The sleeves are this puffy so that you can hide a derringer inside. Feel that tiny cradle.”
Hidden pistols. Poison. Garrotes.
Definitely not normal, though of course the same sentiment could have been applied to Tella’s fiancé. Fictional fiancé, she corrected. Although for a charade of an engagement it seemed Jacks was going to a surprising amount of effort.
The seamstress stopped in front of a closed door at the end of the hall. “Why don’t you go in and get situated, pet? I’ll pop back with your items in a few.”
The woman disappeared down the hall and Tella reached for the doorknob. She half expected to find chandeliers made of poison bottles dangling from an aubergine ceiling, mirrors lined with swords, and dressing hooks made of silver daggers.
She’d not expected to see him.
Tella’s stomach dipped and her heart might have flipped, the same way it always did whenever she met Dante.
He didn’t lounge or rest, he possessed.
In the corner of the suite, atop a raised platform, he sat back in an excessively large black leather chair as if he ruled the world from it. His generous shoulders and chest consumed his temporary throne rather than the other way around. His posture was straight but not rigid, as if he didn’t know how to slouch, only how to take up space.
Arrogant scoundrel. Yet even as Tella thought the words, heat spread across her chest as she said, “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
“How did you know I would be here?”
A slow, superior raise of his brows.
Tella’s world tilted once again. “You sent the letter?”
“Disappointed I’m not Jacks?”
She slammed the door shut. “Are you mad? Do you know what my fiancé will do if he discovers this?”
“He’ll only find out if you tell him,” Dante answered coolly. “And there’s no need to pretend with me that you two are actually engaged.”
Silent alarms filled the dressing chamber as Jacks’s words rushed back to Tella: