“Do you smell that?” I asked as we approached the camp.
Tristan sniffed. “Smells like outside.”
“Like summer,” I said, hurrying my step. And then stopped dead.
The camp we’d left behind had been all snow and mud, but now it was a lush oasis of greenery. Grass as high as my knee carpeted the ground, bushes were thick with leaves, and wildflowers painted the clearing in a myriad of colors.
We approached Gran and Chris, who stood near a bunch of lavender flowers.
“Always such a fondness for pretty things, Christophe,” Tristan said. “Were you planning to leave some on my pillow?”
“What I planned to leave on your pillow didn’t smell half so nice.”
Ignoring their banter, Gran took hold of my arm. “Whole clearing took to bloom after you two scampered off to have your spat.” She jerked her chin at the flower. “Lobelia.”
“That’s certainly no coincidence.” I plucked one of the blossoms. “Shall we?”
* * *
“You’re sure you want to do this?” I asked Martin, tucking the blanket around him. “It will not be pleasant.”
“Can’t be any worse than what he did to me.” We’d brought him out of the tent and laid him on the grass, but his eyes had been on the Duke the whole time.
“Stay back,” I said to Tristan and Chris. “The last thing we need is you getting caught up in this.” Victoria stood a little further on, Vincent sitting on the ground at her feet, fingers plucking at the grass, and I waited for her nod before I turned back to Martin and my grandmother.
It took a bit of time to create the potion, Gran murmuring instructions as I worked, but when it was finished, I wished it had taken longer. If it didn’t work, not only would I be back to square one, who knew what state Martin would be in?
I started pouring the basin of liquid at his forehead, moving slowly down his body, until I reached the stumps of his legs. The potion sat suspended in a gleaming line, trembling with each of his nervous breaths. Picking up the cast-iron pan, I touched fingers to either side of the liquid on his forehead, and murmured the incantation. The potion spilled in two sheets to either side, flowing like twin waterfalls. At first, it seemed as though nothing was happening, that it was nothing more than an interesting trick to entertain the eye. Then all at once, gravity seemed to double in strength, dragging me down.
And Martin began to scream.
The potion turned pink, then bright red as the spell tore apart his skin, his eyes, his insides, rending him as it took back what belonged to the earth.
Tears streamed down my face. I wanted to stop. Needed to stop. But it was too late. The potion thickened into a metallic slurry that pooled on the ground.
Then it was done.
The twin waterfalls ceased their flow, and I changed my focus, catching hold of his magic and bending it to my will, forcing it to heal him. The gruesome carnage faded, but his chest was still.
“Come on, Martin,” I screamed, slamming my hands down on his chest. “Breathe!” My fists struck him again, then again, but as I flung them down the fourth time, instead of hitting flesh, they sank along with his clothing into earth beneath him.
“Stones and sky!” I jerked my arms back so hard I toppled onto my bottom, watching as his misty figure drifted and swirled, then finally coalesced into the librarian I knew and loved.
He blinked at me.
“Martin?” I bent closer. “Can you hear me? Are you all right? How do you feel?”
His lips parted and his eyes shifted back and forth. “There are no words for this, Cécile. Not in any language.”
It was only then that I realized he was whole once more. “You are as you imagine yourself to be,” I breathed, so painfully happy that I’d fixed my friend that it took me a moment to realize I felt no relief of my promise. Martin was free from iron and fey once more, but there was something more that needed to be done. Something that I’d missed.
“Tristan,” I said, turning. “I think I…” But the words died on my lips, because I found myself face to face not with Tristan, but with Victoria. And before she even spoke, I knew what she would ask.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Tristan
“You fixed him,” Victoria said to Cécile, her voice strange and breathy. Desperate. “You made him better.”
I knew where this was going, and judging from the look on Cécile’s face, so did she.
“Victoria, no,” I said, catching hold of her arm to draw her back.
In a blur of fury, she spun, her fist connecting with my face in a burst of pain. She’d hit me. I touched my lip, then looked at the blood on my fingers, trying to understand how we’d gotten to this point. How instead of untrussing Angoulême and dealing with him, I was fighting with my closest friends.